A UNC Charlotte professor has won the top faculty award given by the UNC system.

Diane Browder, a special education professor at UNCC, received the O. Max Gardner Award Friday during a meeting of the UNC system's Board of Governors.

Browder has spent more than two decades on academic instruction and assessment methods for severly disabled children. Her work has changed educational expectations for disabled children and helped shape educational policies and practices, according to a Friday news release.

"Dr. Browder is living proof that the research we do on our campuses matter," UNC system President Tom Ross said.

Browder's award, which carries a $20,000 prize, is given annually from the will of former Gov. Oliver Max Gardner to recognize faculty who make "the greatest contributions to the welfare of the human race."

A Duke graduate, Browder has long worked to dispel the notion that children with severe disabilities can't learn cognitive or academic skills.

In accepting her award, she told a short anecdote that elicited smiles and tingles from a packed room of onlookers. It centered on a young girl who was severely disabled. She'd never spoken in her life, communicating essentially through with her eyes.

Then one day, Browder was quizzing her with pictures. She locked eyes on a picture and, for the first time in her life, spoke.

The word was "apple."

Democrats in the State House are crying foul over the way the new majority in the legislature has appointed new members to the UNC system's Board of Governors.

House Republicans elected a new slate of eight members to the governing board Tuesday amid a protest from Democrats claiming the process was corrupt.

As Jane Stancill reports today, the 16 new members of the 32-member board include 13 white men, 2 white women and 1 man of Indian descent.

Seeing no need to cast votes that wouldn't matter, House Democrats turned in blank ballots and later voted "no" on a roll call vote on the list approved by Republicans.

Since members of the UNC board are political appointees, the majority power always has the option of stacking the deck to its liking.

But as we reported last week, previous legislatures have kept some level of gender and racial diversity on the board.

The board is now clearly far more conservative than it has been in prior years. But as newly re-elected board member Brent Barringer points out in today's story, the board has traditionally not operated in a particularly ideological or political manner.

By that, I mean that in discussions of higher education issues - tuition increases, approval of academic programs, the hiring of chancellors - the board very rarely divides along party lines.

In fact, there have been very few contentious, split votes in recent memory.

Perhaps that will change. We'll see.

While the legislature has now made its 16 appointments, not all members will be new. There are several re-appointments, including Peter Hans and Ann Goodnight on the Senate side, and Barringer and Leroy Lail on the House side. Those members have experience with board issues and are up to date on the UNC system's ongoing struggles with budget cuts, clearly the top issue facing the university right now.

Two more of the new appointees are prior members - John Fennebresque and H. Frank Grainger. So it's not all new blood.

Still, there will be challenges. When the new members take their seats on the board later this year, the budget situation may still be unclear. And the UNC President, Tom Ross, is new in his role as well, having taken over at the start of the year for Erskine Bowles, who retired after a five-year run.

Here's the slate appointed by the House this week:

Brent Barringer, a Cary lawyer (re-elected)

Leroy Lail, a Conover businessman (re-elected)

Mary Ann Maxwell, a Goldsboro business owner

Ed McMahan, a Charlotte businessman and former state legislator

Hari Nath, a Cary information technology consultant

David Powers, of Winston-Salem, a vice president with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

Richard Taylor, a Lumberton insurance, real estate and auto dealer

Raiford Trask III, a Wilmington developer

Dick Baddour, athletics director at UNC, is expected to be in Wilmington Thursday to brief members of the UNC system's governing board about the ongoing situation with the football program on the Chapel Hill campus.

Baddour isn't expected to give a formal presentation, but will be available during a committee meeting to answer questions. The board is meeting on the campus of UNC-Wilmington.

There will surely be questions. The latest on the burgeoning scandal: John Blake, the now-former assistant football coach, appears to have had a cozy relationship with an agent. This according to a News & Observer review of Blake's phone records.

In case you missed it...

Lost in much of the fanfare last week related to N.C. State's hiring of its new chancellor was a final decision on the controversial UNC system retreat rights policy.

The UNC system's governing board finally, after months - and months and months - of deliberations, approved changes putting some teeth into a policy that, until now, had given departing chancellors an unchecked golden parachute - on the taxpayer dime.

Here are the details.

The UNC Board of Governors plans to take up the issue of paid leaves for administrators at its meetings Thursday and Friday, addressing concerns that the often six-figure payments to campus officials have gotten out of hand.

The leaves are intended to help administrators prepare for a return to teaching, but The News & Observer reported in August that paid leaves had been given to campus administrators who then retired, got jobs elsewhere or were shown the door. Some leave deals also violated UNC system policies.

Here's more from staff writer Eric Ferreri's Campus Notes blog. 

Documents:

The UNC system's governing board said goodbye to five members Friday whose terms expired.

Stepping down are Ray Farris, Brad Adcock, Craig Souza, Frank Grainger and William Smith. 

Two other members whose terms expired - Jim Phillips and Brad Wilson - will remain on the board as emeritus members because each spent time as the board's chairman.

Farris, Adcock, Souza, Grainger, Wilson and Phillips each came aboard in 1997 and spent 12 years on the board, which makes policy for the state's 16 public universities.

Public higher education in North Carolina has changed dramatically since they began their tenures. The system has more than 215,000 students now - 56,000 more than 12 years ago. That's essentially like adding a student body the size of UNC Chapel Hill's. Twice.

And perhaps most notably, the physical plant has expanded immensely through the $2.1 billion bond campaign for higher education, which brought a wave of new construction to college campuses.

The seven vacated spots will be filled by some names familiar in the state's political and higher education circles. The new members, who begin work July 1, are Burley Mitchell, Bill Daughtridge, Franklin McCain, John Blackburn, Walter Davenport, James Deal and Paul Fulton.

Mitchell is a former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court. Daughtridge is a former state representative, and Fulton is a current trustee at UNC Chapel Hill.

McCain chairs the board of trustees at N.C. A & T University, Davenport chairs the Elizabeth City State University board, and Blackburn does likewise at Appalachian State University. Deal is on the Appalachian State board as well.

This week, the UNC system’s governing board will consider adopting a “value statement” making clear some of the public university system’s strategies as it navigates these lousy economic times.

While some of it is the usual rhetoric: “Protect UNC’s commitment to teaching, research and public service” - there are a couple components that send a firm message to the system’s 17 campuses.

For one, it directs campuses to consider across-the-board cuts only as a last resort. Cutting every division of a university equally is easier, in a sense, but administrators say doing so makes little sense because not every division, department, class and function has equal value.

The catch? It requires campus leaders to look very critically and make unpopular decisions. Nobody wants to be the one to tell Professor X, who has taught at Big State University for 30 years and is wildly popular on campus, that his Center for the Study of Vanilla Ice Cream is no longer relevant.

“Consider strategic vertical cuts that would reduce or eliminate nonproductive and/or nonessential programs and centers that no longer contribute in as meaningful a way to the campus’ modern mission as they once did,” the statement reads in part.

The next line in the statement is also interesting because it speaks to the desire of UNC system officials to have campuses act more as a cohesive unit rather than as 17 separate parts.

“Where feasible and appropriate, face-to-face courses that are eliminated should be made available through high-quality on-line instruction via UNC online. campuses are encouraged to continue their commitment to be more outward-facing, collaborative and regionally engaged.”

Okay, so here’s what that line means, though it doesn’t specifically say it. If a UNC system campus has a mediocre academic program that costs a lot of money, it should be scrapped, even if it means sending students to a similar, Internet-based course offered by another university.

Yes, the UNC system wants its campuses to send its customers away if and when it makes academic and financial sense.

“You’re sending it to the UNC system,” Hannah Gage, chairwoman of the UNC system’s Board of Governors, told me this week. “It does involve a deeper degree of education from the people who guide students. And it is cross-promotion. But we are a system.”

In recent years, the UNC system has used online courses more and more heavily in dealing with an increasing demand for its services.

And campuses see the value. In 2008, enrollment in distance education courses jumped 20 percent over the previous year, and campuses continue to ratchet up their online services.

A committee of the UNC system’s board will discuss the value statement Thursday.

This morning, a committee of the UNC system's Board of Governors will discuss, once again, tuition and fee increase proposals for the 17 campuses within the public university system.

The meeting comes days after UNC system President Erskine Bowles implored members of that board to consider lower tuition hikes than campuses had asked for.

Bowles is asking the board to slice each campus request by one-third, which is interesting given that the requests were all over the board. Some campuses, like UNC Chapel Hill, want to raise tuition at a level close to the 6.5 percent ceiling the board has set. Other campuses, like N.C. Central University, proposed to raise rates at far lower levels.

Yet, Bowles wants all requests cut by a third. That could make for an interesting discussion today, since campus chancellors are expected to plead their individual cases.

One other note - in reporting on these sorts of rate increases, we often report how campuses want to raise "tuition" and "fees." But the truth is, that's just a portion of what a student (or that student's parents) will pay in a year for that education.

I've always found this website a good gauge of the real costs of college. It is from UNC Chapel Hill's aid website, and shows that university's best guesstimate on the total cost of college.

It illustrates that tuition and fees for an in-state student from North Carolina this year totals $5,396. But what that student actually pays, after room, board, incidentals, books, travel and other costs reaches north of $16,000.

That's real money.

UNC system President Erskine Bowles is recommending a scaling-back of the tuition and fee increases that public universities have requested for next year.

In a strongly-worded memo to members of the UNC system's governing board, Bowles wants to cut all campus requests by a third.

He writes in part:

"The unprecedented scope of this recession and its growing impact on North Carolina families - combined with the real threat that ongoing budget cuts pose to our academic mission - mandate a different approach, both in terms of the amount of increase and the use of funds.

This has caused the chancellors and me to revise our recommendation to this board. Put plainly, most North Carolina families cannot afford a 6.5 percent increase in undergraduate tuition and fees. At the same time, we need additional resources and the flexibility to use those resources wisely in order to lessen the impact of this recession and related budget couts on our university."

 Bowles' recommendations have not come easy, in part because he and other university leaders have not been able to get a good read on where members of the General Assembly stand on the prospect of higher tuition.

A series of June electrical fires at a N.C. Central University facility is proving very costly.

The June 11 fire at NCCU's high-voltage electrical switchgear unit on East Lawson Street knocked out power in nine university buildings for five hours.

Sixteen days later, three additional units were damaged by fire, and three days after than, one more caught fire. In all, the damage to these five switchgear units left half the campus without electrical power, with the rest of campus experiencing intermittent power problems, according to a UNC system memo. There were no injuries from the fires, which caused the cancellation of some instruction, freshman orientation and some special events.

Total cost to repair the electrical systems, install a new, uninterruptable power supply and conditioning unit, and to upgrade the emergency generator system: $1.8 million. NCCU is asking the UNC system's permission this week to cobble together that money through three separate university funds, according to the memo. It is being classified as an emergency capital improvement project.

There is no mention in the memo of the source of the fire. Stay tuned.