Ravenscroft senior Melissa Funsten announced today her commitment to play field hockey at Davidson College.

Funsten, who will be the first Raven to play Division I field hockey, was named the TISAC conference Co-Player of the Year and Ravenscroft team MVP in 2010. She led the Ravens to an NCISAA State runner-up finish in 2010 while breaking the school record for points in a career with 47.

“Melissa has been an outstanding player on our field hockey team since her eighth-grade year,” Ravenscroft coach Kerry Norman said.

Several private institutions from North Carolina pop up on the latest magazine rankings evaluating the affordability of higher education.

This time, it's Kiplinger's Personal Finance, which has unveiled its 2011 Best Values in Private Colleges issue.

Duke, Davidson, Wake Forest and Elon all make their lists.

(Illustration courtesy thedigeratilife.com)

Kiplinger's actually has two lists. On its private-college list aimed at liberal arts colleges, Davidson College ranks 5th nationally.

Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania tops that list.

On the private university list, Duke ranks fifth, Wake Forest is 21st and Elon is 35th.

Princeton sits atop that list.

Kiplinger's looks at the total cost of attendance but also examines the "net" cost, meaning the cost after factoring student aid.

Consider: The total cost of attending Duke is $53,157. But because Duke meets 100 percent of demonstrated need, it gives out, on average, $33,810 in need-based aid and $23,185 in non-need-based aid, significantly defraying the cost for a lot of students.

Click here to search the magazine's database to see how your school fares.

Tom Ross, the next president of the UNC system, was on Good Morning America this week.

Sort of.

North Carolina's Tom Ross is the current Davidson College president set to lead the UNC system starting Jan. 1.

He's not Tom Ross, chairman of Delaware's Republican Party. That's who Good Morning America interviewer George Stephanopoulos was referring to in an interview with Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party candidate for the U.S. Senate who won a Republican primary in Delaware this week.

Delaware's Tom Ross apparently had predicted, as you can see in the screen shot above, that O'Donnell had little chance to win.

But the fella in the photo is the UNC system's next president, not the guy running Delaware's Republican Party.

North Carolina's Tom Ross apparently popped up first when someone was casting about for a photo of Delaware's Tom Ross.

Oops. Pesky Internet.

The New York Times has the full video here.

And credit to the Greensboro News & Record for picking up on the gaffe here.

UNC President-elect Tom Ross is leaving the corporate board governing Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina.

Ross, chosen late last month to head the 17-campus public university system, had joined the BCBSNC board earlier this year. Under the organization's bylaws, board members who change jobs must offer to step down, and the board then decides whether to accept the resignation.

But Ross has made clear he plans to leave the board.

(photo courtesy Davidson College)

In a Sept. 7 letter to Jeffrey Houpt. the former UNC-Chapel Hill med school dean and current chair of the BCBSNC board, Ross writes in part that membership on corporate boards doesn't make sense for him right now.

"I know that I have much to learn in my new position, and that I will have many demands on my time, particularly during the first year of my service," wrote Ross, the current president at Davidson College. "Thus I have concluded that at this early stage of my work at the university it is not in my best interest or that of the university for me to devote the time necessary to properly fulfill the duties of a corporate board member."

His resignation will be effective Oct. 15.

Ross succeeds Erskine Bowles as UNC's president on Jan. 1. He has been lauded as a builder of consensus throughout a long career largely in the public sector.

The Blue Cross board has a distinct UNC system influence. The organization's CEO, Brad Wilson, is a former chairman of the UNC system's Board of Governors and still an emeritus member. He was also a member of the search committee that interviewed Ross for the UNC post, creating a conflict of interest. So, he sat out that interview, he told the News & Observer.

A News & Observer editorial today pushes Ross to leave the BCBSNC post, saying his new job with UNC requires his full attention.

Tom Ross is the youngest of four boys born to Charles and Mary Ross, both Charlotte natives. They family lived in Greensboro, where young Tom developed a love for baseball by listening to Cincinnati Reds games on the radio.

He went to Davidson College, where he developed an interest in public service that has guided him through his working life.

On Jan. 1, Ross will leave Davidson, where he's the president, to take over leadership of the UNC system. It's a big jump in scale - from a private college of 1,700 students to a 17-campus public system of 200,000 students. But Ross's many supporters say he's just the man for the job.

I spoke with Ross recently in his Davidson College office, which is dotted with baseballs and other memorabilia from his favorite sport. They include a Reds ball cap autographed by Pete Rose and a baseball autographed, illogically enough, by the staff of the court clerk's office in Catawba County.

That interview yielded a profile of Ross in today's paper.

A former judge who also directed the administrative office of the state's court system, Ross has cut a broad swath through North Carolina government and politics, and he spoke at length of his service.

Here are excerpts.

Why did you attend Davidson?

As a UNC system search committee zeroed in on Tom Ross as its top choice to run the state's public universities,  one influential member was faced with a conflict.

J. Bradley Wilson is the president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina. He was also a member of the UNC search committee by virtue of his emeritus membership on the UNC system's Board of Governors, which he chaired several years ago.

Ross is also on the Blue Cross board, named to it earlier this year. As such, he would play a role in making employment and compensation decisions that could affect Wilson.

(photo courtesy cednc.org)
So when Ross's name popped up during the search committee's deliberations, Wilson said he stepped out of the room. He declined to participate in Ross's interviews to avoid a conflict of interest.

Now, Ross must offer to resign from the Blue Cross board. The organization's bylaws require that members offer to step down if they change jobs; however, the board doesn't necessarily have to accept that resignation, so Ross may indeed remain on that board, Wilson said last week. The matter has yet to be addressed.

The insurance board is heavy with members familiar with the university system. A second member of the UNC presidential search committee, Walter Davenport, sits on the Blue Cross board as well, but did not sit out the Ross interviews, according to a UNC system spokeswoman. He is not a Blue Cross employee, as Wilson is, and thus didn't have the same conflict.

Harold Martin, the current chancellor at N.C. A&T University, is also on the Blue Cross board. Prior to taking the reins at N.C. A&T, he served as a UNC system vice president.

Other board members include Jeffrey Houpt, the former head of the UNC Health Care system, and Lloyd Hackley, a former chancellor at Fayetteville State University.

Blue Cross hasn't disclosed what it's paying Ross for board work. Other board members were paid $33,047 to $51,314 last year, Blue Cross reported in a filing with the N.C. Department of Insurance.

Ross was hired last week to head the 220,000-student system. He starts work Jan. 1 and will earn $525,000 annually.

How religious is too religious?

That's the dicey question at the core of a recent court ruling that now prohibits Davidson College from using police powers. The thinking: Davidson is a Presbyterian institution and as such cannot have a police force because it runs afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

To all this, a writer with the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy says: Enough!

Writing on the group's website, Duke Cheston argues that the ruling opens a door that best remain shut - defining levels of religiosity.

And, Cheston suggests, in farming out security to other local agencies, religious colleges and universities may be getting a lesser product.

Plucked from the state's deep-rooted political establishment, Tom Ross has the credentials to be the next president of the state's crown jewel -  The UNC system.

That according to N&O columnist Rob Christensen, who writes in Sunday's paper that Ross, the former judge and current president at Davidson College, is something of a poor man's Erskine Bowles.

Bowles too has the deep roots in the state's political establishment, but also carved out a career in private industry as an investment banker.

Christensen writes in part:

"In turning to Ross, the UNC Board of Governors found someone who is part of a relatively small group of men and women who run North Carolina's politics, businesses, foundations, courts and law firms.

The establishment is a meritocracy. North Carolina is not Virginia with its first families or South Carolina with its Charleston aristocracy."

Last week, Ross was hired to replace Bowles as president of the UNC system. He starts work Jan. 1.

Thomas Ross is expected to be elected to the presidency of the state's public university system today.

Ross is the current president at Davidson College.

He's the top choice of a search committee and a North Carolinian with deep political roots.

Here's the story.

Thomas Ross, the current president at Davidson College, is next in line to lead the UNC system.

The UNC system's Board of Governors have called a special meeting for Thursday morning to hire a new president, and several sources tell us that Ross is the choice.

Here's the story.