N.C. Central University has hired another Indiana University administrator.

Coincidence? Perhaps not.

NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms arrived in Durham last summer from Bloomington, Ind., where he was working as an administrator within the Indiana University system. He soon set about crafting a new leadership cabinet. Earlier this year, he moved Provost Beverly Washington Jones out of that position.

This week, he named her successor. He is Kwesi Aggrey, who comes from Indiana University's Northwest campus.

A native of Ghana, Aggrey was the vice chancellor for academic affairs at that campus. 

At N.C. Central University over in Durham, Saturday's mid-year graduation ceremony is expected to be so packed that tickets are being limited and overflow seating is being made available.

The ceremony is at 9 a.m. at the McClendon-McDougald Gymnasium.  

This year's December graduating class is one of the largest in recent years, with 519 students graduating. Thus, the university is limiting tickets to four per graduate. Once tickets are distributed, any left over will be distributed Friday at 3 p.m. at the B.N. Duke Atrium on campus.

If you can't get a ticket, you can watch the proceedings at B.N. Duke Auditorium, Farrison-Newton Communications Theatre, the School of Education Auditorium, or the Great Hall at the law school. It will also be webcast on the university's website.

The keynote speaker will be Patricia Russell-McCLoud, an Atlanta attorney and motivational speaker.

An undergraduate student at N.C. Central University was found dead late last night in his campus dormitory.

The student's body was discovered by a roommate, a university spokeswoman said today. The student's identity has not yet been made public.

More on the story here. 

This is the latest in an unusually large number of student deaths at NCCU, a public university in Durham. In the course of the 2007-08 school year, eight students died for various reasons. 

N.C. Central University wanted about $800,000 in state funds next year to start restructuring NCCU's University College.

He may get $300,000, and will be thankful for it. Given the state economy and UNC system President Erskine Bowles' demand that every line item in the university system's new budget request be justified to his satisfaction, Nelms is happy with whatever he can get.

Bowles and the UNC system wrote $300,000 into the budget request approved Friday for the NCCU initiative. While far less than what Nelms wanted, he said restructuring the college is a top priority, so he'll shift some federal money from other places to pay for it. 

 Earlier this year, NCCU decided to transform the college, which previously functioned basically as a clearinghouse for a variety of not-necessarily-connected functions, to a place from which campus leaders could focus on their top academic priority: student retention.

The money will pay largely for people. In order to re-cast the University College properly, Nelms hopes to hire more academic advisors and tutors and identify more mentors for first- and second-year students. NCCU is a historically black institution, and many of its students are the first in their families to go to college. Many arrive excited yet unprepared for the rigors of college-level work, Nelms said.

"These kids need some straight talk and a certain amount of structured support," he said. 

In a story in the Boston Globe today, a Florida school teacher named Steve Graham attempted to break some serious news about N.C. Central University.

Try to follow me here: Graham, who is black, was talking about how excited he was to see Barack Obama win the presidential election. He said it was better than seeing any of his sports heroes — John Thompson, Doug Williams and Tiger Woods - reach the pinnacle of their respective sports.

Then he says this:

"My daughter just thinks this is normal. My father went to a school when it was called North Carolina College for Negroes. And when I went there, it was called North Carolina Central University. Now they're thinking of calling it the University of North Carolina at Durham."

Huh?

Now, I follow higher ed issues around these parts fairly closely and am pretty sure I would know if one of our local universities was about to change its name. 

But just to be sure, I contacted spokespeople with both NCCU and the UNC system, each of whom assure me there is no name change on the horizon.

So there you go. 

Much has been written in this newspaper about lagging graduation rates, particularly the challenges historically black universities here face keeping students in college and getting them all the way through to graduation day.

At N.C. Central University in Durham, where about 49 percent of students graduate within six years, Chancellor Charlie Nelms is targeting student success as one of his top priorities.

The problem isn't just in Durham, nor just in North Carolina. This article looks at graduation rates at urban universities across the country, and some of the data is eye-opening. The six-year graduation at Chicago State University is 16 percent. At the University of the District of Columbia, it's 19 percent. At Wayne State University in Detroit, 32 percent.

The article reads in part:

"To varying degrees, these problems are mirrored in urban universities nationwide - academically unprepared students, insufficient funding, and the worst of city politics and higher education administration put together in one tangled mass of dysfunction.

There are exceptions, of course, institutions and departments doing great things despite many challenges. But on the whole, the odds are stacked against many city college students and the outcome data reflect the end result."

Canon Tyrell Fuller, the 21-year-old N.C. Central University student, apparently died of natural causes. The popular NCCU senior died unexpectedly back in April.

At the time, public health officials thought he had meningitis. That turned out not to be the case, but authorities in Creedmoor, where he fell ill while working, are still investigating his death.

Charlie Nelms gave his second convocation address as N.C. Central University's chancellor this morning.

In it, he largely recounted the university's accomplishments over the past year, while also announcing a new fundraising push.

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.