The power shift in the General Assembly has the folks who run public universities nervous.

The Republican takeover brings with it some uncertainty. How will the new legislature view the university's budget request? Will it provide full funding for enrollment growth?

And another key concern: What will legislators opt to do with revenue gleaned from tuition increases?

That's a big issue on campuses, which are lobbying hard already to keep that revenue. In what has become an annual battle, some legislators would prefer to take that pot of money away and stash it in the state's General Fund, to help ease the budget deficit.

In today's story on tuition and fee increase proposals, State Sen. Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, chimes in with words UNC officials will likely be pleased to year.

Berger, expected to take over leadership in the State Senate in 2011, told me yesterday he thinks campuses should keep the revenue.

"If we're talking about increasing tuition, that should stay on campuses rather than going into the General Fund," he said. "I don't think you should be using tuition as a tax substitute."

The money management firm led by the great-grandson of North Carolina Central University founder James E. Shepard will establish an endowed scholarship fund of $100,000 with the NCCU Foundation.

The commitment was made by Piedmont Investment Advisors of Durham, whose president and CEO is Isaac H. Green, Shepard's great-grandson.

Green noted that more than 90 percent of NCCU students receive financial aid, and that historically black colleges and universities in particular struggle to provide the financial support that gives deserving students the chance to attend college.

“This endowed scholarship of $100,000, in honor of my parents, Dr. James and Carolyn Green, and my great-grandfather, Dr. James Shepard, will give undergraduate students in good academic standing that opportunity,” he said.

When fully funded, the income from the fund will be used to provide scholarship support for undergraduates, with a preference for students in the School of Business.  To be eligible, recipients must be residents of one of these North Carolina counties: Alamance, Burke, Caswell, Chatham, Durham, Franklin, Granville, Person, Vance or Warren.

Piedmont, which is based in Durham, manages about $3.1 billion in assets.  Green, along with partners Sumali Sanyal and Dawn Alston Paige, founded the firm in August 2000.

“As a Durham-based, minority and women-owned firm,” Green said, “we understand the importance of a strong community and business environment. We understand that through hard work, a commitment to serve well, and a strong sense of faith, we can all achieve success in our endeavors.  My great-grandfather would have been proud to see the lives that have been changed by this university, and I am proud to honor his legacy and that of my parents.”

Scientists with N.C. Central University and UNC-Chapel Hill have won a joint grant from the National Cancer Institute that will bring nearly $12 million to the two institutions.

The Comprehensive Minority Institution Cancer Center Partnership Grant is one of two issued by NCI; Harvard and the University of Massachusetts were awardees as well.

This will be the largest sponsored research grant in NCCU history - $7 million over five years to the Julius L. Chambers Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute. UNC's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center will receive about $4.9 million.

The money will fund faculty partnerships between the two institutions to develop joint programs, expand training and support five research projects.

The program is designed to link minority-serving universities with NCI-designated cancer centers.

For more information, check this out.

The key projects include:

• An evaluation of a self-screening cervical cancer test by mail among rural women in North Carolina.
•  A comparative study of a precancerous condition called Barrett’s esophagus to pinpoint differences in genetic and environmental factors that may contribute to the predominance of this disease in Caucasian Americans and may be protective in African-American patients.
•    A study of receptors for key agents that could be administered without undesirable side effects and inhibit the growth of prostate cancer, a disease that disproportionally affects African-American men.
•     A project to identify potential drugs that target a key biomolecular signal involved in triple negative breast cancer, a type of cancer that affects young African-American women disproportionately.
•      An intervention, centered at barbershops, aimed at promoting physical activity in African-American men.
   

A former N.C. Central University trustee faces sexual coercion claims in suburban Atlanta.

Eddie Long, the high-profile prosperity preacher who heads the Lithonia, Ga.-based New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, is the target of two lawsuits from young men  who claim Long coerced them into having sex.

(photo courtesy blackgospel.com)

Long disputes the claims.

Long is the longtime pastor at New Birth, a massive church outside Atlanta. If his name is familiar, it may be due to his odd involvement in a mess at NCCU a couple years back that ended up costing the university greatly.

While Long was still a trustee, campus officials discovered an NCCU satellite campus operating at his church, a degree-granting operation that had never been properly approved.

The unauthorized venture ended up costing NCCU more than $1.1 million, which was a piece of the $3 million or so in federal financial aid paid to students in the unaccredited program.

Those payments were improper because the program was not accredited.

There was a time when Hillside High School in Durham was a feeder school for N.C. Central, the university literally down the street.

But times are changing, reports Stan Chambers in today's Durham News, and now most Hillside students avoid the quick jaunt down Fayetteville Street in favor of a university outside of Durham.

But now the university wants to dig into those old roots once again and is becoming more aggressive about local recruiting.

A wide-scale campus power outage has forced the cancellation of classes today at N.C. Central University.

University officials announced the cancellation this morning in a brief statement that did not offer a cause for the outage.

On college campuses these days, you'll find all manner of questionable attire. From pajama bottoms to oversized shorts to skirts short enough to leave nothing to the imagination, the college student wardrobe is less than impressive.

At N.C. Central University, Chancellor Charlie Nelms and other campus leaders want to change things by sending a firm message about acceptable dress.

I spoke several students for today's story who said they agreed, at least in concept, with Nelms' desire that they dress better and present themselves in a more professional manner.

Some excused sloppy dress, saying they couldn't afford better clothes.

But others, like stuent Gary Hodges, don't buy that argument.  Hodges has no problem dressing up and doesn’t mind spending a few bucks on nice clothes, either. For business students, spiffy suits are school supplies.

“You can get a suit from a discounter for $50,” said Hodges, a senior who lives in Durham. “Students would spend fifty bucks at the movies and the shopping mall buying stuff they don’t need, so I don’t think it’s a hardship.”

What do you think?

It isn't unusual for the folks over at N.C. Central University to spend part of their August shoehorning students into area hotels when demand for on-campus housing exceeds supply.

That's not happening this year, thanks to a philosophical shift in the way the university finds on-campus spots for students.

Until now, housing assignments were done on a first-come, first-serve basis and occasionally resulted in housing crunches like the NCCU had last year, when hundreds of students were placed in the Millennium Hotel for a semester.

But as the semester begins this week, NCCU will avoid a repeat of that scenario, said Chancellor Charlie Nelms. It will do so by placing a new emphasis on housing for freshmen; the university told returning students months ago that freshmen would be given priority, so older students may want to seek off-campus housing on their own, Nelms said.

NCCU set aside 2,400 beds, enough for all new freshman, and had about 1,000 more on campus for older students. The rest are expected to find other housing.

The emphasis on freshman housing is an attempt to ease the college transition and make sure those students stay in school to become sophomores, and juniors, and seniors, Nelms said.

"We know there's a connection between living on campus and student retention," he said. "And if you're on campus and walk down teh hall, you're likely to strike up a conversation. You have those serendipitous interactions that are really important."

Classes start today.

The art museum at N.C. Central University will soon unveil a series of color sketches depicting Nelson Mandela's years of political imprisonment.

The exhibit is "Spirit of Freedom: Drawings and Narratives from Nelson Mandela's Imprisonment at Robben Island." The collection of 20 color sketches and narratives will run from Aug. 8 to Sept. 17.

Mandela spent 19 of his 27 jailed years in Robben Island. His sketches depict those experiences. One shows a guard tower; another, the view from his barred prison cell.

The sketches were the idea of a Mandela adviser who believed that they could help raise money for the fight against AIDS, according to this university news release.

The former freedom fighter returned to Robben Island with photographer Grant Warren and later worked as a student with artist Varenka Paschke, a granddaughter of the apartheid Prime Minister P. W. Botha, to produce lithographs.  Steven Inggs, professor of printmaking at the University of Cape Town, turned Mandela’s work into limited edition prints.
 
The pieces have been loaned to NCCU by Capitol Broadcasting Co. and were originally purchased in South Africa by Jim Goodmon, president and CEO of Capital Broadcasting.  Goodmon had earlier toured Robben Island with a former prisoner as guide and noticed the pieces as he passed an art gallery.
 
Born Rolihlahla Mandela in 1918, Mandela was active in the African National Congress (ANC), an organization focused on African nationalism and self-determination. The 1948 political victory of the white supremacist National Party in South Africa, which ran on the platform of apartheid, thrust Mandela into a leadership role with the ANC.  Mandela led the resistance against apartheid in a campaign that included boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and non-cooperation.
 
In 1964 he was arrested and found guilty of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment.  He was  released from prison in 1990 and elected president of the ANC the next year. Three years later, black South Africans would vote for the first time and Mandela was elected the first black President of a fully democratic South Africa. Now 92 years old, this former South African President, Nobel Prize laureate and former political prisoner remains one of the most transformative figures of tolerance, compassion and reconciliation.
 
The NCCU Art Museum is on Lawson Street in Durham. It is open Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m.  Admission is free. For general information or assistance, call (919) 530-6211.

The Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute at N.C. Central University has a new director.

He is K. Sean Kimbro, who comes to Durham from the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, where he has worked since 2004.

Kimbro, 45, will be associate professor of biology at NCCU. At the Winshop institute, he most recently served as program director of the Georgia Center for Health Equality. It provides infrastructure for the study of various health disparities in the metro Atlanta area.

Kimbro, a Ohio native, has a bachelor's degree in biology from Washington University in St. Louis and a doctorate in molecular and microbiology from Indiana University. His research focuses on hormone-related cancers.

In an NCCU press release, Kimbro says he wants to sharpen the institute's focus on health disparities research and improve its relationship with the National Institutes of Health, a major source of federal research funding.

At BBRI, Kimbro will oversee a 16 faculty researchers.