UNC system Board of Governors chairman Peter Hans says the real lesson of the whole episode with Mary Easley is that universities must be cautious about hirings to begin with, also mentioning UNC-Chapel Hill's hiring in 2005 of former U.S. Sen. John Edwards.
"The lesson here," Hans said, "is that the university system should avoid entanglements. Whether it's this hiring, or the hiring of John Edwards, or possibly a Republican politician in the future."
N.C. State University has picked a speaker from Duke for its spring commencement. Duke Energy that is. James E. Rogers, chairman of the board, president and CEO of the power company will deliver the commencement address.
Rogers has more than 20 years of experience as a CEO in the electric utility industry. He was named president and CEO of Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power companies in the United States, following the merger of Duke Energy and Cinergy in April 2006.
He has served more than 50 cumulative years on the boards of Fortune 500 companies, and in leadership roles for a host of organizations and energy councils and was named to Newsweek’s “Global Elite” list of “The 50 Most Powerful People in the World” in 2009. He will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
During the ceremony, Chancellor Randy Woodson will also confer an honorary degree on Robert Weiss, the artistic director and chief executive officer of Carolina Ballet.
Commencement is set for Saturday, May 14, at the RBC Center in Raleigh. The ceremony starts at 9 a.m.
The leaders of the UNC system and its campuses turned precisely zero cartwheels Tuesday upon getting a look at the spending plan proposed by the House.
It calls for cuts of more than 15 percent to public universities. That's far too much, UNC President and others said.
Systemwide, that would lead to the elimination of 3,200 jobs, many of them filled, Ross said.
N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson said the cuts would force "large and dramatic change" to the entire system.
Stay tuned. The Senate budget, expected to be more friendly to universities, comes out next.
UNC Chapel Hill does not anticipate a major academic restructuring – a la N.C. State University – to deal with ongoing budget cuts.
"We’re going to continually make changes," Robert Winston, chairman of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, said in a recent interview. "There will be some restructuring here and there. But nothing that will shock people and blow them away."
Last week, NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson announced a sweeping plan to eliminate some degree programs and merge departments and, potentially, entire schools.
The announcement was an indication that after four years of budget cuts, that campus could no longer get through the annual budget-cutting exercise by nipping around the periphery.
Woodson wants to rethink the entire university structure instead of gradually slicing away at every department’s budget, as it and other public universities have done for the last several years. At NCSU, budget cuts have already led to the elimination of jobs, class sections and other academic resources.
In Chapel Hill, UNC-CH's strategy is to assume cuts are coming and prepare for them as early as possible. To that end, Provost Bruce Carney pushed deans last October to start planning for cuts of 5 and 10 percent for next year, which for UNC-CH would be $26 and $52 million, respectively.
Normally, that wouldn't take place until March or April, Carney told trustees Wednesday afternoon. UNC-CH officials accelerated the exercise to allow more time to prepare for the cuts.
And UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp has already announced a five percent permanent budget cut effective July 1. That gives deans and department heads a half year to plan for the reductions.
"We’ll try to shield teaching and research and protect our ability to provide need-based financial aid," Thorp wrote in an e-mail to faculty and staff. "Admittedly, however, that will be harder to do moving forward because of the cumulative effects of the cuts we’ve taken so far."
Keep in mind: These cuts are for the next budget year. On top of that, universities have been asked to return to the state 3.5 percent of their spending for the current year, which, of course, is already half over. They must do so by March 1.
Read more about this in Thursday's News & Observer.
Big changes are coming at N.C. State.
Chancellor Randy Woodson announced plans today for a major reorganization aimed at rooting out underperforming or non-critical departments, programs and units.
It's a budget-cutting measure intended to streamline the university and mirrors a similar initiative soon to get underway on the UNC system level.
Jay Price has today's story here.
And here's a video and text copy of Woodson's announcement.
Randy Woodson had plenty of friends and well-wishers in attendance Tuesday at Reynolds Coliseum for his formal installation ceremony as N.C. State's chancellor.
Two who couldn't make it: Pat and Herb Woodson, the chancellor's parents. They stayed home in Fordyce, Ark., where Herb Woodson is nursing a bum leg. But they followed the festivities on the NCSU website, bursting with pride.
Herb Woodson, 79 and retired from the construction and restaurant businesses, told me Tuesday he wasn't surprised that his son laid out some fairly ambitious plans for NCSU.
"What he starts, he likes to finish," the elder Woodson said. "He's driven, but he's driven to do a good job. If he does something, everybody is going to know about it."
And he thinks his son, formerly the provost at Purdue University in Indiana, will be NCSU's chancellor for the duration.
"He loves it," Herb Woodson said. "They spent 25 years in Indiana. It gets cold there, you know! He wants to finish his career [at NCSU]."
N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson wants a more efficient university that brings in more federal research dollars and private gifts and better translates scientific discovery to practical use.
Officially installed Tuesday as NCSU's leader, Woodson laid out his vision for NCSU, one that he said must better capitalize on the university's strengths.
One way to do so is to cut through some red tape and tear down some of the walls between academic departments.
"The real opportunities for the future are at the intersection of disciplines and our professional fields," he said. "That means strengthening our interdisciplinary programs, lowering the barriers between disciplines and departments, being more nimble in our operations, developing academic programs of study across disciplines and bringing faculty together to promote interdisciplinary scholarship."
Woodson is thinking big. He wants to expand NCSU's tenure-track faculty, an improbable notion at many universities these days given the state of budgets at public institutions.
"You may be wondering how in a weak economy we can add tenure-track faculty." he said. "That's the challenge, right? The first part of the answer is that we can't do it all at once."
But without adequate tenure-track faculty, NCSU will fall behind on grant-writing and the training of graduate students, which in turn will limit the university's ability to conduct research and enroll grad students.
That, in turn, leads to an increase in the size of classes, he argues.
He also hopes to increase NCSU's $400 million endowment; many of NCSU's competitors have endowments twice as valuable, he said.
Woodson, the former provost at Purdue University, started work at NCSU in April.
Randy Woodson's been busy.
Since leaving Purdue University and becoming N.C. State's chancellor in April, he's barnstormed the state and beyond to introduce himself to alumni groups. He's slogged through his legislative season - where public universities lobby for funding - and he's made his first high-profile hire - new athletic director Debbie Yow.
On Tuesday, Woodson will be installed as NCSU's chancellor, a formal ceremony highlighting a week of events. He spoke to the News & Observer about his early observations of the job. Here are excerpts:
What are your early impressions of the new job? Any surprises?
There haven't been a lot of surprises. The institution is so similar academically to where I came from, I feel the academic part hasn't been a surprise. The only surprises have been positive - the strength of our faculty and students. If there is a surprise, it's a positive one about how committed our alumni and fans are about the institution.
What's going to be the biggest budget fight in the legislative session?
A big one for us is to make sure that the tuition students pay stays on campus. The students are investing in their education. Where their tuition goes...needs to be transparent and clear. And always a big issue is making sure there's adequate funding for financial aid for students with the most significant financial need. It's going to be a difficult session all the way around. We understand that.
You mentioned fan interest, alumni interest. Did you get a good glimpse of that early on in hiring a new athletic director?
N.C. State is building a new chancellor's residence on the shores of Lake Raleigh, over on Centennial Campus.
(Here's a map, if you can't figure out where it will be...)
And thanks to this website from NCSU's communications office, you can follow its progress.
(Photo: N.C. State Alumni Association)
Original designs called for a massive, 12,000-square-foot home at a price tag of $5 million; but those plans were scaled back considerably before the final project was approved.
The house is slated to be done in the spring.
At N.C. State, Chancellor Randy Woodson talks a bit about tuition hikes, which will mean an added $900 for his in-state students this fall.
