DURHAM – Duke's women's basketball team held UNC Wilmington to one point for the first seven minutes of the first half. 

The No. 9 Blue Devils raced to a 14-1 lead and never looked back. They throttled the Seahawks, claiming an easy-day-at-the-office  107-45 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

With a certain height advantage, the Devils ran the floor and finished inside, applying pressure the Seahawks could not handle. In trying to keep the Devils at bay, they committed 40 turnovers – 21 in the first half – and were outscored 78-18 in the paint, out rebounded 41-24 and  generally overwhelmed.

UNC Wilmington has a new leader.

He is Gary L. Miller, who since 2006 has served as provost and vice president for academic affairs and research at Wichita State University.

He was named chancellor at UNCW Tuesday by the UNC system's Board of Governors.

Miller, 57, starts work no later than July 1, succeeding Rosemary DePaolo, who is retiring after an eight-year tenure.

One of three research universities in the Kansas Board of Regents System, Wichita State University is an urban doctoral research university enrolling approximately 14,500 students at the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels.  

From a UNCW press release: As provost and vice president for academic affairs and research, Miller is WSU’s chief academic and research officer.  In that role, he has been responsible for the overall vision, mission, and operations of all undergraduate and graduate academic programs on WSU’s main and satellite campuses, as well as providing leadership for academic support, research, strategic planning, outreach programs, and international programs.

Last year, Miller was a finalist for the presidency of Binghamton University.
 
A native of Dayton, Va., Miller graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in anthropology.  After completing a master’s degree in biology (1979) at William and Mary, he earned his doctorate in biological sciences from Mississippi State University in 1982. He also has attended programs in educational leadership at Harvard University and Yale University.
 
Miller began his academic career in 1983 as an assistant professor of entomology at Mississippi State and two years later joined the faculty of Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. 

In 1989, he began a 14-year tenure at the University of Mississippi, where he rose through the academic ranks and served for seven years as chair of the Department of Biology.  In 2002, he was recruited to serve as dean of arts and sciences at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., where he was helped expand in expand programs in the sciences, organize a full revision of the general education program, and increase enrollment. 

He left California in 2006 to join WSU as provost and vice president for academic affairs and research.

UNC Wilmington is closing in on selecting its next chancellor, and predictably, the search has been tight-lipped.

As is the custom when public universities in this state search for chancellors, those doing the searching are sworn to secrecy. Passwords, secret meetings and everything aside from Cold War-era spy techniques are employed to throw reporters off the scent to maintain the anonymity of candidates.

This is done, university officials always say, to insure that the institution gets the best possible applicants, since some top candidates are scared off if they know their interest will be made public.

As the Wilmington Star News reports today, UNCW faculty, staff and students involved in the process have signed confidentiality agreements. That's not unusual.

The search committee at N.C. Central University that sought a replacement for departed James Ammons did so and communicated partly in code.

UNCW is looking for a replacement for Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo, who is retiring.

UNC Wilmington is closing in on selecting its next chancellor, and predictably, the search has been tight-lipped.

As is the custom when public universities in this state search for chancellors, those doing the searching are sworn to secrecy. Passwords, secret meetings and everything aside from Cold War-era spy techniques are employed to throw reporters off the scent to maintain the anonymity of candidates.

This is done, university officials always say, to insure that the institution gets the best possible applicants, since some top candidates are scared off if they know their interest will be made public.

As the Wilmington Star News reports today, UNCW faculty, staff and students involved in the process have signed confidentiality agreements. That's not unusual.

The search committee at N.C. Central University that sought a replacement for departed James Ammons did so and communicated partly in code.

UNCW is looking for a replacement for Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo, who is retiring.

UNC Wilmington Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo will retire next June.

DePaolo, who has led the UNC system campus for the last seven years, announced today she will step down June 30, 2011.

“When a whole phase of a university’s renewal is complete, when the institution has not only redefined itself but grown into that definition, then it’s time for the chancellor who led that renewal to ask whether the time has come for new leadership, for a new vision—to take the university to its next level of potential,” DePaolo said.

DePaolo will not accept a retreat package or return to the university’s faculty, and  announced her plans eight months before her actual retirement date in order to give UNC President Erskine Bowles, his successor Thomas Ross, and the UNCW Board of Trustees adequate time to convene a search committee and appoint her replacement, according to a university news release.

“I want to leave my successor a clean and unencumbered sheet for any new ideas or vision he, or she, wants to bring to the position of UNCW chancellor,” she said.
 

Lots of oil spill news in the paper today related to higher education.

On one front, the ethical dilemma facing university researchers heading to the Gulf Coast this summer to do work on the oil spill cleanup. It can be dicey, maneuvering through some of the obstacles, scientists say.

And then there's some scientists down at UNC Wilmington, wading through the surf to collect water samples to gauge whether the oil spill will ever reach the shores of North Carolina. Matt Ehlers has that story.

A UNC system policy guaranteeing chancellors a one-year leave at full pay when they leave the top job plays a key role in recruiting top talent, the leaders of five of North Carolina’s public universities said Thursday.

This group of campus chancellors, which included UNC Chapel Hill’s Holden Thorp and N.C. Central University’s Charlie Nelms, spoke today at a workshop for members of the UNC system’s Board of Governors, which is likely to scale back the four-year-old “retreat rights” policy in the coming months.

The current policy allows a university president or chancellor retiring after at least five years of service a one-year “retreat” at full administrative pay, followed by a return to the faculty. Their salary then would be 60 percent of what they earned as chancellor or president.

Rosemary DePaolo, now in her seventh year as chancellor at UNC Wilmington, said the retreat rights policy, while difficult for those outside academia to digest, is a critical piece of the compensation package for people considering a leadership post at a public university. These are difficult, stressful jobs, so potential chancellors want to know they’ll be taken care of it they become unpopular on their campus.

“We do need a cushion upon which to fall back, because falling back is all too likely,” said DePaolo, who is the second longest-tenured chancellor in the UNC system, behind only John Bardo, Western Carolina’s leader since 1995. “These are high-risk jobs with high turnover. You might not like [retreat rights] philosophically, but this is a business and we have to compete.”

The "retreats right" policy has been employed broadly at North Carolina's 16 public universities, UNC records show. Over the past five years, taxpayers have paid about $8 million to 117 administrators who either returned to the faculty or left the university. In 24 cases, the payouts were for $100,000 or more.

A recent News & Observer review found that these agreements, along with other transitional payments, offered sizable sums of money with few or no strings attached, in at least three cases violated UNC system policies and in some cases rewarded administrators with as much as a year's salary for a job poorly done.

For more on this story, read Friday's News & Observer.

The University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Marine Science has received a $15 million matching grant today from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for the construction of a new marine biotechnology facility.
 
The new facility will house MARBIONC, a program that focuses on the application of marine biotechnology for health, food and energy. Research areas include drug discovery, detection technologies for human-origin marine pollutants and biotoxins from microorganisms, and algae farming for biofuels and mariculture, according to a UNCW press release.

“From an economic development perspective, we’ve been seeking to consolidate North Carolina’s marine biotechnology under a single roof, and this MARBIONC facility brings us one step closer to that reality,” said Jeffrey Wright, a principal and director for research at MARBIONC.

The money comes from federal stimulus funds through the American Recover and Reinvestment Act.

For more, click here.

How's this for a recruiting tool?

UNC Wilmington has snared a top 10 national ranking...from a surfing website.

Surfline.com, which clearly doesn't share methodology secrets with U.S. News & World Report, has proclaimed UNCW one of the nation's 10 best "Surf Colleges."

Wilmington is, according to the site, the mid-Atlantic's "most-happening epicenter" for surfing.

The nation's top surf college? University of California - San Diego. 

A UNC Wilmington psychologist has been named the state's professor of the year.

Kate Bruce, a psychology professor who also directs the university's honors scholars program, was named the North Carolina Professor of the Year.

The award is given by the Carnegie Foundation and the Council for the Support and Advancement of Education. It recognizes teaching and the impact of education on undergraduate students.

Bruce has worked at UNCW since 1984 and has directed the honors program since 1999. In that time, the number of students to enter the program each year has grown from 75 to 125, and the number of students participating in departmental honors in their academic majors has doubled.

She is the third UNCW faculty member to win the award.