A prominent UNC-Chapel Hill researcher has settled a dispute with the university, re-gaining her credentials and full salary while agreeing to retire at the end of the year.

Bonnie Yankaskas, a noted epidemiologist, had been demoted, her pay cut essentially in half, after a hacker infiltrated a computer server that she, as the principal investigator for a massive breast cancer study, oversaw.

Yankaskas has overseen the Carolina Mammography Registry, a federally funded project that compiles and analyzes mammogram data submitted by dozens of radiology offices across North Carolina to improve breast cancer screening.

The university held her responsible for the breach and first tried to fire her before later recommending the demotion from full to associate professor and the pay cut.

Under the terms of a settlement announced Friday, Yankaskas has regained her status as a full professor and her full salary of $175,000 has been restored.

She agreed to retire Dec. 31 of this year, according to a news release issued late Friday.

Under the terms of the agreement, the university will not comment on the settlement’s terms. Nor will Yankaskas, according to her attorney, Raymond Cotton.

It wasn't a hate crime. In fact, it wasn't a crime after all.

That's the takeaway from the false police report filed by UNC-Chapel Hill freshman Quinn Matney, whose claim that he was assaulted apparently due to his sexual orientation sent the campus into a brief frenzy.

But here's a question I haven't yet answered: why even use the "hate crime" classification? To what end?

Here's the deal: North Carolina has no specific law dealing with hate crimes. That means had Matney's claim been true and police had made an arrest, that person could not be charged with a hate crime under state law.

But universities that receive federal Title IV student financial assistance money must conform to the Higher Education Opportunity Act, one requirement of which being an annual report of crimes identified in the Clery act, which requires universities to report crime statistics.

A hate crime on the UNC-CH campus would have met the Clery crime definition of a hate crime and as such would have been included in the university's annual report, said Jeff McCracken, the campus police chief.

Reporting it as such doesn't automatically trigger any action, McCracken said, but would allow local police to request FBI assistance in investigating the situation, and federal charges could be filed.

Of course, it's all moot now.

McCracken said Thursday his agency will likely charge Matney with filing a false report. It isn't clear when Matney will be charged, though. For now, the student has returned home to Asheville to be with his family.
 

Has it really been 40 years?

Bill Friday, the longtime UNC president who many in this state consider the godfather of public higher education, is celebrating the 40th anniversary of his UNC-TV interview show, "North Carolina People with Bill Friday."

As Yonat Shimron reports in Sunday's News & Observer, Friday is as sharp and on point as ever, having long ago learned the value of the open-ended question.

Read on.

Republicans will soon outnumber Democrats on the UNC system's Board of Governors.

This shift becomes official later this summer when 16 members appointed this week and last by the new Republican-led legislature take their seats.

As Jane Stancill reports over on our Under the Dome blog, Republicans outnumber Democrats 18-13.

Have a look.

Democrats in the State House are crying foul over the way the new majority in the legislature has appointed new members to the UNC system's Board of Governors.

House Republicans elected a new slate of eight members to the governing board Tuesday amid a protest from Democrats claiming the process was corrupt.

As Jane Stancill reports today, the 16 new members of the 32-member board include 13 white men, 2 white women and 1 man of Indian descent.

Seeing no need to cast votes that wouldn't matter, House Democrats turned in blank ballots and later voted "no" on a roll call vote on the list approved by Republicans.

Since members of the UNC board are political appointees, the majority power always has the option of stacking the deck to its liking.

But as we reported last week, previous legislatures have kept some level of gender and racial diversity on the board.

The board is now clearly far more conservative than it has been in prior years. But as newly re-elected board member Brent Barringer points out in today's story, the board has traditionally not operated in a particularly ideological or political manner.

By that, I mean that in discussions of higher education issues - tuition increases, approval of academic programs, the hiring of chancellors - the board very rarely divides along party lines.

In fact, there have been very few contentious, split votes in recent memory.

Perhaps that will change. We'll see.

While the legislature has now made its 16 appointments, not all members will be new. There are several re-appointments, including Peter Hans and Ann Goodnight on the Senate side, and Barringer and Leroy Lail on the House side. Those members have experience with board issues and are up to date on the UNC system's ongoing struggles with budget cuts, clearly the top issue facing the university right now.

Two more of the new appointees are prior members - John Fennebresque and H. Frank Grainger. So it's not all new blood.

Still, there will be challenges. When the new members take their seats on the board later this year, the budget situation may still be unclear. And the UNC President, Tom Ross, is new in his role as well, having taken over at the start of the year for Erskine Bowles, who retired after a five-year run.

Here's the slate appointed by the House this week:

Brent Barringer, a Cary lawyer (re-elected)

Leroy Lail, a Conover businessman (re-elected)

Mary Ann Maxwell, a Goldsboro business owner

Ed McMahan, a Charlotte businessman and former state legislator

Hari Nath, a Cary information technology consultant

David Powers, of Winston-Salem, a vice president with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

Richard Taylor, a Lumberton insurance, real estate and auto dealer

Raiford Trask III, a Wilmington developer

The legislature's new Republican majority has made its first move to put an imprint on the UNC system. On Thursday, the Senate appointed eight new members to the UNC system's Board of Governors.

The eight new appointees don't signal a dramatic shift, in that four are either re-appointed current or former board members. But taken collectively, they are seven white men and one white woman; meanwhile, the board stands to lose four African-Americans and at least five women once all appointments are made.

The House appoints eight additional new members next week.

Here's today's story.

Reappointed to the UNC Board of Governors were long-time education advocate Ann Goodnight, wife of SAS Institute CEO Jim Goodnight, and Peter Hans, a senior policy adviser with the Nelson Mullins law firm in Raleigh.

Former board members H. Frank Grainger of Cary and John Fennebresque of Charlotte also were appointed. Grainger is part-owner of Fair Products Inc. and Tritest Environmental Lab, and Fennebresque is an attorney.

The four newcomers were Fred Eshelman of Wilmington, executive chairman and founder of Pharmaceutical Product Development Corp.; W. Louis Bissette Jr., an attorney from Asheville; Thomas Harrelson of Southport, vice president of AECOM, a former state legislator and DOT secretary appointed by Republican Gov. Jim Martin; and Phillip Walker, senior vice president with BB&T in Hickory.

If you're the parent of a college student, Toy Story 3 spoke to you.

The animated Pixar film, the third in the hugely successful series about children's toys come to life, gets to the emotion of the empty next - the moment when your child goes off to college.

It's a sweet movie that has had far broader appeal than just to kids, as Jenna Johnson with the Washington Post points out here.

And as Johnson also notes, the first Toy Story came out in 1995, targeting young children who now, 16 years later, are reaching college age. They're graduating with Andy, the little boy who grows up over the course of the three movies.

To summarize: As Andy gets ready for college, mom makes him pick which toys to take with him, which to junk and which to stash in the attic.

Of course, Andy's mom gets weepy thinking about life without him in the house. As Johnson points out, an industry has sprung up around this particular angst - self-help books and college orientation sessions aimed at the parent struggling to give junior some space.

It's a great movie with a genuine, tear-jerker of an ending. On Sunday night, it took home two Oscars.

Nice going, Buzz. Nice going, Woody.

Tuition at Duke is going up.

Trustees approved a 4.3 percent tuition hike for next year, which will bring the total cost of a Duke undergraduate education, if you factor in room, board and other costs, to nearly $54,000 a year.

A Duke spokesman cites a number of rising costs, like health insurance, as one reason for the university's need for additional revenue.

Duke's not alone. The UNC system is also raising its tuition rates. Officials there approved hikes averaging about 6 percent for the next academic year.

An early look at Gov. Beverly Perdue's budget proposal, which rolls out today, suggests she wants to protect higher education to some extent.

As Michael Biesecker reports over at our Under the Dome blog, the governor doesn't include university workers in a series of proposed job eliminations.

She proposes modest increases to the UNC system for enrollment increases but concedes a tuition hike of some level is likely necessary.

She has also proposed a new N.C. Career and College Promise, that would provide two years of tuition-free college credit to state high school students who keep high grades and maintain other standards.

 The nursing school at UNC-Chapel Hill is cutting enrollment 25 percent to save money.

That means the school will admit 152 students next year, down from 208.

The enrollment reduction starts with students admitted for the summer semester that starts in May.

The move is a reaction to ongoing budget pressures, including a 5 percent permanent cut instituted by the university in January and additional cuts expected to reach as high as 15 percent.

The move is a rare, tangible example of how the ongoing budget pressures are restricting access to public higher education in North Carolina. UNC system campuses generally try not to restrict access to their programs.

“We are committed to offering high-quality, rigorous and safe programs for entry into nursing practice at the baccalaureate and advanced practice levels,” said School of Nursing Dean Kristen M. Swanson. “The budget challenges have left us little alternative but to reduce the number of students we enroll.”

The enrollment reductions must be implemented now because postponing them until January 2012 would not allow adequate savings to meet budget requirements, according to a news release. The school continues to explore additional means to absorb the anticipated budget cuts.

School of Nursing students have two options for preparation to enter into practice as a registered nurse (RN): the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) six-semester program or the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) four-semester program for applicants with a baccalaureate or higher degree in another field of study. Together, the BSN and ABSN programs have been graduating approximately 200 new nurses each year.

The projected need for nurses continues to grow because of health-care reform, the health-care needs of the aging Baby Boomer generation and an aging nursing workforce.

“Given the nursing shortage it is truly unfortunate to find ourselves reducing enrollments to the levels we realized 10 years ago,” Swanson said. “However, we cannot sacrifice the quality or safety of nursing education, so our difficult choice was to reduce the number of students.”