Erskine Bowles was a couple years into his tenure as UNC's president when a real head-scratcher landed on his desk.

N.C. Central University, the historically black institution in Durham, had been improperly operating a satellite campus for for years at a church near Atlanta.

The plot thickened: The church was operated by Eddie Long, then a NCCU trustee.

Hmm...

The university's discovery of this satellite campus created a mess for Bowles and Charlie Nelms, then still new in his post as NCCU's chancellor.

Nelms had recently taken over for James Ammons, who had left Durham for the presidency at Florida A & M University.

The unauthorized satellite campus at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga. had been created while Ammons was chancellor.

So in interviewing Bowles recently just weeks prior to his retirement as UNC president, I asked him if he had ever gotten to the bottom of that mess.
 

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.

The improperly-created satellite campus N.C. Central University ran for four years at a suburban megachurch run by a campus trustee will cost the university more than $1.1 million.

That's how much the university has agreed to repay the federal government for improperly distributed loan funds.

 
For background, click here and here.

Late last week I wrote this story about the release of the UNC system's final report on the mess involving N.C. Central University and its unauthorized satellite campus at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga.

In the story, I wrote that the report didn't place specific blame; that's true, but it did name former Chancellor James Ammons at least once, in a section that points out how odd it seems that the creation of this campus did not follow proper guidelines.

The brief background: In 2004, NCCU created a series of undergraduate programs at the church, whose pastor is Eddie Long, a university trustee. Problem was, the programs were never approved by any of the various bodies who should have either voted on it or been told about it, including campus trustees; the UNC system's governing board, the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges' Commission on Colleges — which accredits NCCU — and the federal Department of Education, which doled out financial aid that made its way to students at the Georgia campus.

In case you missed it: N.C. Central University finally received some good news this week regarding the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church fiasco.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools notified the university Tuesday that the degrees granted to 25 students at the unauthorized suburban Atlanta campus are, in fact, valid.

That sound you hear is a collective sigh of relief being sighed over on Fayetteville Street.

Eddie Long, the NCCU trustee who runs the Lithonia, Ga. megachurch where the unauthorized series of programs was held for four years, attended this morning's NCCU Board of Trustees meeting via teleconference, not in person. Chancellor Charlie Nelms addressed he issue briefly, repeating his pledge to make the situation right by the students involved. Long did not add anything to that conversation.

During UNC system governance board meetings Thursday and Friday, UNC system President Erskine Bowles gave blistering status reports on his investigation into the saga surrounding N.C. Central University and its unauthorized satellite campus in Lithonia, Ga. 

It is jarring to realize that NCCU is on the hook for the federal financial aid money it distributed to students in the program. Bowles is clearly not happy with the situation. I've posted some of his comments in other forums, but here is a transcript of exactly what he said Friday morning during a full board meeting of the UNC system's Board of Governors.

He did not mince words.  

N.C. Central University Chancellor Charlie Nelms said Friday his institution is still in talks with the UNC system about the repercussions from an unauthorized satellite campus NCCU recently stopped operating at a suburban Atlanta megachurch.

The saga surrounding the collection of degree programs NCCU offered for four years at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga. received just a passing mention Friday during at telephone conference meeting of the executive committee of the university's board of trustees.

I've been writing a lot about the satellite campus in Georgia that N.C. Central University recently shuttered after running into accreditation problems.

But not quite everything makes the paper; thus, here are a couple bits and pieces from my notebook. (Throughout this post, you'll find links to everything I've written on this issue)

In reporting the story that ran Sunday about NCCU's unauthorized satellite campus at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta, I tried several times to contact James Ammons, NCCU's former chancellor who is now president at Florida A & M University in Tallahassee.

Ammons never called or returned my emails requesting comment. He did comment, briefly, to a higher education trade publication called Inside Higher Ed. He didn't say much, but here's a link to the story that publication wrote on the New Birth issue.

And here are Ammons' comments.

"James H. Ammons, who was chancellor when the program was set up, recently left to become president of Florida A&M University. Via e-mail, Ammons said that while he knows that anything that happened administratively while he was chancellor was 'my responsibility,' he 'cannot recall all of the details regarding that particular program because I don’t get involved in the day-to-day operations of academic programs,' leaving such matters to the provost and faculty."

As you may have read in Sunday's News & Observer, NCCU recently folded an unauthorized collection of degree programs it was operating at a megachurch in suburban Georgia whose pastor is a university trustee.

Students who earned degrees through the program may not have got what they thought they were getting. NCCU officials haven't said a lot on the issue, but did release this statement Monday: