Should UNC limit enrollment? Reduce it, even?

Gasp!

This isn't the sort of idea that has ever gotten much serious consideration in North Carolina, a state that prides itself on providing an affordable and accessible education to its citizens.

But these woeful economic times are changing the minds of decision-makers. In today's paper, a story about why this may not be the worst time for the state to consider scaling back enrollment.

One note: There's an error in the story that will be corrected. There are 58 community college campuses in North Carolina, not 56.

Charlie Nelms has little patience for the 15 percent cut to Pell Grant funding proposed by House Republicans.

The proposed spending bill would cut millions in federal research and financial aid funding and would reduce the maximum Pell Grant - the primary source of federal need-based aid for college - from $5,500 to $4,705.

The $845 in lost potential funding per student could have a significant impact, Nelms said Wednesday.

"It would just decimate the whole notion of access and opportunity," he said. "We cannot afford to go backward."

At NCCU, 65 percent of students - more than 3,000 in all - receive Pell funding. The reduction would surely keep some from college, he warned.

"It is the base of our financial aid package," he said. "The people who are impacted are the people who can least afford to be impacted."

The House proposal is part of a budget-cutting plan that would trim $100 billion from President Obama's spending request for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

In today's paper, the full story on new UNC President Tom Ross's desire to seek out duplication within the UNC system.

This should be an interesting process. On individual campuses, faculties aren'g generally programmed to think first about working collaboratively with their counterparts at other public institutions. It happens, but it isn't as high a priority as it's going to become.

Ross's first big venture will seek out what he calls "unnecessary duplication" among academic programs, an endeavor sure to result in some hurt feelings and turf wars.

Here's the story.

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.

N.C. Central University Chancellor Charlie Nelms will give the sermon today at Duke Chapel's Good Friday service.

This will be Nelms' first sermon at Duke Chapel but far from his first church appearance. Since coming to NCCU in 2007, Nelms has made a habit of speaking at area churches. Doing so, he says, is a chance to offer public testimony.

He does it on his own time and speaks just as "Charlie," not as the leader of a public university.

"I'm speaking as a citizen of Durham, not as the chancellor of NCCU," Nelms said this week. "I'm presenting my personal point of view around issues of faith.  I'm more than a chancellor. I'm driven by a set of beliefs. I don't invoke those in any public kind of way when I'm interacting with students."

He speaks at area churches about a dozen times a year.

Nelms was raised in a small baptist church near Crawfordsville, Ark. In a small southern town, church was a big deal.

"The church was a special kind of place. And Easter was a very special time in the life of a poor kid growing up in the south because that's when you got your special clothes," he recalled. "You got a special outfit, and you had to give a special speech. An Easter speech. You're taught public speaking at a very young age and you get over your fear of getting over speaking to a crowd. There's a lot of learning."

The Good Friday sermon at Duke Chapel is at noon today.

"Charlie Nelms is an outstanding speaker who has much to teach us about courage in the face of adversity and the transforming power of suffering love - which are exactly the things Good Friday is all about," said Samuel Wells, dean of Duke Chapel.

Nelms said he'll talk about social justice and the moral responsibility that comes with being a Christian.

"We must be people who not only espouse a particular set of values, but follow them as well," he said. "We must be willing to practice what we preach."

Nelms expects to speak for 15 or 20 minutes today.

"Much longer than that, you bore people," he joked.

N.C. Central University has turned an ongoing internal audit over to state regulators after discovering evidence that a former university employee embezzled funds from a project funded in part by federal and state grants.

NCCU has found that the former director of the Historically Minority Colleges and Universities Consortium, for which NCCU was a member and fiscal agent, funneled some of its funds into a personal bank account, according to a March 29 letter to state officials from NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms.

“It now appears that substantial funds may have been diverted into this Bank of America account,” Nelms wrote. “The account may also have been maintained covertly by the former employee for improper purposes.”

The amount of money in question isn’t specified in the letter, and NCCU officials have declined further comment.

But over the last decade, the program has received more than $13 million in funding from state appropriations, federal and state grants and private foundations.

Read more in Friday's News & Observer.

It rained this morning, so N.C. Central University officials moved a ceremonial groundbreaking into the old Holy Cross Church on Alston Avenue.

It was likely one of the last gatherings for that church on that patch of earth. The aged stone church, the longtime home to one of North Carolina's oldest African-American catholic congregations, is being supplanted to make room for a new nursing building - one part of the three-project, $70 million construction boom being celebrated today.

But rather than just bulldozing the place, NCCU officials are spending $2 million to move it across campus to a new spot next to the Shepard House along Fayetteville Street.

"This could have gone up in dust," NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms said this morning. "But imagine a wrecking ball hitting something this historic. That would not have been fair."

For more on the ceremony and the three new construction projects on the NCCU campus, read Saturday's Durham News.

For much of the decade, N.C. Central University flung its doors wide open, welcoming scores of new students - prompted by a UNC system mandate to increase enrollment.

Problem was, those students weren't all ready for college. Plenty dropped out, leaving NCCU with a stain on its graduation rate data. From 2004 to 2008, just 18 percent of NCCU students graduated within four years. About 38 percent managed in five years, and about half did it in six years.

Now, university leaders are re-making the undergraduate academic experience, shifting from the enrollment model from quantity to quality. They're slowing the enrollment growth, a move necessary in part because the campus infrastructure can't withstand continued expansion, and looking for ways to admit better students.

At N.C. Central University, Chancellor Charlie Nelms continues with the message he's been thumping since his arrival in Durham two years ago.

NCCU students, he continually insists, must be better communicators. They must be masters of the spoken and written word.

Such was one theme of his State of the University address, given last week during the university's convocation.

Nelms has long held that the success of college students hinges in large part on effective communication skills. Here's part of what he had to say in his address:

Helping our students learn to communicate properly must be a campus-wide effort.  

The English Department cannot do it all on its own. Faculty, whether you teach trigonometry or abnormal psychology; we need you to commit yourselves to improving the quality of the written and oral presentations of our students.

Staff, when students speak to you using improper grammar, correct them.

It’s a competitive world out there and for our graduates to have a fighting chance, we must help them gain the soft skills they need to succeed.

Nelms' address also hit on a number of campus highlights. One Nelms favorite: a recent U.S. News ranking that tabbed NCCU as the top public historically black university in the nation.

You can click on the attachment below to read Nelms' entire speech.

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