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(10/25/07 4:00am)
Twenty-five years ago this week the five "founding mothers" of Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina gathered around a kitchen table and discussed the need for access to contraceptives and sexual education in the region.
In celebration of that anniversary, the organization hosted a reception Monday. And in its 25 years, the organization, the youngest in the nation, has seen its share of ups and downs.
To meet the initial kitchen-table goals, the women opened a small Hillsborough office in 1983 that distributed only educational pamphlets and condoms. The office moved to Chapel Hill the following year.
"I was the first paid staff person, and on my first day of work, I walked into an office with a card table and a lawn chair," said Janet Colm, who has been the group's president since its creation.
Now, the group provides sexual education and medical services to men and women in 25 counties.
Planned Parenthood expanded to Durham County in 1991. It was renamed Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina in 2002 when it expanded its services to 23 counties.
"We feel our mission is threefold: work we do in health centers, work we do in education and the work we do in advocacy," said Jennifer Ferris, communications coordinator for the group.
The Chapel Hill health center, built in 1998 after a $2 million fundraising campaign, provides birth control, contraceptives, annual exams and sexually transmitted infection testing for both women and men. The facility is also the organization's first abortion clinic.
But the organization experienced its biggest setback, Colm said, in 1994 when the N.C. General Assembly enacted abstinence-only sex education in schools and cut funding that provides abortions for low-income women.
Colm said the highlight of her tenure as president was the pro-choice march to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 2004. She has a picture of the crowd published in The Washington Post on the wall in her office.
"I was in that crowd," she said. "I knew there were a lot of people, but it wasn't until I saw that picture with the Mall packed that I could really see the impact."
But Planned Parenthood also sees regular opposition. Anti-abortion activists picket outside one of the health centers each week, Ferris said.
Carolina Students for Life opposes Planned Parenthood because it is the nation's leading provider of abortions, group President Ashley Tyndall said.
"There is a huge misconception that their focus is all-encompassing, focusing on contraception and pregnancy prevention, but that's not the case," Tyndall said. "They make all their money from abortions."
But Voices for Planned Parenthood, a student organization with about 15 active members, works as a liaison for the organization on campus.
"We try to help spread awareness about comprehensive sex education, sexually transmitted infection information and women's rights," said Katelyn Bryant-Comstock, the group's co-chairwoman.
The organization regularly meets with Planned Parenthood staff. Then it campaigns to inform students about the risks of unprotected oral sex, lobby against anti-abortion laws and rally against the rising prices of University-provided contraceptives.
Because of local support, Colm said she sees a positive and effective future for Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina.
"Planned Parenthood across the country has been around for 80 or 90 years; this is an organization that doesn't stop," she said.
Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu
(04/12/07 4:00am)
Raymond Hackney, interim director of the Department of Environment, Health & Safety, wants to make all UNC laboratories mercury-free.
Earlier this semester , the department launched "Mercury-Free at UNC," a program that seeks to reduce on-campus elemental mercury, found primarily in thermometers.
Exposure can lead to tremors, emotional changes, insomnia and headaches and, in severe cases, kidney failure, respiratory failure and death.
"By removing mercury we can prevent spills of hazardous materials to protect the environment as well as people," said Hackney, who began replacing thermometers several years before the program started.
Hackney said the use of mercury is unnecessary because there are equally effective materials, which can easily replace it.
Digital and alcohol thermometers are available as alternatives to mercury-based ones.
On its Web site, Mercury-Free encourages students and faculty to sign a pledge to "minimize elemental mercury use in work spaces."
So far, 22 people, mostly faculty members, have signed the pledge. Fifteen of those pledges come from the School of Pharmacy, where the use of mercury has been eliminated in all laboratories.
Angela Kashuba, a professor in the School of Pharmacy, said she signed the pledge after receiving an informational e-mail.
She said eliminating mercury is important for the environment.
Kashuba, who runs critical samples for pharmacology studies in HIV-infected patients and healthy volunteers, said the day-to-day processes in her lab have not changed after going mercury-free.
"Mercury-Free at UNC" aids laboratories in disposing of mercury thermometers, and it provides free non-mercury thermometers.
The program provides funding for up to 100 percent of the cost of mercury-free replacements for laboratory devices during the 2007-08 school year.
Carol Arnosti, a professor in the marine sciences department, also signed the pledge.
"Things happen in a lab; things get broken," she said. "Reducing hazards is a good idea."
Arnosti, who investigates the cycles of organic carbon in marine environments, said changing thermometers has not significantly affected her lab processes.
She is the only person in her department who has signed the pledge so far.
Arnosti said she believes more people have not signed the pledge because they do not use thermometers in the laboratories or are overwhelmed with end-of-the-year activities.
"This is a hectic time of year for both students and professors," she said. "As far as everyone is concerned, there is information overload."
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(03/29/07 4:00am)
With photos of aborted fetuses and genocide Wednesday in Polk Place, members of Carolina Students for Life said they sought to foster discussion on a controversial subject.
"We are hoping to create more lines of dialogue - the problem with the abortion debate is it's so abstract," said senior Ashley Tyndall, the group's president. "Regardless of how you feel about it, you have to acknowledge these pictures are what an abortion is."
Laura Sosnowski, secretary of Carolina Students for Life, said that the photographer could not reveal where the photos were taken but that they were shot out of the country.
Kate Vlach, co-chairwoman of Choice USA, said she thinks the pictures were exaggerated in color and size.
Vlach said that the photos represent very late abortions and that about 2 percent of women who have abortions have this type.
"I think it is misleading and disrespectful toward real genocide to compare access to illegal health care options to a genocide of a real group of people," she said.
She added that it was unfair of Carolina Students for Life to piggyback off Tuesday's Holocaust Remembrance ceremony, comparing abortions to genocide.
Tyndall said the pictures are supplemental material to discussion. She handed out pamphlets titled "Why Abortion is Genocide."
The group has displayed the photos for the past two years and has seen counterprotests.
Sosnowski said the group's intention was not to scare people.
"I think people get the mind-set that it is a ball of tissue," said Sosnowski, who has been anti-abortion since she was in middle school. "I mean it has fingers; it has toes; it looks like a human being. It is a human being."
She said the display received mixed reactions from passers-by. "We get what I call 'hit and run,' where somebody will yell at us then run away," she said.
Sosnowski and Tyndall both said they'd had productive conversations and changed minds.
Scott Kimball, a freshman from Williamston, was standing by the display to argue with group members for much of the afternoon.
"They are going to get people who want to argue, like me," he said. "They're going to get people who agree with them, but they aren't going to change any minds."
Kimball said he and members of Carolina Students for Life discussed whether a fetus should be considered alive, whether it is a moral issue and whether abortion should be legislated.
"I'm standing out here to argue," he said, "The same reason I go talk to Gary," he added, referring to the controversial Pit Preacher.
Kennetra Irby, a sophomore from St. Petersburg, Fla., said that though she doesn't consider herself an abortion rights activist or an abortion opponent, she does not support abortion unless the mother or child is at risk.
Irby asked Tyndall questions and took a handout.
"If you didn't want a baby, you shouldn't have put yourself in that predicament," she said.
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(03/28/07 4:00am)
About 30 students gathered Tuesday afternoon in the ROTC armory to hear World War II veterans discuss their battle experiences.
"I will tell you that it is not often you get to spend the afternoon with heroes," began Lt. Col. Gregory Daddis as he introduced the panel.
The afternoon was filled with personal anecdotes and memories as each veteran took his turn detailing his war experiences.
"The little stories you don't get from a textbook really brought history alive for me," said junior Allan Carr, a history major.
Panelist Robert Patton enlisted in the reserve corps while enrolled at Davidson College. He was sent to training camp with only four credit hours needed to graduate.
"Being able to type saved my life," said Patton, who was made an operations sergeant once his army superiors learned he could type.
When Patton's division of 15,000 men landed in France, their rations were in England.
"We survived for two weeks on French bread and one spoonful of brown cream of wheat," Patton said.
John Ryan volunteered for the army on his 18th birthday, in 1943
"I didn't want to miss a good war," he said.
Ryan served as an army company runner on the Siegfried line, a line of defensive forts and tanks created by Germans on the border, before he was captured by Germans during a night patrol.
Ryan said that after he was shot in the arm, he slapped his chest and fell to the ground, pretending to be dead.
Rather than leaving him alone as he had hoped, the Germans approached Ryan, beat him and then took him by motorcycle to a hospital to dress his wounds. "I spent the rest of the war in the luxury of a prison camp, where I was fed one bowl of soup a day and worked my muscles with the shovel," Ryan said.
Everett "Bud" Hampton joined the Fourth Marine Division in 1942. His unit, which shipped from San Diego in 1944, was the first unit to go directly into combat from the United States and the first to capture Japanese foreign territory.
Hampton's division fought battles in Mali, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. He was given a battlefield commission as 2nd Lieutenant.
After returning to the U.S. in 1946, Hampton, who earned two Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars, attended UNC and opened a YMCA in Greenville, S.C., in 1950. A year later he was called back by the Marines to serve in the Korean War.
Don Mathias served as a combat engineer and mess officer on the Western front, traveling through France, Belgium and Holland. "I had to keep the cook's morale up, an army travels on its stomach," he said.
Students said they were happy to be able to have the opportunity to hear the veterans speak.
"We are very quickly losing opportunity to get first-hand primary sources of what they went through and hear their experiences with their own words," said Chris Arndt, a senior ROTC member who helped plan the panel.
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(02/28/07 5:00am)
In 1966 Hortense McClinton became the first black professor at UNC. She taught in the School of Social Work for 18 years.
Less than 30 years after McClinton arrived, the University had progressed so much that it had the most blacks holding endowed chaired professorships of any American university.
In April 1993 UNC had 11 out of the country's total 74 of these professors, who taught a variety of fields ranging from chemistry to philosophy.
One of these professors was Charles Daye, who still teaches in the School of Law. Daye, who began teaching in 1972, said he believes the challenges he has faced throughout his career have been no different than those of other faculty.
Although Daye said he believes there has been improvement in faculty diversity through the years, he said it has been hard to sustain.
"People come, and sometimes they don't stay, retire or pass away," he said.
Today UNC has 130 black faculty members, representing about 4.5 percent of UNC's 2,885 total faculty, according to the most recent data from the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.
Black students make up about 9.9 percent of the University's total enrollment, leading some to call for more black faculty to mirror the student breakdown.
Daye also led the Chancellor's Minority Affairs Review Committee, which submitted a report in 2000 that recommended a campuswide assessment of minorities and the development of a diversity plan. He said that diversity is not the end by itself but a tool used to expand the educational experience.
"I think students are impressed by what they observe," he said. "If we're going to talk about a society where everyone is valued, it won't do unless we create an institution where our values are evidenced."
Napoleon Byars, who graduated from the School of Journalism in 1976 and returned 21 years later to teach, said he has noticed substantial improvement in student and faculty diversity since he was a student.
Byars said faculty diversity should be achieved not for diversity's sake but for the good of society.
"There's a responsibility we owe to the residents of this state to reflect the state's population," he said.
Coming from the University of California at Los Angeles to UNC, Geography professor Jim Johnson said he saw a similarity between the importance university leaders placed on diversity at both campuses. At UNC, Johnson said he was impressed by the camaraderie that exists among the faculty.
Faculty said that they believe that UNC values a diverse faculty but that more can be done.
"Competition for African-American talent is becoming more fierce. We have to understand that reality and become more competitive," Johnson said. "The commitment exists on this campus."
Johnson said UNC should look in nontraditional places to get more talented black professors.
"We have to have people who believe it's important, and we have to have incentives," Daye said, suggesting awards for departments that achieve diversity.
Byars said increasing mentoring opportunities for minority students is needed to engage students early on and encourage graduate work.
Joe Templeton, chairman of the faculty, said he hasn't received any race-related complaints since he has represented the faculty and said UNC encourages diversity.
"The University is proactive in trying to identify a diverse pool of applicants," Templeton said. "It's not just reactive but proactive."
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(01/31/07 5:00am)
University physicists are refuting the Big Bang theory with a new cosmological model stating that the universe has no beginning or end.
The cyclical model, proposed by UNC physics professor Paul Frampton and graduate student Lauris Baum, consists of four parts: expansion, turnaround, contraction and bounce.
"It all starts all over again," Frampton said. "It has happened an infinite amount of times and will happen an infinite amount of more times."
Dark energy, discovered by scientists in 1998, is a negative pressure that causes the universe's expansion. Dark energy, a ratio w, of pressure to density, was crucial to Frampton's model.
After billions of years of expansion, space divides into separate patches that contain only dark energy and low-energy radiation, he said.
"The patches become disconnected after all the structure disappears - black holes, galaxies, solar systems are completely disintegrated."
At turnaround, the patches, which each represent one universe, stop expanding and start contracting. The contracting phase facilitates structure formation, and then the universes bounce outward, rebuilding individually.
The most important scientific breakthrough of the 20th century occurred in 1934 when Richard Chase Tolman established the oscillatory universe hypothesis. Before Tolman, the concept of an ever-expanding-and-contracting universe conflicted with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that entropy, or disorder, always is increasing.
Using Tolman's work, Frampton and Baum put forth that entropy increases from one oscillation to the next before ceasing to exist within the patches.
Frampton's model differs from its only rival cyclical model, proposed by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok in 2002, in the exact value of w. In the Steinhardt-Turok model, the value of w never is below negative one, whereas in Frampton's model it can be slightly below.
"They are competing theories at this point," Frampton said.
Frampton, who has been studying cosmology for eight years, said the analysis needs more technical calculations before it is complete.
The model will be published in the Physical Review Letters' Feb. 16 issue.
"There is no beginning and no end in this model. That's the conclusion," Frampton said. "Time never began, and it never ends, which is more satisfying."
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(01/30/07 5:00am)
Just two months after UNC signed on with Ruckus Network Inc., the company announced that its legal music downloading service is available to all students with a valid college e-mail address.
After almost a year of negotiations with the company, UNC signed an exclusive contract with Ruckus, and students gained access to the service in mid-November.
Although legal on-campus downloading now is available free of charge via Ruckus without a contract, officials said UNC students will benefit from the school's early participation.
"I think the important point here is because we were early adapters, we're enjoying a much better service," Student Body President James Allred said.
UNC has several services that other colleges don't, including a personalized home page, free access to music and videos and its own campus server.
Andrew Soucy, a spokesman for BluePoint Venture Marketing for Ruckus, said the server saves UNC money by reducing bandwidth and minimizing illegal file-sharing.
Illegal downloading can slow Internet speed, prompting universities to buy more servers. But at UNC, Ruckus installed its own server that makes downloads up to 10 times faster.
"Usually to combat that, schools will buy more servers, but this kind of combats a lot of that," Soucy said.
Ruckus officials said the company will continue to improve its relationship with UNC. The company is working on making more top-quality movies and TV shows available, said Ed Cheely, Ruckus' director of campus relations.
"To sweeten our deal, they're going to greatly improve video content - putting more TV shows on there - for free," Allred said.
But Wren Kreber, a graduate student at St. Bonaventure University, a New York school unaffiliated with Ruckus, said he does not think he is losing out.
"You know, I've never really found a movie that I would want on there - I don't feel myself at a disadvantage because I subscribe to Netflix," he said.
The company made the decision to extend its service to all college students after an overwhelmingly positive response from schools across the country, Cheely said.
"Initially, colleges had to enter into an exclusive contract with the company, but we changed that to increase users," Soucy said.
UNC's early involvement with Ruckus might have aided the company in its new expansion, Allred said.
"Our willingness to help shape the model has made it possible for them to open it up to the rest of the schools," he said.
Allred said that when he began negotiations with Ruckus, he was impressed with the service in many ways - its large music selection, shared playlists and user-driven playlist content.
"Reading student playlists and using them, rather than coming up with them on their own - that's something I think is a major advantage," he said.
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(01/26/07 5:00am)
Week four: Have you kept your New Year's resolution?
According to statistics from Proactive, a self-coaching Web site, 64 percent of people have kept their resolutions after one month.
Indeed, three out of the four students we talked to at the start of the semester are still going strong.
"It's kind of a cake walk, though. It's just soda," said David Campbell, a junior who decided to go soft-drink-free to support his brother with the same resolution.
Freshman Caroline Mack, who resolved to read the Bible consistently, already has read three books: Matthew, Mark and Luke.
"They're really small books, but I'm happy that I've gotten through it."
Mack said she enjoys having the downtime she sets aside to read the Bible at lunch or in the evenings.
"It's forcing me to take time out of the day for myself and not let work and social events take up all my time," she said. "I'm taking more time to relax."
Nikki Pratt has succeeded with not one, but two resolutions: flossing daily and limiting herself to one dessert a week.
She can thank dining hall food for the latter. "It was a lot harder for me to switch into the dessert one because I was still at home with all my mom's dessert."
Though she was well on her way to meeting her 60-mile goal for January, a foot injury prevented Ashleigh Jackson from running.
She said the ball of one of her feet hurt for a week, making it difficult to walk, much less run.
But she's not giving up. "I'm going to still try to keep running in
January and get as close as I can."
Now the real question. Will these students keep their resolutions until Dec. 31, 2007?
When Lent - during which some Christians give up something they enjoy for 40 days - rolls around, Pratt won't just limit sweets, she'll abandon them entirely. "I plan on making the transition to Lent easier and then keeping it up after that."
Jackson said she plans to meet the 60-mile goal at least one month this year.
And what about no soft drinks until next January? "No problem," Campbell said.
Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.
(01/17/07 5:00am)
With a partnership still in the works, the staff at MarketSmart plans to address UNC Hospitals' communication needs through innovation and expansion.
UNC Hospitals announced Friday that it signed a three-year contract with MarketSmart, a marketing communications firm owned by Think Partnership. Although only in the planning stage, MarketSmart will launch a new advertising campaign for UNC Hospitals.
"Our overall general goal is to help UNC meet their mission - help UNC help all the people of North Carolina," said Dennis Wipper, creative director at MarketSmart.
Wipper said MarketSmart plans to improve upon the hospitals' already successful branding by using diverse media outlets.
"We want to get their message out there in a way that is more accessible and stronger but carry on the tradition of great communication that they've established over the years."
Using MarketSmart's expertise in interactive media, Wipper said he plans to focus in large part on improving the hospital's accessibility on the Internet.
"Web sites really just extend the reach of all the communication that UNC does," he said.
Although the company lacks experience in hospital advertising, Wipper has worked for a number of medical centers across the country including Wake Medical Center and Hilton Head Regional Medical Center.
Wipper said most hospitals face similar communication needs.
"They need to communicate to all the different audiences they have," he said. "It's not just potential patients. They need to speak to potential physicians and the community at large."
Lia Luisi, a publicist at Worksmith, the public relations division of MarketSmart, said the company's services include branding, audiovisual, print, broadcast and radio commercials, public relations, secret shopping and media buying.
"We can do it all basically," Luisi said. "I think with UNC they are going to tap into a lot of different areas."
Wipper said he is excited to begin working with UNC Hospitals. "It's always great when you can work for an organization that does good work, the way UNC Health Care does," he said.
"They really are one of the leading medical centers in the country. There is no one in the advertising business that wouldn't leap for a chance to work with them."
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(01/12/07 5:00am)
Dr. Carol Otey worked closely for six years with scientists from Seattle, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and London toward the treatment and prevention of pancreatic cancer - a condition that's almost always fatal.
And she didn't even get to meet them face-to-face until last December.
The colleagues, with the exception of the British researchers, gathered in New York City to celebrate the publication of their findings.
The five laboratories managed to collaborate through e-mail, FedEx and conference calls to study a gene common in victims of pancreatic cancer.
"This is a good example of modern, highly collaborative research," said Otey, a professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology.
"We were able to share molecular tools and mail frozen cells to each other by FedEx. We had conference calls and sent results as PowerPoint slides attached to e-mails," she said.
Otey discovered the gene, which she named palladin, with the help of a former student six years ago.
Palladin is over-expressed in both types of pancreatic cancer. It is also found in moving cells, which are Otey's research specialty.
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most deadly cancer in the United States.
Dr. David Crispin, a co-author of the paper and senior scientist at the University of Washington, said the five-year survival rate is often nonexistent: 95 percent of patients die within five years of diagnosis.
"Often when people are diagnosed, it's usually inoperable. The cancer has spread so much through the body it's often nonremovable," he said.
With respect to the possibility of early diagnosis of the disease, researchers offered differing viewpoints.
"More research will need to be done to see if this mutation is common in most familial cases," Otey said.
"Then it would be very feasible to develop a blood test that will test for this mutation."
Crispin said it was too early to tell whether the discovery will aid early diagnoses.
"It does open up an avenue of research where we can discover the other pathways that are involved to target for diagnostic," he said.
Otey said she is excited by preliminary results linking the gene to several types of cancer.
"The obvious next goal is to get an earlier and more accurate diagnosis of cancers," she said.
Otey hopes for a genetic-based treatment of cancer in the future.
According to Crispin, known risk factors for the pancreatic cancer include a history of smoking, alcoholism, long-term exposure to dry-cleaning products and pancreatitis, a disease characterized by inflammation of the pancreas.
Family history of the disease is also a predictor.
"This opens up a novel pathway towards cancer that hasn't been described or explored," Crispin said.
"It opens up a lot of new ways to look at the complexities."
Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.
(11/14/06 5:00am)
Protecting defenseless people lies at the heart of both military and public health work, and UNC officials gathered Monday morning to honor that connection.
"Neither is motivated to make money because both know there are more important things in living," said Jim Porto, a clinical health assistant and former helicopter pilot for the U.S. Marines during the Vietnam War.
"Without a healthy society, democracy would be threatened," he said.
Both Porto and fellow veteran Rick Tysor were honored during a belated Veterans Day ceremony held Monday at the School of Public Health.
Classical music set the scene as an etched glass panel commemorating veterans was unveiled beneath the staircase at the front of the Michael Hooker Research Center atrium.
Porto read excerpts from soldiers' experiences in World War II and stressed similarities between public health and military sectors.
The plaque, revealed at the end of Porto's speech, reads: "With gratitude to all veterans in the school of Public Health Family for their Dedicated Service. Veterans Day."
Dean of the School of Public Health Barbara Rimer said the ceremony was inspired by a letter she received from a public health alumnus who also served in the military.
"The letter made us wake up and realize that many of our alumni have been in the military over the years" she said.
The letter's author, Wanda Wills, served as a nurse in U.S. Army from 1940 to 1946 and in the U.S. Air Force from 1948 to 1964.
Her letter memorialized personal wartime experience and stressed military history.
"Please give us old-timers the benefit of listening to our stories," Wills wrote.
"It was a different time and age when our country was young - with unlimited frontiers, when people were seen for what they were, not who their parents were. One could have dreams, and if you were ambitious enough, you could attain them."
Linda Kastleman, information and communication specialist for the School of Public Health, said she appreciated Wills' efforts.
"Ms. Wills helped us remember how important the School of Public Health had been to her," Kastleman said.
Jules Heisler, senior associate dean at the school, said that although people often don't link public health and the military, many public health nurses and physicians have served in the military in varying capacities.
"Public health nurses and physicians have a very important role outside combat, as well as in combat, such as flying the Medevac, like Mr. Porto, and taking care of wounded soldiers," Heisler said.
Ramona DuBose, director of communications for the school, also recognized the collaboration.
"People traditionally have not associated public health with the military," DuBose said. "But when we look back at our alumni and our school we see a trend in the amount of contributions public health has made to the military and the military to public health."
Rimer said the ceremony was a way of coming to terms with her generation's conflicted past.
"This plaque is a form of thank you and recognition to the many health people from our school and the world. We believe they need our recognition and our thanks."
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(10/26/06 4:00am)
Children who grow up in low-income communities are seven times less likely to graduate from college than children residing in more fortunate financial settings.
A panel co-sponsored by Students for the Advancement of Race Relations and Teach for America sought to broaden campus awareness about the continuing impact of educational inequality along racial and ethnic lines Wednesday night.
University educators and administrators and diversity professionals came together to speak on race and the achievement gap among a gathering of more than 30 students.
"You need to teach people that all people are capable, it's not their culture or color," said Cookie Newsom, director for diversity education and research, one of five panelists at the event.
All of the panelists had previous teaching experience and were concerned with a variety of race issues influenced by their differing ethnic backgrounds.
Newsom said she seeks to dispel the myth that black children learn more slowly than white children. She stressed that closing the achievement gap begins in teacher-preparation programs.
Jennifer Ho, assistant professor in the English department, said the way society looks at education and race must be changed.
"We have to get to a place where we can talk about things honestly, with a filter, so we don't hurt people's feelings - then we can get to the root of the problem," she said.
"Everyone has to be brave and courageous and think of a way to talk about this problem."
Kwame Griffith, director of diversity outreach for Teach for America, said the achievement gap begins in kindergarten and continues to affect students in college.
"The achievement gap starts very young but it can be changed," he said. "The gap needs to be applied to the University level, too.
"We need to ensure that leadership that moves our country forward is representative of our people."
Danny Bell, research assistant in the American studies department, said he is concerned with how teachers interact with Native American students and the population's low graduation rate at North Carolina universities.
Bell also said that because their population is so small, Native Americans often are forgotten.
"Where is our place in this whole dynamic?" he said.
Adrienne Allen, co-chairwoman of SARR, said she hopes UNC students will become more aware of how fortunate they are to be at the University and more sensitive toward those less fortunate with regard to education.
"When you are more aware of the schooling someone received - that it's not something they can control - you can be more understanding and sensitive to that," she said.
Freshman Bettina Umstead said she wants students to be more informed about the racial achievement gap to make a change.
"Students at UNC can encourage people around them to do something about it and be proactive."
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(10/24/06 4:00am)
Growing up in Plymouth, Mass., David Roderick said he was influenced by the constant presence of the history that surrounded him.
Inspired by his hometown, Roderick examines both individual and collective histories in his first book, "Blue Colonial."
"When you grow up in a town like that, (you're) surrounded by that historical legacy all the time," Roderick said. "I didn't deliberately choose that topic, it just creeped up on me. I couldn't shake it."
Roderick, a prize-winning poet, will read selections from his cultural book of poetry at 3:30 p.m. today in Greenlaw 223.
Roderick is the 2006-07 Kenan visiting writer at the University.
"Blue Colonial" is about American history and culture, including encroachment on the natural landscape and the disappearance of Native American people.
"My first book headed in that direction because (the history) just kept returning to me" he said.
The Kenan visiting writer program, funded by the Spray Foundation of Atlanta, brings a new author to the University for a one-year teaching appointment.
Roderick, whose book of poetry won the Meridian Editor's Prize for Poetry in 2002, teaches English 131, an introductory poetry class.
Jennifer Herbst, creative writing program assistant, said most of the visiting writers are typically just beginning their careers.
"A lot of our students want to continue on with their writing. (The program) gives them something to look forward to, look up to, be inspired by," she said.
The Kenan visiting writer program seeks to alternate yearly between fiction and poetry authors.
The program also provides the author with time to work on a second book while teaching at the University.
"It's an unusual program for large universities like UNC," Roderick said.
"It's definitely a special feature. There aren't many examples of it elsewhere. The program is fantastic for its support of part-time writers while they're at work at creative endeavors."
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.