Carolina arts & sciences

              PlayMakers
Reaches Out
Acting, Teaching and
Engaging the Community
A l s o
ins ide
• Football Fallout
• Lensing Lessons
• ’Hotel Rwanda’
Revisited
S p r i ng • 2 0 1 0
a r t s & s c i e n c e s C a r o l i n a
T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f N o r t h C a r o l i n a a t C h a p e l H i l l
College of Arts & Sciences
• Karen M. Gil, Dean
• William Andrews ’70 MA, ’73 PhD
Senior Associate Dean, Fine Arts and Humanities
• Michael Crimmins
Senior Associate Dean, Natural Sciences
• Jonathan Hartlyn
Senior Associate Dean, Social Sciences,
	
International Programs
• Tammy McHale
Senior Associate Dean, Finance and Operations
• James W. May
Senior Associate Dean, Program Development;
Executive Director, Arts & Sciences Foundation
• Bobbi Owen
Senior Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education
Arts & Sciences Foundation
Board of Directors
• James L. Alexandre ’79, Haverford, PA, Chair
• Vicki Underwood Craver ’92, Riverside, CT,
Vice Chair
• Karen M. Gil, Chapel Hill, NC, President
• William L. Andrews, ‘70 MA, ‘73 PhD,
Chapel Hill, NC, Vice President
• Tammy J. McHale, Chapel Hill, NC, Treasurer
• James W. May, Jr., Chapel Hill, NC, Secretary
• D. Shoffner Allison ’98, Charlotte, NC
• Ivan V. Anderson, Jr. ’61, Charleston, SC
• R. Frank Andrews ’90, ’95 MBA, Washington, DC
• Valerie Ashby ’88, ’94 PhD, Chapel Hill, NC
• Constance Y. Battle ’77, Raleigh, NC
• Laura Hobby Beckworth ’80, Houston, TX
• William S. Brenizer ’74, Glen Head, NY
• Cathy Bryson ’90, Santa Monica, CA
• R. Duke Buchan III ’85, Amenia, NY
• Jeffrey Forbes Buckalew ’88, ’93 MBA,
New York, NY
• Sunny H. Burrows ’84, Atlanta, GA
• G. Munroe Cobey ’74, Chapel Hill, NC
• Sheila Ann Corcoran ’92, ’98 MBA,
Los Angeles, CA
• Steven M. Cumbie ’70, ’73 MBA, McLean, VA
• Jaroslav T. Folda III, Chapel Hill, NC
• Gardiner W. Garrard, Jr. ’64, Columbus, GA
• Emmett Boney Haywood ’77, ���82 JD, Raleigh, NC
• Lynn Buchheit Janney ’70, Butler, MD
• Matthew G. Kupec ’80, Chapel Hill, NC
• William M. Lamont, Jr. ’71, Dallas, TX
• Edwin A. Poston ’89, Chapel Hill, NC
• John A. Powell ‘77, San Francisco, CA
• Benjamine Reid ’71, Miami, FL
• Alex T. Robertson ’01, New York, NY
• H. Martin Sprock III ‘87, Charlotte, NC
• Emily Pleasants Sternberg ’88, ’94 MBA,
	
Greenwich, CT
• Eric P. Vick ’90, Oxford, UK
• Charles L. Wickham, III ’82 BSBA, London, UK
• Loyal W. Wilson ’70, Chagrin Falls, OH
From the dean F r om t h e D e a n
Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2010
Opening doors through learning,
discovery and outreach
Jeff Meanza (MFA ’04) must be a master multi-tasker. As
the director of education and outreach for PlayMakers Repertory
Company, our professional theater company in residence, he
juggles multiple roles.
As an actor, he played five characters in the ambitious
production of Nicholas Nickleby. And as an educator, he has
helped PlayMakers open its doors wide to the community in
new and exciting ways — including teacher artists in the schools,
open discussions with artists in public venues like the library
or local bookstore, and the Summer Youth Conservatory. Through the SYC, young actors
train with professionals and put on a full-scale production; my son Elliot is one of many local
students who have participated in this amazing opportunity.
In the College, part of our ongoing goal is to reach out to the community, the state and
the world through learning and discovery. These are not separate objectives, but rather an
interconnected part of our mission, which is illustrated in several stories in our spring ’10 issue
of Carolina Arts & Sciences:
• Twenty undergraduate students, led by political science faculty member Donna
LeFebvre, went on a Burch Field Research Seminar to study and volunteer in Rwanda last
summer and had a life-changing experience. They came back to UNC committed to forming
an organization to support the Rwanda school where they had learned about that nation’s
tragic past while serving its survivors.
• Exercise and sport science researchers Kevin Guskiewicz and Fred Mueller are
studying the long-term impacts of football players who suffer multiple concussions. Their
work is gaining national attention and raising awareness across all levels of play, including the
NCAA.
• English professor George Lensing is living proof that teaching, research and service
are energizing. As the former head of the Office of Distinguished Scholarships, he has helped
many UNC students to land Rhodes and other prestigious scholarships. These bright students
leave Carolina with bold ideas that will change the world.
• We profile Erin Burns, one of the first graduates of UNC-BEST, our partnership with
the UNC School of Education that enables science and math majors to simultaneously earn
N.C. teaching credentials with their undergraduate degrees. Burns is now teaching biology at
an inner-city Charlotte high school.
• You’ll read about beloved music professor and tenor Stafford Wing, who retired after
40 years in the College. His many former students — including performers, teachers, musical
directors and others — have benefited from his leadership, teaching and service.
We appreciate the support of our alumni and friends more than ever before as we
continue to face ongoing economic challenges in the year ahead. Many of our learning,
discovery and outreach initiatives would simply not be possible without their commitment.
Our door is always open to you — come see us and find out about all of the exciting
things going on in the College of Arts and Sciences.
— Karen M. Gil, Dean
Karen M. Gil
Steve Exum
F e a t u r e s
6 • PlayMakers
Reaches Out
The College’s professional theater
opens its doors wide to the
community
10 • ‘Hotel Rwanda’
Revisited
Undergraduates explore the
aftermath of atrocity
15 • Football Fallout
	 UNC research examines the
long-term effects of concussion
impacts
18 • Lensing Lessons
	 Teaching, research and service
are energizing
Cover photo: PlayMakers Repertory Company’s Jeff Meanza (MFA ’04) poses with Allison Press
of Chapel Hill High School, who portrayed Helena in the Summer Youth Conservatory’s production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Photo by Steve Exum)
Table of Contents T a b l e of
Co n t e n t s
Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2010
D e p a r t m e n t s
inside front cover
From the Dean
Opening doors through learning,
	
discovery and outreach
2 High Achievers
Two Rhodes Scholars, literary prize
for Asian studies professor, kudos
for teaching, chemist wins polymer
prize, biologists tapped for science
association, computer graphics work
honored, and more
20 Profiles
UNC-BEST graduate Erin Burns is
born to teach; Beloved music professor
Stafford Wing leaves UNC on a
high note.
22 Highlights
New international experts join the
College, gifts from retired geologist
move mountains, pinpointing the causes
of “runner’s knee,” celebrating first-generation
college students, heading
off “home-grown terrorism,” single
	
atom controls how bacteria “walk,”
and more
31 College Bookshelf
Fiction exploring the segregated past,
an international adoption and celebrity
encounters with animals; reflections
on secret interviews with President
Clinton, growing up Jewish in N.C.,
raising a child with autism and why
Muhammad matters; and more
inside back cover
Final Point
Lady Mechanic, a poem by senior
English major Michelle Hicks of
Lafayette, La.
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   1
15
18
10
Steve Exum Donn Young Bruce Siceloff
Two for the Rhodes
In Taiwan, she taught English and
computer skills at a shelter for Vietnamese
victims of human trafficking. In Israel and
Turkey, she conducted interviews and attended
conferences to research tensions that arise
between religious minority groups and their
governments.
As part of a fall 2008 study abroad in
Switzerland, Longino traveled to Bosnia-
Herzegovina to research human trafficking after
the country’s civil war.
At UNC, Longino is president of the
Carolina chapter of the Roosevelt Institute, a
national student think tank. This year, Carolina’s
was named the most outstanding chapter
among 75 nationwide.
Spelman has worked in refugee camps in
Tanzania, tutored underprivileged high school
students and trekked more than 125 miles in
Washington’s Olympic Mountains.
He is proficient in conversation in Swahili
and in conversation and reading in German. He
has won five competitive academic prizes from
the classics department since 2007, including
the Herington Scholarship twice. In addition to
that scholarship, his classics awards include The
Eben Alexander Prize in Greek, The Epps Prize
in Greek Studies and The Albert Suskin Prize in
Latin.
Working to help Burundian refugees in
Tanzania last summer — Spelman’s second
time there with the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees on a Morehead-Cain
summer experience — he read himself to sleep
at night with the ancient Greek poetry of Pindar.
Spelman edits the Cellar Door, UNC’s
undergraduate literary magazine, and has
written a poem accepted by the internationally
circulated Southern Poetry Review. He won the
prize for the best poet in the junior class from
UNC’s creative writing program.
With Amnesty International, Spelman has
participated in national planning sessions and
a steering committee, coordinated activism by
about 30 high school students in the Triangle
and led the UNC chapter. •
High Achievers
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H i g h A c h i e v e r s
UNC seniors Elizabeth Blair
“Libby” Longino and Henry Lawlor Spelman
have won prestigious Rhodes Scholarships for
graduate study at Oxford University in England.
They were among 32 American college
students selected Nov. 21 for the prestigious
honor, perhaps the world’s most competitive
in higher education.
Longino of Dallas is double-majoring in
English and public policy analysis. Spelman
of Swarthmore, Pa., is majoring in classical
languages with a minor in creative writing.
Longino will pursue master’s degrees in
forced migration and comparative social policy
at Oxford. She plans a career in human rights
advocacy.
Spelman will pursue a master’s degree
in Greek and Latin languages and literature.
His ambition is to become a
professor.
Both students came to
Carolina on the Morehead-Cain
Scholarship — a full, four-year
merit award that includes
four summer enrichment
experiences.
That’s not the only thing
they have in common. They
met during their first year at
Carolina, reconnected about
two years later on a research trip
to Turkey, and then later started
dating. They are looking forward
to exploring Oxford together.
Longino has interned with a microcredit
program in Vietnam, helped start a group
combating child prostitution in Cambodia and
completed an Outward Bound Wilderness
Expedition in the Pacific Northwest.
Longino spent one of her Morehead-
Cain summers in Vietnam, interviewing clients
of a small microcredit project. One day, she
heard a Vietnamese mother’s pleas for a heart
treatment for her daughter.
The experience resulted in an invitation
later from Vietnamese colleagues to help start
a foundation in Cambodia addressing child
prostitution in Phnom Penh’s Vietnamese
community.
Asian studies scholar
wins literary prize
Sahar Amer, a professor of Asian
studies, won a top prize from the Modern
Language Association of America (MLA).
Amer received the Aldo and Jeanne
Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary
Studies for her book, Crossing Borders:
Love Between Women in Medieval French
and Arabic Literatures (University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2008). The award
is presented annually for outstanding
scholarly work that
involves at least two
literatures.
Amer is a member
of the MLA, the largest
and one of the oldest
American societies
in the humanities.
At Carolina, she is
also an adjunct professor of French and
international studies.
She focuses her research on
cross-cultural relations between the
Arab world and Europe throughout the
centuries; Arabs and Muslims in France
and in America today; and cross-cultural
constructions of gender and sexualities. •
Sahar Amer
Steve Exum
Libby Longino Henry Spelman
High Achievers
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   3
H i g h A c h i e v e r s
Kudos for teaching
Sixteen College faculty and graduate teaching assistants were recognized with 2010
University Teaching Awards, the highest campuswide honors for instructional excellence.
This year’s nominee for the UNC System Board of Governor’s Award for Excellence
in Teaching is Rachel Willis, Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor in
the department of American studies. One recipient is selected each year by each of the
16 institutions in the UNC system. The UNC-Chapel Hill recipient is also the University’s
nominee for the CASE U.S. Professors of the Year competition, a national award for
outstanding undergraduate teaching.
Winners of Tanner Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching are:
• Claudio Battaglini, assistant professor of exercise and sport science;
• Robert Cantwell, Townsend Ludington Professor of American Studies;
• Brian Hogan, assistant professor of chemistry;
• Elizabeth Jordan, lecturer and associate director of undergraduate studies, psychology;
• Greg Gangi, assistant professor, curriculum for the environment and ecology.
Winners of Johnston Teaching
Excellence Awards for undergraduate
teaching are:
• Daniel Wallace, J. Ross MacDonald
	
Distinguished Professor, English and
	
comparative literature;
• Albert K. Harris, professor of biology.
Winners of Distinguished Teaching
Awards for Post-Baccalaureate
	
Instruction are:
• Thomas Hill, Kenan Professor of
	
Philosophy;
• Robert MacCallum, professor of
	
psychology.
Winners of Tanner Awards for
Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching by
Graduate Teaching Assistants are:
• Stacey Treat, communication studies;
• Ben White, religious studies;
• Pablo Maurette, Spanish;
• Andrew Pennock, political science.
In addition, religious studies professor
Omid Safi won the J. Carlyle Sitterson Fresh-man
Teaching Award, awarded to a professor
teaching first-year students, and political
science professor Michael Lienesch won the
University Professor of Distinguished Teach-ing
Award. This three-year term professor-ship
was established to recognize career-long
excellence in teaching. •
Simpson lauded for
literature contributions
Bland Simpson, a creative
writing professor, author, composer and
lyricist, was recognized for his significant
contributions to North Carolina literature.
Simpson, Bowman and Gordon
Gray Distinguished Term Professor,
received the R. Hunt Parker Memorial
Award from the North Carolina Literary
and Historical Association.
Simpson has taught in the College
since 1982 and directed the creative
writing program from 2002 to 2008.
He is the author of numerous
books about North Carolina, including
The Great Dismal: A Carolinian’s Swamp
Memoir, The Mystery of Beautiful Nell
Cropsey: A Nonfiction Novel, Ghost Ship
of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the
Carroll A. Deering and The Inner Islands:
A Carolinian’s Sound Country Chronicle.
He has been a member of the
Tony Award-winning string band, The
Red Clay Ramblers, since 1986. He has
collaborated on or contributed to almost
a dozen musicals, including Diamond
Studs, King Mackerel, Kudzu and the Tony
winner Fool Moon. •
Bland Simpson
Steve Exum
Brian Hogan Michael Lienesch
Lars Sahl
Daniel Wallace
Steve Exum
Brodey wins language
association book award
Inger Brodey received the 2009 South
Atlantic Modern Language Association
Studies Book Award.
Brodey is associate professor of English
and comparative literature and Asian studies.
Brodey
won the award
for her 2008
book, Ruined
by Design:
Shaping Novels
and Gardens
in the Culture of Sensibility. The book
on landscape gardening and the history of the
novel features the work of Laurence Sterne,
Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Jane Austen.
“Inger Brodey has written a book of
remarkable vitality about the fascination with
ruins across eighteenth-century Europe,” said
Wu Hung, a distinguished professor at the
University of Chicago.
Brodey has won national awards
for her scholarship, including a Mellon
Fellowship in the Humanities. She was
recently awarded an Earhart Foundation
Research Grant to complete a book-length
comparison of cowboys and samurai in
film. She also is working on a study of
representations of Jane Austen in Asia.
She won a 2006 UNC Tanner Award for
Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. •
High Achievers H i g h A c h i e v e r s
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Two juniors receive Carson Scholarships
Juniors Caroline Fish and Chase Jones have been named Eve Carson Scholars at UNC.
The scholarship will provide half the cost of their senior year studies, plus $5,000 each
for a summer enrichment experience.
Fish, of Raleigh, is double-majoring in psychology and English, with a minor in creative
writing in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Jones, of Greensboro, is majoring in business administration at Kenan-Flagler Business
School, with a minor in exercise and sport science in the College.
Carson, a senior from Athens, Ga., and UNC’s 2007-2008 student body president,
was killed in March 2008. One of what she called her “Big Ideas” as president was to create
a merit-based scholarship for UNC juniors.
The scholarship was established in her memory
to honor balanced, ambitious students who have
shown strong involvement in leadership roles at
Carolina and have at least a 3.0 grade-point average
in their first three undergraduate years.
Fish is a 2007 graduate of Ravenscroft School
in Raleigh. She has worked toward solving the
problems of sexual assault and domestic violence.
She is working with campus colleagues to produce
a documentary to raise awareness about sexual
violence. She also has studied abroad in France,
where she worked to help victims of sexual assault.
“Caroline is an incredibly motivated person and inspired the committee with her drive
to bring about positive change in this area,” said Thomas Edwards, a senior biology major
who directed the scholarship program this year.
Jones graduated from Ragsdale High School in Jamestown, N.C., in 2006. He has
worked with patients at the N.C. Children’s Hospital and next year will lead the Carolina
Dreams Program, which connects athletes to children in the hospital. A varsity baseball
player, he overcame brain cancer during his first year at Carolina.
“He took this devastating event and turned it into both a positive personal experience
and motivation to work diligently to ease the burden of children in similar situations at the
N.C. Children’s Hospital,” Edwards said. •
Davenport wins award for Cobb program
Randi Davenport, executive director of the James M. Johnston
Center for Undergraduate Excellence, received a statewide award for
her leadership in the Connected Learning Program (CLP) in Cobb
residence hall.
The North Carolina Housing Officers Organization (NCHO) tapped
Davenport for its Faculty Partnership Award. The new award recognizes
the outstanding contributions of an academic faculty member to the
housing and residence life department at their institution.
The Connected Learning Program in Cobb, a joint project of the Johnston Center
and Housing and Residential Education at UNC, was created in 2004. The program
offers students the chance to shape their own learning experiences outside the traditional
classroom. During the academic year, CLP students work in teams to develop projects of
their own design — ranging from research trips and lecture series to music performances
and film-making workshops. The participants live together in Cobb hall.
Davenport is an adjunct faculty member in the department of English and comparative
literature. Her memoir, The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes, was published by Algonquin in
March 2010. [see page 31.] •
Inger Brodey Caroline Fish Chase Jones
Randi Davenport
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   5
High Achievers H i g h A c h i e v e r s
Wenbin Lin
Chemist awarded
polymer prize
Chemist Michael Rubinstein
was awarded the 2010 Polymer Prize
from the American Physical Society.
The award recognizes
outstanding contributions in polymer
physics research.
Rubinstein, the John P. Barker
Distinguished Professor, has been at
UNC since 1995.
Most of the materials around us (from
plastics to tires) and inside us (DNA and
proteins) are made of polymers — giant,
chain-like molecules. The goal of Rubinstein’s
research group is to understand how
polymers move through a tangle formed
by their molecule neighbors and how they
are deformed if attached to each other in a
network, then pulled apart (like stretching a
rubber band). UNC researchers are modeling
polymers in the lungs with the goal of
developing treatments for diseases such as
cystic fibrosis.
Rubinstein received his bachelor’s
degree from the California Institute of
Technology and his master’s and doctorate
degrees from Harvard University.
Lin named to
top 10 chemists list
Chemist Wenbin Lin was named to
a top 10 list by a British publication for the
number of citations per article published.
The London-based Times Higher
Education, named Lin among the “Top Ten
Chemists of the Decade.” From January
1999 through June 2009, Lin published 106
original research reports and review articles,
which were cited a total of 6,685 times,
averaging around 63 citations per paper.
Lin’s research group works on a
variety of interdisciplinary projects from
catalysis to supramolecular materials to
nanobiotechnology. His research efforts are
relevant to important societal issues such as
environment and sustainability, alternative
renewable energy, biofuels and solar cells,
and human health.
Lin holds joint appointments in the
College and UNC’s Eshelman School of
Pharmacy.
He is a lead investigator in the new Solar
Energy Research Center, a project principal
investigator of the Carolina Center of Cancer
Nanotechnology Excellence, and a member
of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive
Cancer Center and the Institute for Advanced
Materials, Nanoscience and Technology.
Computer graphics,
robotics work honored
Computer scientist Dinesh Manocha
was honored by the world’s largest
educational and scientific computing society
for his contributions to geometric computing,
computer graphics and robotics.
Manocha, the Phi Delta Theta/Matthew
Mason Distinguished Professor of Computer
Science, was named a fellow of the
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
He is an expert in computer graphics
and geometric modeling. His research on
mathematical foundations and applications
has been used in scientific computations,
robotics, 3-D computer graphics and virtual
reality by the scientific community, the
computer industry and the entertainment
world.
Biologists tapped for
science association
Biologists Joseph Kieber and Mark A.
Peifer were named fellows of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
The association honors fellows’
scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to
advance science.
Kieber was recognized for his
contributions to plant hormone biology.
Hormones influence virtually every aspect
of plant growth and development. He was
also cited for his service to the international
community of arabidopsis researchers.
Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant, is widely
used as a model organism in plant biology.
Studying model species can help provide
insight into the workings of a wide variety of
other organisms.
Peifer, the Hooker Distinguished
Professor of Biology and a member of the
UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer
Center, was recognized for his contributions
to the understanding of interactions between
cells and of cell signaling during development.
Disruptions in this cellular machinery
contribute to various diseases, including
cancer. His work, which explores how cells
turn into tissues and organs, focuses on
epithelial tissues such as skin, lung, colon and
breast tissue.
Graduate student wins
Intel Fellowship
To his adviser, Rahul Narain “is an
exceptional student in every regard.”
Narain, a UNC College graduate student
in computer science, received an Intel Ph.D.
Fellowship, the only recipient in North
Carolina.
The Intel PhD Fellowship Program
selects students who are conducting leading-edge
technology research. Students must
focus on research in hardware systems
technology and design, software technology
and design, or semiconductor technology and
manufacturing.
Narain specializes in efficient animation
of complex phenomena, such as human
crowds, while also retaining small-scale detail.
“Due to his rare combination of excellent
analytical skills and unparalleled programming
skills, Rahul is able to achieve impressive results
that have never been seen before,” said his
adviser Ming Lin, the Beverly W. Long Distin-guished
Professor of Computer Science. •
Michael Rubinstein Dinesh Manocha Mark Peifer
Reaches PlayMakers
PlayMakers
6   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
PlayMakers
Steve Exum
Out
PlayMakersReaches Out Reaches Out
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   7
It’s 10 a.m. on a December morning and Jeff Meanza quickly heads backstage after greeting teachers and
students in the lobby of UNC’s Center for Dramatic Art. He will make a fast change into costume for a
performance of PlayMakers Repertory Company’s The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
Talk about juggling multiple roles.
Meanza (MFA ’04), PlayMakers’ director
of education and outreach, also plays five
characters ranging from a middle-aged
womanizing dandy to a 14-year-old boy
	
in the epic two-part production that casts
25 actors in 150 roles.
Since their inception in 1984, these
educational matinees have reached nearly
100,000 area youth.
Sue Scarborough, who teaches acting
and theater at Enloe Magnet High School
in Raleigh, has been bringing her students
to PlayMakers’ weekday matinees for nearly
20 years.
“PlayMakers is our closest and best
theater that showcases outstanding acting
and technical [work],” she said. “It’s
important for me as a teacher to know
that they create everything there, from the
costumes to the sets.”
“It lets me as a teacher show my students
the possibilities.”
Possibilities and partnerships
The educational matinees are just part
of the many partnerships PlayMakers is
exploring in an increasing effort to reach out
to the community. The company is bringing
dramatic performances to a wider audience
through cultural programming both inside and
outside the theater’s walls.
A couple of years ago, a grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) jump-started
an initiative to take PlayMakers artists
into the schools. Through its teaching artists
program, PlayMakers offers two residencies
per year to area schools at no cost.
“We want to be as supportive as we
theater is like,” he said.
Meanza was 5 years old when a local
theater production of Annie in his hometown
of Modesto, Calif., first sparked his interest
in dramatic art. He went to theater summer
camps, studied the oboe for 14 years, played
in bands and symphonies — but when he
got to college at the University of California
at Berkeley, he initially felt like he needed to
pursue a more “secure” liberal arts degree.
While in college, a trip to see an off-
Broadway play re-lit the theater spark. He
changed his undergraduate major to theater,
then went on to pursue his MFA at UNC.
Meanza is quick to point out that the
skills learned in theater cross disciplines.
“Having been a theater artist from a very
The College’s professional theater opens its doors wide to the community
c o n t i n u e d
B y K i m W e a v e r S p u r r ’ 8 8
can to keep the arts alive and well in their
schools,” said Kathy Williams, a PlayMakers
company member who heads the program.
Joy Jones, an MFA candidate in the
Professional Actor Training Program, led a
workshop for the artists on creating lesson
plans, warm-up activities and addressing
different themes. A Google e-mail group
allows the artists to continue to share ideas.
The partnership with the schools —
which has stretched from the Triangle to
Fayetteville, Yanceyville and beyond — is
one of the initiatives Meanza is most proud
of since joining PlayMakers’ staff in 2007.
“We’re there to help augment anything
they need — whether it’s using the arts to
teach English or history or science, or to help
students understand what a professional
Reaches ABOVE: Oliver! music director Ernie Scarborough rehearses with students. LEFT: Jeff Meanza (MFA ’04),
director of education and outreach at PlayMakers, played multiple roles in the epic Nicholas Nickleby.
Robert Breen
Collaboration
Expanding the
8   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
young age, after graduate school, I became
the national director of graduate programs
for the Princeton Review,” he said. “All of the
skills I learned as an actor were completely
applicable in that job.”
A creative collaboration
For the past three summers, Brian and
Mary Stokes of Pittsboro have supported their
15-year-old son Henry’s participation in the
Summer Youth Conservatory (SYC), a unique
partnership between PlayMakers and The
ArtsCenter of Carrboro.
In an intensive, five-week experience,
40 children from elementary to high school
learn from PlayMakers’ professional staff
all the aspects of putting on a full-scale
production — including training in acting,
movement, voice and technical theater. And
they perform it in the Center for Dramatic
Art’s Paul Green Theatre, where PlayMakers
puts on its main-stage shows. Students have to
audition for a spot in the conservatory, which
is tuition-based. Full and partial scholarships
are available.
“No matter what you end up doing …
you learn to express yourself creatively and
with confidence, and those are probably the
most highly sought-after skills in any field.”
	 — Brian Stokes
“Henry will never forget some of these
people,” Brian Stokes said. “No matter what
you end up doing … you learn to express
yourself creatively and with confidence, and
those are probably the most highly sought-after
skills in any field. … The kids are also
learning how to work with deadlines and
achieve certain milestones.”
The SYC participants performed Oliver!
and The Music Man their first two seasons.
Last year, they took on Shakespeare. Henry
Stokes played a major role — Lysander — in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In his first two
seasons, he played ensemble roles, and he
found those just as valuable.
“Being in an ensemble role was amazing,
because Tom [Quaintance, the director] really
makes those roles special and uses them to
develop the world of the play,” he said.
The North Carolina Theatre Conference
(NCTC), the statewide service organization for
theater arts and artists, recently awarded the
SYC its Constance Welsh Theatre for Youth
Award.
Angie Hayes, the executive director
of NCTC, called the conservatory “a model
program for youth theater in North Carolina.”
Seventeen-year-old Allison Press of
Chapel Hill has participated in SYC for
two summers. She admits that at first it
was intimidating to think about doing
Shakespeare; now she loves it. She played
Helena in Midsummer.
“The experience just gets richer and
richer and more fun every year,” she said.
“Once Tom and [dramatic art professor] Julie
Fishell helped us to unlock the language, it
was fun to build a character off of that.”
Last year for the first time, SYC offered
an apprentice program called TheatreTech.
Six students signed up for the program and
learned about different technical aspects of
theater, including set, costume and lighting
design, and stage management. They could
then focus on one area.
“Everything in theater is one huge
problem-solving exercise — even if the show
goes off fairly smoothly,” said Kaitlyn Rogers,
18, of Chapel Hill, a TheatreTech apprentice.
This summer, SYC will expand from
a half-day to a full-day program, allowing
for more in-depth classes. Participants will
perform The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Jeri Lynn Schulke (MFA ’99), director
of the Youth Performing Arts Conservatory
at The ArtsCenter, said the partnership with
PlayMakers has been very rewarding.
“The staff at PlayMakers are inspiring
people to work with,” she said. “Nobody’s in
it for ego; we’re all focused on doing the best
we can for these students.”
Echoed Allison’s dad, Dennis Press, who
is the controller at UNC, “The ArtsCenter and
PlayMakers individually do great things, but
collectively it proves the expression that ‘the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’”
Fostering a love of Dickens
With its production of Nicholas Nickleby,
PlayMakers took the idea of engaging the
community to a new level.
An NEA grant helped the company to
create “The Dickens Initiative” — expanded
programming around the play that was
offered in area bookstores, a library, schools,
an art museum and more. Playwright
David Edgar came to campus for a week in
residence, a master class and public lecture.
Marian Fragola, who got her master’s in
information and library science from UNC
in 2008, is the humanities coordinator at
the Durham County Library. She has been
involved with bringing PlayMakers’ artists
to the library since The Glass Menagerie in
2008.
With Nicholas Nickleby, she brought in
directors, actors and designers to the library’s
main branch and The Regulator Bookshop to
talk about adapting, directing and designing
an epic.
“People are fascinated to get that
behind the scenes [look],” she said. “One of
the attendees said, ‘like the extras on a DVD,
these lectures helped me to appreciate the
massive undertaking of Nicholas Nickleby.’”
Tom Quaintance, a Los Angeles-based
director who has led each summer’s SYC
performances and who co-directed Nicholas
Nickleby with producing artistic director
Joseph Haj (MFA ’88), enjoyed participating
in the outreach events.
“When we were producing the play,
we wanted to peel away some of the layers,
to show how we were doing this,” he said.
“There was a joy in this process that had to
do very specifically with the building of a
community.”
CLOCKWISE FROM BELOW: (From left), SYC
students Alexander Daly and Karl Kopcynski rehearse
a scene from The Music Man. • (From left), Joy
Jones and Jeff Meanza in Nicholas Nickleby. •
SYC participants took on Shakespeare last summer.
Reaches Robert Breen
Collaboration
Conversation
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   9
has collaborated with PlayMakers
productions since 1980.
The program’s 2009 Richard
A. Soloway Seminar, supported
by private funds, focused on “The
Victorian World,” with UNC and Duke
scholars discussing different aspects of
Victorian life. Participants attended a
performance of Nicholas Nickleby.
For teachers, the tickets were free.
“This collaboration brings the
humanities to life in ways that we don’t
often experience,” said Eve Duffy, director of
the program. “It’s a conversation that just gets
started in the theater, and then you keep it
going.”
Expanding the conversation
Since Haj came on board as producing
artistic director in July 2006, he has made it
a key focus of PlayMakers’ strategy to extend
that conversation with the community.
He created the second-stage PRC²
series where the company could explore
socially and politically relevant work in a more
intimate setting — shows are performed in
the smaller Elizabeth Price Kenan Theatre.
And he added post-show discussions with the
audience and the creative artists.
With the main-stage season this year,
PlayMakers introduced the free “Vision Series:
Directors in Conversation.” A week before
each show opens, the public is invited to
the theater to learn about the production in
process, meet the director and get a behind-the-
scenes peek at the show.
“If you ask a dozen different artistic
directors, you’ll get different ideas about
what’s important to them,” Haj said. “We just
believe strongly at PlayMakers that this theater
belongs to the community it is charged to
serve. It’s not up to us to sit in an ivory tower
and wave the artistic flag.”
Tariq Nasir, a documentary filmmaker
and a member of PlayMakers Advisory
Council, has supported PRC² discussions from
the beginning.
In this day and age when it may be
easier to turn on the TV than visit the theater,
Nasir believes an educational mission is even
more crucial. A study by the NEA found a
noticeable decline in theater, museum and
concert attendance between 2002 and 2008
for adults 18 and older.
“When you learn how to appreciate
[theater], you learn the subtleties and then
you’re more likely to want to take part
because you see the real value,” he said.
“With the PRC² series, Joe is saying, ‘we’re
going to entertain you, but we also want you
to feel stretched beyond your comfort zone.’”
“We just believe strongly at PlayMakers that
this theater belongs to the community it is
charged to serve.” — Joseph Haj
The “Mindplay” discussions offer another
avenue for community participation. While
the program has existed for about a decade,
attendance has been growing in recent years,
according to Meanza.
On select nights after each of the main-stage
productions, a psychoanalyst leads a
50-minute discussion about characters and
themes in the show.
“Modern psychoanalysis is the deepest
study and treatment of human character and
emotion that we have, and so it’s a powerful
lens for looking into a drama,” said Peter
Perault, a Chapel Hill psychiatrist who has
led several discussions over the years. “I think
people find that the give-and-take with the
audience after a performance always enriches
their experience of the theater.”
In the coming year, PlayMakers will
explore new partnerships with the North
Carolina Symphony, Kidzu Children’s
Museum in Chapel Hill and UNC’s Sonja
Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and
History, among others.
Quaintance, the guest director, has
known Haj for about 20 years. Haj has rallied
his team around the idea of embracing the
community, he said.
“There’s a sense of shared purpose
in that building,” he said. “Joe hasn’t just
surrounded himself with people who agree
with him; he’s surrounded himself with
people who are willing to fight for what’s right
and work for a higher purpose.”
“That’s a recipe for success.”
Online Extras: More on PlayMakers at
www.playmakersrep.org and college.unc.edu.
Out
The
Ackland Art
Museum
presented the
original drawings,
illustrations and
prints of Dickens’
England.
Drawn from
the museum’s
permanent
collection, the
temporary
installation in
the new second
floor study
gallery included works by Dickens’ chief
artistic collaborators. The exhibition featured
one of artist George Cruikshank’s original
1838 drawings for Oliver Twist. English
lecturer Marc Napolitano gave a lunch-time
talk on Dickens’ art in the “Victorian popular
consciousness.”
A Wilson Library installation in the Rare
Book Reading Room showcased the original
serial editions of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-
1839) and two early theatrical adaptations
of the novel. More about the installation
and Napolitano’s talk were posted online on
PlayMakers’ Web site.
“It was very exciting working with
PlayMakers, to use our collection to bring
together faculty and resources from across
campus to help extend the life of Nicholas
Nickleby beyond the event itself,” said Rob
Colby, coordinator of academic programs at
the Ackland.
The College of Arts and Sciences’
Program in Humanities and Human
Values was founded in 1979; the program
Jon Gardiner
T
10   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
he 20 undergraduate
students who headed to Rwanda
last summer knew it would be
a very different kind of study
abroad experience.
I felt a tinge of discomfort
as we landed on the runway
and pulled into the airport
…my inability to grasp the
atrocity that happened
here. To me it is a scene from a horror movie, a page from
a book … I surely could never imagine such hell.
— Sarah Stoneking’s blog, May 21, Kigali
Led by UNC political science senior lecturer Donna LeFebvre
and Tessa Bialek, an alumna teaching assistant, the group returned
to the scenes of a massive massacre that occurred 15 years ago.
Nearly a million Rwandans were killed in the space of 100
days in 1994, in a bloody ethnic clash when Hutus turned on their
Tutsi neighbors. Hollywood brought the genocide to light in the
2004 award-winning film, Hotel Rwanda, the true-life story of Paul
Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who sheltered over a thousand Tutsi
refugees. Required reading for the UNC students included New
Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch’s book, We Wish To Inform You
That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.
Carolina students met survivors and perpetrators face to face;
took classes on genocide, reconciliation and international law;
taught children orphaned by the slaughter; visited churches and
schools where people were slain; lived with Rwandan families and
sat in on international criminal court proceedings.
Through a Burch Field Research Seminar, they spent a few
days in Arusha, Tanzania, at the International Criminal Tribunal
for Rwanda; four weeks in Kigali (including week-long home
stays with Rwandan families); one week in Butare at the National
‘Hotel Rwanda’ Revisited Undergraduates explore
the aftermath of atrocity
B y K i m W e a v e r S p u r r ’ 8 8
c o n t i n u e d
Bruce Siceloff
Bruce Siceloff
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   11
Most of the students at
College Doctrina Vitae (CDV),
a secondary school near
Kigali, are genocide orphans.
(Left) The skulls of hundreds
of genocide victims are stored
in a church at Nyamata.
12   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
University of Rwanda and
one week in The Hague at
the International Criminal
Court. In addition to academic
coursework, they went on field trips and volunteered at various
schools and nonprofits in Rwanda.
“A lot of us couldn’t process what we had seen,” said Sarah
Stoneking, a senior chemistry major from Greensboro, who is
pursuing a double minor in anthropology and music. “In a lot of
ways, I felt like I didn’t have the right to understand what I had
seen, because there were stories that were being told that were not
mine — and never will be mine.”
The memorial gave me, and I believe others, truth.
It not only gave me facts, it gave me the reality. It not
only gave me the names, it gave me the faces. It not only
gave me the written accounts, it told me the stories.
It gave me the people. The women, the men and the
children. 	 — Menna Mburi’s blog, May 21,
Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre
For Menna Mburi, a senior political science major and
journalism minor, it was a journey back to her family’s roots in
neighboring Tanzania. She grew up in Raleigh, but lived for a
couple of years in Tanzania when she was 5. She was there in 1994,
at the time of the genocide in Rwanda, but wrote in her blog that
she doesn’t remember hearing about it then.
At the memorial center, the impact of the killings hit home for
Mburi when she stumbled upon a glass case, illuminated by a single
light bulb, that contained a piece of clothing worn by one of the
victims.
“It reminded me of something that my mom had worn [as a
young adult],” Mburi said. “There’s this picture of my mom, my
favorite from when she was younger. She has on this green fabric,
and she’s at my grandmother’s house, kneeling on the ground
with a cow. It triggered something in my mind, and I made the
connection that this could have been my mom, my dad, my
brother. It touched me in a way that I can’t even explain.”
As I hope the people who read this
understand, no part of Rwanda was left
untouched by the genocide. The National
University of Rwanda’s narrative is one
of immense sadness: professors turned
on professors, students against students,
professors against students. Over five
hundred people were killed on this campus,
on a typical college day. When we
sat in a lecture room, the only thing
going through my head was: Who
was sitting here, in this chair?
— Matt Karkutt’s blog,
June 14, Butare
The university was one of many
memorial sites the students visited. At
two churches in the Kibuye district
of Rwanda, students saw blood stains,
holes left by bullets and grenades, piles of
clothing worn by the victims and pews
scattered with everyday objects they carried — toys, purses, hats,
ballpoint pens, ethnic identity cards. Skulls and bones of the dead
lined shelves of the sacred places, surrounded by the musky smell of
earth, death and age.
We went to Nyamata where 10,000 people were killed in
a church. … I thought about everyone I knew, and how
that would only be a drop in the bucket of even this one
massacre. I thought about my hopes and dreams and
how those of the victims were cut down, right then and
there for no reason. — Thomas Ginn’s blog, May 30
Memorial in Butare, where the skeletons are preserved
in limestone. This one brought me to tears, wondering
why I had been born into such privilege, security and
opportunity. — from Ginn’s Facebook album of the trip
Thomas Ginn said it wasn’t just at memorial sites that the
students felt the impact of the genocide. Because of the length of
their stay, they were able to immerse themselves in the daily life of
Rwanda. Everyone they met had a story to tell.
“We were sitting in a restaurant one night and we started
talking to a guy sitting by himself,” recalled Ginn, a senior math
and economics major from Atlanta. “He talked to us for three
hours about his life, how his entire family was killed in the genocide
and how he was still trying to figure out a way to cope. … You
couldn’t have learned this in a classroom.”
During the genocide, bodies were dumped in the Akagera
and Nyabarongo rivers — both tributaries of Lake Victoria. As per
the custom, the UNC students wrote messages to the survivors and
victims while walking across the river bridges.
Matt Karkutt, a junior English and interdisciplinary studies
major from Gray’s Creek, N.C., chose to offer up this quote from
J.R.R. Tolkien while on the bridge of the Akagera: “Little by little
Sarah Collman
Bruce Siceloff
Amber Clifford
CLOCKWISE from top left:
Kigali kids check out UNC student
Doug Harris’ camera. • Sparsely
equipped science lab at CDV.
• Donna LeFebvre in Arusha
National Park, Tanzania.
Exploring
global climate change
in Iceland and more This summer UNC students will travel to Iceland and
Alaska to study global climate change, thanks to a new
Burch Field Research Seminar.
The rotating roster of semester- and summer-long
seminars allows UNC faculty to lead groups of
undergraduates on extensive field research trips in the U.S.
and around the world.
The program is supported by Lucius E. Burch III, a 1963
Carolina graduate who wanted to encourage professors
and students to engage their intellectual curiosity together
beyond the classroom. The first seminar debuted in fall
1998. Burch also funded the Burch Fellows Program, which
allows talented Carolina undergraduates to design and
pursue individual independent study projects anywhere in
the world.
Burch Seminars, which typically have between 12 and
18 students, provide 12 hours of academic credit in a mix of
independent study and formal course work.
They are open to all UNC undergraduate students who
are in good standing and have at least a 3.0 GPA. Financial
aid can be applied to the program cost, and students can
apply for additional need-based scholarships.
Information online at www.burchseminars.unc.edu.
— B y K i m W e a v e r S p u r r ’ 8 8
one travels far.” Karkutt added in a blog entry: “I
travel with the Rwandan people, always.”
Karkutt, who is involved with an anti-genocide
activist group on campus, had read “obsessively”
about Rwanda before the trip. Still, he said the
experience of actually being there was “intense —
but that’s an understatement no matter what.”
“At the memorials it was very raw,” he said. “It
wasn’t polished, it wasn’t clean. It could be difficult
sometimes, because we want to put barriers around
ourselves with death, but there you couldn’t do that.
You knew that wherever you stood, someone was
probably murdered there.”
“But what I would do is look around me, and I would
see life continuing, kids playing and people moving on and
trying to look forward to the future.”
LeFebvre, who has a UNC law degree, got interested
in international criminal law about 10 years ago. In the
summer of 2006, she interviewed staff and attended hearings
at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the
Rwandan genocide court in Arusha, Tanzania, and the new
International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands.
She decided to create a Burch seminar, an off-campus study
program that showcases the relationship between UNC faculty
research and undergraduate education by combining traditional
coursework with experiential learning. The seminar program is
supported by a gift from UNC alumnus Lucius E. Burch III. Each
year between five and seven seminars are offered in both domestic
and international locations.
“Overall what I wanted them to get from the experience is
that you can make a difference, that things like genocide don’t have
to happen — and when they do happen, you can do something
about it,” said LeFebvre, who has won 13 teaching awards at
Carolina. “They have a duty to do something because they are
global citizens.”
Students found the voluntary service learning component of
the Burch seminar most meaningful.
Stoneking was among a group of students who volunteered
to teach at College Doctrina Vitae (CDV), a secondary school in
Kigali.
“I felt some sort of visceral discomfort with the fact that I was
in Rwanda and I was learning and talking and meeting people, but
I wanted something else I couldn’t really articulate,” said Stoneking,
who taught chemistry, drama and English. “Once we started work-ing
at College Doctrina Vitae, it was amazing. … I ended up doing
my research project on teaching science in developing countries.”
Mburi worked at a local nonprofit, Mwana Ukundwa
(“Beloved Child”), an organization started by genocide survivor
Mukankaka Rose to provide orphans and widows with the
knowledge and skills to re-integrate into society.
On Mburi’s first day there, she helped plant, weed and hoe
crops — pumpkins, squash and carrots. The weather was perfect.
c o n t i n u e d
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   13
David Gilmore
Bruce Siceloff
Bruce Siceloff
CLOCKWISE from top left:
Brick wall with broken bottles
in the Niboye neighborhood in
Kigali. • Sorting coffee beans
at a plantation near Butare.
• Pink work suits identify
convicted genocidaires.
Thirteen’s
a lucky number Political science senior lecturer Donna LeFebvre has won
13 teaching awards since becoming a UNC faculty member
in 1984.
That baker’s dozen includes two UNC Tanner
Undergraduate Teaching Awards (in 1996 and 2004)
and three Students’ Undergraduate Teaching Awards (in
1995, 2000 and 2006). She became the first person to win
a second students’ teaching award, the only such honor
directed and funded by Carolina students.
Menna Mburi, a senior political science and journalism
major who participated in last summer’s Rwanda Burch
Seminar with LeFebvre, is not surprised by those accolades.
She said in LeFebvre’s classroom, students are encouraged
to voice their opinions and share their ideas.
“Her instructional techniques go beyond the traditional
lecture,” Mburi said. “Everything was about application and
about putting ourselves in other people’s shoes and about
being able to examine both sides of the [Rwandan] conflict.
… She pushes you to think beyond the subject matter.”
LeFebvre is also committed to service learning,
something a student nominator noted in 1996 when
recommending her for the Tanner Award:
“Through her variety of experimental class methods
and her dedication to organizations and committees
on campus, Donna LeFebvre is working to expand the
definition and goals of university education.”
LeFebvre has taught criminal law in Eritrea and
through Semester at Sea, a floating university ship
that travels around the world. In fall 2004, she led the
university’s Honors Program in London. In fall 2010, she
will direct the Honors Program in Cape Town, South Africa.
Friederike Seeger, director of Burch Programs and
Honors Study Abroad, believes LeFebvre’s background in
leading international programs will help another group of
students create meaningful experiences in Cape Town.
With an intense study abroad experience like a Burch
Seminar, “faculty directors need to wear many hats: you
have to be not only a professor, but also a parent and
friend. Donna excels at that because she really cares about
the students,” Seeger said.
— B y K i m W e a v e r S p u r r ’ 8 8
Although they did not speak the
same language, the Rwandan
women and UNC volunteers
bonded through song. It was one
of the moments she will never
forget.
“The sun had not risen yet;
it was behind the mountain, and
it was very cool. … I remember
they were singing Christian songs,
and they asked if we knew any
Christian songs, and we started
singing ‘Amazing Grace.’ … We
started teaching them in English,
and they started teaching us in
Kinyarwanda. … It was our way we communicated with each
other.”
In addition to teaching at CDV, Karkutt took on an
independent project of his own. A classically trained ballet dancer,
he decided to teach ballet to students at a primary school. In turn,
they showed him intore, a native Rwandan dance.
Once they returned to Chapel Hill, the students wanted to
continue their connection to Rwanda. They are forming an official
student organization that will continue the partnership with College
Doctrina Vitae. They are arranging for letter-writing exchanges
between U.S. and Rwandan students. They want to provide supplies
to the school. And they were awarded a Nourish International grant
to send six UNC students back to CDV this summer.
“I’ve never had a group of students like this — fearless, smart,
adventurous,” said LeFebvre,
who has hosted “reunions” of the
group at her house. “They just
leapt in … sometimes working 12
or 14 hours a day. … They were
busy 24-7.”
The students came back
changed in different ways from
the experience. Many of them
hope to do further travel and
studies abroad. Some say the trip
either affirmed or changed their
career paths. Karkutt hopes to
find a way to continue his dance
exchange. From LeFebvre he
learned to ask the question: “What do I want to do next?”
“When you open that book, you can’t realize what it’s like
to step off a plane in Kigali, Rwanda, until you do it,” Karkutt
said. “Studying abroad opens your eyes and makes you see a lot of
things about your own country, and about yourself.”
From Karkutt’s June 7 blog entry: It’s our last night of
Kigali. I’m currently sitting at Bourbon Café, drinking
a short latte, taking in the city atmosphere … one last
time. I’ve made several decisions … and one is that I’m
coming back.
Online Extras: Listen to audio clips of LeFebvre and Stoneking
talking about the Rwanda trip at college.unc.edu.
ABOVE: Donna LeFebvre and UNC students with teachers
and students at CDV. The Carolina students are forming
an organization to support the Rwanda school.
14   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
Bruce Siceloff
Football
Fallout
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   15
We are
a sports-crazed
nation.
We love celebrating the success of athletes
of all stripes — from the girl on the youth
recreation team kicking her first goal to
the professional football player scoring his
umpteenth touchdown. We’re not so big
on the injuries. We don’t necessarily ask to
know more about the sprained ankles, torn
menisci, busted vertebral discs, broken ribs
or concussions that athletes suffer. But each
year, in every sport, a steady stream of injured
players trail off the football fields and ice-rinks,
away from the track and soccer fields, and into
the offices of athletic trainers and physicians.
Of all the common impact injuries an
athlete might incur, concussions are the hardest
to detect. But we’d best figure it out, because
a body of research is building that shows
how athletes who suffer multiple concussions
can expect a bevy of problems later in life:
depression, cognitive troubles and dementia.
When football players take to the field
each fall, about 10 percent can expect to
sustain at least one concussion that season.
Of these, 15 to 20 percent are likely to have
a second concussion in the same season. And
the recurrent concussions may be the most
costly to a player’s lifetime health.
Kevin Guskiewicz’s UNC research
on the long-term consequences of football
concussions is gaining national attention and
raising eyebrows across all levels of play,
including the NCAA.
Guskiewicz first became concerned
about concussions when he was an athletic
trainer with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the early
1990s. He saw battered and bruised players in
the NFL put back in games, and he questioned
if their health was being properly considered.
“What bothered me the most was
the arbitrary nature in which return-to-play
decisions were made after they’d taken a hard
hit to their head,” says Guskiewicz, the Kenan
Distinguished Professor who now chairs UNC’s
department of exercise and sport science. “We
needed a system to assess the damage.”
So he set about creating one, based
on careful measurements of an athlete’s
postural stability, cognitive function and
general symptoms. The research formed his
dissertation at the University of Virginia where
he earned a doctorate in sports medicine, but
he did not stop there.
• Decoding a
concussion’s impact
Over the past decade and a half,
Guskiewicz has accrued a body of published
studies that seeks to untangle both the short-and
long-term health effects that concussions
wreak on athletes. His work has been
published in numerous scientific journals and
cited in major news media, from CNN and
continued
UNC research increases concern
about long-term concussion impacts
B y D e L e n e B e e l a n d
P h o t o s b y D o n n Y o u n g
16   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
HBO Sports to The
New York Times and
New Yorker magazine.
After establishing criteria to assess an
athlete’s concussion and monitor his recovery
— he helped write guidelines that are now
recommended by the National Athletic
Trainers’ Association and the American
College of Sports Medicine — Guskiewicz
next wondered if he could use the magnitude
of a hit to predict the degree of concussion
an athlete might experience. In 2004, he
connected with sports equipment company
SIMBEX to measure the magnitude of head
impacts football players experience when
tackling and blocking by rigging up special
helmets with a device called an accelerometer.
The instrument fits snuggly within the helmet
and measures both the direction and location
of a hit, and the magnitude or g-force.
In 2004, UNC football players started
wearing the helmets and Guskiewicz’s team
began collecting the data. When a player’s
head was impacted, the accelerometers
captured the hit and transmitted the
information — tagged with a unique ID
matched to each player — to a computer
on the sidelines. Guskiewicz also used video
footage to analyze the hits and match plays to
the data. He thought they’d uncover a linear
relationship between the highest g-forces and
the worst concussions. But no such luck.
“There was no relationship between
the force and the severity of concussion,”
Guskiewicz says. The seeming randomness told
him two things: first, that as much attention
should be paid to players who receive what
might look like a minor hit
as do those who receive
a big hit; second, that the
constellation of factors
resulting in a concussion
were a lot more nuanced
than people had assumed.
• The long reach of
multiple concussions
But what Guskiewicz found next was
even more eye-popping.
In 2001 he had helped found UNC’s
Center for the Study of Retired Athletes. One
of the first things the center did was mail
a health survey to 3,600 retired National
Football League players. Little did Guskiewicz
know, but he’d spend the next eight years
mining data and publishing studies based on
more than 2,500 returned surveys.
One of the first trends he noticed was a
disturbingly high correlation between retired
NFL payers who had suffered four, five or
more concussions during their careers and
the onset of severe cognitive problems and
depression later. In a 2005 paper, Guskiewicz
and his team described links between
recurrent concussions and mild cognitive
impairment, or MCI, and Alzheimer’s disease.
MCI is a pre-dementia state. Sufferers begin
to slide into severe memory loss and lose their
executive functioning skills, like problem-solving.
It might sound like the normal dance of
old age, but it’s far more troubling. Having MCI
is like being in a holding room for Alzheimer’s:
30 to 40 percent of people diagnosed with
MCI will develop Alzheimer’s. In a 2007 study,
they also described links between the number
of concussions suffered and the probability of
developing depression later.
But not everyone who sustains a
concussion will develop mild cognitive
impairment or depression. About 5
percent of people with a concussion
will have symptoms that last beyond
six weeks. When this happens, it’s called
post-concussive syndrome. Mild cognitive
impairment is a possibility if people are in this
slim 5 percent.
The NFL’s mild traumatic brain injury
committee sniffed at Guskiewicz’s work. They
attacked his sample size as too small. They
decried that some of the survey respondents
were self-reporting medical histories without
medical records to back them up.
“They tried to poke holes,” Guskiewicz
says. “We were disappointed, but not
surprised.”
But then Boston University medical
doctor Ann McKee began studying brain tissue
of deceased NFL players who had, while
living, pledged to donate their minds to a
“brain bank” at BU’s Center for the Study of
Traumatic Encephalopathy. She found that
players who suffered severe or repeated blows
to their heads may develop a disease state
known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy,
where tau proteins precipitate onto brain
tissue. An excess of these deposits lead to
brain dysfunction and dementia. Other studies
have shown that people who suffer from
Alzheimer’s have unusual deposits of beta-lipid
proteins in deeper regions of their brains.
Disturbingly, retired athletes who suffered four,
five or more concussions during their careers
appear to be more at risk for developing these
excessive beta-lipid protein deposits.
Guskiewicz’s current work delves
further into questions about sports-induced
brain injuries. He is the principal investigator
on a clinical trial that seeks to uncover if
an omega-3 fatty acid supplement has the
nutritive power to break up beta-lipid proteins
and prevent deposits from building up within
the brains of at-risk individuals. The double-blind
study (where the research team and
the participants are both blinded to whether
LEFT TO RIGHT: Kevin Guskiewicz’s
research examines the long-term effects
of concussions. • Accelerometers
help researchers study head impacts. •
Guskiewicz has worked with the UNC
football team since 2004.
LEFT: Fred Mueller heads
the National Center for
Catastrophic Injury Research.
ABOVE: Kevin Guskiewicz
analyzes data from his
research, which is gaining
national attention.
• Looking at HOCKEY
Kevin Guskiewicz is working with
UNC visiting assistant professor Jason
Mihalik in the department of exercise
and sport science to monitor the
impact of collisions sustained by youth
playing hockey for the Carolina Junior
Hurricanes in Raleigh. About 30 young
boys have had accelerometers installed
in their helmets, and the researchers
are studying two age-groups: 13- to
14-year-olds, and 15- to 16-year-olds.
They are in the middle of their fourth
season of data collection, and they’ve
logged more than 20,000 head impacts
between the two groups.
“We have not formally analyzed
the data, but so far the trends seem
to be showing us that the youth are
getting hit in the average range of 18
to 22 g’s,” Mihalik said. This puts the
force of their impacts on par with
collegiate football players.
Mihalik said this is worrisome
for several reasons. First, sustaining a
concussion at a younger age widens
the window of time when an
athlete may sustain additional
concussions. But in general,
kids don’t tend to know as
much about the dangers of
concussions, so they may be
less likely to report them. Also,
youth league teams rarely have
a physician or dedicated athletic
trainer, making it more difficult
to diagnose a brain injury.
He hopes to expand the study to
girls’ youth hockey because NCAA data
indicate that female hockey players
sustain concussions at nearly twice the
rate of their male counterparts.
the supplement or a placebo is being taken)
consists of performing before-and-after brain
scans and testing the cognitive skills of 40
retired athletes who participated in the 2001
health survey. He is also investigating whether
some players may be hardwired to develop
dementia or MCI.
• The darker side
of sports
Unfortunately, the healthy pursuit of
sports can lead to catastrophic injuries and
death in athletes of all ages. Fred Mueller,
professor and director of UNC’s National
Center for Catastrophic Injury Research, has
been tracking these trends in high school and
collegiate athletics since 1980, though the
center has been issuing the report since 1965.
He retired last June, but still directs the center.
Mueller’s center issues a report annually
that parses incidences of catastrophic injury
and death within different sports. They also
record the circumstances of the event. The
data go to the National Federation of State
High School Associations, the American
Football Coaches Association and the NCAA.
Spikes of injury incidences within a cer-tain
sport have led to changes in equipment or
education to prevent future injuries. “We see
fewer deaths now, fewer direct injuries, and
more indirect injuries,” Mueller says, discussing
data trends over three decades. He recently
finished co-authoring a book to be published
by Carolina Academic Press in Durham, titled
A Comprehensive Study of Football Fatalities
1931-2008.
Guskiewicz says that Mueller mentored
him when he first started at UNC, when
Mueller was the chair of the department of
exercise and sport science.
“My goal is that through our research
and improving safety in sports, we’ll see fewer
subjects showing up in Fred’s catastrophic
injury database,” Guskiewicz says.
• Moving forward, safely
Guskiewicz has just begun untangling
the web of events that enmesh athletes in
recurrent concussions and their associated
long-term health effects. He’s helping to
found a new clinical research lab, called the
UNC Sport Related Traumatic Brain Injury
Research Center, which reflects the trajectory
of his studies.
“It’s going to focus exclusively on
brain injury research, but will allow us to
connect the dots between prevention, injury
mechanisms, interventions for recovery
and late-life complications. So it’s a natural
progression,” he says.
But he wants to make it clear he’s not
seeking to fundamentally change the sport of
football.
“I have three boys of my own who play
football. I care very much about the sport of
football continuing,” Guskiewicz says. “I just
want to be sure that as researchers, we are
contributing to making it safer.”  •
Online Extras: More on research by
Guskiewicz and Mueller at college.unc.edu.
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   17
18   •   college.unc.edu    •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
George Lensing Jr., the Mann
Family Distinguished Professor
of English and Comparative
Literature, volunteers to teach
early-morning classes.
Amazingly, given the nocturnal nature of
many college students, his classes fill up. Each
morning, as the students shuffle in, he’s there
to greet them, handouts at the ready, notes
already written on the white board. He brings
enough enthusiasm to stir sleepy minds into
thought without crossing over into annoying
perkiness.
“Wherever they are coming from, four
hours of sleep the previous night and other
things on their minds, if I don’t project some
energy, I’m not going to engage them,” said
Lensing, who is in his 41st year of teaching at
UNC. “I’m energized because I love it.��
Lensing has a deep well of energy and
effort that he dips into to teach, to serve on
an exhausting number of committees and,
for the past seven years, to direct the Office
of Distinguished Scholarships. (Psychology
professor Linda Dykstra took over last
September.) And then there’s the academic
research he does on 20th-century poets and
novelists, The Wallace Stevens Journal he edits,
and the three books he has written on Stevens
(the insurance executive cum poet). Lensing
also works with students at the Catholic
Newman Center and hosts an annual picnic
at his house, serves as president of the Inter-
Church Council Housing Corp. in Chapel
Hill and devotes time to hospice visits. In
2005, he was awarded the “Building Bridges
Award” given annually by the UNC/
Community MLK Jr. Planning Corp.
Two recent awards underscore his
achievements and the esteem he has earned
from colleagues across the University com-munity.
The Arts and Sciences Foundation
gave him its inaugural William F. Little Distin-guished
Service Award, recognizing Lensing’s
extraordinary commitment to the College.
The late Little was a chemistry professor and
founder of the Foundation.
And Lensing’s faculty peers at the
University honored him with the 2009
Lensing Lessons Teaching, research and service are energizing
By Nancy E. Oates • photos by Steve Exum
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   19
Thomas Jefferson Award, in recognition of
his stellar teaching, scholarship and service.
Faculty members nominate candidates
for the annual award, created in 1961 to
recognize the colleague who best exemplifies
the ideals and objectives of Thomas Jefferson.
Bobbi Owen, senior associate dean
of undergraduate education, said Lensing
embodies the characteristics that the
University wants to see in all faculty
members. “He is a good scholar, a good
teacher and a good citizen of the University,”
she said. “He’s the quintessential well-rounded
person.”
Owen said Lensing’s success benefits the
University as well.
“As Carolina students have won these
prestigious scholarships and been competitive
with elite private schools,” she said, “it lets
more people know about UNC-Chapel
Hill.”
Libby Longino and Henry Spelman,
who both won Rhodes scholarships this
year — spoke of Lensing’s commitment
to helping students impress the scholarship
committees, even though he no longer
directs the office. [see related story on Longino
and Spelman on page 2.] He critiqued their
essays and conducted mock interviews with
them so they could sharpen their answers.
During Lensing’s tenure as director of
distinguished scholarships and his unofficial
role in helping students last fall, 10 UNC
students were named Rhodes Scholars
and more UNC students received Luce
Scholarships than did students at Harvard.
In 2009, UNC nominated five students for
consideration as Rhodes Scholars; all five
were named among the 236 finalists.
“I don’t think I would have won the
scholarship without Professor Lensing’s
kindness, experience and humor,” Spelman
said. “But even if I hadn’t won, it was worth
applying just to have gotten to know him
better.”
Longino was most impressed by
Lensing’s “dedication and willingness to share
[his] thoughts and advice” in critiquing drafts
of her personal statement that the scholarship
requires. He continued to communicate
with her throughout her summer in Cape
Town, South Africa, until she was satisfied
with her submission. “He’s an expert in
helping you think about how to frame
your work and experiences in a way that
effectively communicates who you are and
how you fit the criteria for this scholarship,”
she said.
Lensing, while directing distinguished
scholarships, worked with students applying
for scholarships such as the Luce, Udall,
Truman, Marshall, Mitchell, Goldwater and
Churchill. He often came in on weekends as
deadlines approached. He videotaped mock
interviews, not to criticize but to say, “Here’s
how you answered this question; you critique
it.” Students came back a week later prepared
with much better answers.
Lensing has spent his entire career
at UNC. Originally from a little town in
Louisiana called Lake Providence, he left
home in high school for boarding school
in Arkansas, followed by an undergraduate
degree in English at the University of Notre
Dame in Indiana. He returned to the South
for a doctorate in English from Louisiana
State University, then went to Brazil as a
visiting professor of English for a two-year
stint in the Peace Corps. From there, he
applied for teaching positions at universities
in the U.S. UNC had an opening in its
English department. He came in 1969 and
never left.
The list of administrative duties and
committee involvements over the past four
decades takes up three pages on Lensing’s
curriculum vitae. He was selected as the
December commencement speaker in 2004.
As secretary of the faculty, he wrote and read
a number of honorary degree citations for
luminaries such as President Clinton, the
Rev. Billy Graham and Nobel Prize-winning
poet Seamus Heaney. For 26 years he served
on the Committee on Student Conduct that
oversees the UNC Honors System, and for
15 years he made presentations on the Honor
Code to the men’s basketball team.
But it is in teaching that he found his
calling. He received the Tanner Distinguished
Teaching Award in 1984 and the John
Sanders Award for Teaching and Service
in 2001, and he held the Bowman and
Gordon Gray Professorship for Distinguished
Teaching from 2002 to 2007.
Even while director of distinguished
scholarships, Lensing had only a one-course
reduction in his teaching load.
Lensing gets out from behind the
lectern as he teaches and walks through the
aisles of the classroom, creating an interactive
classroom environment, said Joseph Flora, his
colleague in the department of English and
comparative literature. “Not every student
loves poetry,” Flora said, “not even English
majors. He gives students a sense of why a
poem has endured; while even though it’s
tough, it’s still worth their time.”
On a December morning, in the last
class before finals began, Lensing talked
through a William Butler Yeats poem about
aging with his students, nearly all barely out
of their teens.
“It’s not fair,” he said later. “I grow older,
and they stay 20 years old every year.”
Teaching keeps him young, he said. “I
love the interaction with students. When I 
teach a class where their eyes are alert and
they’re making responses and writing things
down, I don’t know anything more satisfying.
You feel like you’ve given them something.”
One of his former students, novelist
Sarah Dessen, gave back in the form of giving
him a cameo in one of her teen novels. Ever
modest, he didn’t let it go to his head. “I
don’t think many of my colleagues have read
Dreamland,” he said.
Over the years, Lensing has taught
everything from first-year English to graduate
seminars. He plans to teach only for a few
more years. He’ll continue to do his own
research — he has written more about
Wallace Stevens than any other critic — and
look for other ways to stay connected to the
University. “It’s been such a big part of my
life,” he said.
“I learn by teaching. A great poem is
inexhaustible. There’s always something I can
learn from it.” •
ABOVE: George Lensing and students examine
the works of Irish poet Seamus Heaney in the
Rare Book Collection of Wilson Library.
Erin Burns: Born to Teach
By JB Shelton
Teaching biology at West Charlotte
High School is much more than a career in
education for Erin Burns, who graduated
from UNC in 2009 with a major in biology, a
minor in entrepreneurship and N.C. teaching
credentials.
“Even as a little girl, I understood the
power of an educated mind,” she says.
“Teaching fulfills my lifetime obsession to
change the world for the better.”
The North Carolina Teaching Fellow
graduated from High Point’s Southwest
Guilford High School and began teaching
at West Charlotte in August 2009. She is
indefatigably passionate and has perfect
timing, as one of the first graduates of the
UNC-BEST (Baccalaureate Education in
Science and Teaching) program, an innovative
collaboration of UNC’s College of Arts and
Sciences and School of Education that enables
science and math majors to simultaneously
obtain their N.C. teaching credentials
and their
undergraduate
degrees.
Burns origi-nally
planned to
be an inner-city
biology teacher,
becoming a missionary doctor by attend-ing
medical night school. She admits to her
naivete, “Little did I know there was no such
thing as medical night school.”
Instead, she’s creating a teaching career
— in a school with a 99 percent minority
population and a 75 percent poverty level —
where the kids consult her daily about health
and personal issues.
“Teaching high-schoolers about their
bodies, genetics and science is similar to
working at a medical clinic,” says Burns.
“Education is a powerful preventive medicine;
students need to know about AIDS.”
And they need to hear it from someone
competent and comfortable in telling them.
Rap music in
the classroom
CSI lab
UNC-BEST
trained her to break
down complex
concepts into terms
students could
relate to. A senior, who’d flunked biology
twice, told her, “Man, Ms. Burns, you’re
the only teacher that makes it so that I can
understand.” (Yes, he passed.)
Deoxyribonucleic acid is multi-syllabic
genetic code mumbo-jumbo, but her
students get her point that DNA is their
bodies’ instruction manual. “We made and
munched edible candy models of DNA
and listened to ‘bio-rap’ — rap music with
vocabulary about replicating DNA,” she says.
“Their favorite lessons,” adds Burns,
“take place in our classroom CSI crime lab.”
(Most teachers don’t start a school term
simulating a crime
scene, complete
with bloodied
ketchup walls. Most
teachers aren’t Erin
Burns.) “Students
gather evidence
and predict which pretend suspect broke into
my classroom. Every student is 100 percent
engaged, realizing the importance of science,
imagining career paths toward forensics.”
Entrepreneur’s creative spirit
During the biotech unit, Burns
encourages students to think innovatively
about creating solutions to world problems.
“I love to give them confidence-building
assignments where there are no ‘wrong
answers,’” she says. Her students vouch
that she makes them feel smart, developing
enough self-confidence to think finding a
cancer cure could be in their futures.
Burns minored in entrepreneurship and
participated in an internship in Beijing where
she taught art to migrant children.
“[The internship] gave her a whole
new outlook on the world outside of North
Carolina, with increased confidence in
her talents and strengths,” says economics
professor John F. Stewart, director of the
entrepreneurship minor in the College.
Her ultimate dream is “combining
my passion for entrepreneurship with
my teaching experience to create a
nonprofit group or charter school where
entrepreneurial spirit and creativity collide.”
‘Born teacher’
“From my first interaction with
her, I knew Erin was a born teacher —
unwavering, passionate, deeply committed to
educating others and bringing about positive
change through service,” says Ramona D.
Cox, coordinator of teacher recruitment and
retention licensure officer at UNC’s School of
Education.
Cox and Burns worked together on a
two-year service-learning project for Durham
Public Schools, where she, students and
members of the UNC chapter of the Student
N.C. Association of Educators refurbished a
school’s exterior and built a new school store.
“I know she will make a big difference
in the lives of the students she encounters,”
says Cox.
Burns’ students are already living proof.  •
ABOVE: UNC-BEST graduate Erin Burns ’09 uses
creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit in teaching
biology to West Charlotte High School students.
Profile P r of i l e
20   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
“Even as a little girl, I understood
the power of an educated mind.
Teaching fulfills my lifetime obsession
to change the world for the better.” [ ]
NEED TO CLEAN
UP PHOTO
High Note
Colleagues and students celebrate tenor’s long career
By Pamela Babcock
Profile P r of i l e
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   21
32 years, Wing retired in June 2009. Over
the years, his teaching and singing amassed a
large and loyal following in Chapel Hill and
beyond. His poignant Lieder recitals (art songs
in German mainly from the 19th century),
including Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf,
Strauss and Mahler renditions, were highlights
of the concert season.
He also taught and mentored a wealth
of successful graduates, not only performers,
but also teachers, musical directors and others
who have prospered through his leadership,
performance, teaching and service.
Terry Rhodes, UNC’s music department
chair and director of opera, met Wing when
she was an undergraduate in the 1970s.
She has considered him a “dear colleague,
incredible friend and mentor” throughout her
21 years on the Carolina faculty.
Rhodes described Wing as a beacon who
led the voice area through periods of feast
and famine with his “buoyant spirit, generous
nature, warm smile and unstinting wisdom and
guidance.”
Wing grew up in West Palm Beach, Fla.,
has degrees from Stetson and Louisiana State
universities and studied at the Vienna Academy
of Music. He came to UNC in 1969 from an
illustrious career that embraced both classical
and non-classical repertoire in concert, opera,
musical theater, television, radio and recording.
Wing has performed as a soloist in Europe,
the U.S and Canada, and has recorded with the
Chamber Orchestra of the Vienna Symphony,
the Vienna Pro Musica Orchestra and with
Armor Artis in New York. He toured with the
Music Theater of Lincoln Center and performed
Like many of the classic songs he sang
and taught, Stafford Wing’s UNC career ended
on a soaring note.
Colleagues, former students, fellow
performers and admirers closed out the music
professor’s 40 years at Carolina with a musical
tribute in Hill Hall. Metropolitan Opera
mezzo-soprano Victoria Livengood ’83 was the
headliner for the October celebration. Sharing
the stage with her was a host of Wing’s former
students from across the nation, from New York
to California, and Florida to Alaska. For the
finale of the show, all joined in singing Rodgers
and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone”
from the musical Carousel:
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark ...
The song fit the occasion with a couple of
caveats. At the end of Wing’s busy and fulfilling
career, the sky glowed not golden, but Carolina
blue. And the sound Rodgers and Hammerstein
set at the end of the storm instead rang through
all of Wing’s years on stage and in teaching —
the “sweet silver song” of his lyric tenor voice.
A well-loved voice professor who chaired
the voice area in the music department for
at Carnegie Hall in New York and the National
Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In the early 1960s, as an ensemble singer,
Wing pulled off nearly 1,000 performances as
a member of the chorus at Radio City Music
Hall — singing four and five shows daily. “I
once did 22 straight weeks without a day
off,” Wing recalled. He also performed in the
ensemble for NBC-TV Opera productions, and
with the New York Philharmonic in concerts
and in recordings under the direction of
Leonard Bernstein.
At Carolina, Wing served as director of
the UNC Chamber Singers in the 1970s, and
in addition to teaching voice, taught general
music appreciation, lyric dictions and the
ever-popular opera appreciation. He received
the Amoco Foundation Award for excellence
in inspirational teaching of undergraduate
students. During his teaching career, he
continued to perform in recital, oratorio and
opera not only on campus, but also in Europe
and New York.
Nurtured by music every day, Wing said
he owes a great deal of his success to the love
and support of his wife of 54 years, Janice Tice
Wing, who also was his first accompanist in
high school.
“The opportunity to teach while
continuing to sing has been an incredible gift.
The students have kept me young,” he said.
“I will always be interested in students and
colleagues, and I hope to remain in touch with
them.”
Online Extras: Read the program
from Wing’s retirement celebration at college.
unc.edu. •
“The opportunity to teach while continuing to sing has been
an incredible gift. The students have kept me young.
I will always be interested in students and colleagues,
and I hope to remain in touch with them.”
ABOVE: UNC tenor Stafford Wing
22   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
Highlights H i g h l i g h t s
graduate student
to help establish
seven of the
stations now in
operation.”
Drew
Coleman, associate
professor, concurs
that Rogers’ gifts
extend beyond the
checkbook.
“John
has been a tremendous supporter of
undergraduate and graduate research,” he
said. “His interests are multidisciplinary in
a climate that emphasizes specialization. He
encourages a holistic
view of science, mixing
research approaches,
research areas and even
research disciplines.”
Coleman said
that Rogers has
been a pioneer in
encouraging geological
techniques toward
solving archaeological
problems.
“It is not unusual to begin working on
a problem with a student and dig into the
literature only to find a paper written by
John decades ago.”
Rogers, a native of Los Angeles,
enrolled as a chemistry major at the
venerated California Institute of
Technology (because it was within driving
distance of his hometown, he jokes), but
switched after he took a required geology
course and then his geology courses began
to outnumber his chemistry classes.
He earned his master’s degree at the
University of Minnesota, returned to Cal
Tech in 1952 and completed his Ph.D.
there in 1954.  His first job was to help
create the geology department at Rice
University in Houston.
John Rogers has left the classroom —
but not the students.
And although the William R. Kenan,
Jr. Professor Emeritus of geology retired in
1997 after 22 years on the Carolina faculty,
he remains engaged in research, both his
own and that of other UNC geologists.
His health prevents him from the physical
challenges of geological field work, but his
mind continues to explore with vigor.
“The department has hired some
remarkable faculty in the past few years,”
said Rogers. “While I can’t work in the
field, I can support faculty and students
with dollars for equipment and research.”
Through the John and Barbara
Rogers Fund
for Geochemical
Excellence, Rogers
directs his gifts to seed
funding for faculty in
the department. This
money helps attract
even larger private
and federal grants and
enables undergraduates
and graduate students
to conduct important
research that otherwise would not have
been possible. For example, a recent
gift enabled a young faculty member to
purchase a pellet press used to prepare
rocks for analysis, which led to a National
Science Foundation grant for a special
X-ray machine to analyze geological
elements in detail.
Rogers also stepped in with critical
funding for assistant professor Lara Wagner,
whose research in seismology and tectonics
focuses on how the Blue Ridge Mountains
survive the ravages of time.
“I had funds for 10 broadband seismic
stations, but no money for expenses like
fuel, food and lodging,” Wagner said.
“John provided this funding and made
it possible for four undergraduates and a
In addition
to Rogers’
abundant scientific
accomplishments —
seven books, fellow
and past president of the International
Division of the Geological Society of
America, fellow of the Geological Society
of India, and honorary fellow of the
Geological Society of Africa — he is a
gifted administrator. While at Rice, he
served for five years as Master of Brown
College, a women’s residential college.
Today, Rogers lives in Durham with
his wife Barbara. They have two children,
Tim, a newspaper editor in Wilson, N.C.,
and Peter, who studies wildlife conservation
in Africa and is on the faculty of Paul
Smith’s College in New York.
Rogers recently completed co-authoring
a college textbook on how
human history has been influenced by
earth and its processes, including climate
changes and Hurricane Katrina. Rogers
even maintains a Facebook page.
“John actively seeks and funds students
for all of his research ideas. Part of this is
practical. He no longer has the physical
abilities to follow through on ideas,” said
Coleman.
“The other [factor] is passion. John
gets immeasurable satisfaction from working
with students and watching them succeed.”
And thanks to Rogers, they can move
mountains.  •
Online Extras: More on Lara
Wagner’s research and John Rogers at college.
unc.edu.
Moving Mountains
Gifts from retired geologist support faculty and student research
By Del Helton
ABOVE: John Rogers.
LEFT: Lara Wagner (left)
and students have
benefited from John
Rogers’ generosity.
“The department has
hired some remarkable
faculty in the past few years.
While I can’t work in the
field, I can support faculty
and students with dollars for
equipment and research.”
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   23
Highlights H i g h l i g h t s
Rachmaninoff and Ricky Nelson
shared 12-year-old Linda Moore
Pelletier’s hi-fi time, thanks to a supply of
classical music albums from her beloved
uncle “Ardrey Lee.”
 
 
Long after the pop stars of the early
1960s fell from the charts, Pelletier’s
interest in classical music and art
flourished.
 
 
 
 
 
“My uncle gave me culture,” said
Pelletier, a 1970 UNC alumna of Van
Wyck, S.C., and longtime teacher at
Charlotte Country Day School. “He was
marvelous, educated, witty, and to the
end, his mind was as sharp as a tack.”
Lucius Lee Ardrey Moore Jr. died
in September 2007 at 84, leaving another
legacy, one that will influence generations
of Carolina students. Through his
estate, he gave the College of Arts and
Sciences $880,000 to establish the Jacques
Hardré Distinguished Professorship in
Romance Languages, the department’s
first permanent professorship. The
Hardré Professorship qualifies for
another $334,000 from the state’s
Distinguished Professors Endowment
Trust Fund, making the total initial
endowment $1,214,000. It will provide
the department with annual income of
more than $60,000 for salary and research
funds.
“Lee’s gift honors a professor
who was departmental chair at a very
significant time of expansion, and at
the same time
will add to our
faculty a very
distinguished
scholar of
romance
languages,” said Larry King, department
chair. “It couldn’t come at a more critical
time as several longtime members of our
faculty are retiring, and we will need
A College First
UNC alum creates first distinguished
professorship in romance languages
By Del Helton
to recruit new
faculty in a highly
competitive
environment.”
Moore
earned four
Carolina degrees,
including
bachelor’s degrees
in chemistry
and medical
technology in 1949, a master’s degree
(1950) and a Ph.D. (1965) in public
health. He was born in Davenport, Iowa,
but grew up in Clinton, N.C., as the
oldest of four children.
 
After completing his Ph.D., Moore
moved to Atlanta, beginning a 27-year
career at the Centers for Disease Control
as a consultant in parasitology and tropical
medicine. He traveled often to the
South Pacific, Central America and the
Caribbean to train local health agencies
on treatments to prevent and detect
tropical diseases, including malaria.
 
A passionate chorister of church
music, he joined Atlanta’s Cathedral of
St. Philip in 1968, where he met his
partner of 39 years, John Wilkerson.
Wilkerson died just two months prior to
Moore’s death.
 
Over the years, the two entertained
numerous friends and family in their
historic Ansley Park home, with annual
mint julep parties, Easter champagne
brunches and
New Year’s
Day dinners of
traditional hog
jowl, Hoppin’
John, collard
greens and Moore’s infamous stewed
tomato casserole.
 
 
Moore had already named Carolina
in his will, but a friend suggested
designating the gift in honor of a Carolina
faculty member whom he held in great
esteem.
 
That was Jacques Hardré, a French
professor and mentor to Moore during his
student years.
“He literally turned my uncle’s life
around and made him realize his self-worth,”
said Pelletier, who coincidentally
was a French major.
 
 
 
Hardré began teaching at Carolina
in 1945, was named a Kenan Professor
in 1971, and retired in 1977. He died in
1983 at 68.
 
A native of Dinan, France, Hardré
became a naturalized U.S. citizen in
1956. From 1942 until 1945, he served
as a lieutenant with the legendary First
Armored Division of the Free French,
earning a number of military awards for
his service. Hardré earned two degrees at
Carolina, an M.A. in 1941 and a Ph.D.
in 1948.
For Pelletier, the gift is a lasting
reminder of her uncle’s remarkable
generosity and his devotion to a place
he loved.
“Ardrey Lee was so happy when
he could help others. And he absolutely
adored Chapel Hill — who doesn’t?”  •
Online Extras: Read the 1983 UNC
Faculty Resolution memorializing Jacques Hardré
at college.unc.edu.
ABOVE: Lee Moore as a student at Carolina. Through his estate,
Moore established a professorship in honor of a favorite French professor.
“Ardrey Lee was so happy when he
could help others. And he absolutely
adored Chapel Hill — who doesn’t?”
Highlights H i g h l i g h t s
24   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
as American studies,
which has several other
faculty who work with
visual culture.”
Barrett came to
UNC following a
Mellon Postdoctoral
Fellowship in American Art at the
University of Chicago. Before that, he was
a Wyeth Fellow at the Center for Advanced
Study in the Visual Arts at the National
Gallery of Art. Barrett earned master’s
degrees in art history and museum studies
from Syracuse University after completing
his undergraduate work at the University of
Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. in art
history from Boston University.
Barrett says his favorite part of being a
professor is teaching college students.
“I find the energy, enthusiasm and
inquisitiveness of students exciting,”
Barrett said. “It’s a wonderful time of life
for people, a time
of discovery. It’s
exciting to be around
students when they’re
bringing this energy,
spirit and enthusiasm
to the classroom. It
buoys you.”
In addition
to general survey
courses on American
art, Barrett currently
teaches an advanced
course on the Civil
War in American art.
He is also developing
a graduate course in American landscape
painting, which he will teach for the first
time in fall 2010.
In the classroom, Barrett works to help
students understand the interconnection
of art with other social forces and cultural
activities.
Ross Barrett remembers his first art
exhibition.
He was 7 years old when his parents
took him to the Los Angeles County
Museum to an exhibition featuring French
Impressionist paintings. Barrett recalls
being fascinated by the bright colors of
the paintings, especially Monet’s “Garden
at Sainte-Adresse,” with its colorful flags
and flowers on a seaside terrace. It was the
beginning of a lifelong passion for art.
As the inaugural David G. Frey
Distinguished Fellow of American Art,
Barrett specializes in 19th and 20th century
American painting. His interests include
ideology, violence and power in American
society and art.
Barrett says that the focus of the Frey
Fellowship played an important role in his
decision to join Carolina’s faculty.
“No other schools had this type of
commitment to American art,” he said.
“That was incredibly
exciting and set
Carolina apart from
other schools.”
Mary Sheriff,
art department chair
and W.R. Kenan,
Jr. Distinguished
Professor of Art
History, said Barrett’s
appointment comes
at an important time
for the department.
“The addition
of a specialist in
American art was
critical,” Sheriff said. “The area is not only
one of the most popular with students but
is also a strong component of departments
such as music, history and English. With
Barrett joining the faculty, we have
increased our offerings in American art as
well as our collaboration with units such
“American society is increasingly
visual,” he said. “I want students to engage
with that landscape critically — to see art
images as products of a deeper history,
bound with social, economic and political
structures and forces. The key is thinking of
art as a lens on a moment, not a reflection.
It gives us access to the way Americans
thought of major developments and crises of
their times.”
Barrett works to bridge the gap
between the art the students are studying
and the world around them. He often shows
ads, cartoons and popular prints from the
eras they study to help provide them with a
critical toolbox for viewing the world today.
Barrett receives salary support and
research funding from the David G. Frey
Distinguished Professorship in American
Art, one of three professorships established
by David Frey (’64 BA English, ’67 JD.) A
banker by trade, Frey created professorships
in art, dramatic art and music because he
views the liberal arts as the foundation of an
undergraduate education.
Frey said he selected American art,
specifically the period from the 1820s to
1945, because of the recent growth in the
field as well as his interest as a collector.
“American art is an emerging discipline,
from a teaching, as well as a collecting,
standpoint. I’m excited that the university
found a rising star in this area,” Frey said.
“It’s gratifying that students, graduate
students and others on campus will be able
to have a higher and perhaps more thorough
appreciation of the artists spanning the last
two or three centuries of American art.”  •
Artistic Lens
New Frey Fellow uses art as a critical
toolbox for viewing the world
By Joanna Worrell Cardwell (M.A. ’06)
ABOVE: Ross Barrett is the first David G. Frey Distinguished Fellow of
American Art. He specializes in 19th and 20th century American painting.
“American society is increasingly
visual. I want students to engage
with that landscape critically —
to see art images as products of
a deeper history, bound with
social, economic and political
structures and forces. The key
is thinking of art as a lens on a
moment, not a reflection. It gives
us access to the way Americans
thought of major developments
and crises of their times.”
Joanna Worrell Cardwell
their shells out of calcium carbonate) at various levels of CO2
predicted to occur over the next several centuries. When CO2
combines with water, it produces carbonic acid, raising the
overall amount of carbon in seawater but reducing the amount
of the carbonate ion used by organisms in their calcification.
Seven species (crabs, lobsters, shrimp, red and green
calcifying algae, limpets and temperate urchins) showed a
positive response, meaning they calcified at a higher rate and
increased in mass under elevated CO2. Ten types of organisms
(including oysters, scallops, temperate corals and tube worms)
had reduced calcification under elevated CO2, with several (hard
and soft clams, conchs, periwinkles, whelks and tropical urchins)
seeing their shells dissolve. One species (mussels) showed no
response.
Such changes could have serious ramifications for predator
and prey relationships that have evolved over hundreds of
millions of years, said Ries, assistant professor of marine sciences.
“There is no magic formula to predict how different species
will respond, but one thing you can be sure of is that ecosystems
as a whole will change because of these varied individual
responses,” he said.  •
As the world’s
seawater becomes more
acidic due to rising
atmospheric carbon
dioxide, some shelled
marine creatures may
actually become bigger
and stronger, according to
a UNC study.
The finding, based
on research by UNC marine scientist Justin Ries, could have
important implications for ocean food webs and the multi-billion
dollar global market for shellfish and crustaceans.
Previous research has shown that ocean acidification — the
term for falling pH levels in the Earth’s oceans as they absorb
increasing amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere
— is likely to slow the growth or even
dissolve the shells of such creatures.
However, the new study, published
in the December issue of the journal
Geology, suggests that sediment-dwelling
marine organisms may exhibit a wider
range of responses to CO2-induced
acidification than previously thought:
some may get weaker while others
become stronger.
Researchers also found that creatures whose shells grew
the most, such as crabs, tended to prey on those whose shells
weakened the most, such as clams.
Researchers grew 18 different species of economically and
ecologically important marine calcifiers (creatures that make
H i g h l i g h t s Highlights
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   25
Study reveals winners and
losers of ocean acidification
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Blue crabs increased
in mass under elevated CO2 levels. • Sea urchins
showed dissolution of their spines under high CO2. •
Lobsters followed a similar pattern as the blue crab.
ABOVE: Justin Ries
Justin Ries
Justin Ries
Justin Ries
Highlights H i g h l i g h t s
26   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
politics in Latin America. For his doctoral
dissertation in history at the University
of California, San Diego, he focused on
indigenous perceptions in Ayacucho,
Peru, from 1940 to 1983, preceding the
rise of the Shining Path guerilla insurgency.
He is a postdoctoral fellow at UNC and
will join the tenure-track faculty July 1.
• Gabriela Valdivia, assistant professor of
geography, studies human-environmental
interactions in Latin America. For her
interdisciplinary doctoral dissertation at
the University of Minnesota, she explored
the political and environmental claims of
Native Amazonians in the Ecuador who
Editor’s Note: One of the top priorities of
the College is to ensure that our students get a
truly global education by studying with teachers
and scholars who are experts in key regions
	
of the world. That means maintaining our
considerable faculty expertise in Latin America
and Europe, while expanding
the number of faculty who focus
on Asia, Africa and the Middle
East. Thanks to a combination
of public and private support, and
interdisciplinary partnerships, the
following international scholars
joined our faculty in the fall.
Latin America
• Zaragosa Vargas, a leading
scholar in U.S. and Latino/a
labor history, is the William
R. Kenan Distinguished
Professor of History and
Latino/a Studies. He grew up
in Michigan “in the shadow
of the auto industry,” he
says, where family members
worked for General Motors.
His doctoral dissertation at the
University of Michigan focused
on early Mexican factory
workers in Detroit and the
industrial Midwest. The author
of five books and numerous
articles and essays, he previously
taught at Yale University
and the University of California at Santa
Barbara. At Carolina, he is collaborating
with oral historian Jacquelyn Hall, the Julia
Cherry Spruill Professor of History, on the
early civil rights movement.
• Miguel La Serna, assistant professor
of history, is interested in indigenous
revolutionary movements and the
connections between culture, violence and
were affected by petroleum development.
She is now studying how agrarian decisions
in the lowlands of Bolivia are affected
by changes in politics, institutions and
production relations associated with land
reform.
Asia
• Yong Cai, assistant professor
of sociology and fellow of
the Carolina Population
Center, is an expert on the
impact of China’s social
and political changes on
fertility, mortality and gender
inequality. Now considered
a rising star in his field, he
grew up on a farm in rural
China and graduated from
Peking University in Beijing,
where he was a student
during the Tiananmen Square
protests. He has a Ph.D.
in sociology and an M.S.
degree in statistics from the
University of Washington.
Before coming to Carolina,
he taught at the University of
Utah. He is supported in part
by a Freeman Foundation
grant to help the College
expand faculty expertise in
Asia.
• Xi Chen, assistant professor of political
science, is completing a groundbreaking
book about the increasing level of social
protests in China and the government’s
response to them. As a former attorney
in China, he had extraordinary access to
internal reports from police and political
party sources in his native Hunan Province
and was able to conduct in-depth interviews
with police as well as protestors petitioning
Growing global expertise
Zaragosa
Vargas
Anna
Agbe-Davies
Miguel
La Serna
Ahmed
El Shamsy
Dan Sears
The College attracts scholars of Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East
H i g h l i g h t s
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   27
Highlights
the government. He received a Ph.D.
in political science from Columbia
University, had a postdoctoral fellowship at
Harvard and previously taught at Louisiana
State University.
• Sara Smith, a feminist geographer,
conducted a landmark study of the
complex politics of marriage and
fertility along the volatile India-Pakistan
border for her doctoral dissertation at
the University of Arizona. During a
year of intense fieldwork in the Ladakh
region, she found that increasing tensions
between Buddhists and Muslims have
complicated reproductive decisions and
choices regarding marriage, as individuals
respond to pressures to enhance their
population base for political purposes.
Smith conducted 200 surveys, including
in-depth interviews with members of
Buddhist and Muslim households, and
with political and religious leaders.
Africa
• Anna Agbe-Davies, assistant professor
of anthropology, focuses on the historical
archaeology of colonialism in Atlantic
Africa and slavery in the Caribbean
and southeastern United States. Her
research and teaching span African,
African-American and American/
Southern studies. She obtained a Ph.D.
in anthropology at the University of
Pennsylvania, previously taught at DePaul
University and served as an archaeologist
for the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation.
 
• Colin Thor West, assistant professor of
anthropology, is engaged in innovative
research on the human impacts of
development and climate change in
Africa and Alaska. He has studied
Single atom controls
motion needed for
bacterial infection
UNC researchers have
discovered that a single atom — a calcium
— can control how bacteria “walk.”  The
finding identifies a key step in the process
by which bacteria infect their hosts, and
could one day lead to new drug targets to
prevent infection.
Bacteria stroll along solid surfaces using
tiny fibrous legs called pili. This motility
enables some pathogenic bacteria to
establish infections — such as meningitis —
that can be lethal.
By resolving the structure of a
protein involved in the movement of the
opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas
aeruginosa, scientists identified a spot on the
bacteria, that when blocked, can stop it in
its tracks.
“When it comes down to it, a single
atom makes all the difference,” said senior
study author Matthew R. Redinbo,
professor and chair of the department of
chemistry in the College, and professor of
biochemistry and biophysics. His findings
appeared in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
Redinbo and his team have been
collaborating with Matthew C.  Wolfgang,
an assistant professor of microbiology
and immunology and a member of the
Cystic Fibrosis/Pulmonary Research and
Treatment Center at UNC. They are trying
to figure out how bacteria move with their
legs. They noticed that Type IV pili are long,
dense fibers.
“These pili act as grappling hooks —
the bacteria extend the fibers out, the fibers
attach or stick to a surface, and then are
retracted back into the bacteria, pulling it
along,” said Wolfgang.
 
The research was funded by the
National Institutes of Health and Howard
Hughes Medical Institute.  •
A single atom —
calcium (shown in blue)
— can control how bacteria walk.
how environmental change affects
household sustainability in Burkina
Faso and how fluctuations in salmon
harvests impact communities in
the Arctic. He graduated from the
University of Chicago, volunteered
in Africa for the Peace Corps, earned
a Ph.D. in anthropology at the
University of Arizona, and served
as a NOAA (National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration)
post-doctoral fellow at the University
of Alaska, Anchorage.
Africa/Middle East:
• Ahmed El Shamsy, assistant professor
of history, is considered a “trail-blazing”
scholar of pre-modern Islamic
law and culture in north Africa and
the Middle East. He is working on
a book about the early evolution of
Islamic law in Egypt. He grew up in
Germany, received a B.A. with honors
in Arabic and politics from the School
of Oriental and African Studies in
London, and earned a master���s degree
in international relations from the
London School of Economics and
a Ph.D. in history and Middle East
studies from Harvard University.  •
— The College also recently hired a
Chinese film expert as a lecturer-adviser in
communication studies and five additional
lecturers to expand our teaching in Arabic,
Chinese, Japanese and Korean language and
literature classes. This year we are seeking
to recruit six tenure-track professors with
expertise in areas such as British history,
Brazil, Japan, sub-Saharan Africa, Korea,
and peace, war and defense. We are also
hiring a lecturer in international and area
studies, and another in Arabic language and
literature.
28   •   college.unc.edu   •   Spring 2010   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
Highlights H i g h l i g h t s
Celebrating
first-generation
college students
Ron Bilbao was born and raised
in Miami to immigrant parents from
Venezuela and Colombia. Now a
senior at UNC, he is the first person
in his family headed down the path to
college graduation.
“My father had to actually drop
out of college when he was younger to
go to work, but [my parents] knew the
value of an education and wanted to
pass that on to their kids,” said Bilbao.
About 20 percent of undergradu-ates
who entered Carolina in fall 2009
are first-generation college students like
Bilbao.
 
New initiatives — including
a Web site, student organization
and graduation recognition — are
celebrating the success of these first-generation
students.
“Nationally, the number of first-generation
college students attending
universities is on the rise,” said Cynthia
Demetriou, retention coordinator
in the Office of Undergraduate
Education in the College. “The goal
of these new initiatives is to help retain
first-generation students by further
integrating them into the academic and
social culture of the University.”
The Web site (firstgeneration.unc.
edu) features video interviews with first-generation
students including Bilbao as
well as alumni and faculty; information
about the new Carolina Firsts student
organization; a student blog; a photo
gallery; tips for success; support services
for students; and more.
A new initiative beginning in
May will recognize graduating first-generation
college students with a pin
that says “Carolina Firsts,” as well as a
celebratory breakfast.
In April, for the second year, the
Office of Undergraduate Admissions
will hold an event for first-generation
students who have been admitted for
fall 2010.  •
From professional athletes to
weekend warriors, the condition known as
“runner’s knee” is a painful and potentially
debilitating injury suffered by millions of
people. Until now, it has been unclear just
what causes it.
New UNC research has zeroed in
on what appear to be the main culprits
of the condition, formally known as
patellofemoral pain syndrome.
The study is believed to be the first
large, long-term project to track athletes
from before they developed runner’s knee,
said study co-author Darin Padua, associate
professor of exercise and sport science.
The research appeared in the
November issue of the American Journal of
Sports Medicine.
Runner’s knee — the bane of
many types of exercise, from running to
basketball to dance — affects one in four
physically active people. If unchecked, it
can lead to more serious problems such as
patellofemoral osteoarthristis.
Padua and his colleagues studied
almost 1,600 enrollees from the United
States Naval Academy. Researchers
analyzed participants’ biomechanics when
they first enrolled at the academy, then
followed them for several years to see if
they developed the syndrome.
A total of 40 participants developed
the syndrome during the follow-up period.
Pinpointing the cause of ‘runner’s knee’
The study found:
•  Participants with weaker hamstring
muscles were 2.9 times more likely to
develop the syndrome than those with the
strongest hamstrings.
•  Those with weaker quadricep
muscles were 5.5 times more likely.
•  Those with weak arches were 3.4
times more likely.
•  Participants with smaller knee
flexion angle (those whose knees bent less
on landing during a jump test) were 3.1
times more likely.
The study appears to confirm that
if people can change the way they move
and improve their leg strength, they can
prevent or correct the problem, Padua said.
Everyday athletes can also spot for
themselves whether they are at risk. For
example, if their knee crosses over the big
toe when squatting, if the arches of their
feet collapse when landing from a jump,
and if they do not bend their knees much
when they land, they stand a greater chance
of developing the syndrome, Padua said.
The researchers are now looking into
which exercises are best for improving the
biomechanics involved.
The study’s lead author was Michelle
C. Boling, a UNC doctoral student at the
time of the study, now an assistant professor
at the University of North Florida,
Jacksonville.  •
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2010   •   college.unc.edu   •   29
H i g h l i g h t s Highlights
Displaying
works
of heart
About 100
pieces from 20 artists
were showcased at the
November opening
of The Artery, a new student-run gallery
providing an opportunity for student
artists to display their work.
The Artery is located in the Bank of
America Center at 137 E. Rosemary St.
in Chapel Hill.
Founders of the gallery include
Hallie Ringle, a senior art history
major; Natalia Davila, a junior art
major and chemistry minor; and Gavin
Hackeling, a senior double major in
art and political science. Ringle and
Davila are president and vice president,
respectively, of Kappa Pi, the art and
art history honors
fraternity.
When trying to
find potential build-ings
to house the
gallery, the trio sent
letters to those that
had vacancy signs.
Soon after, the
Bank of America
Center agreed to
let them use the
space for free.
The idea
came as an
inspiration from
Jeff Whetstone,
director of undergraduate
art studies and an assistant professor in
the art department. Whetstone told the
students about a student-run art gallery
that opened in 2003. Although that
gallery survived for only a few months,
the organizers of the new gallery see The
Artery as a long-term project.
The organizers hope that the gallery
will also interest those not normally
involved in art and those interested in art
history and curating exhibits.  •
Report identifies
strategies to head
off ’home-grown’
terrorism
The shootings at Fort Hood,
the recent arrests of five young men
in Pakistan and last summer’s arrests of
terrorism suspects in North Carolina mark
a troubling increase in terrorism-related
activity by Muslim-Americans.
But a new report by scholars at UNC and Duke University, which analyzes the
extent of terrorist violence by Muslim-Americans since 9/11 and identifies strategies to
head off “home-grown” terrorism, says the number of radicalized Muslim-Americans is
still small.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, 139 Muslim-Americans have committed
violent terrorist acts, been convicted on terrorism charges involving violence or been
arrested with charges pending. Of that number, fewer than a third successfully executed
their violent plots, and most of those were overseas.
The report recommends that policymakers reinforce successful anti-radicalization
activities now under way in Muslim-American communities to address this low — but
not insignificant — level of terrorist activity.
“Muslim-American organizations and the vast majority of
individuals that we interviewed firmly reject the radical extremist
ideology that justifies the use of violence to achieve political ends,”
said co-author David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on
Terrorism and Homeland Security.
The report, “Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-American
Communities,” was co-authored by Schanzer, associate professor
at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and adjunct associate
professor of public policy at UNC; Charles Kurzman, professor of
sociology at UNC; and Ebrahim Moosa, associate professor of religion
at Duke. It summarizes two years of research in Muslim-American
communities in Seattle, Houston, Buffalo and Raleigh-Durham.
“Muslim-American organizations and the vast
majority of individuals that we interviewed firmly
reject the radical extremist ideology that justifies the
use of violence to achieve political ends.”
”Muslim-American communities have been active in preventing radicalization,” said
Kurzman. “This is one reason that Muslim-American terrorism has resulted in fewer than
three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11.”
The research shows that denunciations of terrorism, internal self-policing,
community building, government-funded support services and political engagement can
all reduce risks of radicalization.
The authors noted that Muslim-Americans “are feeling the strain of living in
America during the post-9/11 era” and policies that alienate Muslim-American
communities in an effort to crack down on terrorism are likely to exacerbate, not reduce,
the threat of homegrown terrorism. •
LEFT: Charles Kurzman co-authored a report on
“home-grown” terrorism. RIGHT: Students
(from left) Natalia Davila, Hallie Ringle and
Gavin Hackeling co-founded The Artery.
Jason Smith
H i g h l i g h t s
Progress made
in turning
methane gas
into liquid fuel
Researchers at UNC and
the University of Washington
have taken an important step
in converting methane gas to a liquid,
potentially making it more useful as a
clean fuel and as a source for making other
chemicals.
Methane, the primary component of
natural gas, is plentiful and is an attractive
fuel and raw material because it is more
efficient than oil, produces less pollution
and could serve as a practical substitute for
petroleum-based fuels until renewable fuels
are widely useable and available.
However, methane is difficult and
While some students may have spent
last summer relaxing at the beach, UNC
senior Maggie West created a microfinance
program to help the homeless in Chapel
Hill and Carrboro.
West, a public policy and Latin
American studies major from Raleigh,
led the pilot launch, working with the
Community Empowerment Fund (CEF).
The student-run organization, affiliated
with the Campus Y and the UNC Center
on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, gives
loans to those who are already homeless or
at risk of being in that situation and helps
them build their financial assets.
West was inspired to help from her
involvement with HOPE (Homeless
Outreach Poverty Eradication), a Campus
Y group, which gave her the chance to
form relationships with the homeless.
She received a Summer
Undergraduate Research Fellowship
(SURF) from the Office for Undergraduate
Research in the College to fund the
Senior creates microfinance program for homeless
program and evaluate the results.
“I will always be driven
to this kind of work by the
strength of the community
itself and the courage and con-viction
I have witnessed in this
community to overcome challenge
after challenge,” West said. “I am driven to
delve this deep and work for systemic change
because I have been so humbled by all that I 
have learned from those whom I have met
in the shelter and on the streets. I believe we
all deserve a better system.”
Volunteers and students served as loan
officers for the new project. The funds were
primarily used for housing deposits, starting a
small business, buying cell phones or paying
for bus passes for work.
Last summer, CEF received 18
applications for the program, and approved
five of them. Those five borrowers were
eligible to receive initial loans from $100 to
$300. When those were paid off, they would
be able to receive loans from $600 to $1,000.
If borrowers had
to defer their payment,
they were able to work
it off for a few hours
as “sweat equity”
through the Campus
Y’s HOPE Gardens. The
homeless plant and harvest their own crops,
which are then sold at farmers markets and
on the UNC campus.
­Applicants
who were not eligible
for loans were not denied assistance. CEF
provided them with a connection to other
services, such as food pantries, housing
assistance programs, health care providers,
as well as skill development such as resume-building,
job-searching and computer
literacy.
Durham County is interested in
replicating the idea. CEF is working with
Duke University, the Durham Rotary Club
and Durham County Department of Social
Services to introduce a new pilot for the
homeless there. •  — By Kristen Chavez ’13
costly to transport because it
remains a gas at temperatures
and pressures typical on the
Earth’s surface.
Now UNC and UW
scientists have moved closer
to devising a way to convert
methane to methanol or other
liquids which can easily be transported,
especially from “remote” sites where meth-ane
is