Carolina arts & sciences

              Super Science Complex
State-of-the-art facilities open new doors to discovery
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
I n s i d e : I r a q V e t s • W o m e n ’ s S t u d i e s • M u s i c S c o r e s • U n d e r g r a d R e s e a r c h
S P R I N G • 2 0 0 7
a r t s&s c i e n c e s C a r o l i n a
T h e C o l l e g e o f
A r ts & S c i e n c e s
• Madeline G. Levine
Interim Dean
• William Andrews ’70MA, ’73 PhD
Senior Associate Dean,
Fine Arts and Humanities
• Bruce Carney
Senior Associate Dean, Sciences
• Arne Kalleberg
Senior Associate Dean, Social Sciences
and International Programs
• Tammy McHale
Senior Associate Dean,
Finance and Planning
• 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
• Ivan V. Anderson, Jr. ’61, Charleston, SC, Chair
�� Madeline G. Levine, 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
• James L. Alexandre ’79, London, UK
• D. Shoffner Allison ’98, Charlotte, NC
• William S. Brenizer ’74, Glen Head, NY
• Vicki Underwood Craver ’92, Cos Cob, CT
• Steven M. Cumbie ’70, ’73 MBA, McLean, VA
• Archie H. Davis ’64, Savannah, GA
• Robin Richards Donohoe ’87, San Francisco, CA
• Gail McGregor Fearing ’66, Chapel Hill, NC
• Alan Feduccia, Chapel Hill, NC
• Mary Dewar Froelich ’83, Charlotte, NC
• Robin March Hanes ’78, Asheville, NC
• William T. Hobbs, II ’85, Charlotte, NC
• Lynn Buchheit Janney ’70, Butler, MD
• Matthew G. Kupec ’80, Chapel Hill, NC
• William M. Lamont, Jr. ’71, Dallas, TX
• Cathy Bryson Moore ’90, Santa Monica, CA
• Paula R. Newsome ’77, Charlotte, NC
• Benjamine Reid ���71, Miami, FL
• Emily Pleasants Sternberg ’88, ’94 MBA,
Greenwich, CT
• G. Kennedy Thompson ’73, Charlotte, NC
• S. Thompson Tygart ’62, Jacksonville, FL
• Thomas M. Uhlman ’71 MS, ’75 PhD,
Murray Hill, NJ
• Charles L. Wickham, III, ’82 BSBA, London, UK
• Michael R. Zimmerman ’75, New York, NY
College on the move
Scientists are moving into new high-tech labs. Our
women’s studies program celebrates a major landmark
with a move into the 1901 Smith building — the first
building on campus named for a woman, Mary Ann
Smith of Raleigh. A major gift from the Kenan Trust is
underwriting a transformative “movement” for the music
department, with scholarships and a new building. A
chemist moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the
U.S. State Department for a year and traveled around
the world, sharing information with scientists and
graduate students in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Undergraduate researchers journeyed all over the world to discover new ideas, and two
alumni are back from Iraq with an informed perspective on foreign policy.
Faculty, students and alumni of the College of Arts and Sciences are on the move.
In this issue of the magazine, we celebrate the opening of Chapman Hall and Caudill
Labs, the first two buildings to open in the new Carolina Physical Science Complex. Gifts
for these facilities from alumni Max Chapman ’66 and Lowry Caudill ’79 are opening doors
to discovery and forging new collaborations for scientists and students. A 4,500-square-foot
fluids lab being built in Chapman Hall will help mathematicians and marine scientists better
understand hurricanes, tsunamis and global warming. We feature protein pioneer Gary Pielak,
insect flight specialist Laura Miller, polymer professor Valerie Ashby, microscope master Lu-
Chang Qin, and wave tank researchers Richard McLaughlin, Roberto Camassa, Alberto Scotti
and Francisco Werner.
You’ll read about undergraduate research projects that examine Soviet wetlands
policy, human rights and public art in Mexico, delays in the state appellate court process,
and misconceptions about women of the Middle East. You’ll find out what chemist Edward
Samulski accomplished as a Jefferson Science Fellow. And you’ll learn about distinguished
awards our chemistry faculty earned from the National Institutes of Health, the American
Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Our women’s studies program is celebrating its 30th birthday. This curriculum reaches
some 2,000 students a year in 118 classes across the arts and sciences. The program’s core
faculty are a blend of established scholars and rising stars, and its graduates enjoy successful
careers in business, government, nonprofits and academia.
An $8 million gift to music from the Kenan Charitable Trust completes funding for the
Kenan Music Building and will make possible 16 full music scholarships for undergraduates.
The gift is the largest ever received by an academic department in the College.
Marine captains Rye Barcott ’01 and Croft Young ’95, both of whom have seen active
duty in Iraq, share their views on the Iraq Study Group Report. ABC World News named
Barcott a “Person of the Year” for co-founding Carolina for Kibera, a community-based
nonprofit providing medical care and recreation for impoverished people in Nairobi. We also
share news about Drew Levinson ’82, a CBS correspondent who felt a calling while reporting
from the Middle East to pay tribute to his Southern Jewish heritage.
Many of these accomplishments are possible because alumni and friends of the College
were moved to support our mission — to provide an exceptional liberal arts education for
leadership in a fast-changing world. Their generosity is making a difference for faculty and
students today and tomorrow.
Madeline G. Levine, Interim Dean
From the Dean F r o m t h e D e a n
Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2007
Madeline G. Levine
Dan Sears
Contents
F e at u r e s
8 • Super Science
State-of-the-art facilities open
new doors to discovery
 
15 • Summer Scholars
Undergraduate students navigate
research at home and abroad
18 • Women’s Studies
Turns 30
Examining the role of gender
across disciplines
Cover photo: Chemist Valerie Ashby is thrilled
with her brand new lab in Caudill Laboratories,
one of two major buildings that opened in the
fall as part of the new Carolina Physical Science
Complex, the largest construction project in
the history of the University. (Photo by Steve Exum)
Ta bl e of C on t e n ts
Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2007
De p a r t me n ts
inside front cover
From the Dean
On the move
2 High Achievers
Banner year for chemistry, two more
	
Rhodes Scholars, a Citizen of the
World, three cheers for creative writing,
blues scholar lauded at international
film festival, and more
21 First Person
Two Marines offer a “view from
the ground” on the Iraq Study
Group report.
22 Spotlight
Chemist Edward Samulski found
plenty to do during his year with the
	
U.S. State Department in Washington.
23 Highlights
Music’s $8 million gift, Amazon River
switched direction, a CBS journalist
	
reflects on his Southern Jewish heritage,
and more
30 College Bookshelf
New books across the arts and
sciences explore poverty in America,
	
fundamentalism and the Scopes trial,
the lost gospel of Judas Iscariot, the first
published novel by an African American
woman, the making of “Oklahoma”
the musical, perspectives on affordable
	
home ownership, mismatched workers
in a globalized society, and more
32 Final Point
Historian Heather Williams’
patchwork quilt conveys the African
	
American experience.
inside back cover
In the News
Holden Thorp named next dean
of the College
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   1
18
8
15
Dan Sears Steve Exum
Steve Exum
High Achievers
2   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
H i g h A c h i e v e r s
A banner year
for chemistry
It was a big year for UNC chemists,
who brought home major awards for
pioneering research.
Gary Pielak became the first Carolina
scientist to win the $2.5 million, five-year
Director’s Pioneer Award from the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) for
groundbreaking research on the role of
proteins in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and
other neurodegenerative diseases. [See story
on page 11.]
Mike Ramsey also received a notable
$3.8 million, four-year NIH grant to further
develop his tiny “lab-on-a-chip” technology
for cheaper, faster and more customized
DNA sequencing.
The goal is to eventually reduce
the cost of human genome sequencing
from about $10 million to $1,000, greatly
expanding its usefulness in medical research
and health care.
Ramsey, the Minnie N. Goldby
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, joined
two of his colleagues in receiving top awards
from the American Chemical Society for
outstanding contributions to their fields.
Ramsey received the top award in
chromatography. James W. Jorgenson,
William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of
Chemistry, received the society’s highest
award in analytical chemistry. Joseph
M. DeSimone, William Rand Kenan Jr.
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry
and Chemical Engineering at UNC
and N.C. State University, received the
Henry F. Whalen Jr. Award for Business
Development.
 
Chromatography is a laboratory-scale
technology for separation and purification
of chemicals and is critical to chemical
research. Ramsey is a pioneer in the field of
microfluidics and nanofluidics, helping to
create the concept of performing lab tests in
miniature — on tiny silicon, glass or plastic
chips — called “lab-on-a-chip.”
Analytical chemistry focuses on
measuring the chemical composition of
material of all types with greater precision,
sensitivity and speed. Jorgenson, former
chair of the department, pioneered the
chemical separation technique, capillary
electrophoresis, in the 1980s.
DeSimone’s award recognizes his
ability to identify market needs, develop
novel technologies to address those needs
and transfer that technology from the
laboratory to the marketplace. He is inventor
of record for more than 100 patents, of
which the majority are assigned to UNC.
He has pioneered environmentally friendly
processes for manufacturing and dry
cleaning, researched the use of fuel cells
for portable power and explored the use of
nanotechnology for cancer detection and
drug delivery.
DeSimone was recognized with two
more honors. He was elected to the College
of Fellows for the American Institute for
Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE),
and was named a fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
[See story on page 3.]  •
Mike Ramsey James Jorgenson
Steve Exum
High Achievers
Three recognized nationally for efforts
to advance science
Three faculty in UNC’s College of Arts
and Sciences were named fellows of the
American Association for the Advancement
of Science, one of the leading science
organizations in the nation.
•  Joseph M. DeSimone is director of
the UNC Institute for Advanced Materials,
Nanoscience and Technology and Kenan
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.
He is engaged in all aspects of polymer
synthesis and processing and has been
widely recognized
for originating
environmentally
friendly
methodology used
in dry cleaning and
manufacturing. He
is involved in fuel
cell research for
alternative sources of
power and the use
of nanotechnology
in medicine.
DeSimone was
named a fellow
for “distinguished
contributions to
polymer synthesis and processing, from
fundamental aspects of chemical systems to
environmentally friendly ways to manufacture
polymers.”
•  Daniel A. Reed is director of the
Renaissance Computing Institute, UNC
vice chancellor for information technology
and Chancellor’s Eminent Professor in the
department of computer science. He is
founding director of the interdisciplinary
Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), a
Citizen of the World
James Peacock, Kenan Distinguished
Professor of Anthropology, was named a
“Citizen of the World” by the Interna-tional
Affairs Council of North Carolina.
Each year the nonprofit awards the
title to a North Carolinian who has done
the most for the internationalization of
our state.
Peacock has been instrumental in
the development of new international
programs at UNC, such as the World
View program for educators and the
Rotary Peace Center. He is the former
director of the University Center for
International Studies, now called The
Center for Global Initiatives. His research
focuses on Southeast Asia and the
Southeastern United States in relation to
history, memory and global issues.
Triangle Business Journal also tapped
Peacock as one of  “10 Area People
Working to Change the World.”  •
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   3
collaborative venture of Duke University,
N.C. State University, UNC and the State
of North Carolina. Reed is a member of
President Bush’s Information Technology
Advisory Committee. He was named a
fellow for “outstanding research in the
field of high performance computing,
exemplary professional leadership and
distinguished national service.”
•  Stephen J. Walsh is director of the
Landscape Characterization and Spatial
Analysis Lab and a professor of geography.
He examines the interactions between
people, places and the environment
using geographic information systems
(GIS), remote sensing, spatial analysis and
physical geography. He directs studies in
Ecuador, Thailand, Latvia and the U.S.
Walsh was named a fellow for “substantive
landscape characterization and spatial
analysis through remote sensing and
geographic information science.”  •
Joseph DeSimone Daniel Reed James Peacock
Jeffrey Johnson Anne MacNeil Ajit Joglekar
Biology lecturer 
wins national 
teaching award
Jean DeSaix, senior lecturer
in the department of biology,
won a national honor for
outstanding teaching.
The National Association
of Biology Teachers’ Four-Year
College Biology Teaching Award
recognizes a college educator who demon-strates
creative and innovative instruction.
DeSaix, who has been teaching biology
since 1972, received the award during the
group’s annual meeting in Albuquerque,
N.M., last October. Chancellor James
Moeser recognized her during a fall meeting
of the University Board of Trustees.
DeSaix, who has a Ph.D. from UNC,
teaches introductory biology.  •
Hettleman Prize 
Given for artistic And 
scholarly achievement
College faculty members were among
the recipients of 2006 Phillip and Ruth
Hettleman Prizes for Artistic and Scholarly
Achievement by Young Faculty at UNC.
Winners were Jeffrey Johnson,
assistant professor of chemistry, and Anne
MacNeil, associate professor of music
history. Jonathan Oberlander, associate
professor of social medicine and an adjunct
faculty member in political science, also
received the prize.
The Hettleman Prize recognizes the
achievements of outstanding junior tenure-track
faculty or recently tenured faculty. All
of this year’s recipients also received praise
for their qualities as teachers.
The award was established by the late
Phillip Hettleman, who was born in 1899
and grew up in Goldsboro, N.C. He earned
a scholarship to Carolina, went to New York
and, in 1938, founded Hettleman & Co., a
Wall Street investment firm.
Johnson joined the chemistry faculty
in 2001. His laboratory develops new
synthetic methodology for the rapid
construction of complex organic molecules,
especially pharmaceuticals, and he has
won nearly every major award available to
young chemists, said Holden Thorp, chair
of the department of chemistry.
“Johnson’s productivity has been truly
astonishing,” Thorp wrote in a nomination
letter. “He has assembled a strong group
of graduate students and together they
have published 34 papers from UNC, all
in top-refereed journals. Jeff has already
established a national reputation and is
regarded as one of the very top young
chemists working in this crowded and
highly competitive area.”
MacNeil came to Carolina in 1999.
Her study of women in late 16th and early
17th century Italian theater has “opened
whole new fields of inquiry in the areas of
theater history, opera history, commedia
dell ’arte, and not insignificantly in gender
studies,” wrote music department chair Tim
Carter, who nominated MacNeil.
A colleague characterized MacNeil’s
writing as an “exceptionally learned, often
brilliant study of what I had previously and
offhandedly thought of as a peripheral topic
in the history of music.”
“In her publications and lectures she
has brought to light a whole new facet
of musical and literary activity in the late
Italian Renaissance and early Baroque in a
way that has gained her high national and
international repute,” Carter said.  •
Biologist wins 
Burroughs Wellcome 
early career award
Ajit P. Joglekar, a postdoctoral biology
fellow, won a prestigious $500,000 award over
five years from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
He is the first scholar to win the award at UNC.
The 2007 Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Career Awards at the Scientific Interface are
awarded to early career researchers with back-grounds
in the physical/computational sciences
whose work provides innovative approaches to
tackle important questions in biology. Twelve
awards were given nationally this year.
Joglekar’s research focuses on “protein
machinery” in cells.
“Movement of chromosomes, the genetic
material in a cell, is critical for dividing them
equally between daughter cells as a cell divides,”
said Joglekar, whose mentor is Ted Salmon, the
James Larkin and Iona Mae Ballou Distinguished
Professor of Biology. “Errors in this process of
chromosome segregation lead to human disease
and aging. I am studying the structure and
action of the ‘protein machinery’ that generates
forces needed to achieve accurate chromosome
segregation.”
Joglekar received master’s and doctorate
degrees in biomedical engineering from the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and
an undergraduate degree in mechanical
engineering from Pune University in India.  •
[Mathematical biologist Laura Miller won
the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Award in 2006,
before joining UNC in January 2007. See story
on Miller on page 12.]
4   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
High Achievers
Jean DeSaix
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   5
High Achievers
Three cheers for creative writing
A UNC creative writing professor and a student were tapped with honors named for
author Thomas Wolfe, and an alumnus won North Carolina’s highest civilian honor in literature.
Shinemaster — a book of poems by Carolina creative writing professor Michael McFee
— received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, given annually by the Western
North Carolina Historical Association. McFee, an Asheville native, has been a professor of
English and creative writing at UNC since 1995.
He is the author of eight books of poetry and a collection of essays. His new chapbook
of one-line poems was published in February and his first book of prose, The Napkin
Manuscripts: Selected Essays and an Interview, was
published last fall. [See page 31.]
Nathaniel “Nate” Lumpkin of Raleigh was awarded
the fifth Thomas Wolfe Scholarship in creative writing
at UNC.
The scholarship, established in 2002, provides a
student with full financial support for four years at Carolina.
Lumpkin enjoys fiction writing, especially short stories, but
says that “poetry is beginning to be a draw.” He has his
own Web “blog,” and has been writing informal essays on
it for over two years now.
Frank Borden Hanes Sr. of Winston-Salem, a novelist,
poet and retired journalist who graduated from UNC in
1942, contributed $2 million to establish the scholarship.
Creative writing alumnus Michael F. Parker ’84,
who’s now an English professor at the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro, won a 2006 North Carolina Award
in literature. The awards, the state’s highest civilian honor,
recognize outstanding lifetime achievements in fine arts,
science, literature and public service.
Parker writes about characters who struggle with love,
family and relationships. His first novel, Hello Down There,
was published in 1993 to critical acclaim. Other novels
include Towns Without Rivers, Virginia Lovers and, new this
year, If You Want Me to Stay. He also has a new collection
of short stories. [See page 31.]
Two UNC alumni won North Carolina Awards for public
service: former N.C. Governor James E. Holshouser, Jr. ’60
J.D. and newspaper editor Roy Parker, Jr. ’52 Journalism.  •
Blake Scholar Lauded 
for Online archive
English professor Joseph
Viscomi was among five trailblazers in
information and library science and
information technology honored Oct.
12 in the first Knowledge Trust honors
ceremony.  Viscomi was recognized for
his work in creating the William Blake
Archive.
The Louis Round Wilson
Academy, convened by UNC’s
School of Information and Library
Science, includes world leaders in
library and information science and
technology management. Academy
members nominated candidates for the
Knowledge Trust awards.
Viscomi, James G. Kenan
Distinguished Professor of English, was
presented the Exploration Award for
creating or compiling new knowledge,
tools and services.
Viscomi co-edited and created
the William Blake Archive based on
approximately 5,500 images — two-thirds
from the illuminated books
and one-third from Blake’s paintings,
drawings and engravings — transferred
to digital form.
Conceived and designed in 1993-
95, and a free site on the World Wide
Web since 1996, the archive is an
international public resource for major
works of visual and literary art that are
highly disparate, widely dispersed and
often severely restricted as a result of
their value, rarity and extreme fragility.
The Blake Archive has had a
significant impact on teaching and
scholarship. It also has challenged the
traditional notion of literary criticism by
virtue of the ways in which elements of
Blake’s work can be viewed, moved and
modified.  •
Michael McFee
Nate Lumpkin
6   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
High Achievers
Two more Rhodes Scholars
A Carolina senior and a recent graduate have won 2006 Rhodes Scholarships.
Ben Lundin of Nashville, Tenn., is a senior religious studies major and Morehead
Scholar. Adrian Johnston of Toronto graduated in May 2006 with a double major in economics
and philosophy.
Among the most prestigious scholarships available, the award funds tuition, fees and
living expenses for two to three years at Oxford University in Great Britain.
Lundin will use the scholarship to earn a master’s degree in
international relations. He will study the political influence of religious
movements and write a thesis on religion in global conflict.
“Eventually, I would like to develop my interests in religious
dialogue through a research professorship in religious and ethnic conflict
resolution,” Lundin said. “These are some of today’s most pressing issues,
and I could pass my passion on to the next generation of researchers and
public servants in this developing field.”
The summer after his freshman year, Lundin had an internship with a
human rights group involved with prisons in Peru. There he interviewed a
man accused of being a member of the Shining Path terrorist group.
The prisoner seemed near despair, Lundin wrote in his Rhodes
application. “But what struck me most was his conviction that faith had
kept him alive in isolation … Peru was my glimpse of faith’s powers of
inspiration and sustenance in the lives of believers.”
Back at Carolina, Lundin took an honors seminar about religious
ideals, chose to major in religious studies and eventually became a
teaching assistant for a freshman honors course in the subject.
He founded Carolina Crossfire, a student group dedicated to
discussing difficult religious questions, personal and political. The group
sponsored a public dialogue by an agnostic professor and a local pastor,
asking what they considered to be attractive and unattractive aspects of
organized Christianity.
Johnston plans to pursue a master’s degree in international relations at Oxford,
researching how developing countries can improve gains from international trade by pursuing
institutional reforms.
“The privilege of an Oxford education would greatly enhance my future career in
international economic diplomacy, advocating for structures of power that serve vulnerable
communities on a global scale,” he said.
In Burundi from July through October, Johnston worked for an organization that
provided conflict management training to leaders in the country’s peace process, “using the
same negotiation theory that I studied in a graduate level course at UNC.” He researched the
impact of the training on the Burundian Army, formed through the integration of Hutu rebels
and Tutsi-dominated government forces. Previously, the two groups had engaged in bloody
slaughters against each other for three decades.
On Johnston’s first visit to Burundi, in summer 2003, he evaluated conditions in a
refugee camp in Tanzania. The camp was home to Burundians who had fled the conflict
between Hutus and Tutsis in their own country.
At Carolina, Johnston was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and the Order of the Golden
Fleece, an honor society recognizing extraordinary contributions to the University.  •
Hofweber wins 
philosophy best 
article prize
Thomas Hofweber, an assistant
philosophy professor, won the 2006 best
article prize awarded to young
scholars by the American
Philosophical Association.
Hofweber, who came to
UNC in 2003, won the award
for “Inexpressible Properties and
Propositions.” The prize is given
for the best article published in the
last two years.
Hofweber specializes in
metaphysics (the basic features
of reality) and the philosophy of
language and mathematics. He
received a Ph.D. from Stanford
University in 1999 and a master’s
degree from the University of
Munich, Germany, in 1994.
“It’s no surprise that Thomas
Hofweber’s work is winning prizes,” said
philosophy department chair Geoffrey
Sayre-McCord. “His papers, considered
singly, are consistently sophisticated and
elegant. Taken together, they are working
to support a powerful systematic account
about what we are doing in thinking and
talking about logic, mathematics and what
exists. His work is at the cutting edge of
the field.”  •
Ben Lundin
Adrian Johnston
High Achievers
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   7
endowed lecture named for 
long-time philosophy staff member
Blues scholar 
Honored at 
international 
film festival
William Ferris,
a widely recognized
expert on African
American music and
Southern culture,
received a Lifetime
Achievement Award
at an international
film festival in Prague
last fall.
Ferris, the Joel R.
Williamson Eminent
Professor of History
and senior associate
director of the Center for the Study of
the American South, was honored at
the Music on Film — Film on Music
Festival at the Palace Lucerna, one of
the oldest cinemas in Europe.
The festival showcased several
of Ferris’ documentary films on B.B.
King, the Mississippi Delta blues, black
churches and religion, gospel music
and African fife-and-drum music in
the United States. There also was an
exhibition of his photography, and he
discussed and performed blues music.
Festival director John Caulkins
called Ferris “a pioneering ethno-graphic
filmmaker in the tradition of
the legendary Alan Lomax,” referring
to the late ethnographer who recorded
thousands of blues and folk songs for
the Library of Congress.
A native of Vicksburg, Miss.,
Ferris has interviewed thousands of
musicians ranging from the famous
(B.B. King) to the unrecognized
(Parchman Penitentiary inmates
working in the fields).
He has written or edited 10 books
and created 15 documentary films. He
chaired the National Endowment for
the Humanities from 1997 to 2001.  •
William Ferris
Claire Miller retired in 2002 after
39 years as manager of the philosophy
department. A day or two later, she came
back on a part-time basis to manage one
of her prized projects: the department’s
annual philosophy colloquium.
And during the colloquium last fall,
Miller got to sit in on a new endowed
lectureship named in her honor. Faculty
surprised her with the news of the gift at a
department meeting.
The donors who established the
endowment for the annual Claire Miller
Lecture in Philosophy wish to remain
anonymous. The unusual gift recognizes
the extraordinary contribution that
Miller has made to the UNC philosophy
department and, perhaps most visibly,
to the internationally recognized Chapel
Hill Colloquium, which she has organized
since its inception 40 years ago. Gerald
Postema, Cary C.
Boshamer Professor,
said he could think
of no more fitting
way to honor the
colloquium’s
“queen bee.”
“Claire
identified with
the colloquium from the very beginning
and threw herself into the planning of the
event with incredible energy. Early on, she
made a commitment to the department of
philosophy, and she has worked pretty much
all of her life for the love of the department,”
Postema said. “Naming a lectureship for
a staff member is a wonderful tribute and
signals the important role
that staff play in the life of
the University.”
Philosophy professor
and department chair Geoff
Sayre-McCord said Miller is
someone who “pays careful
attention to details.”
“Claire understands
and appreciates what’s
at stake in everything
she does,” he said. “She
works tirelessly. Neither the
department nor the colloquium would
have thrived in the way they have without
her decades of hard work, intelligence and
commitment. We know how lucky we
have been, and it is a delight to be able to
put in place this permanent honor to her.”
Miller’s reaction to the news:
“thrilled, stunned, shocked.”
“It’s a nice
recognition for
University
employees,”
she said. “It was
very creative,
outside-the-box
thinking on the
part of the donor.”
“Although I had been to college
before I came to UNC, I probably got my
education in the philosophy department,”
Miller added. “The people are fascinating;
they’re intelligent; they’re funny; they’re
interesting. It’s a friendly, open, diverse
place to work. The department has been
my professional family.”  •
{ } “Claire understands and appreciates
what’s at stake in everything
she does. Neither the department
nor the colloquium would have
thrived in the way they have
without her decades of hard work,
intelligence and commitment.”
— Geoff Sayre-McCord
8   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
Whether they are squinting at
stars or molecules, measuring the motion
of waves or the flight of insects, Carolina
scientists across traditional and emerging
disciplines are discovering what new
state-of-the-art facilities can mean for their
research and their students.
The big news just off Polk Place is
the recent opening of Max C. Chapman Jr.
Hall and the W. Lowry and Susan S. Caudill
Laboratories, the first buildings completed
in the first phase of the long-awaited $205
million Carolina Physical Science Complex.
The complex, the largest construction
project in UNC history, will rely on $22
million in private gifts and $84 million
from a higher education bond referendum
approved by N.C. voters in 2000.
Chapman Hall is named for the 1966
College alumnus who gave a $5 million
gift to support the new 130,000-square-foot
building.
“The real thanks for this building
goes to the people of North Carolina,” said
Chapman during the building’s official
dedication in November. “Clearly my
contribution and others are small fractions
of what it takes to build a facility like this.”
Chapman, chairman of Gardner
Capital Management Corp. in New
York City, is a legendary figure in the
futures and options industry on Wall
Street. He has also served nearly 20 years
on the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation’s
Investment Fund, which he has chaired for
the past decade.
Chapman Hall offers lecture halls,
laboratories and offices for faculty and
students in chemistry, mathematics, marine
significant impact
highly innovative
integrated approach
Left to right: Chemists are excited about collaborative possibilities in the new Caudill Labs.
• Protein pioneer Gary Pielak uses an NMR instrument to study proteins in living cells. • Marine scientist
Alberto Scotti and mathematician Richard McLaughlin will expand their experiments with waves. • Chapman
Hall provides high-tech labs and classrooms for faculty and students in chemistry, mathematics, marine sciences and
physics and astronomy, as well as the Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology.
Super Science
State-of-the-art facilities
open new doors to discovery
B y A n g e l a S p i v e y
Steve Exum
Steve Exum
Steve Exum
Steve Exum
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   9
materials sciences. In Phillips, the scientists
had to run separate machines to supply
pressurized air and refrigerated water, for
example, but now all of that is central.
“The less noise and power we have going
through any room, the better science we
can do,” Hall said.
Rich Superfine, Bowman and Gordon
Gray Professor in the department of physics
and astronomy, has also found that the data
from a microscope he uses to examine
single molecules of DNA in studies of
sciences, and physics and astronomy, as well
as the Institute for Advanced Materials,
Nanoscience and Technology.
Researchers who study and
manipulate molecular materials on the
nanoscale (which can be 100,000 times
narrower than a strand of human hair)
rely on high-tech instruments that are
susceptible to the smallest interference. In
their old labs in Phillips Hall, vibrations
came from cars and trucks pulling into
a nearby parking lot, from power lines
feeding nearby Peabody Hall, and even the
building’s window air conditioners and
steady foot traffic.
Before-and-after pictures taken with a
scanning electron microscope tell the story.
Those taken with the same microscope,
but after the move to the basement of
Chapman, have much higher resolution,
even to the lay person’s eye, than those
taken in the old labs. [See sidebar on page 14.]
The absence of window air
conditioners and other extraneous
machines also reduces vibrations, said Adam
Hall, a graduate student in applied and continued
underlying principles
extraordinarily strong
10   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
blood clotting is “considerably quieter,”
he said. “The better measurements I think
will allow us to better determine the forces
involved when cells divide and help us
understand the process of clotting better.”
Chapman Hall’s central ventilation
system also means more controlled
conditions for these and other instruments
that 21st century science requires, said
Laurie McNeil, professor and chair of
the department of physics and astronomy.
“These instruments need steady
temperature and steady humidity,” she said.
• Forging new
	
	
collaborations
Another exciting feature of Chapman
Hall is a new 4,500-square-foot fluids
laboratory [see sidebar on page 10], including
a 120-foot long wave tank, which will
allow for new collaborations between the
departments of mathematics and marine
sciences.
For the last nine years, applied math
researchers had relied on a 350-square-foot
fluids lab in Phillips Hall.
“The applied math group has
landed some big grants and trained a
large number of undergraduates and
graduate students in the small space,” said
Patrick Eberlein, professor and chair of
the mathematics department. Two awards
were given by the National Science
Foundation’s Division of Mathematical
Sciences. Mathematics professor Richard
McLaughlin is the principal investigator
for a $1.7 million research training grant;
and Roberto Camassa, George Kane
Professor of Mathematics, is the principal
Making
Waves
By Angela Spivey
When you picture a wave, it’s
probably crashing on a beach. But applied
mathematicians and marine scientists at
Carolina see waves everywhere — in
the warming of the earth, in a cloud of
chemicals in the air. By April 2007, others
will be able to see them too — in a 120-
foot-long transparent tank in the basement
of Chapman Hall that is part of a new
4,500-square-foot fluids laboratory.
The tank will enable researchers to
study the large-scale behavior of water seen
in hurricanes and tsunamis, for instance, and
to expand their experiments with waves
— to help answer such questions as how
global warming works and how airborne
chemicals behave.
The
National Science
Foundation’s
Division of
Mathematical
Sciences
awarded UNC
a $620,000
major research
instrumentation
grant to acquire
the wave
tank. Roberto
Camassa, George
Kane Professor
of Mathematics,
is the project’s principal investigator. Co-principal
investigators include mathematics
professor Richard McLaughlin and, in
marine sciences, assistant professor Alberto
Scotti and Francisco Werner, the George
and Alice Welsh Professor.
Deeper, longer and wider than similar
tanks at other scientific institutions, the
UNC tank will be transparent and elevated
off the floor, so scientists can observe
the water from all angles. “To be totally
optically accessible with this length is
unique,” Camassa said.
The tank will be divided into four
modules, so several experiments can
happen at once. In addition, the modules
will have different properties. The deepest
module will be used for studying deep
waves and the effect of dropping things
a long distance. Another module that
is wider than the others could be lined
with material such as sand, to study
how bottom topography affects wave
propagation. If need be, the gates between
the modules can be opened so scientists
can use the whole length of the tank,
to study waves that happen over long
distances.
Before scientists can answer the big
questions about global warming, they have
to understand the underlying principles,
Camassa said. An example is mixing of
stratified fluids — fluids in which one
layer is denser, or heavier, than the other.
“You have an energy balance on
earth, and energy from the sun has to be
distributed one way or another,” Camassa
said. If you think of the earth as a water
basin, and the sun’s energy as a running
faucet, the way the earth stores and releases
the sun’s energy — or the height of the
overflow drain from the bottom of the
basin — is influenced by mixing, he added.
Scotti also studies mixing of fluids of
different densities. For instance, if a heavy
gas such as chlorine were to be spilled in
an industrial accident, how would it mix
with the lighter air? ��If a large cloud of
gas spills, it’s important to understand how
fast the cloud will get dispersed in the
environment.” he said.
The fluids lab also will include a
wind tunnel, a mixing station and other
equipment.
It was quite a change from the old
fluids lab in Phillips Hall, which could
accommodate only three people at once
— forcing scientists to work in shifts.  •
ABOVE: Marine scientist Alberto Scotti (left) and mathematician Richard
McLaughlin will work on a much larger wave tank in the new 4,500-square-foot
fluids lab in Chapman.
underlying principles
Steve Exum
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   11
continued
investigator for a $620,000 major research
instrumentation grant.
The larger space in Chapman will
help the group expand even more. For
example, the new fluids lab will include
a wind tunnel that McLaughlin, Camassa
and Laura Miller, who joined the
department’s faculty in January, will use to
study insect flight. [See sidebar on page 12].
The physical design of the complex
makes it easier for scientists to connect.
“The simple ability to communicate has
made a profound impact on how we
work and on the ease of collaborating,”
said Francisco Werner, George and
Alice Welsh Professor and chair of the
department of marine sciences. Now,
marine sciences faculty will be able to
meet with colleagues in applied math by
simply walking down a flight of stairs or
crossing a bridge that connects Chapman
Hall to Phillips Hall.
For chemist Mike Ramsey, whose
group studies the emerging field of
nanofluidics, the new space in Chapman
means eliminating a daily hike between
his former office in Kenan and labs in
Venable. Ramsey recently received a $3.8
million grant from the National Institutes
of Health to further develop his “lab-on-a-
chip” technology for faster and cheaper
human genome sequencing. “Now all
of our lab space is contiguous, and all of
the office space for students and postdocs
are now together and adjacent to the
labs,” said Ramsey, the Minnie N. Golby
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.
“That allows for a lot more camaraderie.
Protein
Pioneer
By Karen Stinneford
(BA ’87, MBA ’02)
Chemist Gary Pielak’s award-winning
research into the role proteins
play in neurodegenerative disorders such as
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s was fueled by a
dare, of sorts.
Years ago whenever Pielak, who
studied protein stability, discussed his
research with fellow UNC chemist Linda
Spremulli, she’d tell him it wasn’t applicable
to real life, saying, “But the way you’re doing
it isn’t what happens in living cells, because
in living cells, proteins are really crowded.”
“And that really, really bugged me,”
Pielak recollected, “because I knew she was
right.” So he changed direction and began
doing much riskier research in living cells.
The gamble paid off. Pielak’s new
approach garnered him a $2.5 million, five-year
Director’s Pioneer Award this year from
the National Institutes of Health. The award
supports exceptionally creative scientists
who pursue highly innovative and risky
approaches to biomedical challenges. He’s
the first UNC scientist to receive the award.
Pielak uses nuclear magnetic resonance
(NMR) spectroscopy to study proteins
inside cells that are still alive. His research
team had successfully used this high-resolution
imaging tool to study bacteria.
Now they hope it will lead to new
understanding about proteins in animal cells.
“We’re really swinging for the fences
here,” Pielak said.
What Pielak
and his team uncover
could have sweeping
ramifications for
medicine. Better
understanding how
proteins change in cells
diseased by Alzheimer’s
and Parkinson’s could
lead to breakthrough
treatments that halt the
rate of degeneration
— or even reverse it.
“Probably not
in my lifetime, but
absolutely, it can
happen,” Pielak said.
 
For now, the NIH
grant gives Pielak and
his team of student
researchers added
motivation to push on
with their work. Pielak
enjoys a reputation
on campus for being
especially generous
when it comes to giving students hands-on
laboratory experience.
“Scientists don’t spring forth fully
formed from Zeus’ head — scientists have
to be trained,” he said.
Matthew Dedmon ’02 worked with
Pielak for three years as an undergraduate
at UNC and majored in chemistry. Now
completing his post-doc at Harvard Medical
School, Dedmon says Pielak’s secret to
training talented scientists is the latitude he
gives them as students.
“Gary is a brilliant scientist who is
always ready to discuss a problem and always
has suggestions for a potential solution,”
Dedmon said. “What makes him a great
educator, however, is that he gives students
the chance to solve their own problems,
rather than merely dictating the work and
supplying the answers.”  •
ABOVE: Chemist Gary Pielak uses a large NMR spectrometer to
study proteins inside living cells. His award-winning work could advance
Parkinson’s research.
highly innovative
Steve Exum
12   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
In general, when doing science, the
casual/coincidental discussions are really
important.”
Chemists are also envisioning new
collaborative projects in the W. Lowry and
Susan S. Caudill Laboratories, their new
146,000-square-foot home connected
to the adjacent Kenan Laboratories by a
bridge and an open plaza [see sidebar on
	
page 13].
Lowry Caudill, a 1979 chemistry
alumnus and entrepreneur, gave a major
gift for the new building and the Royce
Murray Quadrangle, the largest of the
green spaces planned for the complex.
The Caudill building features
laboratories for chemists; a special “high
field room” with seven nuclear magnetic
resonance (NMR) spectrometers, which
are high-resolution imaging tools; a “clean
room” for nanoparticle synthesis in the lab
of Joseph DeSimone, William R. Kenan
Jr. Distinguished Professor; and numerous
common areas for students and faculty to
interact with each other.
Caudill agrees that one of the science
complex’s biggest assets is the way the
layout encourages conversations. “The
Royce Murray Quadrangle, for example, is
going to be a centerpiece to the complex
when it’s completed. It’s a place where
students and faculty can go outside for
lunch or conversation or throw Frisbees or
contemplate a problem,” he said.
The quadrangle honors Caudill’s
Carolina mentor, longtime chemistry
professor Royce Murray, whose 45-year
career has been marked by extraordinary
achievement as a scholar and educator.
Flying
Lessons
By Pamela Babcock
Why is it that below a certain size, tiny
insects no longer flap their wings to fly?
What can the flying habits of these insects
tell us about aerodynamics?
How do trees and plants withstand
high wind forces such as hurricanes or
tornadoes? And how does the flow of blood
through a fetal heart change as it grows and
develops?
These are a few of the subjects Laura
A. Miller, assistant professor of math-ematics,
has studied. A mathemati-cal
biologist, Miller researches how
animals and plants deal with fluid
dynamic forces in nature.
“The basic idea behind
mathematical biology is you use
the tools of mathematics to better
understand biology, and the other
idea is that biology can inspire new
problems in mathematics, so the two
fields really enhance each other,”
Miller explained.
Miller joined the Carolina
faculty in January, after serving as a
postdoctoral fellow at the University
of Utah in Salt Lake City. She
received her Ph.D. in math from
New York University in 2004; she
has an M.S. in zoology from Duke
University and a B.S. in biology from
the University of Chicago.
“I’ve always been torn between
studying aerodynamics and physics, and
biology and math,” Miller said.
In 2006, Miller won a Burroughs
Wellcome Fund Career Award at the
Scientific Interface, which provides $500,000
over five years to support research in
quantitative biological and medical sciences.
Miller’s laboratory and field work
may have applications for military flight
and medical healing. Her research on lift
generation in insects could inform the U.S.
Department of Defense as it develops micro-air
vehicles. Remote-controlled, insect-size
aircraft could be used for search and rescue,
military surveillance or the detection of
chemical and biological agents, for instance.
The physics of flight changes “as you
shrink it down to the size of an insect,”
Miller said
Plant wind-resistance studies could
have implications for manmade structures
and buildings, while knowledge about
early embryonic blood flow and heart
development could lead to “corrective tools
for congenital heart disease,” she explained.
Miller, a native of Marietta, Ohio,
said she was attracted to UNC because it
supports mathematical biology and offers
an integrated approach to problems with
synergies between the departments of
biology and genetics and the UNC School
of Medicine.
She is also excited about the new fluids
lab in Chapman Hall, which will include
both a large wave tank and a wind tunnel.
In Utah, Miller had access to a
miniature water tank, but looks forward
to using the much larger fluids lab in
Chapman Hall to continue her heart
development experiments.
“For a math department to have access
to a really large facility to do fluid dynamics
experiments is really unique,” Miller said.
She’ll also continue her plant
research with the wind tunnel in the new
interdisciplinary fluids lab. Miller previously
used the tunnel while she was a graduate
student at Duke. The tunnel, 2.8 meters tall
and 7 meters in length, was donated last year
to UNC by Nekton Research, based in
Durham, N.C.  •
ABOVE: Mathematical biologist Laura Miller studies
habits of tiny insects. She stands in a walkway connecting
Phillips Hall to Chapman Hall, which will promote
collaborations between scientists.
integrated approach
Dan Sears
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   13
The second phase of the Carolina
Physical Science Complex will include an
addition to Sitterson Hall for computer
science, scheduled for completion around
2008, and the replacement of Venable Hall
with two, new state-of-the-art buildings
to be completed around 2010. “New
Venable” will be occupied by chemistry
and marine sciences. Marine sciences will
move out of Chapman in late 2010 or
early 2011 — and that space will then
be filled by physics and astronomy, and
mathematics.
• Enhanced teaching
space
Both Caudill and Chapman add
improved teaching space in the project’s
first phase. All of the classes formerly taught
in Venable, including chemistry classes, are
now being taught in Chapman’s new lecture
halls and classrooms. And Carolina’s first class
on entrepreneurship for scientists is being
held in Caudill Labs. Holden Thorp, Kenan
Professor and chair of chemistry, and Caudill,
an adjunct professor of chemistry, are co-teaching
the class as part of the College
of Arts and Sciences’ involvement in the
Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative. Caudill
brings his experience as one of the founding
scientists of pharmaceutical development
company Magellan Laboratories, which he
and a partner grew to 600 employees, then
sold to Cardinal Health.
Labs for undergraduate astronomy
classes will also be taught in Chapman,
where telescopes will be set up on the
new rooftop observing deck. The new
Polymer
Professor
By JB Shelton
Protégé and first graduate student
of UNC chemistry professor Joseph M.
DeSimone, Valerie Sheares Ashby has
already garnered 10 patents for her research
on the design and synthesis of polymeric
biomaterials.
“It is a long, hard road from inside
the lab working with biological materials
to using them inside the human body, but
the impact can be significant,” said Ashby.
Significant, indeed, for folks interested in
feeling better, healing faster and avoiding
medicinal side effects.
Ashby, Bowman and Gordon Gray
Distinguished Professor, teaches organic
chemistry to sophomores and juniors and
introductory chemistry to freshmen.
The Ashby group, her intrepid band
of students, moved from antiquated Venable
Hall  in December to a 21st century
polymer chemical lab in the new W.
Lowry and Susan S. Caudill Laboratories.
“[Students] have the advantage of state-of-the-
art equipment and extensive working
space with no option but enhanced
efficiency,” Ashby said.
“We are primarily interested in
designing the properties of synthetic
polymer materials for multiple functions
in biological applications,” she explained.
Polymers are the building blocks of plastics,
created by linking many separate units
together. If you’ve ever hooked dozens of
heal and repair damaged eye tissue and
maintain sight. As new cells grow in, the
biodegradable scaffolding safely disappears.
She earned both her B.S. (’88) and
Ph.D. (’94) from UNC, and joined the
faculty as an associate professor in 2003. In
the interim, Ashby was a visiting scientist
at IBM and Eastman Chemical Company
and a National Science Foundation NATO
postdoctoral fellow. She was honored by
the American Chemical Society in 2002 as
one of the country’s top 12 young female
chemists.
Ashby explained her enjoyment of
her career — certainly one of intense and
intensive scientific expertise — with the
motto, “If it’s not fun, I’m not doing it.”  •
paper clips to form chains, you’ve created
the office-supply version of a polymer.
Ashby is tailoring biomaterials to
improve drug delivery in the body. “The
polymer materials become nontoxic carriers
with targeting agents that either hold or
attach to drugs. They prolong the drug’s
circulation time in the blood, control its rate
of release and only target a specific cell or
area of the human body,”  she said. Think,
for example, of quick-acting but continuing
relief of your headache without digestive
side effects.
Her tissue engineering and scaffolding
work are initial steps to facilitating cell
growth and alignment. One potential
application is regenerating retinal cells to
significant impact
ABOVE: Chemist Valerie Ashby has garnered 10 patents for her research on polymers. She and
her students will benefit from state-of-the-art equipment and extensive lab space in Caudill.
continued
Steve Exum
Microscope
Master
By Karen Stinneford
(BA ’87, MBA ’02)
Imagine you are an astronomer,
peering through a high-powered telescope
to examine an object on the moon about
the size of two tennis balls.
Then imagine what might happen to
your view if a dump truck lumbered by 20
feet in front of your telescope, vibrating it.
Lu-Chang Qin, an associate professor
in the department of physics and astronomy,
knows how vibration can blur one’s view
of another world — in his case, the not-so-distant
one involving atomic and molecular
particles that can only be viewed through
a highly sensitive microscope. As director
of the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Atomic
Imaging and Manipulation, Qin uses a
transmission electron microscope to study
tiny carbon nanotubes.
They are extremely thin — about
100,000 times narrower than a human
hair — and look like cylinders of balled-up
chicken wire. Because they are
extraordinarily strong and can conduct
heat and electricity, they could be useful
in a variety of ways — from making more
sensitive electronics to stronger concrete or
even warmer winter coats.
Studying the structure of carbon
nanotubes is critical to understanding their
potential applications. The transmission
electron microscope allows Qin and his
colleagues to magnify carbon nanotubes up
to 1 million times.
“Everything is made up of atoms, but
exactly how they are stacked is important
to the property and performance of
materials,” he explained. “It’s like building a
house with brick or blocks — depending
on which you use, you get a different house.
Any disturbance affects the resolution.”
When the Keck lab was housed
in Phillips Hall, vibration frequently
obstructed Qin’s view. Ordinary traffic was
a problem, but lumbering dump trucks and
cranes were even worse.
“We couldn’t always hear the
construction traffic, but we could tell it was
there because our resolution was affected,”
said Qin, who also is associate chair in
the curriculum in applied and materials
sciences.
This is why Qin was excited about
moving into Chapman Hall.  The
transmission electron microscope was
relocated to the basement of Chapman,
where Qin can conduct his research
essentially vibration free.
“The department worked very hard to
adapt the Phillips Hall space — still, it took
more than a year to get the microscope
to perform marginally,” Qin said. “The
new environment in Chapman is a big
improvement as far as I’m concerned.”  •
ABOVE: Lu-Chang Qin (pictured in his old Phillips Hall lab) uses an electron microscope to
study tiny carbon nanotubes. In the old lab, vibrations frequently interfered with his work.
14   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
extraordinarily strong
space allows the department of physics
and astronomy to teach these labs at the
optimal time — after dark. The deck at
Morehead Observatory was too small to
accommodate all of the students at once,
so classes were split into two observing
sessions, one at 7 p.m. and one at 8:30 p.m.
“Early in the fall and late in the spring, the
first class would be observing when it was
still partly light out,” said Bruce Carney,
Samuel Baron Professor of Astronomy and
senior associate dean for sciences. “That just
doesn’t work.”
The first floor of Chapman includes
a glass-walled room where astronomers,
aided by undergraduate and graduate
students, will remotely control telescopes
UNC uses in Chile and South Africa.
The room is four times the size of the
old observing room, but Carney said that
its best feature is that it puts astronomy
on display. “It’s planted right where the
students will be passing by on their
way to classes on the first floor,” he
said. “When one of the professors was
debugging it last fall, there were students
plastered up against the wall looking
in. I’m sure we’re going to draw more
students into the sciences this way.”
Expanded space and high-tech
facilities will also make it easier to attract
high-caliber  faculty. For example, marine
sciences will begin recruiting in fall 2007
for a specialist whose interests will provide a
bridge between the work of various faculty
in marine sciences and those in the applied
math group, Werner said.
“Moving into a 21st century building
and laboratories has completely changed
our outlook on the possibilities — on what
we think we can do. We have set our targets
higher.”  •
Dan Sears
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   15
Summer Scholars
Art for change
in Oaxaca, Mexico
Katie Almirall landed in the
middle of a major news story last
summer — a political uprising in
Oaxaca, Mexico — while pursuing
her SURF project on using public
art to raise awareness of human
rights issues.
In a backlash against Governor
Ulises Ruiz, teachers went on strike,
and people camped out in the streets
and organized protest marches.
“When I went out the
morning [of June 14] for my
Spanish class, there was tear gas in
the air, helicopters, and teachers were
running through the streets. It was
crazy,” said Almirall, a native of Oak
Island, N.C. “I didn’t tell my parents
until I got home.”
Never once did Almirall, a
senior studio art major pursuing a
minor in Spanish, think that maybe
she should go home. It was a ripe
environment for encouraging
artistic comment from the 16 young
students she taught in an art class
at the Center for Human Rights
in Oaxaca. Students discussed the
explosion of art going on around
them in reaction to the political
unrest: puppets, life-size dioramas,
banners and graffiti.
Guided by Almirall, students
brainstormed and created their own
interactive public art project: A huge,
inflatable hand out of clear painter’s
plastic, a hand large enough for
people to walk inside. The students
filled it with index cards full of facts
Exploring public art and
human rights in Mexico, studying
Russian wetlands policy, revealing
delays in North Carolina’s
appellate court process and dispelling
misconceptions about women of the
Middle East— these were a few of
the research projects undertaken last
summer, not by senior faculty, but by
Carolina undergraduate students.
Each year the Office of Under-graduate
Research in the College of
Arts and Sciences awards Summer
Undergraduate Research Fellowships
(SURFs) to 60 to 65 young scholars
to encourage discovery beyond the
classroom. Guided by faculty advis-ers,
undergraduates conduct research
that spans the fine arts, humanities,
business, sciences and social sciences.
Students share their findings each
spring at the Undergraduate Research
Symposium on campus.
“It’s exciting to carry out a
project of your own design as an
undergraduate,” said Patricia J.
Pukkila, director of the Office of
Undergraduate Research and a
professor of biology. “It’s also an
effective way to learn, to understand
the limits of conclusions and to gain
confidence in your abilities to address
future unsolved problems.”
The sampling of projects
featured were funded with $3,000
stipends from the Frances C. and
William P. Smallwood Foundation,
the College, General Administration’s
Undergraduate Research Expansion
Fund and the Robin March Hanes
Fund for Studio Art.
continued
B y K i m W e a v e r S p u r r ’ 8 8
Undergraduate
students Navigate
research at home
and abroad
16   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
about human rights and markers so that
passersby could write reactions of their
own. The giant hand was displayed in the
center of town.
“People were drawing on the
inflatable [hand] which was great — they
felt compelled to do that,” Almirall said.
UNC art professor Beth Grabowski,
who served as Almirall’s SURF adviser, was
impressed with her resourcefulness, vision
and initiative.
“In that kind of situation, you’re an
art director, an art teacher, a conversation
facilitator … there are lots of different skills
to draw upon,” Grabowski said.
Almirall says the SURF project helped
her to build bridges between the Oaxacan
art students and the Latino immigrants she
teaches in a Carrboro art class. The two
groups worked on art projects to exchange
with each other.
“Although there was a lot of political
conflict, I also got exposed to normal
life in Oaxaca. I got to know so many
interesting people who were involved in
the community,” she said.
Studying post-Soviet
wetlands policy
Dylan Trettin combined his interest
in environmental policy and history
to examine the impact of the fall of
communism on wetlands policy
in Russia, home to about 40
percent of the earth’s wetlands.
“Russia’s wetlands are an
immensely important global
resource, playing a significant
role in carbon absorption and
regulation of global warming,”
said Trettin, a junior international
studies and history major from
Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Trettin spent the summer in
Moscow interviewing scientists
and governmental officials,
poring over policy briefs and
visiting a wetlands research site
with scholars from the Russian
Academy of Sciences.
He hypothesized that Russia’s
democratic transition had improved the
ability of the scientific community to
impact wetlands policy. His findings weren’t
quite that simple.
Major funding cuts, layoffs and
a market plagued by corruption are
hampering professionals’ ability to shape
policy, Trettin said.
“The collapse [of the Soviet Union]
was just so chaotic, with people losing
jobs and the government changing. It
wasn’t that the old system was better, but
it has taken time to rebuild something
comparable,” he said.
 
Traveling abroad for the SURF
project gave Trettin a different perspective
once he returned to Carolina last fall for
his international studies courses.
“It was an interesting experience
coming back and sitting in on classes
about globalization … dealing with
broader issues in the context of your own
research,” he said.
Retired Asian studies professor Steven
Levine, faculty adviser on the project, said
Trettin has an extraordinary sense of self-confidence
and maturity.
“I felt like it wasn’t so much
a student-teacher relationship
— we were exploring things
together,” Levine said. “[The
partnership] was very conducive
to learning.”
Trettin is continuing his
work abroad this spring on
an internship with the U.S.
Embassy in Russia, in the Office
of Environment, Science and
Technology.
Anatomy of delay
in the state court
of appeals
Sam Hartzell said only a
college student would spend his
summer poring over 1,636 court
cases decided in 2005 by the
North Carolina Court of Appeals.
The junior political
science and philosophy major
from Raleigh, N.C., wanted to
determine the speed with which cases
receive appellate review in the state
system — and to compare those numbers
with American Bar Association (ABA)
guidelines.
It turns out his SURF project
yielded major findings. Hartzell found
that in 2005, the state Court of Appeals
fell substantially short of the ABA
recommendations. It was data that Hartzell
Katie Almirall
Dylan Trettin
Dan Sears
Dan Sears
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   17
said the National Center for State Courts
confirmed had never been gathered before.
Political science professor Georg
Vanberg admitted he was a bit skeptical at
first that Hartzell could complete such a
daunting project.
“I wasn’t sure an undergraduate could
pull this off in a summer,”  Vanberg said.
“Hopefully he’ll turn this into an honors
thesis. All of our undergraduate theses are
good, genuine pieces of scholarship — but
I think Sam’s will be a standout piece.”
The ABA recommends that 75
percent of all cases be resolved within 290
days from filing the notice of appeal, with
95 percent of all cases resolved within one
year of filing. Breaking his preliminary
findings down into data on civil and
criminal cases, Hartzell found:
•  The North Carolina Court of
Appeals resolved 75 percent of criminal
cases within 21 months, 2.1 times as long as
the ABA guideline;
•  The Court resolved 75 percent of
civil cases within 18 months, 1.8 times the
ABA guideline;
•  The Court resolved 95 percent of
criminal cases within 32 months, 2.6 times
the ABA guideline; and
•  The Court resolved 95 percent of
civil cases within 24 months, 2 times the
ABA guideline.
Hartzell said the delays were
occurring even though the Court
judges issued significantly more
rulings than the national average.
“The research suggests
that cutting appeal times may
be more a matter of trying to
change how things are done
rather than changing how hard
people work,” he said. “If the
Court judges were not unusually
productive, the backlog would be
longer.”
Hartzell hopes to publish
the research and share it with the
Court. He adds that working on
the SURF project was “the best
summer job I’ve ever had.”
Misconceptions about
women of the Middle East
Marium Chaudhry, a native of
Pakistan, wanted to dispel some of the
misconceptions that Westerners have about
women of the Middle East. So she decided
to go straight to the source: surveying her
peers at the University of Jordan.
The senior journalism and
international studies major spent the
summer in Amman for her SURF project.
She interviewed 50 college students, 19
men and 31 women, about their views on
culture, religion, gender roles, education
and lifestyles of women in the Middle East.
Chaudhry said it’s generally presumed
that women living under a Muslim
government are suppressed and oppressed
because of their gender.
But even Chaudhry admits she
was surprised by one of her findings:
50 percent of the students surveyed said
that the government should enforce
women wearing the hijab or “the veil.” She
found that:
•  50 percent of the participants said
wearing the veil (described as head-to-toe
covering) was extremely important; and
•  34 percent said that Islam requires
a woman to be modest but does not require
a woman to wear the veil.
“Most of the women I spoke to
felt [wearing the veil] was a part of their
culture, less a part
of their religion
than their culture,”
she said.
Chaudhry
also found that
76 percent of
those surveyed said
they would like to
incorporate some
ideas of the West
within their own
lifestyle, such as the
freedom to wear
what they want,
and more work
opportunities and
education choices.
The SURF
experience further whetted Chaudhry’s
appetite for digging deeper for the
facts. She hopes to combine her love of
journalism and international study and to
get a job with Al Jazeera, a broadcast media
company based in the Middle East.
Chaudhry asked sociology professor
Charles Kurzman, an expert on the Middle
East and Islam, to help her formulate survey
questions for her project.
“She’s an enthusiastic student who’s a
real self-starter,” Kurzman said. “It was an
ambitious project on a topic that’s of interest
to many academics as well as to the public
at large, the issue of Islamic identity.”  •
Sam Hartzell
Marium Chaudhry
Dan Sears
Dan Sears
18   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
It was once
unthinkable
that women would occupy a prominent and
permanent place at the nation’s first public
university, let alone become the subject of
a serious academic field in which Carolina
would be in the vanguard. But today, 30
years after the women’s studies curriculum
was planted in Chapel Hill, the program has
thrived, reaching some 2,000 students a year
in 118 classes across the arts and sciences. Its
graduates enjoy successful careers in business,
government, nonprofits and academia. And its
core faculty — a diverse blend of established
scholars and rising stars — are enhancing public
understanding of the role of women and gender
in archaeology, anthropology, cinema, history,
literature, government, public policy, public
health, sociology and science in the United
States and around the world.
It wasn’t always so. In the beginning,
UNC was, like the majority of other institutions
of higher learning in the country, a male bastion.
By 1897, a century after the University’s
founding, UNC trustees admitted five women
for advanced courses; however, they would
never appear in a class picture or participate
in a public graduation ceremony.
The die had been cast, though, and the
number of women on campus would gradually
grow until the prevailing norms were turned
upside down and inside out. During the
1960s, women’s pedestals were replaced with
soapboxes in a wave of activism around a host
of issues, including the Vietnam War, Civil
Rights and equal rights for women.
By the 1976-77 academic year, the
National Organization for Women (NOW)
was well established. The U.S. military and air
force academies admitted their first women
cadets. The Episcopal Church began ordaining
women to the priesthood. And that year,
Carolina reached a major milestone of its own:
For the first time, female students outnumbered
male students.
The new majority was not a cause for
celebration in every quarter. The Chapel Hill
Newspaper predicted that “the state’s future
business and political leaders would no longer
be predominantly UNC graduates” and “there
would be a consequent decline in public and
private support,” according to Pamela Dean’s
,
women s
studies
turns 30
,
women s
studies
turns 30
Carolina is a leader in examining
the role of gender across disciplines
B y L i s a H . T o w l e
Steve Exum
Women’s Studies core faculty (clockwise from left) Michele Berger, Jane Burns, Karen
Booth, Joanne Hershfield and Barbara Harris (seated). Not pictured: Silvia Tomaskova.
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   19
Women on the Hill: A History of Women at
The University of North Carolina.
Such skepticism did not deter those who
demanded a different paradigm. Education
professor Mary Turner Lane, an unfaltering yet
judicious advocate for the rights of both female
students and faculty, wrote to then Chancellor J.
Carlyle Sitterson that “today’s students are vastly
different from those of our generation” and
would expect to assume public leadership roles.
With Title IX of the federal Education
Amendment mandating an end to discrimina-tion
on the basis of gender in admission,
financial aid and housing, women sought to
permanently transform the academy. They
began negotiating for a course of study that
would, in keeping with the goals of a liberal
arts education, systematically and
accurately represent the experiences,
roles and contributions of women
within human culture.
An ad hoc committee of
the UNC Faculty Council formed
to study the matter. There were
practical issues to address, of course:
How would such a program be
structured? What about its cost?
But there were also some telling
exchanges. Again, from Women on
the Hill: “When Kenan Professor
of Philosophy Maynard Adams
wondered if enough students would
want to major in such a program,
Margaret O’Connor (an English
professor who had taught the first Carolina
course on ‘women in literature’ in 1972), threw
the question back to him. How many majors
did his department have? Rather sheepishly he
reported at the next meeting that there were
only nine. Adams and the rest of the committee
concluded that, since a major university without
a philosophy department was unthinkable,
programs should not be judged on the number
of majors they might attract.”
Then came the charge that women’s
studies would have no academic merit, and
was merely a passing fad rooted in politics. Joan
Wallach Scott, who joined the UNC history
faculty in 1974 and is now at the Institute for
Advanced Studies at Princeton University,
countered that what “began as a political
movement has become an intellectually
legitimate field of inquiry (addressing) issues
of importance to historians, sociologists,
economists, anthropologists and psychologists”
and therefore belonged at a major research
university. In one sure stroke, Scott had created
a leitmotif for the Carolina approach to
women’s studies.
In 1977, the committee’s recommenda-tions
were accepted and women’s studies at
UNC began as an academic program in the
College of Arts and Sciences. Mary Turner
Lane was named program director, a part-time
position. She and Scott immediately set about
developing its first course, “Introduction to
Women’s Studies,” taught to some 50 under-graduates
in 1977-78.
The program continued to attract
students. When Barbara Harris arrived on
campus in January of 1989, she had two
mandates: teach history and lead the women’s
studies program to the next level. It would
take three years for the Board of Governors to
approve the move to a full-fledged curriculum.
“By that time, I had created a significant
network across campus so cross-listing courses
was no problem,” recalls Harris, a historian of
late medieval/early modern English women.
“In fact, other departments felt affiliating with
women’s studies was a recruitment tool.”
They were right. Senior Shannon Fyfe,
with a double major in music and political
science and a minor in women’s studies, took
her first cross-listed course (in sociology) her
first year at UNC. “It was then that I fell in love
with looking at the world in a different way, a
multi-dimensional way,” explains Fyfe. That
led her to apply to the University’s joint continued
graduate program in law and social work.
Today women’s studies has six core
faculty engaged in teaching and research
[see Who’s Who in Women’s Studies page
20]. In addition, the program lists more
than 100 affiliated faculty in 29 academic
departments in the College and the
professional schools, including African and
Afro-American studies, American studies,
anthropology, art, biology, communication
studies, comparative literature, economics,
English, geography, history, philosophy,
political science, psychology, religious
studies, romance languages and sociology.
 
Women’s studies offers a B.A. degree and
a graduate minor. About 36 undergraduates
major in women’s studies and 25 more take
enough courses for an academic
minor in the field. Many courses
are filled to capacity, including
“Women’s Studies 101,” which
attracts about 250 students each
semester and another 50 students
in the summer.
Carolina’s program also
includes a women-in-science
initiative — led by archaeologist
Silvia Tomaskova — that engages
students in ethnographic studies
of women in science and co-sponsors
guest lectures by
prominent female scientists.
In addition, women’s studies
has a strong internship and public
service component providing opportunities
for Carolina students in about 25 local
organizations.
“Our program’s growth and profile have
secured the reputation of women’s studies at
UNC as one of the strongest in the nation,”
said Harris, the chair. “We are regularly used
as a standard for other universities that are
expanding or institutionalizing their own
women’s studies programs.”
A priority for 2007-08 is to fill the
Druscilla French Distinguished Professorship
in Women’s Studies, funded by Drucie French
(’71 AB English, ’78 MA Communication
Studies) and her husband, Stephen Cumbie
(’70 BS Chemistry, ’73 MBA). It is the first
endowed professorship in women’s studies
at Carolina.
Next year, women’s studies will move into the 1901 Smith building, the first
at UNC named for a woman — benefactor Mary Ann Smith of Raleigh.
Steve Exum
20 • Spring 2007 • Carolinaarolinaarolinaarolinaarolinaarolinaarolina Artsrtsrts & Sciencesciencesciencesciencesciencesciencesciences
French’s fund-raising efforts also led to the creation of the Women’s Studies Faculty Fund, which supports the research, writing and professional activities of the curriculum’s professors. French serves on the executive committee of the Carolina Women’s Leadership Council and served on UNC’s Board of Visitors from 2000 to 2004.
Alumnus Matt Ezzell captures an important aspect of Carolina’s approach to women’s studies. After coming to UNC in 1995 and discovering none of his choices for major study fit quite right, Ezzell took a sociology course cross-listed with women’s studies and “suddenly found a language to make sense of the entirety of life.” He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in women’s studies, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in UNC’s department of sociology. He says he would like to teach in a university women’s studies program.
Ezzell’s favorite quote comes from the activist, author and educator bell hooks because it speaks to his belief that the feminist perspective benefits everyone: “To be ‘feminist’ in any authentic use of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.”
This expansive view is reflected in the content of the women’s studies curriculum. Joanne Hershfield, a scholar and filmmaker who specializes in the role of women in film, uses quotes from Bella Abzug and clips from the film “Erin Brokovich” to help students focus on the varied relationships between feminism and environmentalism during a “Women’s Studies 101” lecture.
The ongoing dialogue in these classes is the important thing, says UNC history professor Crystal Feimster, who graduated from Carolina in 1994 with a double major in history and women’s studies.
“There’s not necessarily a space outside the academy to debate these issues and to figure out how to create a world where we all have the same opportunities regardless of gender, race and class,” says Feimster.
The interdisciplinary approach to curriculum, coupled with internships and international research programs, have put women’s studies in a good place.
Michele Berger, a political scientist who joined the women’s studies faculty in 2002, says, “I’m part of a legacy of scholars who made UNC a leader in women’s studies.”
As a rising star in the study of historically excluded “outsider” voices — such as women of color or women who have been stigmatized by AIDS — she wants to help take the program to the next level.
Berger acknowledges that she and others of her generation have their work cut out for them. “We now have a global, multi-feminist, multi-racial movement. Understanding what it means to place women’s lives at the center of all that, and to also be aware of the inevitable transformation of men’s roles, will take a lot of questioning and analysis and commitment,” she says. “It’s very exciting!”
Women’s studies faculty at Carolina are also excited about moving next year to the Smith Building on Cameron Avenue. The historic structure was named for 19th century benefactor Mary Ann Smith of Raleigh, and completed in 1901, long before anyone envisioned a women’s studies program for Carolina or any other university. Smith left half her estate to Carolina — supporting construction and endowing the Mary Ann Smith Professorships in Chemistry, the oldest continuous professorships at UNC.
How fitting that the women’s studies program will celebrate the start of its next 30 years by settling into the first building on campus named to honor a woman whose visionary philanthropy was considered ahead of her time. •
To learn more about ways to support
women’s studies at Carolina, contact Emily Stevens at (919) 843-5285 or emily.stevens@unc.edu.
Women, Global Science, reveals conceptual flaws in internationally funded AIDS prevention efforts in Africa that focus on changing the behavior of women without addressing the power imbalances involved in unsafe sex practices.• E. Jane Burns, acting chair (Ph.D. French Literature and Medieval Studies, University of California at Berkeley), explores gender, sexuality and material culture in medieval texts. Her book, Courtly Love Undressed, is a study of courtly love and clothing in 13th century French culture. She also teaches courses on feminist and gender theory and women’s spirituality across cultures.• Barbara J. Harris, chair (Ph.D. History, Harvard University), is the author of four books and many journal articles. She is now writing a book on aristocratic English women from 1450 to 1550. She teaches classes on English history during the Tudor and Stuart periods and English and European women's history. Harris received the Mary Turner Lane Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Lives of Women at UNC in 1994.• Joanne Hershfield (Ph.D. Radio, Television and Film, University of Texas-Austin) is a documentary filmmaker and an expert on women in cinema in Mexico. She has published three books on Mexican films and directed/ co-produced several documentaries including studies of Latinos in North Carolina, women in leadership in N.C. and women in Japan.• Silvia Tomaskova (Ph.D. Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley) studies Paleolithic settlements of central and eastern Europe as well as the historical invention of shamans. She directs the women-in-science initiative and teaches courses on gender and science, women in scientific professions, gender and culture, and European prehistory and archaeological theory. •
who s who in
women s studies
A glimpse of the core faculty in the women’s studies curriculum hints at the program’s strengths and breadth.• Michele Tracy Berger, (Ph.D. Political Science, University of Michigan) won a top-book award from the American Political Science Association for Workable Sisterhood, her study of the lives of 16 stigmatized women — former drug users and sex workers with HIV — who became politically active in Detroit. She teaches classes about women of color in contemporary U.S. social movements and the portrayal of African American women in the media.• Karen M. Booth (Ph.D. Sociology, University of Wisconsin at Madison) is a rising expert on the impact of globalization on reproductive health and rights. Her book, Local
,
,clashes too frequently
with the predominately
Sunni Iraqi Police, a
poorly developed force.
 
Indeed, 2006 was slated
as “the Year of the Iraqi
Police.”  Yet, as the Study
Group notes, we have
failed to develop an
effective police force.  In
Fallujah, many police
facilitate insurgent
activity.
When the Iraqi
insurgents’ focus of
effort shifted from
attacks on American and
Iraqi Security Forces
to attacks on fellow
citizens, the time passed
when more U.S. troops
on the ground would
improve the situation.
 
We have never made
significant gains stopping
Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence,
and it will continue
unabated regardless of
troop strength — unless
organic institutions
are strengthened and
a sense of national
identity forged.  The Iraqi government
and people will
ultimately determine
whether a unified
and peaceful Iraq
will be a reality.
The Iraq Study
Group presents a
“least-worst” option
in Iraq.  There is
no panacea to the
complex concoction
of competing insurgencies, sectarian
violence, terrorism, corruption and
IRAQ:
A view from the ground
By Marine Corps Captains Rye Barcott ’01
and Croft Young ’95
The first step to recovery is to
admit we have a problem.  The Iraq
Study Group report admits we have a
“grave and deteriorating” problem in
Iraq.  Additionally, the new Secretary of
Defense, Robert Gates, acknowledged we
are not “winning” in Iraq.
As Marines who returned from
Fallujah last spring, we welcome this
candor, though we wish it had come
sooner.  We have not been “winning”
in Iraq since the months immediately
following our invasion, when we
disbanded the Iraqi Army and failed
for months to acknowledge incipient
insurgencies popping up across the
country.  A year later, the Abu Ghraib
scandal further advanced the radicalization
of local Iraqis, many of whom have since
adopted a jihadist ideology and will be
life-long enemies of the United States.
Key to the strategy proposed by the
Study Group is an increase in the number
of military advisers assigned to training the
Iraqi Army and Police.  If this strategy is
adopted, the training must become much
more of a priority.  However, military
advisers alone cannot
build government
institutions.  Are we
simply training Iraq’s
three largest ethnic
groups to kill each
other?
We both worked
closely with Iraqi Police
and Army units.  The
Iraqi Army in Fallujah,
many of whose units perform admirably,
is predominantly Kurdish and Shi’ite, and
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   21
First Person F i r st P e r s o n
criminality.  As Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn
rule says, “If you break it, you own it.”  We
have a responsibility to at least leave Iraq in
the best shape possible. Perhaps the release
of the Study Group report will be a step in
the right direction.  •
— College alumni Croft Young
(international studies) and Rye Barcott (peace,
war and defense/international studies) have
served active duty in Iraq. Young served two tours
there, most recently commanding a reconnaissance
platoon in Fallujah. Barcott provided written
testimony to the Iraq Study Group.
TOP: Marine Captain Rye Barcott ’01 has served in Iraq and the Horn
of Africa. BOTTOM: Marine Captain Croft Young ’95 has served two
tours in Iraq, most recently in Fallujah.
“We have not been ‘winning’
in Iraq since the months
immediately following our
invasion, when we disbanded
the Iraqi Army and failed
for months to acknowledge
incipient insurgencies
popping up across the country.” [ [
Spotlight S p o t l i g h t
policymakers overseas. The goal
was to build intellectual bridges
between the United States and
the rest of the world.
Samulski helped
organize two transatlantic
conferences on “health and
nanotechnology” involving
both scientists and policymakers. The first
one, on therapeutic advances, was held in
Virginia, and the second, on the social and
institutional ramifications of nanotechnology,
was in Italy.
“It was a great experience for me,
and I worked very hard,” Samulski said. “I
learned to appreciate how important it is to
communicate science to non-scientists.”
He also helped organize four bilateral
conferences — around the central theme of
“Global Dialogues on Emerging Science and
Technology” — on quantum computing (in
Germany), genomics and infectious diseases
(in China), biotechnology and agriculture
(in India) and bioinformatics (in Brazil).
“The State Department would pay
for 15 of the very best U.S. scientists in a
particular area to go to a country and meet
with 15 of their scientists and about 100
graduate students,” Samulski explained.
“We wanted to get access to the next
generation of scientists in these countries,”
he said, noting that U.S. universities are
facing increased competition from overseas
institutions. Each trip involved intense travel
to scientific institutes. In China, for example,
he visited 27 laboratories in three weeks.
Working in the State Department
was both intriguing and fun, Samulski said.
And the social life in D.C. was considerably
more active than in Chapel Hill, he joked,
describing embassy parties, Capitol Hill
briefings and receptions, and jetting around
the world.
He occasionally found himself face
to face with a major newsmaker. He met
Secretary Rice two times and ran into then
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in
the hallway. Samulski also watched with
amazement as President Bush tried to
persuade a roomful of skeptical university
presidents that teaching critical languages is
essential to the security of the U.S.
Samulski was most impressed by the
State Department’s little-known foreign
service officers, civil servants and analysts,
who, he said, “do the demanding work of
maintaining and staying abreast of foreign
affairs, at far less pay than they could make
outside of government.”
He especially enjoyed surprising
his non-scientist peers on C Street by
accurately predicting the actual date and
outcome of North Korea’s first nuclear
missile launch last summer.
“I had a real coup there,” Samulski
recalled. “Despite the seriousness of this,
our office had a pool on when it would
be launched. These people are all experts
on Asia, and they take their work seriously,
and I didn’t know a lot about North Korea.
So I was a little reluctant to enter the pool.
But, at everyone’s insistence, I made an
estimated guess and predicted the launch
would fail no matter what date it occurred,
and then I predicted that it would take
place on July 5 in Korea, because that’s July
4 in the U.S., and I thought that would be
just the kind of message that Kim Jong Il
would want to send.”
The test launch occurred just the
way Samulski had predicted. “It was just a
scientist’s intuition,” he said.
When Samulski returned to work
after the launch, he said, “People were
pointing at me whispering, ‘That’s the guy.’
I think they started wondering if maybe
they should have more scientists in the
State Department.”  •
Beyond the
Classroom
Professor Samulski goes
to Washington
By Dee Reid
Chemist Edward Samulski didn’t
know what to expect when he was one of
only five scientists nationwide selected to
spend the past year at the U.S. State Depart-ment
as a Jefferson Science Fellow. After all,
what could a nanotechnology expert — and
an “independent Democrat”— find to do
on Condoleezza Rice’s turf?
Plenty, it turned out, as the Cary C.
Boshamer Distinguished Professor fulfilled
two very different assignments, one in
which he needed to suppress information
and the other in which he was supposed
to disseminate information. Inside the
State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence
and Research, he worked on classified
projects that he can’t describe, except to say
that he was asked to assess Asia’s progress
in nanotechnology. That’s the study and
manipulation of matter at the atomic scale
— an emerging science with applications in
medicine, energy, electronics and security.
The atmosphere in the bowels of
the State Department where intelligence
work occurs was quiet, dark and ascetic,
Samulski reports. Signs warn employees not
to converse in the hallways. He got used to
wearing a dark suit and tie every day, locking
his computer hard drive in a vault each night
and not discussing work with colleagues
either in or out of the State Department.
His other assignment in the Office of
the Science and Technology Advisor to the
Secretary was not at all hush-hush. Samulski
traveled around the world to promote the
mutual exchange of scientific information,
in order to stay abreast of scientific activity
globally and to strengthen America’s
relationships. He encouraged U.S. scientists
to share information with counterparts and
22   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
Chemist Ed Samulski’s State Department work took him to
China for a conference on genomics and infectious diseases.
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   23
Highlights H i g h l i g h ts
Drew Levinson ’82 at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill
Thousands of miles away in the
middle of Muslim territory in the Middle
East, CBS Newspath correspondent Drew
Levinson started thinking about his Jewish
childhood in Robeson County, North
Carolina.
Over a three-year period, he had
covered skirmishes between Israelis and
Palestinians, interviewed the head of Hamas
in Gaza, covered Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping in Pakistan and
reported on the Iraq War from Kuwait and
Afghanistan.
“In 2000, when I was at PLO
headquarters interviewing the head of
Hamas, he welcomed me and was very
cordial,” said Levinson, who graduated
from Carolina
in 1982 with an
undergraduate
degree in peace,
war and defense.
“Then we sat
down to do the
interview and he
said, ‘My goal is to
wipe Israel off the
face of the map and kill the hated Jews.’
“I thought about being a young
American Jewish reporter working for a
national broadcast company, and it really,
really hit me. I kept thinking more about
[my heritage]. In all, in the history of
Robeson County, there have only been
about 100 Jews there. And it’s now fewer
than five. So I wanted to remember them.”
Levinson, who lives in New York
City, had never made a documentary film,
although he had been covering national
news for CBS since 1997. Serendipity led
him to childhood acquaintance Melinda
Weinstein, now an English professor at
A Lasting Impression
CBS journalist pays tribute to his heritage
growing up Jewish in Robeson County
By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88
Lawrence Technological
University in Detroit. They
teamed up with Levinson’s
friend Lew Pincus, a West Palm Beach
videographer. The team spent 2 ½ years
roaming the back roads of Robeson
County.
The result is a 47-minute documentary,
“Lasting Impressions,” a tribute to the
Jewish people and their Christian neighbors,
who grew up in harmony in the buckle
of the South’s Bible Belt, in a community
almost evenly divided between blacks,
whites and Lumbee Indians.
It is also a very personal story, as
Levinson and Weinstein talk about their
own families in the film, while chatting over
black-eyed peas, fried
chicken and collard
greens at Candy
Sue’s Café.
“One of the
things we talk about
in the film is we tried
to fit in, but at the
same time, to stand
out,” Levinson said.
“Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all honey
and roses. There was hidden anti-Semitism,
but we never had the overt anti-Semitism
I’ve witnessed in bigger cities.”
The film has been shown at dozens
of film festivals, synagogues and museums.
Levinson came home to UNC last fall
to screen the film as part of the Carolina
Center for Jewish Studies’ lecture series.
When he’s not flying around the world
250 days out of the year covering stories
for CBS, Levinson works on marketing the
film, a true “labor of love.”
As a broadcast journalist, Levinson
has covered major news stories including
Hurricane Katrina, the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, the execution of Oklahoma bomber
Timothy McVeigh and the Columbine
High School shootings.
He fell into his love of the broadcast
medium early, working as a teen-age disc
jockey at WFMO radio in Fairmont. When
he got accepted to Carolina, Levinson said
his father, who is now deceased, read the
course catalogue and told him he needed to
major in peace, war and defense.
“He said, ‘You can take courses in
journalism and learn how to write — but
you better know what in the hell you’re
talking about,’” Levinson said.
Levinson followed his father’s advice,
becoming captivated with military history
courses taught by former professor James
Leutze, now chancellor emeritus at UNC-Wilmington.
“Peace, war and defense has helped
me tremendously in news,” he said. “The
only way you can look at the future is to
look back at history. I understand military
strategies and tactical movements. I can’t
imagine a different major for me.”
As a general assignment reporter,
Levinson never knows when he wakes up
in the morning where he’s going to end up
at night. He once hopped on nine planes in
14 days.
“A perfect example was when I woke
up one morning in New York, got sent to
Washington to work there for the day, and
by that night I was put on an airplane to
Rome.
“You never find me in the same place
for long — but I’ve got a lot of frequent
flier points.”  •
“I thought about being a young American
Jewish reporter working for a national
broadcast company, and it really, really
hit me. I kept thinking more about [my
heritage]. In all, in the history of Robeson
County, there have only been about 100
Jews there. And it’s now fewer than five.
So I wanted [ to remember them.” ]
Justin Smith
24   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
Highlights
If Joseph Haydn’s “Surprise
Symphony” woke its audience, then the
William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust’s news
of an $8 million gift to music at Carolina
brought a deafening ovation to Hill Hall.
On Dec. 15, music department faculty,
staff, students and friends gathered in the
rotunda of the 100-year-old building to
hear that the Kenan Trust’s gift will create
16 full music scholarships for undergraduates,
and will complete funding for a new music
building in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The new facility will be called the Kenan
Music Building.
The gift, the largest ever received by
an academic department in the College,
includes a $4 million endowment for Kenan
Music Scholarships and $4 million for
the building now under construction on
Columbia Street between Hanes Art Center
and Abernethy Hall.
Chancellor James Moeser, a concert
organist, described the trust’s gift as
“transformative for music at Carolina.”
“The William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable
Trust has long been a leading patron of
the arts, through its support of the arts
faculty, the department of dramatic art, the
Carolina Performing Arts Endowment and
now the department of music,” Moeser
said. “Through a premier merit scholarship
in music and the naming gift for the new
music building, the trust not only ensures the
continuing vitality of musical performance
at Carolina, but elevates and enhances the
quality and reputation of the department of
music and the University.”
Carolina’s music department has seen
substantial growth in recent years, though
its facilities are more than 75 years old, lack
adequate space and have poor acoustics.
Herbert Hoover was U.S. president in 1930
when the music department moved to its
A ‘Transformative’ Gift
Kenan Trust gives $8 million for music scholarships, new building
By Del Helton
current home in Hill Hall, built first as the
University library in 1907. The number of
music majors has tripled in the past decade
to 250 students, and hundreds more attend
class, practice and perform in the building
each year.
“This gift represents the intersection
of two very important interests the Kenan
family has nurtured for generations: first, is
a dedication to excellence at the University
of North Carolina and; second, a love and
appreciation for the fine arts,
especially music,” said Richard
Krasno, executive director of
the Kenan Trust.
“It is our hope that
the exceptional young
women and men who will
be recipients of the Kenan
Music Scholarships will
not only benefit from the
extraordinary education they
will receive at UNC, but that
the UNC community at-large
will benefit from their
talent in our midst.”
Not a traditional conservatory
While the trust has long supported
faculty and facilities at Carolina, the
scholarships represent its most generous
gift directed to students. The first four
scholarships will be awarded to students
entering in fall 2007, with four scholars
to be named to each subsequent
undergraduate class.
The Kenan Music Scholarships cover
in-state tuition, student fees, room and
board, and provide a $6,000 allowance
for study abroad, work with a particular
performer, internships with elite music
groups, attendance at music festivals and
other musical events, and travel to audition
for graduate school programs. Kenan music
scholars will also benefit from faculty
mentoring and peer counseling.
Within hours after learning of the
gift, department chair Tim Carter began
planning for the first class of Kenan
scholars, which included the appointment
of professor Brent Wissick as faculty
coordinator for the program.
“We immediately contacted North
Carolina high schools to announce this
incredible opportunity,” said Carter, David G.
Frey Distinguished Professor of Music. “After
auditioning 250 students through February,
we’ll have a short list of candidates in early
March. These students will participate in
additional interviews with faculty before we
name the first four Kenan scholars.”
Next year, with time to mount a
broader publicity campaign, Carter hopes
to create a significantly larger applicant pool
from the state and across the nation.
“Carolina is not a traditional
conservatory, and that’s a good thing,” he said.
“We are looking for students who want the
full experience of performance and academic
study, of bringing together the benefits
The new Kenan Music Building and new scholarships
for students are being made possible with an $8 million gift
from the Kenan Charitable Trust.
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   25
Highlights
of doing and thinking. Our liberal arts
emphasis brings together two sides of the
brain, and our students are innovative in all
of their academic as well as artistic pursuits.”
Great faculty, great students,
great facilities
The trust��s gift also completes funding
for the first of two building phases planned
for the site. Costs for the first phase are
estimated to be $31.4 million, with $19.8
million coming from the 2000 Higher
Education Bond Referendum, $7.6 million
from University sources and $4 million from
the Kenan Trust.
With a 2008 completion date, the
Kenan Music Building will provide a space
with proper acoustics now lacking in Hill
Hall. Designed by architect Michael Dennis
with Perkins & Will of Charlotte, the
100,000 square-foot building will feature a
large instrumental rehearsal hall, 18 faculty
studios for applied teaching, 100- and 45-
seat classrooms, three piano studios, three
ensemble rehearsal rooms, three practice
rooms, a world music room, a digital
theory laboratory, a recording studio and a
percussion suite. The large rehearsal hall will
accommodate practices for the University’s
biggest ensembles,
including the 300-
member marching band.
The second phase,
slated for construction
when funding
becomes available,
will feature a 650-seat
concert hall with a
stage large enough to
accommodate a full
symphony orchestra but
with acoustics intimate
enough for chamber
music, additional classrooms and piano
practice rooms, as well as public space for
the arts community.
The Kenan Music Building is a major
step forward in the University’s planned Arts
Common, which aims to elevate the quality
and reach of the arts on campus to the local
community and across North Carolina.
“Not only do we have great faculty
and great students, we will now have a great
facility,” Carter said.
 
For musicologists such as Carter, and
for his performance colleagues, having a
new space where music comes to life is
equivalent to a well-equipped laboratory for
scientists.
 
 
 
 
“I couldn’t be more delighted with
this remarkable gift from the Kenan Trust,”
Carter said.  “It identifies two of our most
pressing needs: outstanding facilities fit for
music in the 21st century and support for
the remarkable creative and academic talents
of the best undergraduates wanting to study
at Carolina. Moreover, the wholly innovative
and unique Kenan Music Scholars Program
will allow our most talented performers to
combine practice and theory at the highest
level, both within the semester and outside
of it. Hark the sound!”  •
Grace notes
•  The Kenan family’s ties to the
University date to 1790 when James
Kenan, a member of the University’s
first Board of Trustees, contributed $25
to the construction of Old East, the first
state university building in the nation. A
member of the North Carolina General
Assembly, James Kenan helped draft
and pass the University’s charter.
•  The various Kenan family
philanthropies have given the University
nearly $60 million during the Carolina
First Campaign, a comprehensive,
multi-year, private fund-raising
campaign to support Carolina’s vision
of becoming the nation’s leading
university. More than half of that total
has been designated for the College of
Arts and Sciences, the oldest and largest
academic unit at Carolina.
•  Carolina’s is the second-oldest
Ph.D.-granting music department in the
United States. Columbia University is
the oldest.
•  Llamas paraded down the
center aisle in Hill Hall auditorium
during the 2006 Festival on the Hill’s
performance of composer John Cage’s
Theatre Piece No. 1.  The biennial
festival celebrates a time or place in
music composition, combining concerts
with symposia. In 2008, the theme will
be Latin American music. By 2010,
festival planners hope the venue will be
the new concert hall. •
ABOVE: (from left) Rishard Krasno, executive director of the Kenan
Trust; Chancellor James Moeser; music department chair Tim Carter;
and Thomas Kenan III look over a model of the Kenan Music Building.
Dan Sears
Highlights
26   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
The psychol-ogy
department
lost two outstand-ing
former faculty
members when
David Galinsky and
Grant Dahlstrom
died last year. Psy-chology
department
chair Karen Gil is
hoping graduate
fellowships established to honor them will forever
link the two professors to the field they loved and
support future graduate students in psychology
for many years to come.
Raising funds for the David and Maeda
Galinsky Graduate Student Fellowship and the W.
Grant Dahlstrom Graduate Student Fellowship,
both $300,000 awards, are a top priority for the
psychology department. The department needs
$180,000 to complete the Galinsky Fellowship
and $68,000 to complete the Dahlstrom
Fellowship.
“Graduate student fellowships greatly
enhance our ability to recruit and recognize the
very best graduate students,” said Gil, the Gillian T.
Cell Distinguished Term Professor. “We typically
provide these fellowships to first-year graduate
students so that they can devote all of their time
to their academic program and their research.”
The Galinskys first established a graduate
fellowship in 1996 because of their appreciation
for the importance of graduate student support.
Graduate fellowships in psychology honor beloved professors
Family, friends
and colleagues
are raising money
to complete
the fellowship
in honor of
Galinsky’s 40-
year career as a
professor and
director of the
clinical program.
He also served as psychology department
chairman from 1983-1993. Galinsky retired in
1997 but continued to be active in teaching and
supervising graduate students as well as playing
a major role in the department’s fundraising
initiatives.
The psychology department established
the Dahlstrom graduate fellowship in 1999 to
recognize his 40-year career as an outstanding
scholar, mentor and teacher. Dahlstrom chaired
about 60 dissertation committees during his time
at Carolina. He served as department chairman
from 1971 to 1976 and retired in 1993 as Kenan
Professor of Psychology. A colleague once called
him “a master clinical diagnostician.”
“Our department owes a great deal to
David and Grant for their dedicated service to
the field of psychology,” Gil said.  •
To support the Galinsky and Dahlstrom
fellowships, contact Kim Goodstein in the Arts
and Sciences Foundation, (919) 843-3919,
kim.goodstein@unc.edu.
The Reeves 
Challenge
The Galinsky and
Dahlstrom fellowships
were included in a
challenge issued by the
Reeves Foundation, a
New Jersey-based family
philanthropy, in support
of graduate students.
If alumni and friends
contributed $600,000
by Dec. 31, 2006, to
endowed graduate student
support, the Reeves
Foundation would create
a new $300,000 graduate
student fellowship in
the College. Alumni and
friends have helped the
College successfully meet
that challenge, raising
$623,272 in gifts and
pledges. The foundation’s
support will allow the
College to create a new
graduate fellowship.
Fundraising for other
graduate fellowships
continues, however,
for at least five funds
in English, religious
studies, economics and
psychology. •
Family, friends and colleagues are raising money
to complete the fellowship in honor
of Galinsky’s 40-year career as a professor
and director of the clinical program. [ ]
The psychology department established
the Dahlstrom graduate fellowship in 1999
to recognize his 40-year career as an
outstanding scholar, mentor and teacher. [ ]
David Galinsky Grant Dahlstrom
Highlights
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   27
Two new distinguished professorships
named for faculty members in American
studies and dramatic art have been estab-lished
in the College of Arts and Sciences.
•  Townsend
Ludington
Distinguished
Professorship in
American Studies
Joe Dorn,
who received an
undergraduate
degree in
American studies
in 1970 and is
now a lawyer
in Washington,
D.C., remembers Townsend Ludington as a
true mentor to students — both inside and
outside the classroom.
Dorn and fellow alumni and faculty
in American studies are establishing the
Townsend Ludington Distinguished
Professorship in American Studies. Dorn
joins Sunny ’84 and Lee ’82 Burrows and
Molly Monk Mears ’84 in giving lead
gifts to establish the professorship. Donors
have committed $408,762 toward a goal of
$500,000 for the professorship, which will
be matched with $167,000 from the state’s
Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust
Fund to create a $667,000 endowment.
The American studies curriculum
offered an excellent preparation for law
school, with diverse courses in literature,
history, art and the social sciences, said
Dorn. “‘Towny’ Ludington was an excellent
champion of the program’s multi-disciplinary
approach.”
“Towny was accessible, personable and
easy to relate to as a student,” added Dorn.
“I hope this new professorship will help the
University find more Towny Ludingtons,
New distinguished professorships established
in American studies, dramatic art
who will help students today have the
experience that I had at UNC.”
Ludington first came to Carolina to
teach in 1966 and was one of the founders
of the American studies program. He twice
served as chair of the program, from 1968
to 1971 and 1986 to 2001. Ludington’s
research focuses on American literature of
the 20th century, biography and American
art. Before he retired in 2004, he was
instrumental in the creation of a Native
American studies program, housed in
American studies.
Joy Kasson, professor and chair of
American studies, calls Ludington “the
moving spirit behind the successful
establishment of the American studies
curriculum.”
“The program would not have been
possible without Towny’s guidance and
dedication,” she said. “But most of all, he
evoked loyalty and dedication from his
grateful students and colleagues. He models
an engaged, humane and generous UNC
professor.”
•  Milly S.
Barranger
Distinguished
Professorship in
Dramatic Art
Alice Welsh
has been a long-time
supporter
of dramatic art
at UNC, and
she wanted to
do something
special to
recognize her friend, distinguished professor
emerita Milly Barranger.
Welsh’s gift of $353,620 to the
College will create the Milly S. Barranger
Distinguished Professorship in Dramatic
Townsend Ludington
Milly S. Barranger
Art. The gift will be matched with
$167,000 from the state’s Distinguished
Professors Endowment Trust Fund to create
an endowment of $520,620.
Barranger came to Carolina in 1982
as chair and professor of dramatic art
and producing director of PlayMakers
Repertory Company. She later taught in
the department of dramatic art until her
retirement in 2003.
Dramatic art professor and department
chair McKay Coble credits Barranger with
“essentially building the department as we
know it now.”
“Milly hired a young and talented
faculty/company that eagerly continued
and expanded the extraordinary work
of our founders,” Coble said. “It was also
under her charge that the UNC Center for
Dramatic Art was built. Our magnificent
facility now houses all aspects of theater
education and production.”
Welsh said she once lived within
walking distance of PlayMakers, so she
didn’t miss a single play. It was there that
she met Barranger, and the two struck up a
friendship.
“I’ve always been interested in theater,
even when I was very little,” said Welsh.
“When you’re in Chapel Hill, you start to
meet people interested in the arts. Milly
elevated the department of dramatic art to
getting recognition across the country.”
Welsh and her late husband, George,
came to Chapel Hill in 1953 when he
accepted a job as a psychology professor.
Their generosity also made possible the
George and Alice Welsh Acting Studio in
the Center for Dramatic Art.  •
To support distinguished professorships,
contact the Arts and Sciences Foundation, 134
E. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514,
(919) 962-0108.
Highlights
When Jeff Allred, who has triple
degrees from Carolina, was once asked what
would make him want to give back to his
alma mater, his time on the debate team was
the first thing that came to mind.
Allred, a native of High Point, got an
undergraduate degree in political science in
1976 and a joint MBA/law degree in 1980.
While on the freshman UNC debate
team, Allred and his debate partner Marc
Sandman ’77 brought home a national
championship to Carolina. Allred later
served as debate team president during his
senior year, from 1975 to 1976.
“The debate team set the foundation
for my later life,” said Allred, who has
practiced law, held high-level management
positions in a global communications
services company and today is president of a
business consultancy firm in Atlanta. “What
debate taught me is an ability to critically
listen and think and organize my thoughts
and express myself orally. If you can speak,
you can write — and that skill set is a
fundamental skill set that everybody needs,
regardless of what you end up doing with
your life. … It’s critical to success in the legal
profession and business world, but equally
important to other endeavors.”
Allred and his wife, Jennifer, have given
$1 million to the communication studies
department to establish the Jeff and Jennifer
Allred Initiative for Critical Thinking and
Communication Studies. In collaboration
with funding from the College of Arts and
Sciences, the department has hired assistant
professor Christian O. Lundberg, a young
$1 million gift to communication
studies funds new initiative
in critical thinking
By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88
28   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
scholar in rhetorical studies.
He will teach courses that
emphasize effective oral
communication and critical
thinking and will serve as
a resource to other faculty in the teaching
of these skills. Lundberg also is teaching a
course this spring on “Globalization and
Communication.” He comes to UNC
from Northwestern University, where he
received a Ph.D. in 2006 in rhetoric and
public culture and was a debate coach.
Lundberg’s appointment frees up
senior scholars to develop and teach three
First Year Seminars. And those seminars
will be named in honor of Jeff Allred’s
mentor and former debate team member,
Joseph P. McGuire ’72, who is now a lawyer
in Asheville.
Allred first met
McGuire when he
participated in the
semi-final round of
a state championship
debate tournament
in high school. McGuire was a judge in the
competition and later persuaded Allred to
come to Carolina.
“Our friendship turned into a
mentorship,” Allred said. “I chose Carolina
because of the personal investment Joe
had in me and the quality of the Carolina
debate program, which was one of the best
in the country.”
Communication studies professor
Robert “Robbie” Cox, who was director of
the UNC debate team from 1971 to 1975,
recalls Allred as “the calm center in the
midst of UNC’s nationally ranked debate
program.”
“Jeff had a sharp intellect and the
highest personal integrity and discipline,”
Cox said. “One story that has remained
with me after 32 years is Jeff’s remarkable
leadership on the eve of a national debate
tournament, when his debate partner
became ill. After working to prepare a
more junior member of the debate team
throughout the night, Jeff led Carolina
through the elimination rounds and won
the championship debate against a stronger
team.”
Allred said the First Year Seminars are
a perfect place for the seeds of his gift to
take root because they engage students at
the beginning of their Carolina experience
in making new discoveries as they work
alongside their professors in the classroom.
Lundberg is developing a new seminar for
fall 2007, “Think, Speak and Argue,” that
will teach students
about formal logic,
critical thinking,
public speaking and
the practices of debate.
“These First Year
Seminars will become
laboratories of learning how to teach critical
thinking skills, and then hopefully we’ll
be able to export what we learn there to
teach teachers how to do this [across the
undergraduate curriculum],” Allred said.
Dennis Mumby, professor and chair of
communication studies, called the Allreds’
gift to communication studies “visionary.”
“As a department, one of our
most important goals is to provide our
students with the critical thinking and
communication skills that will help
them participate as responsible citizens
in an increasingly complex information
environment,” Mumby said. “This generous
gift takes our department to a new level in
its ability to teach those essential skills.”  •
“If you can speak, you can write —
and that skill set is a fundamental
skill set that everybody needs,
regardless of what you end up
doing with your life.” ( )
Jeff Allred and wife, Jennifer, pictured with their family,
have given $1 million to communication studies.
Highlights
Carolina Arts & Sciences   •   Spring 2007   •   29
New exercise program helps breast cancer patients
A new exercise and recreational
therapy program is helping women with
invasive breast cancer deal with the side
effects of cancer treatment.
Get REAL (Get Recreation, Get
Exercise, Get Active, Get Living) & HEEL
is a collaborative effort between the
department of exercise and sport science in
the College and Lineberger Comprehensive
Cancer Center. With support from a
$42,316 grant from the N.C. Triangle
Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast
Cancer Foundation, the program is being
offered free to a limited number of women
in a 13-county region.
The goal of Get REAL & HEEL is
to increase participants’ chances of survival
by enhancing the overall quality of their
lives. All patients enrolled in the program
are working with a personal trainer and a
recreational therapist to design an individual
exercise and recreational plan to help
manage cancer treatment-related symptoms.
Get REAL & HEEL is the brainchild
of Claudio Battaglini and Diane Groff,
assistant professors in the department
of exercise and sport science. They say
the program is distinctive in its holistic
approach to dealing with the side effects of
cancer treatment.
“We believe this program will
complement the strong national history
that UNC has in breast cancer research,”
said Battaglini, a former international level
endurance sports coach. “Breast cancer is the
highest incidence of cancer among women.
This is a disease that kills people every day.”
In the pilot program, Battaglini and
Groff will try to determine if exercise and
recreational therapy are effective ways to
reduce symptoms associated with breast
cancer treatment and explore how women
respond to these combined therapies. Pain,
depression, worry and fatigue are among the
most prevalent adverse side effects of cancer
treatment.
Learn more about the program online
at www.unc.edu/depts/exercise/RTB/
index.htm.  •
Patient Gretchen Hoag
with professor Claudio Battaglini.
Amazon River once flowed in opposite direction
The world’s largest
river basin, the Amazon,
once flowed from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific
— opposite its present
direction — according to
research by UNC geologists.
Russell Mapes, a
geology graduate student, set out in 2004 to study the speed at
which sediment in the Amazon travels from the Andes mountains,
in the present headwaters of the river, to the Atlantic. While studying
sedimentary rocks in the river basin he discovered something else —
ancient mineral grains in the central part of South America that could
only have originated in now-eroded mountains in the east.
If the Amazon had continuously flowed eastward, as it does now,
Mapes and his adviser, geology professor Drew Coleman, would have
found much younger mineral grains in the sediments from the Andes.
Mapes said these sediments of eastern origin were washed down
from a highland area that formed in the Cretaceous Period, between
65 million and 145 million years ago, when the South American and
African tectonic plates
separated and passed each
other. That highland tilted
the river’s flow westward,
sending sediment as old as
2 billion years toward the
center of the continent.
A relatively low
ridge, called the Purus Arch, which still exists, rose in the middle of
the continent, running north and south, dividing the Amazon’s flow
— eastward toward the Atlantic and westward toward the Andes.
Toward the end of the Cretaceous, the Andes started growing,
which sent the river back toward the Purus Arch. Eventually, sediment
from the mountains, which contained mineral grains younger than
500 million years old, filled in the basin between the mountains and
the arch, the river breeched it and started its current flow.
Previous research had identified a reverse flow, but only in
segments of the river. Mapes and Coleman illustrated a continent-wide
shift of the river’s flow, as they traversed about 80 percent of
the Amazon basin.  •
30   •   Spring 2007   •   Carolina Arts & Sciences
College Bookshelf C o l l e g e B o o k s h e l f
•  In the Beginning:
Fundamentalism,
the Scopes trial
and the making of
the antievolution
movement (UNC
Press) by Michael
Lienesch. Political
scientist Lienesch
traces the growth
of a movement
that has ignited
debates in state
legislatures and school board meetings
across the nation. He begins with early 20th
century fundamentalists, provides a fresh
examination of the 1925 “monkey trial,”
and tracks the rise of creation science in the
1960s, the Christian right in the ’80s and
intelligent design today.
•  Saving Graces (Broadway Books/
Random House) by Elizabeth Edwards
’71 English, ’77 JD. This Carolina alumna
is quick to acknowledge that she is not
the first mother to lose a teen-age son
in a car accident, nor the first woman to
be diagnosed with breast cancer. But in
this well-written memoir, she may be the
first political spouse to speak so frankly
about these challenges and about her life
on the campaign trail with husband John
Edwards ’77 JD, the former U.S. senator
now running again for President. Hers is a
warmly told story about the importance of
community.
•  Ending Poverty in America (The New
Press) edited by John Edwards, Marion
Crain and Arne Kalleberg. Edwards ’77
JD, the former trial attorney and U.S.
senator, directed UNC’s Center on Poverty,
Work and Opportunity until he officially
launched his second presidential campaign
at the end of last year. The center sponsored
a series of symposia and policy research
projects, and assembled this collection of
writings by experts addressing poverty
in our time. Co-editors
are Crain, the Paul Eaton
Professor of Law and new
director of the Center,
and Kalleberg, professor of
sociology and senior associate
dean for social sciences in the
College.
•  The Mismatched Worker
(W.W. Norton & Co.) by Arne L. Kalleberg.
An expert on labor and workplace changes,
Kalleberg examines how and why modern
jobs often fail to match the skills and/or
needs o