Summer 2012 Newsletter

Dear Colleagues:

As I complete my seventh year as UNC Charlotte’s fourth chancellor (on July 15), I am pleased to provide you with another update on activities at the University. For those of you who have regularly received and read these periodic missives, you’ll note that this one is a tad bit late in arriving. Normally, I like to issue my updates shortly after the commencement ceremonies but, this year, one thing after the next seemed to get in the way. I can promise you that I haven’t been goofing off. In fact, I missed commencement this year as my daughter, Ali, was celebrating her graduation from West Virginia University. With three college graduates now out in the working world, I can see the Promised Land!

Back home, however, commencement went on quite well without me. Commencement is a ceremony that traditionally marks the completion of an academic journey, but the event also represents a beginning. For UNC Charlotte, this year marked the start of a new era, as the University celebrated our 100,000th alumnus during spring commencement ceremonies. To help commemorate the occasion, past alumni association presidents were on hand, along with members of some of our first graduating classes.

Marketing major Fabian Elliott was honored as the 100,000th graduate in the company of nearly 3,500 of his peers, 48 of whom earned doctoral degrees. In fact, the 2011-12 academic year was a record breaker, with 118 doctoral degrees awarded in total.

Commencement provides a moment to pause and reflect, but the pause doesn’t last for long. The University is a place of constant change, with little “down time” for the faculty and staff who create a positive experience for our students. The University community has been diligently preparing to welcome the largest-ever freshman class in our history—631 more prospective students than anticipated have accepted admission for fall 2012. If all of the students who’ve accepted admission attend, our estimate is that fall freshman enrollment will total 3,801.

Clearly, more students are choosing UNC Charlotte, and we’re doing our best to make their transition to the University seamless and stress-free. We’ve developed a “Move-in 2012” website to provide information to incoming students and their families as they gear up to descend on campus in the fall. The website is just one of many tools we will use to facilitate the move-in process and to help our students succeed as they begin their own journeys toward commencement. I hope this newsletter finds you enjoying the summer months and that you can now settle in to read about the good news from UNC Charlotte. And, as always, if you want additional detail on any specific item mentioned in this newsletter, please feel free to contact my assistant, Shari Dunn.

As we enter a new fiscal year, Governor Beverly Perdue and the General Assembly have made final decisions concerning budget priorities for the upcoming year; the budget includes several important decisions about funding for higher education.
The new budget improves upon last year’s budget by restoring planned cuts, providing additional management flexibilities, funding faculty recruitment and retention, and giving state employees a salary increase of 1.2 percent. The following are some of the highlights of the 2012-13 budget:




Altogether, the 12 counties in our region currently provide 15,233 of our students and are home to 55,049 of our alumni and nearly 36,000 UNC Charlotte donors. When we fully engage those students, those alumni, and those donors in the University’s future, we also expand UNC Charlotte’s influence and reputation. When we expand our influence and reputation, we enhance our ability to offer students an affordable, high-quality education.




“Enterprise risk management” has now fully entered the lexicon of both the private and the public sector, including higher education. That includes having a comprehensive program to ensure timely compliance with the abundant and highly varied federal, state, local UNC system, and NCAA regulations that govern our operations.




Provost Joan Lorden and her staff are leading the University’s preparation for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) re-accreditation process. Currently, all academic departments are in the process of auditing and documenting the extent of compliance with each of the 92 SACS requirements and standards. University teams and departments are closing identified compliance gaps.




More exciting capital projects, including the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC), have come online since my last newsletter. If you’ve had an opportunity to visit campus lately, you may have also noticed that a great many infrastructure improvements are underway— in fact, there may be more orange barrels on the UNC Charlotte campus than on I-85 and I-77 combined! Here are some of the latest, noteworthy projects:




As North Carolina’s urban research university, UNC Charlotte is responsive to changing workforce needs and ever mindful of the economic, cultural, and social well-being of the region. The new programs and partnerships listed here have been created to deliver on that commitment:




Every strong organization, public or private, benefits from strong governance. In our case, we have been extremely fortunate over the years to have engaged and dedicated members of the Board of Trustees. Most recently, we’ve added two new trustees who fit that mold perfectly.




Our athletics teams yielded yet another record-breaking spring sports season, with the golf program advancing to its school-record 8th straight NCAA Tournament, and the track and field programs capturing both the men’s and women’s A-10 outdoor championships. Softball crowned a new home run record-holder as junior Briana Gwaltney broke both the single-season and career marks, while senior Shane Brown led A-10 baseball in batting. The 49ers tennis teams both tied for third at the A-10 Championships.




Alumni Affairs – Linda Opdyke, the daughter of the late Dean W. and Martha Colvard, was named the first distinguished nursing alumna by the University’s School of Nursing Alumni Chapter. Opdyke, who graduated in 1984, was among the first class to complete the University’s master’s degree in nursing. Before her retirement in 2009, she was associate dean of nursing at Mercy School of Nursing at Carolinas Medical Center. During a 32-year career at Mercy, Opdyke excelled as a nurse educator and advocate.