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Under the Dome
Erskine Bowles/James Oblinger visit to eastern North Carolina, Emerging Issues ForumWe're nonpartisan
Luke Bierman, Institute of Emerging Issues
Career
Moves
Judee Lonnee, College of Management
Facebook
becoming a college norm
Paul Cousins
N. C.
Statewide Research and Education Network Boosts Bandwidth, Provides
Foundation for Innovation
High-speed network resources
NCSU
opens dorm for honor students
Honors Village dorms
Getting
Involved
Great Decisions Program
Jan. 31, 2006
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2006
The Institute for Emerging Issues at N.C. State University is a nonpartisan think-and-do tank, contrary to a suggestion by Art Pope in your Jan. 29 article "The knight of the right." The Institute convenes informed debate of all viewpoints, born of research, with the intention of turning good ideas into action. The Institute values many voices, from which North Carolinas leaders can learn about what is needed to ensure that our state remains a wonderful place to live, work and play.
At this year's forum on financing the future on Feb. 6-7, we will hear ideas about tax reform from Steve Forbes and Paul Krugman, Paul O'Neill and Bill Richardson, Mark Warner and Ken Thompson. The John Locke Foundation, along with groups and individuals of many viewpoints, has participated fully in the Institute's work to identify options to modernize the state's century-old tax and finance mechanisms.
The Institute's abiding interest is in good ideas, not in any particular ideological approach, and we invite anyone concerned about North Carolina's financial future to join us at this year's Emerging Issues Forum. More information is at www.emergingissues.org
Luke Bierman
Director
Institute for Emerging Issues
N.C. State University
Raleigh
Jan. 31, 2006
News & Observer
By Dan Kane, Rob Christensen and Jane Stancill
© Copyright 2006
School boards take a poke at eye exam rule
The roiling over a new mandatory eye exam for children before they start school continues today with a news conference at the Legislative Building. The N.C. School Boards Association, which is opposed to the exams, is organizing the conference.
The mandatory exams were included in this year's state budget at the request of House Speaker Jim Black, a Mecklenburg County Democrat and an optometrist. Black said the exams will catch early vision problems before they start to hinder a child's learning.
But school officials, pediatricians and ophthalmologists say the exams are an unnecessary burden for most children. They are seeking to have the law repealed.
Some influential state senators may be trying to help. Those who the association listed as speakers for today's conference include two top budget writers, Kay Hagan and Walter Dalton; a finance committee chairman, David Hoyle; and Bill Purcell, a retired pediatrician who is a co-chairman of a budget committee.
Hoyle said he does not plan to speak about the mandatory exams today, but he is leaning toward trying to eliminate the requirement. He said he has received many calls from angry parents and school officials who say it creates a financial and administrative burden.
"There's general consensus in the Senate that we ought to look at repealing that, or attempt to," Hoyle said.
Bayh to speak in Raleigh
U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana was once former Sen. John Edwards' jogging buddy. Now they are likely to become rivals for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.
So Bayh's acceptance of an invitation to speak at the Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Raleigh on April 29 is likely to raise some eyebrows.
State Democratic chair Jerry Meek said he invited Bayh after meeting him at a Democratic event in Ohio.
Meek said he was not trying to show any disrespect to Edwards. He noted that Edwards spoke to the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in 2004.
"It is important for our activists to be exposed to a range of views in our country and to meet some of the exciting leaders at the national level," Meek said.
Bayh will be the second Democratic presidential wannabe poaching in Edwards' territory.
Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner will be in Raleigh next week speaking at the Emerging Issues Forum at N.C. State University.
Party wheels rolling in
The big enchiladas of the national Democratic and Republican parties will be in the Triangle this week.
Howard Dean, chairman of the national Democratic Party, will be in Durham tonight to watch President Bush's State of the Union address.
Dean will attend a gathering at the Satisfaction Restaurant and Bar, a beer and pizza place, before watching the speech at a private gathering at an undisclosed residence.
Ken Mehlman, national Republican chairman, will be in Raleigh on Wednesday to help the state party raise money.
Mehlman will speak at a luncheon honoring GOP members of the legislature at the Cardinal Club. The event, $250 per couple or $150 per person, will benefit the party.
He will also attend a reception at the home of Wake Register of Deeds Laura Riddick. The event will raise money for GOP efforts to get out the vote. The event costs $500 per couple or $250 per person.
Riddick is married to Matthew Eisley, a general assignment reporter at The News & Observer. Eisley said he will not attend the reception.
Only one GOP lawmaker was not invited to attend the Cardinal Club event -- Speaker Pro Tem Richard Morgan of Moore County. The state Republican Party is trying to defeat Morgan because of his cooperation with House Democrats.
Neeley joins R.J. Reynolds
Chris Neeley has resigned as state director of Americans for Prosperity to become senior manager of legislative support for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem.
Neeley had worked for the anti-tax group associated with Raleigh businessman Art Pope since 2004. He is a veteran of Republican politics, having managed Richard Vinroot's gubernatorial campaign and served as executive director of the state GOP in South Carolina and in Alabama.
Bowles, Oblinger down east
UNC President Erskine Bowles will hit the road today in Eastern North Carolina with N.C. State University Chancellor James L. Oblinger to get a glimpse of how NCSU serves the state.
After a visit to Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, Bowles and Oblinger will tour the Naval Air Depot, which provides maintenance, engineering and logistical support to the Navy's vertical lift aircraft, including helicopters and the V-22 Osprey. NCSU researchers are working on various projects there, including an agreement to address the challenges of vertical lift aircraft.
The two will also tour the Center for Marine Science and Technology in Morehead City, home to a marine laboratory focused on the seafood industry, and the Cunningham Agriculture Research Station in Kinston.
Kane can be reached at 829-4861 or dkane@newsobserver.com.
Facebook becoming a college norm
Jan. 31, 2006
Durham Herald-Sun
By JAMIE SCHUMAN
© Copyright 2006
CHAPEL HILL -- Devin Rooney, a UNC freshman, says he logs onto facebook.com "all the time" to learn about campus happenings or his classmates.
He isn't alone.
At UNC, 94 percent of freshmen are registered with the social networking Web site, Fred Stutzman a doctoral student in information and library science, found in his study of "facebooking" trends on campus.
For those who don't talk to college students that often, Facebook is the rage on campuses nationwide. On it, students post profiles with personal information -- such as contact details, favorite bands, relationship status and photos of drunken debauchery -- and spend many late nights getting the scoop on their classmates.
And administrators, worried about the security concerns of posting personal tidbits online, are taking notice.
"Certainly we have concerns when students are putting tremendous amounts of personal information on the Web in such a way that is not necessarily as secure as they think it is," said Winston Crisp, assistant vice chancellor for student affairs at UNC.
Crisp said he and colleagues have talked about cyber-security with students informally and plan to lead more formal discussions about the use of Facebook next year.
For many students, though, the site is an innocuous way to get the scoop on that girl in their calculus class or the guy they met at a party the weekend before.
Anslei Foster, a freshman, said she "facebooks" to keep in touch with high school classmates with whom she might have otherwise lost contact.
"It's a great way to connect," Foster said. "With Facebook, you can see how people are changing."
Launched in February 2004 by a group of roommates at Harvard, Facebook now is available to students at about 2,140 universities. In December, about 12.4 million unique users logged onto the site.
Facebook spokesman and co-founder Chris Hughes cites Facebook's versatility and students' curiosity about their peers as main reasons for the site's rapid growth in popularity.
"It's useful and fun to use," Hughes said.
Only people with a college e-mail account can log onto the site, and students can choose whether to allow users from other universities to view their page. These features help make the site secure, Hughes said.
But administrators, like Crisp, warn students that information online might not be as private as they think. Crisp said he has heard anecdotal evidence that it's not too difficult for outsiders to access Facebook pages.
And Marcia Harris, director of UNC's career services, said she tells students to be careful about what they divulge on Facebook, because perspective employers may consult it before making hiring decisions.
"I would not be at all surprised that some employers are using it," Harris said.
To some students' chagrin, student-affairs officials at some universities are using the site as a way to catch people who break the law or school rules. In the fall, N.C. State University officials disciplined a handful of students for underage drinking, after a resident assistant found party photos of them on Facebook.
Paul Cousins, director in the office of student conduct at N.C. State, said administrators there don't act as "Facebook cops," patrolling the site to catch rule breakers, but will investigate possible violations if they are brought to their attention.
Cousins, who is concerned about cyber-stalking and harassment, said he has encouraged students not to put too much personal information on the site.
And Stutzman, who studies social networking and identity, agrees that such discussions are necessary.
He said while students see Facebook as a great way to get the stats -- from favorite movies to common friends -- about the people they are meeting, they also need to be concerned about what they put online.
"The university has to give these students the tools to protect themselves," Stutzman said. "This stuff can come back to haunt you."
N.C. Statewide Research and Education Network Boosts Bandwidth, Provides Foundation for Innovation
Jan. 31, 2006
dBusinessNews
By staff report
© Copyright 2006
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. (Jan. 30, 2006) – A four-year, $15 million project
to enhance North Carolina’s statewide Research and Education Network (NCREN)
has been completed, providing faster and more reliable services to all of the
University of North Carolina’s 16 universities, many private universities and
colleges, state government, and other nonprofit institutions throughout North
Carolina.
The project, called NCREN 3, builds upon North Carolina’s nationally renowned advanced network collaboration. NCREN is a collaborative effort among universities, the UNC General Administration, the state of North Carolina, and MCNC, and is operated by MCNC.
NCREN provides high-speed Internet, video, audio, and data center services in addition to access to national research networks, including Internet2 and National LamdaRail. NCREN services support multiple activities at each campus, including research, high-performance computing, distance learning, classroom education, administrative services and extension services.
NCREN 3 enhancements provide a minimum network bandwidth (data rate) of 1 billion bits per second (1 gigabit) at every North Carolina public university, with higher bandwidth up to 10 gigabits serving the state’s largest research universities at UNC Chapel Hill, N.C. State University and Duke University. Through the NCREN 3 project, network capabilities throughout the state are approximately 20 times faster than when the project was initiated in 2001, and more than 600 times faster than typical network connections (T-1 access line) provided by commercial providers to businesses.
High-speed network services are essential for education collaboration and computing-intensive research. Advances in computing are enabling new frontiers of research. Large-scale research, often called e-science, typically involve teams of scientists and scientific equipment from multiple geographic locations. Networks linking these locations can enable the transfer of massive amounts of data, remote visualization of results and remote access to scientific equipment. A robust network infrastructure is often required to make the project possible. NCREN enables collaboration among all North Carolina universities and, through access to national research networks, with universities and other institutions across the nation and world.
“Together with our partners across the higher education institutions in the state, we take a great deal of pride in this accomplishment,” said MCNC Chief Executive Officer John Crites. “The NCREN3 Project was primarily funded by MCNC and is an excellent example of how we have leveraged the strength of this company to support research and education in North Carolina. We look forward to the collaborative effort in the state focused on using these technologies to support education at all levels, including K-12 schools. It's essential to find ways to contribute to the development of 21st century skills by inspiring our children to pursue higher education.”
Self-Healing Reliability
In addition to increased bandwidth, the enhancements include a transition from a point-to-point network to a self-healing network ring architecture for enhanced reliability. If a problem occurs that could disrupt network connectivity, network traffic is rerouted automatically. The enhanced NCREN reroutes service so quickly and efficiently that faculty, students and other users do not even notice a glitch when part of the network is temporarily down.
With the launch of NCREN3 four years ago, a commitment was made to continue the evolution of NCREN to provide a foundation to meet the research and education needs of North Carolina well into the future. By sharing costs through MCNC, a non-profit organization, and leveraging economies of scale by purchasing equipment and services on a statewide basis, universities receive high-quality, advanced networking services at a lower cost than any single university could replicate.
Robyn Render, UNC General Administration vice president for information resources and chief information officer, said, “Through the statewide enhancements, all 16 campuses of the University of North Carolina are better enabled to take full advantage of advanced optical networking capabilities and high-performance computing technologies. This foundation for innovation will continue to foster greater educational opportunities and economic development, and our success with NCREN 3 is another fine example of how the universities collaborate to create new opportunities throughout the state while also identifying cost-saving opportunities. This successful model of collaboration can be expanded to include community colleges and school districts across the state.”
Crites said that NCREN 3 is an example of a continuous cycle of networking advancements throughout North Carolina. “Statewide collaboration through NCREN has established North Carolina universities as leaders in advanced network services that enable innovation and discovery, providing opportunities for all students and faculty across the state,” Crites said. “We are already working with our university partners on the next generation of advanced network infrastructure in collaboration with Internet2 and the National LamdaRail.”
Regional Service Collaboration and Economic Development
A key enhancement through NCREN 3 is the establishment of Regional Points of Presence (RPoPs) beyond the core network serving the state’s largest research universities in the Research Triangle region. RPoPs are regional “on ramps” to the NCREN network, hosting network equipment to support the statewide NCREN backbone.
The regional hubs enable communities to establish their own network services for colleges, K-12 schools, and local government organizations, becoming catalysts for regional economic development.
Western North Carolina
The most recent NCREN 3 projects included enhancements serving UNC Asheville and Western Carolina University, with RPoPs added in Asheville and Hickory.
The creation of NCREN’s self-healing ring network architecture in the western portion of the state was made possible through collaboration with the Education and Research Consortium (ERC) of the Western Carolinas, a non-profit regional network serving the western regions in North Carolina and South Carolina. NCREN services support the ERC’s regional networking initiatives, including providing access to Internet2 and other national research networks.
In addition, NCREN 3 included a new research-only fiber network to support the Carolina MicroOptics Triangle, a regional optical research partnership among UNC Charlotte, Western Carolina University and Clemson University. The organization was formed to coordinate the technology platforms of the partner institutions for technology advancement, local education support, support to local companies, and to support economic development in the region. Over 150 jobs have been created, new degree programs have been established, and the region has established a reputation as one of the nation’s leading optical centers.
Piedmont North Carolina
The first three RPoPs established outside of the triangle area were in Charlotte, Greensboro, and Winston Salem. In Winston-Salem, WinstonNet was the first regional community network established through NCREN. Recent projects include the establishment of 40 computer labs throughout Forsyth County, 18 Winston-Salem City Parks and Recreation computer labs, 10 public library labs, and 12 labs established by Winston-Salem State University in area churches and other underserved areas. WinstonNet supports more than 350 computers and plans to expand this operation to another 50 labs over the next two years.
Southeastern North Carolina
An NCREN3 enhancement in Southeastern North Carolina established RPoPs in Wilmington and Fayetteville that provide enhanced services to UNC Wilmington, UNC Pembroke and Fayetteville State University. These institutions refer to the collaboration as the Southeast Education and Research Network (SERNet). Robert Tyndall, vice chancellor for information technology systems at UNC Wilmington and the initial organizer of SERNet, said that “through collaboration with NCREN, our region now has access to a more powerful and reliable network that will allow our universities, public schools, government and health care agencies to tap into a wide array of new services and to better share our knowledge resources.”
Eastern North Carolina
An RPoP was established at East Carolina University tying in high-speed connectivity to Elizabeth City State University and the Center for Marine Science and Technology at Morehead City.
In addition, the NCREN 3 project was the foundation for a broader expansion of broadband Internet access throughout the region. For example, the Eastern North Carolina Broadband Initiative is an innovative $14.6 million public-private partnership including Sprint, the Albemarle-Pamlico Economic Development Corp., East Carolina University, and MCNC. The initiative expands the availability of broadband access, telehealth and e-learning capabilities east of Interstate 95, providing a boost for economic development.
About NCREN
Since 1985, MCNC has developed and operated the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN) in collaboration with the University of North Carolina’s 16 campuses. MCNC, founded in 1980 to be a catalyst for technology-based economic development throughout North Carolina, is located in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. For more information, please visit www.mcnc.org.
Media Contacts
Scott Yates
Largemouth Communications (for MCNC)
919-649-6621
scott@largemouthpr.com
Posted on:
Monday, January 30, 2006 07:01 AM
NCSU opens dorm for honor students
Jan. 31, 2006
News 14 Carolina
By staff report
© Copyright 2006
RALEIGH) -- Honor students at N.C. State University have a new place to call home.
The newly renovated Honors Village dorms opened Monday along with a brand new Village Commons building.
"It provides plenty of opportunity for community but at the same time it's also a community,” said student Joseph Mazzawi. “I guess the primary focus is learning."
The $15.7 million project includes a convenience store, computer lab, staff offices, a 24-hour service desk, as well as a classroom and meeting space.
Jan. 31, 2006
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2006
Judee Lonnee joined N.C. State University's College of Management as assistant director of admissions.
Jan. 31, 2006
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2006
N.C. State University is participating in the Great Decisions Program, the largest grassroots world affairs educational program of its kind. Henry Clark will speak of its kind. Henry Clark will speak on energy resources at 7 p.m today at 216 Poe Hall on the campus of NCSU. This program is free and open to the public. For a list of program topics, dates and times, send e-mail to Wayne Watkins at rwwatki2@ncsu.edu or call Heidi Hobbs at 513-4389.