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Bond projects help state's economy
College students across the state are sharing space with bulldozers and cranes.
N.C. State
Tops in 'Pork Barrel' Money From Congress
Congress sent more "pork barrel" money to N.C. State -- nearly $6.4
million -- than to any other college or university in the state.
Earmarked
money
How some North Carolina universities fared in getting earmark money.
N.C.
universities tie job creation to projects
North Carolina universities are attaching the potential to create new jobs
to their push for state lawmakers to fund major projects.
Students
describe financial woe
UNC organization's Web site collects tales of how tuition hikes hurt
Fire
Forces Temporary Evacuation Of N.C. State Student Center
A fire forced students to evacuate the Talley Student Center at North Carolina
State University Thursday afternoon.
NCSU
football plus State Fair equals traffic
It's going to be busy on the roads of Raleigh on Thursday night.
Obit:
Dr. Patrick Hill McDonald
former Engineering Faculty member
Bond projects help state's economy
Oct. 16, 2003
News 14 Carolina
By Mitch Kokai, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 TWEAN Newschannel of Raleigh, L.L.C. dba News 14 Carolina
College students across the state are sharing space with bulldozers and cranes.
Construction crews are working on $3 billion worth of projects tied to higher education. Those projects are helping the state cope with a struggling economy.
"It's going to create a new N.C. State because we're going to have the facilities to match the quality of our faculty,” N.C. State Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said.
Some bond money will renovate and expand lab space, meaning more room for research.
"Investment in research is going to allow us to attract additional federal grants that will also have a multiplier, about seven times, as we go forward,” Fox said.
The university isn’t the only one thanking the voters for supporting the bond referendum back in 2000.
"What it means is we will be better able to serve the students who are frankly cascading into our colleges,” Chancy Kapp from N.C. Community Colleges said. “With the current situation, with the economy, particularly in the manufacturing belts and in the East, people must be trained and retrained and ready for great new jobs."
Observers said all that university and community college construction has an impact.
“It's been so good for the economy, for the construction industry and for all the subcontractors,” Phil Kirk from the N.C. Citizens for Business and Industry said. “We're doing an economic impact study right now. We know it's tens of thousands of new jobs."
Kirk said those construction jobs have helped boost the economy.
“If we did not have all these construction and electrical and heating and air conditioning and all these jobs, our economy would be in a whole lot worse shape,” he said.
Supporters hope to see more benefits in the coming years.
Voters approved $2.5 billion in bonds for the state's public universities. So far, the schools have committed more than $1 billion of that money. 96 university bond projects are finished.
Voters also approved $600 million for community colleges. The colleges have committed almost $400 million. 31 community college projects are finished.
N.C. State Tops in 'Pork Barrel' Money From Congress
Oct. 17, 2003
Associated Press, News & Observer, WRAL-TV, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
By Barbara Barrett, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press
RALEIGH -- It's perhaps no surprise that the university with North Carolina's biggest agriculture school topped its peers last year in bringing home the bacon.
Congress sent more "pork barrel" money -- nearly $6.4 million -- to N.C. State University than to any other college or university in the state.
NCSU didn't compete for any of the money. Instead, it sent a wish list to local members of Congress, who slipped the projects into the 2003 federal budget.
The academic pork route -- also known as congressional earmarking or directed funding -- is something that major universities, politicians and government agencies say they aren't thrilled about using. Researchers would much rather compete for grants and earn them on merit.
Still, no one is turning the money down.
"I think N.C. State and other universities often look at directed funds as filling the gaps," said Matt Peterson, director of federal research affairs at NCSU, where total federal financing ran about $100 million last year. Most of that came from grants for which researchers had to compete.
NCSU wasn't alone in getting earmarked money from Congress. UNC-Chapel Hill got $2.1 million last year, making it the No. 2 university pork recipient in individual projects in North Carolina.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper that follows college issues, does an annual review each fall that tracks university dollars lawmakers funnel to their districts. Congress allocated $2.01 billion toward academic pork for the 2003 budget -- a record amount, according to the Chronicle. The 2004 budget isn't completed yet.
North Carolina pulled in $25.2 million in individual projects -- research dollars that schools didn't have to share with colleges in other states -- according to the Chronicle's database. That put the state at 28th in the nation.
The pork process is sometimes confusing. Many university research projects are shared with other schools, and even the universities themselves don't always know who gets how much. At NCSU, for example, the Chronicle reports $6.3 million in shared projects but couldn't say just how much goes to the university.
"If I knew exactly how it worked, I'd probably be more effective," Peterson said.
Competition preferred
Nearly half the money awarded to NCSU in the 2003 federal budget came from the Department of Agriculture. The money included research projects to tackle wheat fungus and improve timber harvesting, and to detect bioterrorism on farms.
Agriculture got a bulk of the funds because the federal agency has historically used earmarks, rather than competitive grants, to dole out dollars to land-grant universities such as NCSU, said John Gilligan, NCSU's vice chancellor for research and graduate studies.
Sometimes, earmarks go for projects researchers would rather win competitively. Congress directed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to spend half a million dollars so that NCSU and other schools could continue studying gravity's effect on plant growth. The six-year project was first won by NCSU on a competitive grant, said Chris Brown, director of space programs at NCSU's Kenan Institute. But NASA stopped the grant a few years ago, and Congress stepped in with the earmark.
"NASA is not fond of earmarks because it's Congress telling NASA how to spend its money. I understand that," Brown said, adding he hopes NASA will decide to finance the work competitively again.
Gilligan and other university leaders fear that some of the pork could be taking dollars away from competitive programs. Those are the projects that federal agencies open to all researchers, and NCSU and UNC-CH have been successful at getting that money.
Major universities are more likely to tout their competitive research grants than the pork projects coming from Congress.
"Nobody brags about that," said Allison Rosenberg, associate vice chancellor for research federal affairs at UNC-CH, where federal research money totaled $397 million last year.
UNC-CH got earmarks for just three projects last year. A million dollars came from the Department of Defense to study business practices in the military, and another $1.1 million came from NASA and the Department of Education to help a biology professor do scientific outreach projects with schoolchildren.
Much of the help in the Triangle comes from Rep. David Price, a Democrat from Chapel Hill who sits on the Appropriations Committee. He and his staff meet regularly with professors to talk about research projects and their impacts on the state and nation.
Price said he thinks pork projects are unfair. He would much rather see money awarded through a competitive peer-review process. But if federal agencies are using earmarks, he said, it makes sense for North Carolina to get in the game.
"Peer review is the superior way, but where peer review is not the norm, then I will play that game and play it well and play it responsibly," Price said.
He and the rest of the state's delegation don't have as much pull in Congress as representatives with more experience, and it shows when the pork is passed around, Gilligan said. He pointed out that because North Carolina is among the country's most populous states, it should rank higher than 28th in congressional earmarks.
"We're not getting our fair share," Gilligan said.
Oct. 17, 2003
News & Observer
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003 News & Observer
How some North Carolina universities fared in getting earmark money:
N.C. STATE UNIVERSITY
2002: $16.5 million in shared and individual projects.
2003: $12.7 million in shared and individual projects.
The 2003 projects include:
* Department of Commerce: $2.5 million for the Carolina Coastal Ocean Observing
and Prediction System, computer models and ocean gauges to predict major impacts
of storms, water quality, pollution and shoreline stability. Shared with UNC-Wilmington
and the University of South Carolina.
* Department of Agriculture: $3.8 million for work with 20 other universities
in researching a fungus that damages wheat and barley.
* Department of Agriculture: $306,000 for work to improve the Christmas tree
industry.
* Department of Agriculture: $25,000 to study new potato varieties
* Department of Agriculture: $293,000 for research to improve husbandry of catfish,
flounder, striped bass and tilapia.
* Department of Agriculture: $495,000 to study swine waste.
* National Aeronautics and Space Administration: $500,000 for work with other
universities to study gravity's effects on plant growth.
UNC-CHAPEL HILL
2002: $9 million in individual and shared projects.
2003: $2.1 million in individual projects.
The 2003 projects include:
* Department of Defense: $1 million to research logistics management for the
military and businesses.
* National Aeronautics and Space Administration: $900,000 to academic programs
at the Science Discovery Outreach Center.
N.C. CENTRAL UNIVERSITY
2002: $850,000 in shared projects.
2003: $839,513 in individual projects.
The 2003 projects include:
* Environmental Protection Agency: $765,000 for research into environmental
exposures in minority communities.
* Department of Education: $74,513 for an academic program for Durham County
schoolchildren.
UNC-WILMINGTON
2002: $1.4 million in individual projects.
2003: $6.1 million in individual and shared projects.
The 2003 projects include:
* Department of Commerce: $1.2 million for marine research and monitoring.
* Department of Health and Human Services: $400,000 for the School of Nursing's
primary-care facility.
* Department of Agriculture: $360,000 for aquaculture of marine finfish.
N.C. universities tie job creation to projects
Oct. 16, 2003
The Durham Herald-Sun, Myrtle Beach Sun News
By The Associated Press
© Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.
RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina universities are attaching the potential to create new jobs to their push for state lawmakers to fund major projects.
First came UNC Chapel Hill's request that the General Assembly this year to back $180 million in loans for a new cancer hospital. The lobbying put as much emphasis on the potential for 2,400 new jobs as the hope for saving lives.
UNC Charlotte is making a similar pitch for a new bioinformatics center. Officials say the center would bring comparisons to Stanford, MIT and Duke, implying that inventions in the new building could create a high-tech job boom.
"There's more pressure on public universities to be accountable. The state legislators are now coming back to public universities and saying, 'OK, what do we get for that?'" said Steve Mosier, associate vice chancellor for research at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
"Today, we know the governor and the legislature want to hear we're creating jobs."
The state university system is gearing itself to be able to make more of these claims. Public campuses are hiring vice chancellors specifically to team with private companies to turn more research into patents and jobs.
They're asking lawmakers to consider at least five building projects in the next year, including the facilities in Charlotte and Chapel Hill, that could require a total of $300 million in state backing. Part of the argument is that they will help create jobs, too.
More money is also available now. The Golden LEAF Foundation, a nonprofit that funds research with some of the state's $4.6 billion settlement with cigarette manufacturers, has received more than 150 applications from state universities. Each application has to project some potential economic benefit from the efforts.
The promise of jobs for money is not without risk, said Mike Walden, an economist at N.C. State who has applied for Golden LEAF grants.
Walden, who raises questions about many state investments in targeted fields like biotechnology, agrees it can be good for researchers to think about the practical effects of their research.
But like the investments of venture companies, some of the expensive research gambles may not pay off. And students encouraged to enter those fields are taking the same risk, Walden said.
"There's the risk we could be training students for an industry that doesn't pan out," he said.
Critics also say university supporters have figured out how to get state and federal grant dollars, but they haven't proved they create enough jobs for the money that's put in, especially in areas of the state that have been hit hardest with textile and furniture plant closings.
"If you look at where they're putting (economic development), that's not where we have the job loss," said Rep. Connie Wilson, R-Mecklenburg, who has been pushing the state to do more for workers laid off after the Pillowtex Corp. plant closed in Concord.
"I'm not saying the potential is not there. The success is not there."
Startup money for the projects was postponed in last-minute discussions before the legislature adjourned in July, but Senate leader Marc Basnight's office is still looking into them. Also, a committee considering economic development proposals is expected to draft legislation that includes some version of the proposals next year.
Proposals for UNCC, UNC Chapel Hill, as well as Western Carolina, Eastern Carolina University and UNC Asheville have the support of House Co-speakers Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg, and Richard Morgan, R-Moore.
Students describe financial woe
Oct. 17, 2003
The Charlotte Observer
By Diane Suchetka, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The Charlotte Observer.
N.C. college students are working two jobs during the school year, three in the summer, borrowing the maximum amount of money they can to pay their tuition.
Those are the stories they're sending to a new Web site in hopes of preventing another tuition increase at state universities next fall. The UNC Association of Student Governments is collecting their stories at www.personalstories.org.
The organization hopes to gather hundreds of letters from the 16 campuses in the UNC system and compile them into a book. Student leaders hope to present the letters to legislators, board members, university chancellors and the UNC Board of Governors, the body that oversees the university system.
"Students have tried numerous ways of trying to get through to lawmakers about what these tuition increases and budget cuts are doing to them," said Amanda Devore, vice president of legislative affairs for the UNC student government association, who personally started the letter campaign.
"Obviously, these personal stories will show, without a doubt, that tuition increases and budget cuts are affecting students."
Members of the Board of Governors have already been talking about limiting tuition increases next year to those used for critical needs such as salary increases and financial aid.
Since 2000-2001, undergraduate tuition has nearly doubled at several UNC schools, according to data from the UNC officials.
At N.C. State University, for example, undergraduate N.C. students are paying $2,955 in tuition this year, a jump of $1,427 from 2000-2001.
Those amounts do not include required student fees, which add hundreds of dollars to the bill and are rising, too.
So far, Devore said, the association has collected about 200 stories. But the Web site has been running only since late September, she said.
Devore hopes to hear from alumni struggling to pay off loans, community college students who couldn't afford university tuition and faculty and staff hurt by budget cuts.
"The ultimate goal is for lawmakers to understand how the decisions they're making are impacting the people of North Carolina," said Devore, a senior accounting major at N.C. State.
"And for them to begin following their constitutional mandate." She paused, then paraphrased the N.C. Constitution: "to provide the benefits of the University of North Carolina as far as practicable to the people of the state free of expense."
Fire Forces Temporary Evacuation Of N.C. State Student Center
Oct. 16, 2003
WRAL-TV
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003 wral.com
RALEIGH, N.C. -- A fire forced students to evacuate the Talley Student Center at North Carolina State University Thursday afternoon.
Authorities say the fire broke out in the cafeteria, following after a malfunction with a deep fat fryer.
Officials say there was no damage, but the kitchen area behind Little Dino's in the food commons area will be closed Thursday night because of chemicals used to put the fire out.
Students were allowed to return to the student center.
NCSU football plus State Fair equals traffic
Oct. 16, 2003
News 14 Carolina
By Katie Marzullo, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 News 14 Carolina.
It's going to be busy on the roads of Raleigh on Thursday night.
N.C. State has a home game on Thursday night and the State Fair begins on Friday. Both bring with them tons of traffic.
The Transportation Department wants commuters to be well aware of what's ahead. They are warning of fair traffic for the next two weeks.
N.C. State plays Clemson at home on Thursday night. Game traffic could interfere with a rush to Gate 9 for the last chance at advance fair tickets. The deadline for these tickets is 6 p.m. Thursday night as well as at area malls. Sales at the agriculture building ends at 5 p.m.
Kickoff is at 7:45 p.m. so plan your ticket buying accordingly.
Red Hat CEO Puts Linux in Position to Challenge Microsoft
Oct. 16, 2003
Tech News World
By Robert Weisman
© Copyright 2003 The Boston Globe.
In 1998, shortly after moving his family to North Carolina, Matthew J. Szulik took a call from an old friend and business associate, Bill Kaiser, general manager of Greylock Ventures in Waltham.
Greylock had just become the first venture capital firm to invest in a free-software company, Linux distributor Red Hat Inc. in Raleigh. Now Kaiser was looking for someone to turn it into a profitable business. "I picked up the phone," Kaiser recalled, "and said, `Matthew, here's an opportunity to change the world. Are you interested?' "
Szulik, a New Bedford native who had been running technology companies for two decades, was interested. He had been watching the free-software movement evolve since his days leading Interleaf in Waltham in the early 1990s, and once had been Exxon's manager for Unix, the technology on which Linux open-source software is based.
Five years later, with the 46-year-old Szulik at the helm, Red Hat has helped transform Linux from an alternative operating system for overcaffeinated college students to a cheaper but viable option for many corporations. From its headquarters on the North Carolina State University campus, Red Hat has become the number one distributor of Linux software by giving it a less intimidating and more accessible look and feel. And Red Hat and its Linux cohorts have been gaining market share in the business of server operating systems.
Red Hat posted its first operating profit ever in the past quarter. And Szulik, who traces his work ethic to a job at the Acushnet golf ball factory while growing up in New Bedford, has emerged as a lion of the Linux camp.
In that role, he has challenged a representative of rival Microsoft Corp. to a debate before Congress on the merits of open-source vs. proprietary software. He has struck partnerships with companies such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard. And he has brought suit against SCO Group, which has threatened the open-source business by claiming to own intellectual property in the Linux code.
"Our goal is to become the defining technology of the 21st century," Szulik said on a visit to Boston last month.
Szulik, now president and chief executive of Red Hat (and still a Red Sox fan from afar), has become a thorn in the side of Microsoft, maker of the rival Windows operating system. He's a full-throated evangelist for a technology and a company that have been growing globally by distributing computer code without copyright restrictions. And he insists the recent parade of worms and viruses infecting Windows systems are playing right into his hands as he calls on Microsoft's customers.
"The issue of viruses over the last 90 days has pushed a lot of enterprise customers over the edge," he contended.
A growing number of companies, government agencies, and other organizations have been willing to give Linux a try, often by turning to Red Hat or other distributors for "wraparound" packages of open source applications, such as Web browsers, calendars, and spreadsheets, that provide disaffected customers with alternatives to proprietary systems. Technology companies like Amazon.com and AOL Time Warner, financial institutions like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, and municipal governments from Munich to Tucson have embraced open source, creating openings for Linux distributors.
When Massachusetts last month became the first state to adopt a strategy of moving state computers toward open-standard software, Red Hat was quick to set up a meeting with state officials assessing their software needs. Though still in the early stages of their evaluation, "we're very happy to talk to Red Hat," said Eric Kriss, the state administration and finance secretary.
Microsoft executives say they aren't overly concerned about the gains of Red Hat and other Linux distributors.
"Obviously, Linux has had some growth in the server space," said Martin A. Taylor, the Microsoft general manager of platform strategy in Redmond, Wash. "But they have less than 1 percent market share on the desktop side."
Even in server operating systems, Taylor said, Linux is gaining ground mostly at the expense of companies like Sun Microsystems that are selling servers running Unix, the multi-user operating system that is the basis for Linux.
"If you look at customers who are thinking about replacing Windows servers with Linux servers," he said, "that's a very, very, very short list."
Taylor noted that Linux systems are also susceptible to viruses -- and Microsoft executives point to a warning in a recent Red Hat regulatory filing that much of the code in its products is developed by independent parties over which Red Hat has no control.
"I look at security as an industry-wide problem," Taylor said.
Yet industry watchers took note when Red Hat posted its first operating profit of $240,000 on sales of $28.8 million for the three months ending Aug. 31 -- a milestone that seemed to vindicate Szulik's strategy for the company.
"Red Hat has been successfully moving its business from one largely associated with free downloads to a position where they have supportable products," said Dan Kusnetzky, vice president of systems software research for International Data Corp. "And that will help the Linux market because one of the concerns people have about buying Linux is they fear that the vendors aren't viable."
For Red Hat, the key to making Linux legitimate for busineses and organizations to adopt is after-market support. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux product, introduced in May 2002, has drawn 26,000 subscribers by combining the Linux operating system with higher-level software, support, and access to updates. Last month, the company rolled out "open source architecture," a framework enabling customers to run additional programs on top of Linux operating systems.
"What this allows us to do is to provide mission-critical applications" for customers, said Paul J. Cormier, the Westford-based Red Hat executive vice president of engineering.
One of Red Hat's proudest moments, ironically, was provided by Microsoft. At one point in its long-running antitrust trial, a Microsoft lawyer held up a box of Red Hat Linux to make the point that Microsoft indeed faced competition. Szulik keeps a framed news photo of the scene in his board room.
"This was at a time where our company had less than $10 million in revenue," Szulik recalled. "Go figure."
Today the company sells 10 times as much open source software. Szulik said Red Hat is on track to ring up more than $115 million in revenue this year. And he thinks that time is on his side.
"It's certainly my view," he said, "that 10 or 15 or 25 years from now, open source software will overtake Microsoft."
Obit: Dr. Patrick Hill McDonald
Oct. 17, 2003
The News & Observer
DR. PATRICK HILL MCDONALD DIED ON THURSDAY, October 16. He was born in Carthag, N.C. on December 25, 1924, the son of Patrick Hill McDonald, Sr. and Mary Jane Bruton McDonald. He graduated from N.C. State University in 1947 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. His college years were interrupted by World War II. He served his country in the 338th Infantry Regiment, 85th Division, 5th Army. He fought in the Italian campaign under General Mark Clark. His years in Italy led to a lifetime love of that country. He spoke fluent Italian and he and his wife, Virginia, enjoyed visits there.
After graduating from N.C. State, Pat taught at Clemson University for two years, then studied at Northwestern University, where he received his PhD in 1953. He spent over 40 years as an Engineering Faculty member at North Carolina State, serving the University as a teacher, researcher and administrator. He was the author of two textbooks, Civil Engineering Systems and Continuum Mechanics. After his retirement he wrote Between the Creeks, a narrative history that tells the story of his family and the Scots who settled in Moore County, North Carolina.
Dr. McDonald was an active member of West Raleigh Presbyterian Church, where he served as a Deacon, and Elder, Clerk of Session and a Sunday School teacher.
He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Virginia Ackerman McDonald; a daughter, Janet McDonald of Raleigh; two sons, Patrick McDonald of Houston, Texas and Clyde McDonald and his wife, Dianne of Charleston, S.C.; three grandchildren, Chris McFayden, Stephen McDonald and Caroline McDonald. He is also survived by one niece and two nephews of Houston, Texas, and several cousins.
He was predeceased by a son, Charles Thomas McDonald, and a sister, Isabel McDonald Kiker.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, October 18th at West Raleigh Presbyterian Church. The family will greet friends following the service.
Memorials may be made to West Raleigh Presbyterian Church Music Program, P.O. Box 5635, Raleigh, N.C. 27650.
Pat McDonald was a Scotsman, an Engineer, always a scholar and gentleman.
"To see the world
in a grain of sand, And Heaven in a wild flower. To hold infinity in the palm
of your hand And eternity in an hour."
William Blake