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Rapport and the bottom line
CEOs seek to reach out to the rank and file
Congress
sent NCSU almost $6.4 million in "pork barrel'
UNC-CH second; state universities got $25.2 million
Tweedy
bird
Form and function meet beautifully in a durable fabric
Glam
mags still setting man traps
Looking at the covers of some popular women's magazines makes you realize
just how far we have -- and haven't -- come.
Bicyclists,
motorists negotiate rules of road
They aren't always alert, some plugged into headphone music and few of them
using rear-view mirrors.
Risk
is part of equation
How ocean-proof can we make N.C. 12?
Termite
Terminator
Pest repellent has Greensboro roots
Class
looks for art in unlikely places
Natalie Hall knew about the human skeleton. As a biology major, she understood
how muscles contract and expand so the human body can swing a tennis racket
or bound across a stage.
People:
N.C. State University
Ronald R. Sederoff
Footnotes:
Best writers to pocket cash
Get writing! N.C. State University's English department, which just launched
a master's of fine arts program in creative writing, will award cash to the
best short stories it can find in a contest.
Financial
Aid Office responds to Carolina Covenant
Financial Aid says that Carolina's plan will not work for NCSU unless some
serious changes are made at State.
Jobs-hungry
Vance in line for $15M textile plant
An Israeli textile company has picked a site to build a $15 million production
facility, and a parcel in Vance County north of Raleigh is a front-runner.
I do's
and . . . don'ts, deadlock over wedlock
cites Barbara Risman, sociology and anthropology
Oct. 19, 2003
The News & Observer
By Karin Rives, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
On any given day, you can see Henry Scherich wander across Liggett Street in Durham to chat with staffers in another building.
He could just as easily pick up the phone, use a messenger or send an e-mail. But the 64-year-old chief executive officer makes it a point to meet personally with his rank-and-file workers to keep them abreast of company matters or discuss projects.
resources
* "Contented Cows Give Better Milk," by Bill Catlette and Richard
Hadden (Saltillo Press, $30): Describes some companies that engage employees
and improve their bottom line because of it, and some that don't.
* "The Accidental Manager -- Get the Skills You Need to Excel in Your New Career," by Gary S. Topchik (Amacom , $17.95): A guide for first-time managers, helping them create a motivational climate that brings out the best in a staff.
* "Keeping Good People," by Roger E. Herman (Oakhill Press, $21.95): Struggling to keep your good employees? This book offers tips for how to reverse that trend.
* "The Trusted Leader," by Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau (Free Press, $25): Authors argue that executives who build trust within a company will have a more loyal work force.
* "301 More Ways to Have Fun At Work" by Dave Hemsath (Berrett-Koehler Pub, $16.05): Yes, working can be fun, and when people have fun, they're also more likely to be productive and loyal.
talking and
walking
HOW DO CEOS COMMUNICATE?
* E-mail: 70 percent
* "Town-hall" meetings: 52 percent
* Walk the halls: 52 percent
* Road shows: 43 percent
* Print column: 42 percent
* Breakfast or lunch meetings: 38 percent
WHO DO THEY COMMUNICATE WITH?
* Senior leadership team: 78 percent
* Senior managers: 51 percent
* Division or unit leaders: 46 percent
* Corporate employees: 35 percent
* Front-line employees: 13 percent
* Supervisors: 11 percent
* Sales force: 8 percent
(LAWRENCE RAGAN COMMUNICATIONS 2002 SURVEY OF 530 COMPANIES, INCLUDING 47 FROM THE FORTUNE 500)
"I don't know all the 230 people who work for me. I wish I did," he confessed. "But it doesn't matter. I still talk to them."
For years, the annual turnover rate at Measurement Inc., the educational testing company Scherich founded in 1980, has held steady in the single digits. The CEO's affable personality, as well as the company's generous profit-sharing plan, may have something to do with it.
Bosses such as Scherich are in high demand these days. Increasingly, corporations realize that a leader who's able to connect with workers will not only build morale but also increase productivity at a time when both are key to survival. Executive search firms are on the look-out for CEOs with "people skills," and a slew of new management books are pounding home the message that good leaders are visible, approachable, fun to be with and comfortable around their employees.
The result: More top executives are emerging from their corner offices to mingle with their troops. Their efforts to be better bosses coincide with research indicating that employee turnover may soon pick up as the economy recovers. A recent survey by CareerJournal.com found that 78 percent of employees expect the job market to improve within the next year. Almost two-thirds, or 64 percent, of the 300 polled employees said they would begin or intensify
their job search once that happens. The margin of sampling error was not available.
Some leaders are already in midst of such an exodus.
Marye Anne Fox, the chancellor of N.C. State University, has seen some of her best faculty members and senior employees lured away by competing colleges and organizations that pay better wages than North Carolina's financially strapped government can. So Fox decided this year to hold bi-monthly breakfast meetings with randomly chosen faculty members at the school in an effort to hear their concerns and frustrations.
She has also scheduled more meetings with members of the faculty senate, the same body that censured her in January after she fired two popular academic administrators and set off a storm of criticism.
Today, faculty members give her credit for mending relations and strengthening lines of communication as many university employees complain about a growing workload and poor pay.
"She has definitely made more of an effort. It has created a more open atmosphere," said Dennis Daley, chairman of the faculty senate.
Fox, too, believes her visibility is making a tough situation a little more tolerable.
"I think it's reassured faculty that we're in the same team, even if we're not always able to respond because of fiscal restraints," she said.
The push to break down corporate hierarchies began with the elimination of thousands of mid-level management jobs in the 1980s. That has placed the spotlight on CEOs and their ability to lead.
"Corporations have, over the last 15 years, worked very hard to do away with layers of managers, and this is one of the byproducts," said Bill Catlette, a Collierville, Tenn., workplace consultant and co-author of "Contented Cows Give Better Milk" (Saltillo Press, $30). "They're required to have a better grasp of what's going on on the floor."
Rock Kershaw of Rock Kershaw and Associates, a Raleigh headhunting firm, said he's running into more companies that specifically request leaders with strong people skills. He's also hearing more executives market themselves as outgoing personalities who can listen to those around them.
"We have been in a terrible economic slump and people have to find reasonable ways to improve the bottom line," he said. "One way of doing that is for the CEO to get out of the ivory tower and mix and mingle in a way that makes sense for the company."
During the boom years of the late 1990s, many companies were in such a hiring frenzy that they failed to look at the soft skills executives brought to the table, said David Singer, senior partner at Fortune Consultants, another Raleigh executive search firm.
Then followed the economic downturn with layoffs and larger workloads for those who didn't lose their jobs.
"Progressive companies are starting to realize the need to ... [meet] employees' emotional needs," Singer said. "They just lost track of people in the last few years."
When Mike Lough became the new CEO for LiveWire Logic in Morrisville last March he immediately had to cut costs at the software start-up company. But instead of trimming benefits as he saw fit, he let his staff vote on it. They decided to keep health and dental insurance and to scrap their 401(k) plan.
Lough also says he increased communication with his 13 employees to make sure everybody was on board.
"In a small company, if one person doesn't deliver, it affects everybody," he said. "So we share all information with employees so they know what the revenue stream is, what the cash burn is, why we spend money and why we don't. You want them to know that."
Such an open approach doesn't come naturally for everybody.
Most corporate executives have been trained to think more about financial results than how to motivate the people who work for them. Those who learn to bridge those two worlds are the ones who become great leaders, said Rob Galford, a managing partner at the Center for Executive Development in Boston.
Raleigh-based Art.com has grown from two employees five years ago to 210 today. During that time, Joshua Chodniewicz, its chief executive, said he learned by trial and error and a lot of late-night reading how to build an inclusive and open workplace culture.
"It's extremely hard work," he said. "There are times when I walk back to my office or to the next meeting and realize, 'There was a better way to do that.' Maybe it was the way I said something, or maybe it had to do with eye contact or hand gestures."
Today Chodniewicz has a reminder on his computer to set aside time for casual interactions with employees. He's made a habit, for example, of responding to e-mail in person, rather than with an electronic reply. He also holds a monthly "Chat with Josh" event to which new employees are personally invited to learn about the company and ask questions of their CEO.
The magic worked on Houston Walthall. After working in electronics manufacturing, she took a job in Art.com's framing department two years ago.
"Where I was before, I just went to work to get a paycheck," he said. "Here it's more than just coming to work. It's like coming into a team and trying to get something accomplished. Here, everybody pitches in."
Staff writer Karin Rives can be reached at 829-4521.
Congress sent NCSU almost $6.4 million in "pork barrel'
Oct. 18, 2003
Winston-Salem Journal
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press
Congress sent more "pork barrel" money to N.C. State University - nearly $6.4 million - than to any other college or university in the state.
N.C. State wasn't alone in getting earmarked money from Congress. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got $2.1 million last year, making it the No. 2 university-pork recipient in individual projects in North Carolina.
North Carolina overall pulled in $25.2 million in individual projects - research dollars that schools didn't have to share with colleges in other states, according to an annual review by the Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper that follows college issues.
The review tracks university dollars that legislators funnel to their districts. The findings put North Carolina at 28th in the nation.
Also known as congressional earmarking or directed funding, the money is something that major universities, politicians and government agencies said 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, the director of federal research affairs at N.C. State, where total federal financing ran about $100 million last year. Most of that came from grants for which researchers had to compete.
Congress allocated $2.01 billion toward academic pork for the 2003 budget - a record amount, according to the Chronicle. The 2004 budget isn't complete.
Nearly half the money awarded to N.C. State in the 2003 federal budget came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The money included research projects to tackle wheat fungus and improve timber harvesting, and to detect bioterrorism on farms.
Agriculture got most of the money because the federal agency has historically used earmarks, rather than competitive grants, to dole out dollars to land-grant universities such as N.C. State, said John Gilligan, the vice chancellor for research and graduate studies at the university.
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 effect on the state and nation.
Price said he thinks that 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 said 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. 20, 2003
The News & Observer
By Karen Guzman, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
Dr. Philip Carter
doesn't care that he's a fashion stereotype. As with no-nonsense folks -- scholarly
and otherwise -- functionality is his style rule.
So the professor of microbiology and immunology at NCSU's veterinary
school wears tweed. Not only tweed jackets, but also Irish tweed caps.
"Most faculty members don't really have an eye for fashion," says Carter, who is 58. " I don't think I do, so I don't have to worry what color my tie is, because tweed has so many colors in it."
Tweed, like the quest for knowledge itself, is classic and enduring. It is above the fray of modern times -- though we should note that college campuses are also known for experimental, avant-garde looks. But tweed, practical and always in style, i s the perfect fabric for people with other things on their minds.
The fabric has its genesis in a far colder clime: the British Isles.
"The tweed suit as we know it today has its origins in hunting clothes," says Kevin Jones, museum curator at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.
The hardy fabric was adapted to city wear. In 18th-century England, a court suit was blended with tweed to produce, in the early 19th century, the first modern men's suit, Jones says.
Tweed first became associated with professors of "classic" subjects, such as Latin, says Diane Ellis, professor of fashion at Meredith College. "These were not people who were interested in anything other than functional clothes that would last a long time."
The term "tweed" actually refers to the way a fabric is put together. The process involves dying and then weaving different colored threads into yarn, which is then turned into fabric.
Carter began wearing tweed during his own student days at Notre Dame in Indiana. "The warm wool was the thing to go with," he says.
Then he discovered the fabric's durability, later confirmed during a trip to England. "You'll see men [in England] doing repairs on the railroad in tweed jackets. They just wear like iron."
Although he tends to remove his jacket in the classroom, to appear less formal and more approachable to students, Carter likes the instant dressy air the blazer adds when he walks across campus. Plus it's comfortable and doesn't wrinkle.
Tom Vick, assistant manager at the Joseph A. Bank store in Cameron Village, says older gentlemen seem to like tweed because it's a little heavier and warmer. That allure is the same reason men overall in the Southeast tend to shy away from the fabric in wool. "It's so heavy, most people want year-round tropical weight fabric," Vick says.
Although tweed suits -- jacket, vest and pants -- are somewhat unusual today, the separate elements have proven timeless, not always the case with "period" fashions. Tweed has also translated across gender lines; Jones points out that the fabric has graced both women's ready-to-wear and couture styles.
Carter, for now, is sticking with his caps and jackets.
And to the old stereotypical riddle, he responds: "Is it an image thing, or do professors really like tweed? Well, this professor really likes tweed."
Staff writer Karen Guzman can be reached at 829-4752.
Glam mags still setting man traps
Oct. 20, 2003
The News & Observer
By Karen Guzman, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
Looking at the covers of some popular women's magazines makes you realize just how far we have -- and haven't -- come.
The cover blurbs on publications aimed at women in their 20s and early 30s tease to stories inside : formulaic, titillating promises that prescribe "Top Tips" for handling all of life's quests. And the most important quest, bar none, is getting and keeping a man.
The October issue of Cosmopolitan promises "101 Fabulous Sex Tips." Glamour offers "25 Bedroom Dos & Don'ts according to guys."
Beauty, of course, is depicted as the necessary bait, hence advice such as Allure's "Your Overlooked Beauty Zones, Make The Most of Them."
"They're traditional messages to women, but they're dressed up in sexier skin," says NCSU's Barbara Risman, co-chairwoman of the Council on Contemporary Families.
The big difference, according to Risman, is that magazines now encourage a woman to use her sexuality to snare a man, whereas tamer publications of the past may have suggested using, say, cooking.
Indoctrination starts early; the themes are the same in magazines for teenage girls. October's YM, for instance, advises girls on "225 Ways to Look Really Cute!" while also addressing "Why Doesn't He Like Me? The Eternal Question Answered."
"It's different and yet the same," Risman says. "The bottom line is still male-focused: how to get and keep one."
The good news is that newer magazines, such as Shape and Muscle & Fitness Hers , focus more on the healthy empowerment of women's bodies, as opposed to just their cosmetic value. And specialized publications that address the needs of particular female communities, such as Honey and Latina, are popping up.
"Even if the mainstream hasn't changed, there's more variety now," Risman says.
Give these the slip
Bedroom slippers sure to get a second glance should arrive in area stores this month.
Isotoner's Conversationals are slip-ons with a message. The plush, velour slippers feature designs and slogans that announce the wearer. Among the themes: "Shop Girl," "Lounge Girl," "Cool Cat" and "Lady is a Vamp."
The designs are dotted with three -dimensional flourishes such as feathers and rhinestones. Placed side-by-side, the slippers form a picture.
At $20 a pair, the slippers will be available in Hecht's, Lord & Taylor and J.C. Penney department stores.
For heat seekers
With below-freezing temperatures and serious snowfall, the folks in Franconia, N.H., know a thing or two about keeping warm on a cold winter's night.
So what better place to buy flannel pajamas? The Franconia-based Garnet Hill has some nifty new designs for its sleep sets.
Made of soft German cotton flannel, these jammies create a toasty cocoon. More than a dozen prints are available, including peace doves, holiday ornaments, guitars and leopard prints.
Women's sell for $68, men's for $78. Check them out and order at www.garnethill.com or call (800) 622-6216 to request a catalog.
Staff writer Karen Guzman can be reached at 829-4752.
Bicyclists, motorists negotiate rules of road
Oct. 19, 2003
The News & Observer
By Bruce Siceloff, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
They aren't always alert, some plugged into headphone music and few of them using rear-view mirrors. When Mary B. Gorman comes upon a multicolor gaggle of bike riders enjoying her green neighborhood between Apex and Jordan Lake, she toots her horn to let them know, gently, that a car is behind them.
"I just toot. I don't toooooot," said Gorman, 52, who enjoyed cycling, too, before arthritis disabled her. "To me, it's a common courtesy."
As she drives around groups of 10 or 20 riders -- carefully, "so if somebody wobbles, I don't hit them" -- she finds that her friendly intentions can be misconstrued.
"Some of them will give you the finger," Gorman sighed. "They're real rude. They're mad at the world when you try to pass them. They think they own the highway."
Traffic laws give cyclists and motorists similar rights and obligations, and roughly equal claim to the road. But the laws, the courts and police do not address many of the practical issues that arise daily on roads shared by slender, fragile bicycles -- usually going 20 mph or less -- and powerful automobiles three times as fast.
Motorists and cyclists are left to negotiate their relationship on the road. A provocative radio broadcast a few weeks ago reminded Triangle residents that this relationship needs a lot of work.
G105 radio talk jockey Bob Dumas struck a nerve in September when he joked about running cyclists off the road and invited drivers to share his animosity. After cyclists protested, two sponsors withdrew and the Federal Communications Commission received complaints, the station manager promised to run a "share the road" education campaign.
North Carolina records 1,000 collisions between bicycles and motor vehicles in an average year, with 30 cyclists killed and 160 seriously injured.
Law enforcement officers, safety experts, two-wheelers and four-wheelers agree that road relations are sensitive to mistakes, misunderstandings and the stresses of traffic and modern life. If you factor in drivers and cyclists who callously break the laws, a few who are quick to offend or to take offense, and you'll hear plenty of grievances from both camps.
Two-wheel road rage
One disagreement over road rights last Sunday morning began with a honking horn and ended with cuts and bruises in rural Orange County. Ray Caldwell, 36, a research scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill, told a state Highway Patrol trooper and an Orange sheriff's deputy that a silver Toyota forced him toward the right edge of the lane and then brushed his leg as it passed him on Dodson's Crossroads west of Chapel Hill.
He caught up with the car at an intersection and exchanged words with the driver and a passenger. When the two men got out of the car and confronted him, Caldwell picked up his racing bike -- "purely as a defensive measure," he said .
He said he swung the bike twice, touching the passenger's arm. The men hurled the bike into the air, punched Caldwell and knocked him to the ground. When another cyclist called 911, they drove away. Caldwell said he did not know whether he would pursue charges in the case.
Some cyclists say they are sensitive to relations with four-wheelers. Mike Jennings, 57, of Cary took up biking a year ago after his knees went bad and he had to quit running. He's in better shape now than he has been since he ran track in high school.
"I will always stay over to the right," said Jennings, who works in Raleigh as Wake County's environmental services coordinator. "If I'm coming up on a curve and I have a better view ahead than the motorist behind me does, I will wave them ahead if I see there's nothing coming -- or put my hand down if they need to wait."
As a cyclist as well as a sergeant and 15-year veteran of the state Highway Patrol, Kevin Bray of Asheville knows the tensions and misunderstandings that happen on the road. Bray puts 3,000 miles on his bike every year. He was one of the first cyclists who complained to the FCC about the G105 broadcast, which he said could be construed as urging listeners to commit felony assault.
Drivers sometimes think cyclists are blocking traffic unnecessarily when they take actions that actually are guided by safety concerns. Bray, for example, doesn't want to ride too far to the right on blind curves and other stretches where doing so might encourage a driver to pass him at a dangerous time. So, in biker lingo, he "takes the lane," a move that might seem rude to the drivers behind him.
"But once I clear the curve and get on the straight road, I'll move over, man," he said.
Bray comes to the Triangle about three times a year for Highway Patrol training, and he brings his bike.
"Raleigh is anything but bike- and pedestrian-friendly," Bray said. "Cars are passing me closer and faster, and there are more horns blown at me in Wake and Durham counties than there are here in Asheville."
Most drivers want to be careful around bicyclists, said Mary Meletiou, bicycle and pedestrian program manager for N.C. State University's Institute for Transpor- tation Research and Education.
"But some don't know how," Meletiou said. "It makes them nervous. They've had some bad experiences with some cyclists. I think the majority of motorists are respectful, but this controversy brought out the worst in some people."
Motorists' complaints
Triangle motorists complain about the hazards created by cyclists riding against the traffic flow, running stop signs and forgetting to signal their turns, and by big groups of slow bikers clogging fast roads.
"Several times, I've popped over the top of a hill and had to slam on brakes to keep from creaming a group of them, anywhere from three to 30 cyclists," said Cori Sheets, an information technology company sales manager who lives south of Apex off old U.S. 1. "I've had to go off the road because I couldn't stop in time. There's no shoulder. It's going in someone's yard."
Mary Gorman had the right of way on Green Level Road near Cary recently when three cyclists approached on a side road ahead of her.
"Instead of stopping at the stop sign -- they saw me coming -- they just flew right across the road. I didn't have to slam on brakes, but I had to apply brakes. It was scary. I don't want to hit one of them. I have no grudges against them," Gorman said.
"But if they feel like they own the highway, somebody's going to get hurt."
Bikers who flout the law make it tougher for other cyclists to win respect on the road, Meletiou said. When she is on her bike and comes upon traffic stopped for a red light, she doesn't sneak past on the right to get in front . She lines up with the trucks and cars.
"It takes a little longer, and you're breathing car exhaust," Meletiou said. "But to my way of thinking, you should act like other vehicles."
Dennis Markatos, 24, of Chapel Hill, who commutes by bike to his jobs with two nonprofit political and environmental advocacy groups, said he occasionally runs stop signs. Asked whether that's the right thing to do, he sighed uncomfortably and steered away from the question.
"That's an important situation for discussion, for sure," Markatos said. "I guess the main thing that I'm coming from is common courtesy and common respect. ... It's not based on 'Am I violating or obeying the law ?' but I respect that person, so I am not going to hurt that person."
Yet even as motorists and bicyclists call for constraints on each other's selfish behavior, their complaints often are tempered with optimism and underlying good will.
Julia Nichols, who directs public policy internships at UNC-Chapel Hill, worries about bicyclists who ignore traffic rules. She reserves her sharpest criticism for rowdy bike riders "who just whiz by" pedestrians strolling across the UNC-CH campus. She wishes they would behave themselves, but she's glad they're there.
"I think it's wonderful, from an environmental stance, how much bicycling is a part of this community," Nichols said. "You never want to discourage people from bicycling. Yes!"
Staff writer Bruce Siceloff can be reached at 829-4527.
Staff writer Ann Kim contributed to this report.
Oct. 19, 2003
The News & Observer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
THE N&O: How ocean-proof can we make N.C. 12?
JOHN S. FISHER: We're always going to have stretches at risk of damage from severe storms, and the question remains, what level of risk are we willing to assume? Asked another way, how much are we willing to spend to minimize the risk of interruption or loss of the highway? We have the engineering knowledge and experience to provide the transportation, but there will be increasing expense and interruption due to persistent long-term erosion and storms. I think the [strategy] is going to be a combination of road, bridge, elevated causeway and ferry, as it is today.
THE N&O: Will we see big changes?
FISHER: Absolutely. A case in point is the proposal to replace Bonner Bridge over Oregon Inlet with a long bridge/causeway. One reason for that design is the difficulty associated with erosion on the north end of Pea Island. The N.C. Department of Transportation has been working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others to design an alternative that will have minimum risk of damage over the [expected 50-year] useful life of the bridge and provide the connection needed across the inlet.
THE N&O: What other changes are likely?
FISHER: There are already discussions about an elevated causeway and bridge or a causeway combination in the future at the breach on Hatteras Island. A long-term solution may be the elevated causeway because the island is so narrow that it would be very difficult to maintain a highway there.
THE N&O: What advances in engineering technology can help us rebuild Outer Banks infrastructure today?
FISHER: We have a better understanding of the nature of damage caused by storms and of the frequency and dynamics of these storms. We also are continuing to improve our engineering skill and judgment and our geological understanding of the long-term processes on the Outer Banks. All these things provide us a better set of tools to deal with the issues that society presents in requesting protection of transportation infrastructure.
There are a number of technologies for forecasting or defining risk. We have a greater understanding of storms, of sea-level rise and the evolution of barrier islands. In terms of road and bridge construction, we continue to improve the technologies and materials we use, so we will be making better decisions and building better roads and bridges.
THE N&O: Will we have to give up on any of the road we have now? If so, where?
FISHER: It's premature to say where, but it's quite possible we may elect to go from road to causeway or even to ferry. I expect to see greater use of elevated causeways on the Sound side of the islands as opposed to the highway constructed on top of the islands. We probably will also make greater use of selected beach nourishment, and I anticipate greater use of ferries. The purpose of the Outer Banks Task Force is to evaluate various alternatives in the context of the transportation needs as well as the protection of the important and fragile natural environment.
THE N&O: One strategy that we have resisted is seawalls. Is it time to reconsider?
FISHER: North Carolina has one of the country's finest coastal zone management programs and has become a model for other states. One aspect has been the prohibition, with a few exceptions, of building seawalls or bulkheads or other shoreline-hardening devices. We will continue to debate whether that is the right policy, but I support it. In the long run, it's better to have a natural beach than a hardened beach. I think beach nourishment has proven itself an effective tool for dealing with erosion. We have used erosion-control structures from time to time, and as technology improves and situations warrant, it may be appropriate to consider these on a case-by-case basis.
The list would include such things as the rock revetment at Fort Fisher. The revetment is a layer of rock which protects the beach and dissipates the wave energy and has been effective in protecting remnants of the historic Civil War fort. The terminal groin at Oregon Inlet is another structural solution to deal with a specific erosion problem. It is a structure built to trap sand on the inlet's southern shore.
I would like to think that the state will continue to explore the use of these or newer technologies, but I anticipate it would be on a very limited basis. Structural solutions could have been appropriate for the protection of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse as an alternative to moving it; in conjunction with a beach nourishment project, it may reduce the frequency of future renourishment.
THE N&O: Any other strategies that should be considered?
FISHER: One used effectively by the DOT is relocating the road away from the ocean, where the island is wide enough and wetlands are far enough back. This can continue to be done.
THE N&O: Are there other concerns?
FISHER: The road is the same corridor for electricity and water so when we have a disruption it's not just to the road, but to these other elements of the infrastructure as well. If you protect the road, you've pretty much protected all three. But, by itself, moving the road back is not sufficient. We also need to maintain a dune to reduce flooding and the transport of sand onto the road.
THE N&O: Some say just build a much taller dune. Is that enough?
FISHER: Large dunes with narrow beaches are not effective because the waves will erode the dunes too rapidly. We need wide beaches and large dunes to protect the road from large storms. There are places where we do not have that, such as the north end of Pea Island, a section in the Kitty Hawk area, portions of Ocracoke Island and other sites. I hope that will continue to be part of the long-term strategy.
THE N&O: What should folks keep in mind?
FISHER: One of the most important is the dynamic nature of the Outer Banks. The combined pressures of more frequent large storms, sea-level rise and other factors will make protecting the highways and these communities more challenging in the future.
Fisher and colleague Margery Overton developed a computer-based mapping system to identify coastal areas at risk of severe damage during hurricanes.
(John S. Fisher heads NCSU's Center for Transportation and the Environment and the N.C. Shore and Beach Preservation Association.)
Oct. 19, 2003
The Greensboro News & Record
By Meredith Barkley, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The Greensboro News & Record.
Here's something new for termites to chew on.
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Class looks for art in unlikely places
Oct. 20, 2003
News & Observer
By Barbara Barrett, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 News & Observer
RALEIGH -- Natalie Hall knew about the human skeleton. As a biology major, she understood how muscles contract and expand so the human body can swing a tennis racket or bound across a stage.
But until this semester, Hall couldn't articulate that knowledge visually. She had no art experience, no background in drawing or sculpting.
Erika Snitzer, an art therapy major, could draw the human form. She understood light and shadow and how shading changes the mood and tone of an artwork. But she never fully fathomed the lines of a taut bicep or appreciated the tension rippling through the legs of a leaping dancer.
A relatively new class at Meredith College has allowed both women to tap into talents they never knew they had.
"Knowing how things move helps you draw a moving figure. It helps you put weight in your drawing," Snitzer said.
"I know what should be done to produce good art," Hall added. She laughed. "I'm not sure I myself can produce good art."
The class -- "Art and Science: Anatomy and the Arts" -- picks up on a trend in higher education toward interdisciplinary studies. It was conceived by Meredith biology teacher John Mecham, an avid photographer, and art teacher Carol Hayes, who has a biology degree. T hey combined classroom anatomy lectures in the college's new Science and Math building with history lessons, hands-on sketch work and field trips.
The homework is overwhelming, Snitzer said. It's also lots of fun.
Among the semester projects are molding clay muscles onto plastic skeletons and producing three-dimensional art books of students' drawings and sketches. The final project is a PowerPoint presentation and Web page that shows the bones, muscles, function, pathology, aesthetics and use in a sport of a joint in the human body.
In January, the students' artwork will appear in a campus exhibit.
"They're no longer going to look at human morphology in quite the same way," Mecham said.
Before a recent class, Hayes wandered among half-finished skeletons that showed the students' range in artistic and scientific understanding. Here the muscles on the skull were a bit out of place, there the clay lines around the mouth weren't so exact. A few of the 15 students had added some individual flair: a straw hat or a cigarette dangling from a skeleton's mouth.
"They're not only hearing about [anatomy] from John, but they're molding it, they're drawing it, and then they're going to the dance studio and dancing it," Hayes said.
Skeletons abound
In addition to exposing the students to another discipline, the teachers want to dispel the stereotype, as they put it, that anatomy is only about humans. All living organisms have a form that follows a function, Mecham said. Drawing the form helps students understand function.
Which is why the class has drawn whale and horse skeletons at the nearby N.C. State University College of Veterinary Medicine and why, on a recent sunny day, the group trekked to NCSU's J.C. Raulston Arboretum to examine primitive plant species through leaf rubbings.
"I want you to think about the primitive or advanced nature of the plant, not just the flower," Mecham told the class. Look at the leaf veins, the flowering arrangement and the seed pods, he said. "Think about its use in nature, the morphology."
The group would be tested on these things.
First, though, Hayes passed out large sheets of brown charcoal paper and conte crayons to do rubbings, the same craft project done by so many preschoolers. Look for variety in the plants you choose, she said, and think about the whole composition of the artwork.
Hall wandered away to a funny-looking tree, a Keteleeria davidiana , with short, stubby, deep green needles. She scrunched her face at her first effort.
"I don't know, I thought it would look really cool, but it doesn't," she said, tossing the needles to the ground. This isn't Hall's favorite assignment of the semester, but at least she's learning more about plant structure, she said.
Harder than it looks
Hall, who also studies Spanish, wants to be a physical therapist. She thought an art class would help her understand how human muscles work. She's fascinated by animal anatomy. Her drawing of a horse skeleton, which she turned in last week, was perhaps the best piece of art she has ever done.
What's so great about the class, she said, is the chance for students to teach one another. "You have students looking through a compound microscope for the first time," Hall said.
And, of course, there's the art education.
Oh, the beginning of class was rough, Hayes said, laughing. All but two of the students came from majors other than art, and their first works weren't good. But she is of the belief that art is a skill, something that can be taught through technique and practice.
Some students, such as Hall, have shown incredible vision, Hayes said. Later, the students will build on their leaf rubbings, going over the works with different-colored conte crayons to emphasize the plants' anatomy.
Meredith stretches out
The courses are an example to other professors as Meredith expands its efforts in interdisciplinary studies, said Alyson Colwell-Waber , Meredith's dean for special academic programs and a professor of dance.
The school has a new general education curriculum this year that includes several global-community courses combining such interests as social work and infectious diseases.
"Anatomy and the Arts" isn't part of the global curriculum, but Hayes and Mecham gave a seminar to faculty last year on how to successfully integrate disciplines, Colwell-Waber said.
"I'm seeing people thinking about learning in a new way," she said.
Hayes and Mecham collaborate on two other courses, one that focuses on biological photography and another that combines science with ceramics.
"I think one of the goals of all three classes is to bring the artist out of the scientist," Mecham said, sitting on a bench at the arboretum.
"And to get the artist interested in the sciences," Hayes added.
Oct. 20, 2003
The News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
Ronald R. Sederoff, Distinguished University Professor and Edwin F. Conger professor of forestry in the College of Natural Resources, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in recognition of his pioneering work in the application of molecular genetics and genomics to forest-tree species. The AAAS is the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science. Sederoff also serves as an associate member in the departments of genetics and biochemistry and co-directs NCSU's Forest Biotechnology Group.
Footnotes: Best writers to pocket cash
Oct. 20, 2003
The News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
Get writing! N.C. State University's English department, which just launched a master's of fine arts program in creative writing, will award cash to the best short stories it can find in a contest.
Entries are due Nov. 3. The department will award $500 to the best 5,000-word story and $200 to the best 1,200-word story. This year's judge is Margot Livesey, author of the novels "Criminals," "The Missing World" and "Eva Moves the Furniture."
The contest is open to all North Carolina residents except employees of the University of North Carolina system or writers with a published book. Graduate assistants in the UNC system may enter. Submissions should be sent to: NCSU Short Story Contest, Department of English, Campus Box 8105, Raleigh, N.C. 27695-8105. Winners will be announced at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 20 in an event on NCSU's campus. For information, call 515-4129.
Financial Aid Office responds to Carolina Covenant
Oct. 20, 2003
Technician
By Tyler Dukes, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.
In early October 2003, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser unveiled a financial aid plan that has broken the mold among public universities. Dubbed the "Carolina Covenant," it will grant students from qualifying low-income families four years of free education with no debt.
Qualifying families must have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Under present federal guidelines, eligible families would include a family of four with an income of $28,000 and a single parent, one child home with an income of $18,000. In return for a debt-free education, the students must work 10 to 12 hours a week at a campus job throughout the duration of their college career.
The new initiative strikes a sharp contrast among many of the nation's universities, which in the recent years have been shifting focus from need-based to merit-based aid. N.C. State, however, has been working hard to do just the opposite.
According to NCSU Director of Financial Aid Julie Rice Mallette, the university has made significant progress in increasing the amount of award money available to students, especially through financial need.
"Our commitment to need-based financial aid has grown since the '90s," Mallette said. "At this point there are more dollars awarded on the basis of need than on merit."
In the early '90s, NCSU had limited funding for both need-based and merit-based scholarships and grants. This began to change after state legislation allowed for a $400 increase in tuition.
"The university made the decision to allocate half of this funding towards financial aid," Mallette said. "This raised the amount of award money to scholarship and grant applicants by $4.2 million."
It also drastically increased award money allocated to financial need, which before the fall of 1996 hovered at about half the amount of merit-based awards.
The Campaign for N.C. State Students, initiated in 1997, also increased award money drastically for both merit and need-based awards. This five-year effort effectively raised $128 million for NCSU. It more than tripled the endowment that awards scholarships and grants and Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said the campaign was one of the most successful fund-raising efforts in the history of the university. The campaign is now working to raise another $150 million to contribute to institutional scholarships and grants.
Despite this and many of the university's numerous fund-raising campaigns, Mallette explains that a program like the Carolina Covenant is just not possible at NCSU without serious changes in the current situation of financial aid.
"I do feel very strongly that the Covenant plan is a good thing," Mallette said. "But what works for Carolina will not necessarily work for N.C. State. The financial needs of N.C. State and Carolina students are not the same, and the financial aid resources available at the two schools are not equal."
The problem lies in the vast differences between the student populations of the two universities. The undergraduate population of NCSU is 28 percent larger than UNC-CH and has a total financial need that is 24 percent greater. Chapel Hill also has many more sources that contribute to the scholarship and grant endowment.
"UNC-CH receives much more gift money that goes directly to funding financial need scholarships," Mallette said. "We would need a pretty significant increase in funding to meet that kind of need-based demand."
The decision on whether to allocate financial aid funds to need-based or merit-based scholarships is a difficult one, especially for students on both ends of the spectrum. Brandon Boyd, a freshman in pulp and paper science, has received the merit-based Pulp and Paper Scholarship along with a small amount of need-based aid.
"That's a hard question," Boyd said. "There are a lot of people that deserve money and a lot of people that want to go to college but can't afford it."
Despite the university's focus on need-based demand, Mallette assures that merit-based award money will not be left behind.
"Trying to select one group of students to concentrate on is philosophically not the best thing to do," Mallette said. "We want to strike a good balance between the competing interests before we decide where the money goes."
Electronic Memory Research That Dwarfs the Silicon Chip
Oct. 20, 2003
New York Times
By John Markoff, staff report
© Copyright 2003
A team of university researchers has constructed an electronic memory circuit from disordered arrays of electronic clumps of gold atoms, according to a report to be published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The advance, made by researchers at Rice University, North Carolina State University and Pennsylvania State University, is based on one of several approaches that are being pursued to create a microelectronic technology on a much smaller scale than today's silicon chips.
In the new field, known as molecular electronics, the researchers have succeeded in creating tiny switches from molecules and atoms. They are now searching for ways to assemble the vast arrays of the switches to serve both as memory and computing devices.
In one approach, being pursued by researchers at Hewlett-Packard and the University of California at Los Angeles, a mesh of extremely fine wires is created with a switch at the points where wires cross.
In contrast, the team led by James Tour, a chemist at Rice University, has opted to build circuits from molecules that are randomly laid out between larger contact points.
By repeating tiny electrical pulses between adjacent contact points, the researchers were able to create regions they referred to as nanocells, which would function both as memory and as computer logic circuits.
So far, the researchers have created circuits that are about 10 times as dense as silicon chips, though they switch on and off far more slowly, Mr. Tour said.
Even if it is not possible to increase the switching speed of the new circuits, they could potentially be used in applications where the stored information is permanent or changes infrequently.
The researchers said their self-assembling circuits performed in some ways like the neural circuits in the human brain, where pathways tend to persist even if they are not used frequently.
They said they thought there were several types of physical phenomena creating the switching effects, storing ones and zeros in their laboratory for more than a week at a time.
Jobs-hungry Vance in line for $15M textile plant
Oct. 20, 2003
MSNBC
By Amanda Jones, staff report for Triangle Business Journal
© Copyright 2003
HENDERSON - An Israeli textile company has picked a site to build a $15 million production facility, and a parcel in Vance County north of Raleigh is a front-runner.
Harel Rotem, vice president of North American marketing and sales for Albaad Massuot Itzhak, confirms that "a site has been chosen." He and other company officials declined to reveal the site location.
Triangle economic development sources say Vance County is at the top of Albaad's list, though no official word has been sent forth from the company.
Benny Finch, director of the Vance County Economic Development Commission, would not confirm nor deny Albaad's interest in Vance County. "I have no commitments from any industry at this time," he says.
Albaad has been working with representatives of the North Carolina Department of Commerce on a package of economic incentives. Commerce officials would not comment.
According to an Israeli news report, Albaad officials say they can recover 40 percent of their investment through tax breaks, free land and other incentives within a few years. North Carolina's incentives programs include tax breaks linked to job creation as well as cash incentives.
The build-to-suit facility would be about 150,000 square feet, sources say. It is expected to employ no more than 100.
Albaad Massuot Itzhak has a contract with Wal-Mart to produce its White Cloud brand of wet wipes. The company has been exporting the products to the U.S. retailer from its production facilities in Israel and in Germany for several years.
The company wants a U.S. plant, and an Israeli news item published in July reported that Albaad had narrowed its choices to four sites in three states - North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Helmut Hergeth, a textile management professor at North Carolina State University, says nonwoven textile manufacturers such as Albaad produce products that are not labor intensive but do required skilled labor. "And we have that here," he says.
"They also need good access to water and dependable energy sources," says Hergeth. "I believe there is a cost advantage in the U.S. because of the infrastructure already here, especially when you go into mass production."
The company is following a pattern set by Israeli companies in recent years in which they build facilities closer to their customers and in more rural areas, says Tom Glaser, president of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce's Southeast region office in Atlanta.
In 2002, Mivrag Automotive Group of the Megiddo region of Israel opened a facility in Clinton, Tenn., to manufacture spare tire hoists. The 55,000-square-foot plant employs 75.
"Usually, they try to buy into a U.S. facility to get into the U.S. market," Glaser says. "But (Albaad) is different because they ... already have (U.S.) customers. For North Carolina, it's a very nice deal."
It also would be a very nice deal for economic development efforts in Vance County, where unemployment hit 14.5 percent in August. Indeed, it would be the second recent dose of good news.
Just this month, Dallas, Texas-based Affiliated Computer Services Inc. announced it will open a pharmacy operations center at Triangle North Corporate Park in Vance County. ACS initially will employ 52 full-time clinical professionals, but that could grow to more than 200 within a couple of years.
"(ACS) needed pharmacists, and they found that within commuting distance they have an ample supply to choose from," says Finch. In addition, Vance-Granville Community College has designed a two-week pharmacy tech program to assist with ACS' employee training.
Albaad was founded in 1985 and went public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 1994. It employs about 300 people and markets some of its products in the U.S. under the White Cloud brand name, which is sold to wholesalers through 36 distribution centers. It markets other skin care, cosmetic cleansing and household cleaning towelettes under the Fresh Ones brand name, according to Matimop, the Israeli Industry Center for R&D.
"It's a good company with a good product," Glaser says. A Vance County win, he says, would be "very attractive to North Carolina because it's been losing textiles."
I do's and . . . don'ts, deadlock over wedlock
Oct. 19, 2003
The Salt Lake Tribune
By Brooke Adams, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The Salt Lake Tribune.
It is a Friday night and in a room off the cafeteria at McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden, a dozen couples are talking about marriage -- what makes it work, what makes it fall apart.
Allie and Ryan Bruce, soon-to-be parents who have been married five years, are brainstorming ways to keep their relationship fun, spontaneous and sensual. A few tables away, Melanie and Murray Meszaros, with four kids and a marriage that has lasted 24 years, are doing much the same.
This marriage education class is exactly what Mike Leavitt had in mind five years ago when he became the first governor in the nation to make marriage a state priority, fitting given Utah's status as the most marrying state in the union. Today, nearly every state, along with the federal government, is engaged in marriage-boosting activities -- and debating whether gay couples should have access to it.
The battle for marriage was neatly framed during the first week of October, when President Bush declared Oct. 12-18 "Marriage Protection Week" and the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the right of that state to deny two men a marriage license.
There are similar legal fights involving same-sex couples seeking the right to marry to those wanting marriagelike benefits under way in another seven states, even as activities promoting traditional marriage proliferate.
The two issues, if not intertwined, overlap. And each has made private relationships a very public matter.
A movement is born: Marriage appeared to be an endangered institution two decades ago when divorce reached an all-time high, out-of-wedlock births spiraled and the percentage of couples living together skyrocketed.
The trends had many causes, but experts say a key one involved the spread of no-fault divorce laws. Divorce rates peaked about 1981 and, after a slight decrease, have remained constant. Nearly one-third of births now occur to unmarried women. And the rate of cohabitation increased 1,000 percent between 1960 and 2000.
The social changes were abrupt and rapid, and were viewed as "freedom for adults and not a big deal," said David Popenoe, who co-founded the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in 1997.
Conservative groups with religious roots first sounded the family disintegration alarm. By the 1990s, social scientists were rethinking divorce, linking the dissolution of the family with a decline in children's well-being.
The researchers took stock of "the body count -- particularly among children, of people suffering because of this," said David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values.
Suddenly, people were acknowledging marriage and two-parent families mattered.
Among them: Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, who wrote a seminal article in the April 1993 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled "Dan Quayle was Right" --keying off the former vice president's remarks a year earlier dissing the portrayal of single motherhood on the television show "Murphy Brown."
The first issue to come into focus was fathers, who were described as largely missing-in-action in many 20th century families.
Books, such as Blankenhorn's Fatherless America, pounded that topic, and fatherhood organizations took the message to the masses.
Fatherhood was a "transitional topic" that "begged the question about what was happening to the father/mother relationship," said Blankenhorn.
In 1995, many of those in the fatherhood movement took up the new cause as the Council on Families in America, which issued a "Statement on Marriage" declaring the divorce revolution a failure.
In Utah, 1995 proved a noteworthy year, too, for marriage. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," which spelled out the church's view of marriage.
The statement coincided with the church's increased involvement defending traditional marriage worldwide, in part through creation of the World Family Policy Center, in 1997, and the School of Family Life, in 1998, at Brigham Young University.
Marriage therapist Diane Sollee also gave the movement legs when, in 1996, she founded the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. She had a simple premise: With the right information and skills, couples could learn to pick the right partners and make marriage work.
"There is a whole science to marriage and it isn't something that we can take for granted or something that happens [because of] luck or love," Sollee said.
Marriage became a state and federal government priority, too. In 1996, Congress passed welfare reform, with a controversial focus on marriage, and the Defense of Marriage Act, which most notably freed states from having to recognize same-sex unions enacted elsewhere.
Even those who promote marriage, however, acknowledge it isn't for everyone and there is a place for divorce -- cases of domestic violence being a prime example.
As Wade Horn, Bush's pointman for marriage, said in a PBS interview in November: Government should not "coerce anyone to get married. It shouldn't run a federal dating service to get people hooked up or married. It ought not to trap anyone, either intentionally or unintentionally, in abusive relationships. It ought not to equate a marriage promotion program with the withdrawal of supports from single-parent households.
"But what it can do is provide access for those couples who have chosen marriage for themselves to a system of services where they can develop the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain healthy marriages," Horn said.
Marshall Miller, co-founder of the Boston-based Alternatives to Marriage Project that advocates for the rights of those who choose not to marry, cannot marry, or live together before marriage, said the education aspects of the marriage movement are commendable. But, he said, there is an "arm of the movement which is doing what many right-wing, religious groups have always done -- oppose any kind of family form other than a married, heterosexual couple living with children.
"The reality is there is an incredible amount of diversity," he said.
Clash of reforms: While some downplay any connection, there is no denying the marriage movement and escalated efforts to open the institution to gay couples have come of age together.
Evan Wolfson puts it in simple terms when he explains why gay couples want access to marriage.
"Our movement is about allowing committed, loving couples who are prepared to take on the responsibilities, protections and securities of civil marriage be able to do so without the discrimination of government," said Wolfson, who founded Freedom to Marry in January with a five-year goal of getting one state to approve gay marriage.
The discrimination comes in various forms, gay couples say. They must cobble together marriage-associated benefits, such as inheritance rights and health insurance for partners. And they are deprived of the social recognition that marriage brings.
"Some say they want
nothing short of full equal rights and to be married," said Laura Milliken
Gray, a Salt Lake City attorney involved in a long-term same-sex relationship.
"Some, like me, say give us the same benefits -- I don't care what you
call it." Freedom to Marry is waging its "civil rights movement"
on three fronts: in a public dialogue aimed at winning over "fair-minded,
reasonable people," in state legislatures and in court rooms.
The skirmishes have been many, the successes few. Just one state, Vermont, allows
civil unions.
That is partly why all eyes are now on Massachusetts, where a ruling on whether the state can deny marriage licenses to gay couples has been expected since mid-July and on Congress, where talk of a Federal Marriage Amendment has resurfaced.
Meanwhile, key figures in the two marriage movements eye one another warily.
"Gay marriage is just a lot of noise," Sollee said. "It's a separate issue from the marriage movement to me."
Others say blocking gay marriage should be an important part of the marriage movement.
"Marriage needs to be strengthened while at the same time marriage needs to be protected from further attacks or challenges that would substantially weaken or damage [it]," said Lynn Wardle, a family law professor at BYU.
Such comments irritate Wolfson.
"If they believe that marriage matters and offers important protections to families, then why wouldn't that be true for gay people?" he asks.
Barbara Risman, a sociology professor at North Carolina State University and co-chairwoman of the Council on Contemporary Families, views the push for gay marriage as further evidence of family diversification -- and nothing to fear.
It is "part of a long-term historical trend to families being . . . less out of one cookie-cutter mold," said Risman.
Wolfson said his proposal is far less radical than changes marriage has already experienced -- acceptance of interracial marriage, no-fault divorce, protection of women's property rights and the decoupling of marriage and procreation.
Opponents "made the same claims of doom and gloom for society in each of these struggles," he said. "All of those claims . . . turned out to be false."
But Linda Waite, a University of Chicago sociology professor and co-author of The Case for Marriage, said that, as with divorce, there is no telling what the social costs of gay marriage may be.
"I am much more cautious about these social costs than I used to be because there are these unexpected consequences and lots of them are bad," she said.
A marrying state: Utah is a good example of how states are addressing marriage, moving simultaneously to deny access to same-sex couples and bolster it for others.
The Utah Legislature, for instance, passed the Marriage Protection Act in 1995, which gives the state the right to reject marriages prohibited by code -- most pointedly, same-sex marriages -- that may be approved anywhere else. About two-thirds of the states have similar laws.
A year later, the state created the Governor's Commission on Marriage, which sponsors yearly conferences for couples who want to give their relationships a tune up and honors "gold medal" marriages.
During 2002, the commission distributed a free video on marriage to county clerk offices, public libraries, high schools, Utah State University Extension Service offices and PTA Family Resource Centers.
Couples who returned a survey card included with the video received matching key rings inscribed with this quote from Cicero: "The first bond of society is marriage."
The state also seeded marriage education programs by spending $43,340 this year to put 76 people through Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program training -- which each instructor is repaying by giving 32 people free classes. The commission used $600,000 in welfare funds to develop pilot programs, most targeting fragile families, and conduct research about marriage and divorce, primarily through USU.
Last week, for example, USU announced it has created the first free Internet-based marriage preparation and enhancement course in the country, available at http://www.utahmarriage.org.
Next year, under proposed legislation, Utah may join such states as Florida, Oklahoma, Maryland and Minnesota in giving couples who take a premarital education course a break on the cost of marriage licenses.
The pro-marriage effort goes beyond the public sector. BYU's School of Family Life is focused on research about marriage, divorce and parenthood.
Richard Wilkins, managing director of BYU's World Family Policy Center, is a key player in pushing Congress to adopt a constitutional amendment that would preserve marriage as a union between a man and a woman -- a proposal that has 95 co-sponsors and is likely to be considered this fall.
The university's law school, meanwhile, is busy airing the marriage debate in a series of conferences. One conference this summer focused on same-sex unions, and another this fall, co-hosted with The Marriage Law Project at Catholic University of America, will tackle "Reaffirming Marriage in a Post-Marriage Culture."
As state efforts spread, the challenge for the marriage movement will be keeping forward momentum, according to Blankenhorn.
"Social movements don't stay the same. They are either getting bigger or getting smaller," he said. "We're going to have to become every year more bold and more radical in our approach to the issue or we're going to be in a period of declining influence."
The new ideas? Reform of divorce law, elimination of tax laws that penalize marriage and greater use of the "bully pulpit of government" in support of marriage, among other things.