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NC State University News Clips for November 12, 2003

Compiled by North Carolina State University’s News Services, a part of the Public Affairs Office. Listed below are the current news clips. Click on the headline of interest to be taken to the full text. Click on “Return to Headline List” at the bottom of each clip or use the scrollbar to be taken back to this location.

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Uproar stalls UNC change
With opposition growing louder and angrier, a plan to add more out-of-state students to the UNC system has been put on hold until next year at the earliest.

NATIONAL & REGIONAL CLIPS

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Uproar stalls UNC change

Nov. 12, 2003
The News & Observer
By Jane Stancill, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

With opposition growing louder and angrier, a plan to add more out-of-state students to the UNC system has been put on hold until next year at the earliest.

The UNC Board of Governors had been scheduled to vote Friday on raising the out-of-state cap from 18 percent to 22 percent of the freshman class. But Brad Wilson, board chairman, said Tuesday that at least three alternative proposals have complicated the decision and that the vote would be delayed.

Today, Wilson plans to outline specifics for how the board should proceed on the contentious issue. The board could send the new ideas back to its planning committee for more consideration, which could take months. The panel does not meet in December.

"The timing is just not right," said Brent Barringer, a board member from Cary. "I can't tell you within a year when the timing will be right. There is the genesis of a good idea here, but it needs refinement and expansion, and it needs to be made more attractive from a political and public-policy standpoint."

The proposal, pushed by UNC-Chapel Hill, has sparked outrage among many state taxpayers who want their sons and daughters to have a shot at admission to the university. Opponents fear that more out-of-state students would hurt the chances of in-state students, although UNC-CH officials have insisted that they want to increase the numbers of both groups.

Wilson said he had received more e-mail messages and letters on this issue than any other during his six-year tenure on the board. Most correspondence is from the western part of the state, he said, particularly the Asheville area.

"It's overwhelmingly in opposition to any liberalization to the cap," Wilson said.

Sen. Richard Stevens, a Republican from Wake County and former UNC-CH trustee, said his mailbox has been full of dissent about the plan, too.

"All of my mail -- 100 percent of the e-mail, letters and phone calls from constituents -- has been against this increase, consistently," he said last week. "The only folks who have really been for [allowing more out-of-state students in] have been associated with the university in one way or another."

The proposal, in effect, would raise the cap from the current 18 percent to 22 percent of the freshman class each year by allowing exceptions for academically superior students.

Barringer and two other members have crafted an alternative proposal that would increase tuition for out-of-state students to the point where there is no subsidy from state taxpayers.

Another alternative, put forth by the board's student representative Jonathan Ducote, would allow campuses to request exemptions to the cap for out-of-staters who would help North Carolina satisfy the demand for workers in certain professions, such as teaching or nursing. "If we're going to explore the out-of-state option," said Ducote, a student at N.C. State University, "we ought to be looking at a plan that has tangible benefits for North Carolina."

A third alternative, proposed by members Peter Keber and Addison Bell, both of Charlotte, would allow campuses to come forward with requests for exemptions based on their own missions and circumstances.

The cap, first established in 1986, applies to 15 of the 16 UNC campuses. The N.C. School of the Arts is exempt from the limit, and the board has allowed N.C. A&T State University to bring more out-of-state freshmen into its engineering program. Some campuses don't come close to enrolling 18 percent of their students from out of state.

Legislators have said the proposal would endanger the UNC system's ability to absorb the state's dramatic increase in high school graduates in the next decade. Three years ago, the system cited the population boom when it persuaded voters to pass a $3.1 billion higher education bond referendum. That money is now being used for campus construction and renovation across North Carolina.

Some legislators have warned that the General Assembly could pass a law to set the out-of-state cap at 18 percent -- or lower.

Ray Farris, a UNC board member from Charlotte, predicted the board would be very cautious about raising the cap. "The ramifications of this can be high," he said.

Barringer agreed, saying, "This is a pretty fundamental decision, almost a cultural change. It deserves a lot of thorough consideration and discussion."

Staff writer Jane Stancill can be reached at 956-2464.

Staff writer Carole Tanzer Miller contributed to this report.

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UNC weighing enrollment options

Nov. 12, 2003
Durham Herald-Sun
By Eric Ferreri, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Herald-Sun

CHAPEL HILL -- With a policy discussion looming later this week, alternatives to the UNC system's controversial plan to increase out-of-state freshmen enrollment continue to emerge.

As of Tuesday, at least two new alternatives to the UNC system's original plan existed and could receive consideration, and a third could be forthcoming. It will fall to the UNC system's Board of Governors to sort things out when it meets Thursday and Friday.

The latest proposal comes from Jonathan Ducote, the only student who sits on the board. Under Ducote's plan, specific programs within public universities would be allowed to increase their out-of-state student enrollment if they could prove a need for extra students.

That differs significantly from the university system's plan, which would allow 15 state universities to exceed the current cap on out-of-state freshmen by up to 4 percentage points. The current cap is 18 percent, which some universities, Carolina in particular, believe is too restrictive at a time when competition for admission is so keen.

Ducote's is the second alternate plan to pop up. In late October, board members Peter Keber and Addison Bell broached the idea of allowing individual campuses to ask permission to add more out-of-state students, rather than changing the overall system policy.

Another board member, Brent Barringer of Cary, reportedly has floated an idea to increase tuition for out-of-state students at campuses wishing to exceed the enrollment cap, essentially so none of their education is subsidized by the state.

Barringer, whose idea was cited in UNC's student newspaper Tuesday, did not return calls for comment. It wasn't clear Tuesday whether Barringer will have a firm proposal for the board to consider this week.

Barringer, along with fellow board members Jim Phillips and Leroy Lail, has kicked some thoughts around related to the cap and has consulted with some UNC system staff members, but nothing firm has been committed to paper, said Gretchen Bataille, the university's senior vice president for academic affairs.

"It's an unofficial proposal," she said Tuesday. "They are thinking through some ideas and have talked with us about some ideas. Officially, there's nothing there."

Ducote, a senior at N.C. State, said his plan would address some of the state's most dire needs and give the economy a boost while also allowing campuses to bring in more out-of-state students.

"There are not enough in-state students willing to come on to do teaching and nursing, and those are two critical areas," he said, using those particular disciplines only as examples. "What we need to do is take out-of-state students and raise the cap for specific programs, not for whole campuses."

Under his plan, campuses given permission to recruit more out-of-state students for specific programs such as nursing and teaching would have to show that they have a plan to make sure the new arrivals stay in school and graduate. In addition, those students would have to remain in North Carolina to work for four years.

Ducote compared the concept to the N.C. Teaching Fellows program, which hands out scholarships for in-state students who promise to teach for four years in the state after graduation.

The plan wouldn't be restricted to teaching and nursing programs, Ducote said.

On the Chapel Hill campus, officials hope the board will approve an enrollment cap proposal this month, since doing it now would allow it to go into effect for next fall's incoming freshman class.

But Board Chairman Bradley Wilson has said he won't call for a vote if there are too many proposals floating around and board members have unanswered questions. That could push a vote back by as much as two months, since the board isn't scheduled to meet in December.

Wilson could also call a special board meeting between now and January for the board to address the issue.

The enrollment cap debate has been controversial since it surfaced months ago. At odds are two fundamental university values -- access for state residents and a quest for excellence.

Supporters of the original plan believe it would help Carolina and at least a few other campuses bring in more exceptional out-of-state students, whose impressive test scores and diversity of thought would certainly add to the academic environment.

But skeptics fear the impact the move would have on North Carolinians who, with high school enrollments rising, are already dealing with an increasingly competitive college admissions picture. Opponents of the plan include some state legislators as well as the state's school boards association, which generally doesn't chime in on higher-education policy issues.

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A Tar Heel tradition

Nov. 12, 2003
News & Observer
By Jane Stancill, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 News & Observer

UNC-Chapel Hill likes to portray itself as "the university of the people," a phrase made popular by alumnus Charles Kuralt. In the minds of most North Carolinians, they are "the people."

That's why a proposal to ease the cap on out-of-state students has struck a nerve with many parents, public school leaders and legislators. Any plan to allow more outsiders into the highly regarded, heavily subsidized UNC system is a plan to exclude North Carolina kids, they say.

And that plan couldn't come at a more politically sensitive time, three years after taxpayers approved $3.1 billion in bonds to renovate and expand campuses to cope with a boom in the number of North Carolina high school graduates.

The proposal, which the UNC Board of Governors could vote on this week, would essentially let campuses raise the limit on out-of-state freshmen from 18 percent to 22 percent of the class. UNC leaders have promised that every North Carolina student who qualifies will be guaranteed admission somewhere in the 16-campus system. But to the 7,500 North Carolinians who apply to UNC-CH because they want to study at the state's nationally ranked public flagship, that's little comfort.

UNC-CH leaders, who are pushing the change, have said they would enroll more in-staters each year, so North Carolinians would actually have more opportunity than they do now. They say bringing more stellar out-of-staters to campus would enrich the intellectual atmosphere and geographic diversity for everyone. It would no doubt help UNC-CH's academic reputation and boost its standings in the brutal competition for best college rankings, they say. Then there's the "brain gain" theory that North Carolina's economy would benefit from the infusion of top talent.

"Our vision of becoming the nation's leading public university is for the greater benefit of the people of North Carolina," UNC-CH Chancellor James Moeser said in a campus speech last month. "If our state is to flourish in a 21st century world economy, it must have an excellent global university whose students experience the world, rubbing shoulders with students from other backgrounds and cultures."

That argument just doesn't cut it with Roger Aiken, chairman of the Buncombe County School Board. He is the father of two boys, 12 and 14, who dream of attending UNC-CH. On a visit to Chapel Hill this summer, the boys insisted that their father pick up a university course catalog. They fought over it in the car.

"I want my kids to have more choices than I did," Aiken said. "Every parent wants that. Now you have someone you always admired saying, 'You may not have as many choices because we have to do this for the good of the university.' That's hard for parents to take."

Buncombe is a high-performing school district, with students scoring 46 points above the national SAT average and 72 points above the state average. And yet, Aiken said, UNC-CH sends too many rejection letters to Asheville.

Six years ago, one of those letters went to Meredith Pless, whose heart had been set on UNC-CH since she was in third grade. A student government president and competitive swimmer with A's and B's and about 1,100 on the SAT, she was crushed, her father said.

"Her grandfathers, her great-grandfathers and her parents lived in this state all their lives and paid taxes," Dusty Pless said. "To us, the common folk, this was absolutely wrong."

Pless was so upset that he drove to Chapel Hill to confront admissions officials. His daughter enrolled at UNC-Greensboro and eventually transferred to UNC-CH, from which she graduated.

"The point is, there are a lot of Meredith Plesses out there -- whether they're from Buncombe County, Wake County or Mecklenberg County -- that this is going to happen to," Pless said.

Pless' state representative, Martin Nesbitt, a Democrat in the N.C. House, is bombarded every year by parents who want explanations as to why their children were not accepted at UNC-CH. If the UNC system board raises the cap, Nesbitt predicted, the legislature will answer with a law setting a lower cap.

"That's a given," he said. "Members of the General Assembly will stand in line to introduce the legislation."

A 1940s innovation

Many states have no official caps. Out-of-staters make up about one-third of the undergraduates at the University of Virginia -- too many, in the view of many parents and lawmakers. At California universities, the out-of-state population is about 10 percent.

UNC-CH, the nation's first state university, was chartered in 1789 with the legislature's noble goal to "consult the happiness of a rising generation and endeavor to fit them for an honorable discharge of the social duties of life by paying the strictest attention to their education."

It wasn't until the post-World War II enrollment boom that a limit on out-of-staters was deemed necessary. A 15 percent cap was adopted in 1946 for the three campuses that then made up the university -- UNC-CH, N.C. State and UNC-Greensboro, then known as Women's College. The limit was unevenly observed as more campuses were added. Some campuses adhered to the 15 percent limit; others had as many as 25 percent of their students from outside North Carolina.

In 1986, the Board of Governors settled on a compromise of 18 percent, remembers Raymond Dawson, a former UNC vice president.

"There wasn't anything magic about it," he said. "We were backing some campuses back and setting a firm limit."

Still, Dawson doesn't recall a hue and cry about the fact that some campuses enrolled higher numbers of out-of-staters. At that time -- unlike today -- the number of high school graduates was leveling off. North Carolinians weren't clamoring for those spots.

Former UNC President C.D. Spangler remembers it differently. When he took the system helm in 1986, he traveled the state and encountered the same question over and over: "Why are you letting all those people in from New Jersey?"

Later, in the 1990s, the legislature jacked up tuition for out-of-state students, saying taxpayers should not heavily subsidize their educations. Today, out-of-staters pay about 95 percent of their educational costs, and some UNC board members want to raise tuition to at least cover the full cost.

In a case study published in the Journal of Higher Education in 1997, researchers from three Georgia universities concluded that North Carolina's out-of-state policies were based largely on politics and not on deeper concerns about educational values.

"It was in the interests of decision-makers not only to impose the limits but also to do so rather swiftly without much debate, analysis and reflection," the study said.

Exceptions to the rule

University leaders were able to finesse the details of the 1986 policy. The cap would apply only to freshmen, for example, not to transfers and not to graduate students. Last year, out-of-staters made up 41 percent of Ph.D. students and 22 percent of all graduate students systemwide.

There were other exceptions, too. With its special focus, the N.C. School of the Arts in Winston-Salem has never had a cap, and more than half of its current students are out-of-staters. Last year, the UNC board let N.C. A&T State University exempt its engineering program from the limit because so few historically black colleges offer such training.

Other campuses haven't always strictly followed the rules, either. Last fall, besides N.C. A&T, East Carolina and Elizabeth City State University also exceeded the 18 percent limit.

In 1995, the UNC board amended the policy to crack down on violators. If a campus exceeded the cap two years in a row, its budget could be reduced. In the last few years, however, the board has declined to issue "fines" because of state budget cuts.

Although UNC-CH has been the focus of the debate, several universities would likely take advantage of greater flexibility to lure more out-of-staters, especially those near North Carolina's borders. Mickey Burnim, chancellor at Elizabeth City State, said his campus could recruit more easily and cheaply in the nearby Norfolk, Va., area rather than distant places in the state such as Charlotte.

"There really wouldn't be much of a downside from our perspective because we have excess capacity," he said. "Every qualified North Carolinian who applied would continue to be accepted at ECSU."

'Quality' growth

That's not the case at UNC-CH, where about 60 percent of North Carolina applicants typically are accepted. "We can't be and haven't been for many years the university of the people in that we let everybody in," admissions director Jerry Lucido said recently.

Getting more out-of-state students would allow the Chapel Hill campus to grow "with quality," he said.

Bob Bailey, a 1964 UNC-CH alumnus from Clinton, said that sounds like an insult to North Carolinians. "It basically suggests to some people that you are not wanted at home. You can spin it any way you want, but that is one message that is communicated."

This year, the system's 28,332 freshmen were 85 percent North Carolinian and 15 percent out-of-state students. The 16-campus system is projected to grow by 34 percent this decade, and with UNC President Molly Broad aiming to increase the state's college-going rate, that estimate could rise. Broad has pledged a place in the system for all North Carolinians who want an education.

The question remains: Is there also room for more folks from New York and Michigan and Kansas?

Clint Lloyd, a UNC-CH senior from Graham, thinks so. Lloyd is from a die-hard Tar Heel family, and he strongly believes in the "university of the people" moniker.

But, he said, "I really like the diversity that the out-of-state students bring."

So he supports raising the cap. A little.

"As long as people don't come here and make fun of my accent."

what you can do

SHARE YOUR VIEWS on the out-of-state debate with the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. Send e-mail messages to board Chairman Brad Wilson at bog@northcarolina.edu or write to Board of Governors, University of North Carolina, P.O. Box 2688, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27515.
ATTEND THE NEXT MEETING of the Board of Governors, when a vote could be taken on easing the out-of-state enrollment cap. The meeting is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Friday at the UNC General Administration office, 910 Raleigh Road, Chapel Hill. The board will not entertain public comments on the proposal during the meeting.

LEARN MORE about the university system at www.northcarolina.edu.

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School board to ready bond referendum

Nov. 12, 2003
Clayton News-Star
By Joan Plotnick, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Clayton News-Star

Johnston County Schools Supt. Jim Causby announced on Nov. 4 that the Board of Education will have to move quickly on creating a bond issue if it hopes to have new middle or high schools built by 2006.

The Board of Education plans to determine its list of school construction and renovation projects as soon as possible in order to present them to the Board of Commissioners for approval.

If approved by the commissioners, a voter referendum could be held as soon as March 2004.

School board member DeVan Barbour said, “We need to do something (hold a referendum) in the spring because it takes so long to get a school on-line.”

Barbour said the school board is in preliminary stages of determining what to include in a referendum, and its initial proposal likely will change significantly after negotiations with the commissioners.

“I would hope the public would support the bond as long as the request is reasonable and the proposals we put forward are clearly needs the county has,” he said. “Remember this, a lot of this stuff we don’t have a choice about.

“The state puts a limit on how many children we can put in a classroom. All we are saying with a bond referendum is to ask for long-term financing.

“If not, we still have to deal with these issues, but the funding has to come out of current expense instead of bonds,” he said.

Pressing needs in the Clayton area are for a new elementary school to relieve overcrowding at Cleveland, Polenta, Four Oaks and West Clayton elementary schools and new middle and high schools in the northwestern portion of the county served by Corinth-Holders School, Riverwood Middle School, Clayton High School and Smithfield-Selma High School, Causby said.

Causby said that if the school board acts quickly, the county could complete new construction of a new high school or middle school by 2006 and a new elementary school by 2005.

“That is, if everything works perfectly,” he said.

School bond needs are determined largely by student growth. The 25,000-student system is growing at a rate of almost 1,500 students a year, Causby said.

At the meeting, Operations Research/Education Laboratory of North Carolina State University released a report that predicts that all but two of the county schools – Selma and West Smithfield elementary – will outgrow their capacity within 10 years.

The report said nine schools are already over capacity and eight more will be out of capacity by 2005-06.

The firm has been making demographic predictions for Johnston County since the mid-1990s. Last year, their predictions were off by only about 30 students, Causby said.

Schools that already are out of capacity in the Clayton area are Cleveland and East Clayton elementary schools and Clayton High School.

Clayton schools that will exceed capacity by 2005-06 are Riverwood and West Clayton elementaries.

Commissioners Chairman James Langdon said he can’t comment on the bond referendum because he has not seen the particulars.

“We will be willing to discuss it. We always have. We’ll be happy to work with them,” he said.

Commissioner Allen Mims said, “I think they (the school board) need to feel the pulse of the citizens before they come out with a big school bond. I’m hearing a lot of folks might not support a new bond referendum because of the effects of revaluation on their property tax.”

Johnston voters approved a $75 million school bond issue in 2001 to construct West Smithfield, River Dell and Selma elementary schools and West Johnston High School, and other things.

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Making the unreal a reality

Nov. 12, 2003
The News & Observer
By Matt Ehlers, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

RALEIGH -- The instructor stood at the front of the classroom beneath a large screen, using a computer to guide the action.

game release delayed
Don't bother asking Santa this year for the latest version of Epic Games' futuristic first-person shooter. You'll have to live and fight the futuristic gunbattles another day. Although the Raleigh-based company hoped to cash in on the holiday shopping season, the release of "Unreal Tournament 2004" has been delayed to February 2004. But that's the perfect-world answer. When asked whether February was still the target, Cliff Bleszinski, Epic's lead designer, nodded -- and crossed his fingers.

With a few taps of the keyboard, a futuristic 3-D gun floated above him, the super-tough, ultra-violent kind found in popular video games. A couple of clicks later and the gun started to rotate so everyone could see each part of the weapon. Students jotted in their notebooks and excitedly asked questions.

They billed it "Unreal University," but the classes over the weekend in Withers Hall at N.C. State University were as genuine as those normally offered, with just a few differences: Every single one of the more than 200 students wanted to be there, and tuition was only $25.

Attracting hard-core players and professional game-design hopefuls from across the country, the first Unreal University aimed to help students build bigger and badder video games.

Sponsored by N.C. State's Center for Digital Entertainment, Raleigh-based Epic Games, Atari and several other technology companies, the weekend's two-day workshop offered the ins and outs of Epic's Unreal game engine. The Unreal engine, essentially the software guts of the game, powers Epic's hit "Unreal Tournament 2003" and other games, including "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell."

Using the software, fans can create "mods" or modifications to the game, including new characters, guns and vehicles -- or even a whole new game -- then post them on the Web where other players can find them. By sharing their mods, the original game can continuously grow and evolve, said Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer for Epic Games.

"We make our tools easy to use, so you can get good results quickly," he said. "With Unreal University, they can take the tools to the next level."

Some hoped the lessons learned from Unreal University could be parlayed into future full-time employment designing video games. The workshops lured Rashad Jones from Penn State University, where he is working on his doctorate in information sciences and technology. Why games? Because designing them is a job where "you don't mind putting in 10-to-12-hour days."

"Modding" isn't new -- players have been tinkering with computer games for years -- but the growth of the Internet has sped up the exchange of information and helped spawn modder communities around a host of games.

The weekend classes brought modders together to share and improve upon their ideas. Topics included how to animate a character and design weapons.

And classroom lectures weren't the

only draw. Epic also showed off "Unreal Tournament 2004," the futuristic shoot-'em-up video game it markets with Atari. Two computer labs ran the game nonstop. This third version of its popular "Unreal Tournament" series is set to hit shelves in February.

R. Michael Young, an assistant professor of computer science at N.C. State who helped organize the event -- which he hopes will become an annual one -- said Unreal University works as an outreach program for the university while putting his students in contact with industry players. Young teaches a game-design class that uses the Unreal engine.

"It gives them a foot up," Young said. "These classes will help."

But it wasn't just N.C. State students looking for work in the computer-game field. Epic designers were in and out of the classrooms and labs, which is why people came from as far away as Florida and Washington state, to learn a little and maybe make some contacts in the industry.

The game design business is difficult to break into, but it's also growing, Bleszinski said. The lack of good designers has forced companies to look overseas for talent.

But improvements in modding mean that someone building cool new characters at home could be the next hot designer at a major game company.

"It's a great organic incubator," Bleszinski said of the modding process. "One of these people will get hired eventually."

Lee Amarakoon, a 3-D artist from Jacksonville, is one of those looking to one day score a "dream job" in the video game industry. As he waited outside a classroom for a session on vehicle design to begin, Amarakoon said the pace of the business makes it necessary to keep up with improvements.

"You need to stay current if you want to get anywhere," he said.

Amarakoon, 29, spends his after-hours hours making games. "Modding keeps the games alive," he said. He hoped the conference would help him improve his demo reel, the calling card would-be designers use to attract interest for themselves and their ideas.

"In this business, a resume doesn't cut it," he said. "It's all about your demo reel."

Unlike many other industries, the game-design business is friendly when it comes to idea-sharing. If someone builds something cool, he or she posts it on the Web and hope that others use it. Part of the fun of attending an event such as Unreal University is helping each other out.

"It's not a back-stabbing business. We all need each other," Amarakoon said. "We're all artists."

Staff writer Matt Ehlers can be reached at 829-4889.

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Drugs cited in death of suspect

Nov. 12, 2003
The News & Observer
By Oren Dorell, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

RALEIGH -- Authorities think a drug overdose killed a man who died in the custody of N.C. State University Campus Police Nov. 2, and the officer involved in his arrest has returned to her normal duties on campus.

Brandon Burnett, 19, of 2247 Rumson Road in Raleigh was stopped at a checkpoint near NCSU's McKimmon Center, where police arrested him for driving with a suspended license and on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear on a drug charge.

When they searched the car he was driving, officers found white powder they suspected was a drug, said Campus Police Chief Tom Younce.

Less than an hour after his arrest, Burnett started experiencing seizures, police said. He died by the time he arrived at Rex Healthcare.

"The presumption of the cause of death is a drug overdose," Younce wrote in a statement released Tuesday.

Younce announced that he allowed officer Renee Riley to return to her regular duties Monday.

She had been on administrative duty since the incident. The State Bureau of Investigation has yet to complete its criminal investigation, he wrote.

Dr. John D. Benson, a pathologist at Rex Healthcare who performed the autopsy, said an overdose was immediately suspected because police found what they thought was powder cocaine in the car. Benson said that he found no physical evidence of anything Burnett may have ingested but that a test of Burnett's urine came back positive for cocaine and PCP.

The doctor stressed that the test is preliminary and that final toxicology results, which might confirm the urine test and show the amounts of any drugs in the blood, will be published by the medical examiner's office. Those results are expected in 60 to 90 days.

Younce said that police are assuming Burnett swallowed drugs to hide them from police, although he said none of his officers saw Burnett put anything in his mouth.

"There have been cases in that area where that has happened to people involved with drugs when they are confronted with police and they die or almost die from an overdose," Younce said.

Burnett, the youngest of six children, was convicted in February of possession with intent to sell or distribute cocaine, according to court records.

Staff writer Oren Dorell can be reached at 829-8963.

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NCSU police: Drug overdose may be cause of man's death

Nov. 11, 2003
Associated Press, Charlotte Observer, News 14 Carolina, NBC 17.com, News & Observer, Wilmington Morning Star; Winston-Salem Journal
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. - A man who died in the back of an N.C. State police car is believed to have suffered a drug overdose, the chief of the NCSU police said Tuesday.

Officer Renee Riley, who arrested the man, Brandon Burnett, has returned to regular duties, police Chief Thomas C. Younce said.

Younce said he reviewed transcripts of police radio traffic the night of Nov. 2, when Burnett was arrested at a campus checkpoint. He said he believed the officers "did the right thing that evening."

When he was stopped, Burnett had no identification on him, and, after a few minutes, police discovered that his license had been suspended and that he was wanted on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear on a drug charge, Younce said.

Riley handcuffed Burnett, 19, and put him in the back of her cruiser. Police also searched his 2003 Hyundai and found what appeared to be drugs or paraphernalia, Younce said.

Within about 50 minutes of the traffic stop, Burnett started experiencing problems, he said. A few minutes later, he began having seizures.

He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Younce said Tuesday that the final results and confirmation of the amount of drugs in Burnett's system will come from the state medical examiner's office, where an autopsy was performed. The final autopsy report will be available within 60 to 90 days.

The State Bureau of Investigation is completing its investigation, Younce said, and its results will be sent to the Wake County District Attorney's Office.

Burnett's mother has questioned whether police sought help early enough.

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N.C. State Officer Back On Job After Internal Investigation

Nov. 11, 2003
WRAL-TV
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003 wral.com

RALEIGH, N.C. -- An North Carolina State University officer involved in pulling over a man who later died in police custody is back on the job.

Police stopped Brandon Barnett on Nov. 2 at a routine checkpoint. The 19-year-old later went into convulsions and died.

Renee Riley was placed back on regular duty after an internal investigation cleared her of any wrongdoing.

Police say they found drugs in Barnett's car. The preliminary cause of death is a drug overdose.

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Future soldiers honor past veterans

Nov. 11, 2003
News 14 Carolina
By Katie Marzullo, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 TWEAN Newschannel of Raleigh, L.L.C. dba News 14 Carolina

Veterans Day is a time to honor those who serve our country. It can be an especially reverent time for young people aspiring to serve.

On Tuesday, hundreds of ROTC cadets wound down a run through the N.C. State campus at the bell tower, where they're faced with a chilling reminder of the perils of military service.

“I come from a third generation Army family,” Will Huerth said. “My father and my grandfather are both in the Army."

Because of that, Huerth, like so many of his fellow cadets, feels a special pride on Veterans Day.

“It just makes me really proud,” Kelly Brown said. “All the men and women that came before and are still to come serving our great nation."

“I think it's a special honor to be able to appreciate everyone who's given so much to keep America the way it is and to keep peace in the world,” Benjamin Ruddick said.

Sometimes that means going into battle, being taken prisoner and even sacrificing your life.

“Those who have fought, they've gone through a lot,” Stacy Javarone said. “Those who are still fighting now, those who will fight later, keep them in your thoughts. It's a tough job."

It is a tough job the cadets are willing to volunteer for.

"If my time ever comes that I have to go serve my country, I'll gladly go,” Huerth said.

Cadets held the POW/MIA vigil at the bell tower for 24 hours leading up to the ceremony. Cadets from all branches of the military took part in the ceremony.

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Red ink still staining RBC Center

Nov. 12, 2003
The News & Observer
By J. Andrew Curliss, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

RALEIGH -- The private company that operates the RBC Center has posted another year of losses in running the West Raleigh arena, new documents show.

In staging Carolina Hurricanes hockey, N.C. State University basketball, music concerts and other events, the company's arena expenses outstripped the income by $2.55 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the latest operating statement.

The loss was about $300,000 more than budgeted by Gale Force Sports and Entertainment, a sister company of the Hurricanes' National Hockey League team.

Gale Force manages the arena on behalf of Wake County taxpayers, who paid for much of the arena's $167 million construction cost. But taxpayers are insulated from operating losses as part of the lease agreement that put Gale Force in charge of the day-to-day operations at the RBC Center.

In the three previous years the arena was open, Gale Force reported losses totaling about $13.9 million. They have said in the past that such losses cannot go on forever, though no changes are imminent. The arena's finance director, William Traurig, referred all questions Tuesday to Gale Force Chief Financial Officer Michael Amendola, who could not be reached.

The arena losses compound financial woes with the hockey club itself. Team owner Peter Karmanos, who owns a software company in Detroit, has said the organization has lost more than $100 million since moving to North Carolina in 1997 from Hartford, Conn.

He has said he will look into selling parts of the team to interested investors.

Gale Force officials have not said when they expect the arena itself to reach profitability. The lease agreement is for 20 years, with an option to renew for 10 more.

To control the RBC Center, Gale Force pays a rental fee to the Centennial Authority, the public board that oversees the arena. The company then aims to make a profit on ticket sales, advertising, parking, food and drinks, suite sales and TV contracts.

So far, the income from those areas hasn't been enough to cover the bills.

Bill Mullins, finance committee chairman of the Centennial Authority, said the latest figures generate some worry.

"I have a concern about the long-term financial prospects of the Hurricanes and Gale Force," he said. "But this was the business deal they made. ... They wanted to manage the building."

More pressing, he said, is a looming work stoppage in the NHL. The current labor agreement between players and owners expires in September 2004.

Some worry the arena will suffer even more financially without one of its main tenants. Gale Force would be obligated to pay rent even if the hockey club isn't playing.

The latest financial documents, released Tuesday, say that income at the arena was $20.6 million in the most recent fiscal year. Expenses totaled $23.1 million, and the major costs were salaries, rent, food and beverages and merchandise.

A big reason for the operating loss is because of the increased rent payment Gale Force must make.

This was the first year that the Gale Force rent was based on a percentage of the arena's gross revenues. In previous years, the rent was set at $2.7 million.

For the fiscal year that ended June 30, that fee amounted to $3.02 million.

The extra $300,000 will go to a reserve fund used for maintenance and other building improvements, Mullins said.

Mullins said an audit of Gale Force's books is to begin in a couple of weeks to make sure the financial statements are accurate.

Staff writer J. Andrew Curliss can be reached at 829-4840.

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He rides the wave of the future

Nov. 12, 2003
The News & Observer
By Jonathan B. Cox, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

Joseph W. Forbes Jr., 39, is seeking to unwire rural communities. His Raleigh company, America Connect, is experimenting with a technology called fixed wireless that can provide Internet connections with speeds equivalent to those from cable modem service. It's different from other wireless technologies, such as the popular Wi-Fi, in that it operates using frequencies reserved exclusively for the service. That means it can broadcast with more power to reach more people with little interference from other wireless devices.
Other companies have tried to make a go of the technology before, with little or no success. But Forbes said the cost of the equipment has declined, making it more feasible now. America Connect received $500,000 from the Rural Internet Access Authority, a state-sponsored organization, last year and is preparing a trial of its service in Person and Granville counties. Forbes, the chief executive, recently discussed with Connect's Jonathan B. Cox the technology of his 12-employee company. Following is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Q.What is your background? How did you get interested in this field?

A.My senior thesis at N.C. State [University] was on cellular radio. I got in the cellular radio business in 1988 and eventually ended up with BellSouth Mobility in Miami. I left BellSouth in 1995 to be director of engineering for a company called Dial Call Communications out of Atlanta. Dial Call was consolidated with the rest of the [specialized mobile radio] industry by Nextel. When that happened, I started an engineering firm in 1995 called Galaxy Engineering. ... We hit the market at a good time. We grew our business very successfully, and we sold our business in 1997 to a public company called World Access. ... We bought our company back from World Access in 1999. ... And then we started America Connect. We capitalized America Connect and then we sold Galaxy to American Tower [which operates cell-phone towers] in January 2000.

Q.What makes America Connect's service any better than the access that can be bought from a mobile-phone carrier or a wireless Internet service provider?

A.It gets back to why we think fixed wireless is back. ... Standards progression has made fixed wireless viable again. [Standards] are putting innovation back into technology that will drive costs out of the infrastructure that will ultimately benefit the service providers and the consumers.

Q.What is the cost?

A.I can't share that with you because the equipment is still very experimental and we have not negotiated final terms for what would come after the pilot program.

Q. Well, what's the end cost to consumers?

A.We don't really have an ability to communicate to the end user for the pilot what we think ultimately the price would be. What we are able to say is that the product will be priced comparable to what cable and DSL service are now in this market. ... What's really key here is that we intend to offer voice service with ours from the go.

Q.What kind of speeds are possible with your service?

A.It is comparable to cable and DSL. If you think about ... [radio frequencies], inherently if you get farther away from a site, you're going to have degradation. When I go and talk to people about what we're doing, zoning boards, things of this nature, everyone seems to understand the concept of Wi-Fi. So, I say, "O.K., this is Wi-Fi on steroids."

Q.You mentioned zoning boards. Were they a problem?

A.This is so new that the zoning folks we've dealt with in our experience ... don't really know how to classify us. When you say wireless, their world is the wireless mobile operator community. The base station is so small, their zoning ordinances aren't really designed to address these types of deployments. So we're working with them to help change the code. That has been a challenge.

Q.How many customers do you hope to have for the trial?

A.We're going to launch about 150 pilot subscribers. We're here to test the performance of the equipment, make sure the claims of the manufacturers are accurate and find the limitations of the equipment.

Q.How do you choose your pilot customers?

A.We're trying to find pilot customers that fall into various buckets of usage -- a home user that typically uses it at night, but is not a very avid daytime user; small businesses that have a lot of bandwidth demands so we can exercise the network; people on the way outskirts of town that may have no other method. We're trying to find enough of each. And then, of course, government users as well to test it. We've gotten off our Web site so far about 100 subscribers that have already signed up without any advertising, just from hearing about us from a little bit of time in the paper.

Q.Why do you think there is so much interest in wireless? You have wireless Internet service providers, mobile phone companies and even an electric utility like Progress Energy experimenting with a wireless technology.

A.The cost of the deployment of what we're doing versus the cost of deployment of a cable or a wired infrastructure is no comparison. If we prove this stuff works as advertised, we can offer the same level of performance within the cloud that they can get from competitors. Second, if you don't have cable or DSL now, you're probably not going to get it anytime soon. People aren't going to see an improvement in their broadband experience unless you have some other method of getting it to them. Third, I think people like portability. I think they like the fact that they can fire this stuff up at their house and if they've got a laptop PC, they can put their PC in their bag and take it with them. That functionality is powerful. And there is, I think, the high-tech coolness factor, which we shouldn't discount.

Q.How long is your trial going to last?

A.We'll make the commercial decision in the first quarter of next year. If we see a strong demand and see the equipment working as advertised, then the pilot may turn into commercial. If we get less than stellar performance from the equipment or if we get less than stellar results from the customer base, then we have to evaluate what went wrong and make a business decision.

Q.Where do you ultimately hope to take the company?

A.We think this pilot enables us to build a proof-of-concept business plan that you can then go to large investors who have an interest in this space. They can go and touch the technology; they can go and talk to customers. I think that once they see that, they'll get as excited about this as we are. Our current plan is to go out and deploy 50 of these next year. A market is defined as a county, primarily in the Southeast U.S. We'd like to get 300 to 400 of these up within a 24-month period of time.

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Universities considering new tuition increases

Nov. 12, 2003
The Charlotte Observer
By Diane Suchetka, staff writer
© Copyright 2003 The Charlotte Observer.

At least three campuses in the state university system -- including UNC Charlotte -- are talking about raising tuition $900 over the next three years. And other schools in the 16-campus system are considering similar hikes.

UNC Greensboro, for example, plans to ask for a $300 increase next year and up to $300 the following year.

These campus-originated increases are one of many ways costs could rise at N.C. public colleges next year. Fees, room, board and other tuition increases could be implemented later.

Hundreds of students in the University of North Carolina system are expressing opposition to rising college costs in letters the UNC Association of Student Governments is compiling in a book and plans to give to lawmakers and university leaders.

Since 1990, average in-state tuition has risen 134 percent, four times the rate of inflation.

"We have completely forgotten about the students who are the poorest in our state," said Jonathan Ducoté, student representative to the UNC Board of Governors, which oversees North Carolina's public university system. "When only 25 percent of citizens in our state have a college education, something's wrong. And we're not doing anything about it by raising tuition."

Final approval of the campus-based tuition hikes is months away. Each school must get them approved by its trustees and then by the UNC Board of Governors, the body that oversees the 16-campus system. That board expects to take up the issue in February.

Tuition has been rising across the country as schools grapple with state budget cuts and an increasingly competitive higher-education market that demands highly trained faculty, fitness centers, wiring for the Internet and other amenities.

A College Board study found that the average cost of tuition and fees at public four-year colleges in the United States is 47 percent higher, adjusted for inflation, than it was 10 years ago.

Tuition at UNC system schools is still low compared with other public universities in the country.

On average, in-state undergraduates at four-year public universities across the country pay $4,454 in tuition and fees this year, according to the College Board. UNC system schools charge from $2,175 at Elizabeth City State University to $3,993 at N.C. State.

Those costs are rising faster in North Carolina than in many other states, however. Between fall 2001 and fall 2002, North Carolina's public universities raised tuition and fees by 19 percent. That's more than nearly every other state in the country. Only Massachusetts (24 percent) and Missouri, Iowa and Texas (20 percent each) ranked higher, according to a report from the nonprofit, unaligned National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

It's not clear how the Board of Governors will vote when asked to approve the increases early next year.

"I am as ambivalent as I've ever been on this," said Jim Phillips, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee.

Phillips says he's concerned about recent jumps in tuition. "On the other hand," he said, "I do understand why the campuses are responding the way they are, given the (state budget) cuts they have endured."

He also pointed out that approval will depend on what schools say they'll do with the money.

"We need to see exactly what the proposed increases would be used for, the justification for that money," Phillips said.

He also expressed concern that students could face other tuition hikes.

The Board of Governors and the legislature can impose systemwide tuition increases on top of the campus-based ones. Last year, for example, lawmakers raised tuition 5 percent at all campuses.

The year before, there was no legislative hike, but the Board of Governors approved a systemwide increase in addition to local increases for each campus in the university system.

"So students could be facing an increase of $450 or $500 in the coming year," Phillips said.

Campuses also charge general undergraduate fees, ranging from $915 to $1,608 a year, depending on the campus. Those fees pay for health services, intercollegiate athletics and other nonacademic activities.

The fees could go up, too.

N.C. university leaders say the money is needed because state budget cuts over the past several years have, among other things, left them unable to pay competitive salaries and provide some student services.

UNCC officials are still deciding whether to request the $900 over three years, but Chancellor Jim Woodward called it likely.

"We are currently having discussions internally with student groups and others," Woodward said.

If given final approval, the hike would raise tuition for in-state undergraduates by 47 percent -- from $1,904 a year now to $2,804 a year in the fall of 2006. Out-of-state and graduate students pay more.

Those totals do not include general fees -- which add $1,205 to UNCC's annual academic costs -- or room and board.

The higher tuition would give UNCC an estimated $5 million the first year, $10 million the second and $15 million the third year, according to university officials.

Exactly how the money would be spent, Woodward said, is being decided now.

Adding academic advisers and hiring full-time faculty to replace part-timers are likely goals, Woodward said. So is increased financial aid.

"I don't necessarily like it," UNCC student body President Stefanos Arethas said of the hike, "But it's justified.

"The economy's bad, there are budget cuts. If this is going to become a prosperous university, we need the money."

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Two aides quit Kerry campaign to protest firing of its manager

Nov. 12, 2003
Associated Press; Winston-Salem Journal
By staff writer
© Copyright 2003 Associated Press

Sen. John Kerry's press secretary and deputy finance director quit yesterday, adding to the bitter turmoil on Kerry's presidential-nomination team after the dismissal of his campaign manager.

Robert Gibbs, the chief spokesman for Kerry, D-Mass., and Carl Chidlow quit in reaction to the firing of Jim Jordan, abruptly let go by Kerry on Sunday night.

Both expressed dissatisfaction with the campaign, according to officials.

Gibbs is a graduate of N.C. State University, and Jordan is a native of Winston-Salem.

Gibbs will be replaced by Stephanie Cutter, a former spokeswoman for Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and currently the spokeswoman for the Democratic National Convention, the officials said.

Jordan was replaced Monday by Mary Beth Cahill, who was Kennedy's chief of staff.

The switch, less than three months before voters in Iowa participate in their caucuses was designed to energize Kerry's campaign by signaling to fund-raisers and activists that he is addressing problems that have caused his campaign to slump. Iowa's caucuses are the first to be held during an election year.

Many Democratic strategists, however, say that the problems were caused by Kerry himself, that he has campaigned as if the nomination was his entitlement, allowing Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, to catapult ahead.

Dean sealed two key union endorsements last week, forcing Kerry to examine his presidential prospects.

The staff shake-up consolidates power around Kennedy's former staff after months of internal division.

Kerry's team has consisted of roughly three factions - his Washington team, paid consultants and friends and family from Boston.

"We're sorry to see them go. They served the senator well," Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for Kerry, said of Gibbs and Chidlow.

The departures threaten to further erode the morale of a campaign that had been viewed just months ago as a front-running team. Kerry, who has been trailing Dean in key state polls, has been pressured by donors and supporters to shake up his campaign.

Several campaign officials said that the firing of Jordan was viewed as unfair by many Kerry aides, and there remained a possibility that others would follow Gibbs and Chidlow out the door.

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Letter to the Editor: Don't change the mix at UNC-CH

Nov. 12, 2003
Greensboro News & Record
 © Copyright 2003 News & Record

I want to thank Rosemary Roberts for explaining the issues relating to the plan to increase out-of-state enrollment so simply that even I, an ignorant North Carolina taxpayer, can almost understand them. I only have a couple of questions about her logic.

She says that critics of the plan insist the inflated cap "would take seats away from the sons and daughters of North Carolina." Why, she condescends, "that is a misunderstanding." She cites Jerry Lucido, UNC-CH admissions director, as saying that since we are also increasing the enrollment for in-staters the "pie would simply get bigger."

Let's consider that. We, the taxpayers of North Carolina, recently passed a bond issue to pay for the brick and mortar to build Lucido a larger pie plate. The obligation to repay those bonds will be borne 100 percent by the sons and daughters of our state yet under the guidelines

Lucido supports fully half of that additional space will be taken by those from other families. That's not just baking a larger pie but cutting a larger piece for the out-of-staters.

Roberts' "meager four percentage points" change will result in rejection letters from UNC-CH being received in 165 more North Carolina households than under the existing lid. That seems to be pretty cold treatment for North Carolina kids, many of whom have shared an 18-year dream with their parents to attend the "University of the People."

Roberts points out that "not all 16 campuses suffer from the out-of-state lid." She also says that "recruiting more out-of-staters would enhance" the freshman classes. Let's recruit them. Why can't the admissions folks at Chapel Hill share the 11,000 applications they receive annually with N.C. State or UNCG or any of the other state institutions whose students could benefit from the added "socialization" Roberts lauds by bringing in the high quality applicants?

My approach might seem selfish and maybe it is. But if you compel us to pay taxes to build and support the university, then it's only right that it be compelled to operate in the best interests of all the sons and daughters of our great state.

Winton Smithwick

The writer lives in Hillsborough.

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Cree sees light at end of tunnel of founder's lawsuit

Nov. 12, 2003
Associated Press; Biloxi Sun Herald, MS; Wichita Eagle, KS; Akron Beacon Journal, OH; Miami Herald, FL; Times Daily, AL; Wilmington Morning Star, NC; Sarasota Herald-Tribune, FL; Bradenton Herald, FL; Fort Wayne News Sentinel, IN; Fort Worth Star Telegram, TX;
By Emery P. Dalesio, staff report
 © Copyright 2003 Associated Press

DURHAM, N.C. - Months after semiconductor maker Cree Inc. was rocked by a founder's claims of federal securities fraud, the company appears to be regaining momentum.

Shareholders have pushed the price of Cree stock back to within 15 percent of where it was before the lawsuit was filed, and demand for the company's silicone carbide semiconductor wafers - used to make low-voltage, light-emitting diodes, or LEDs - remains strong.

Cree recently announced plans to start making its own light fixtures - devices designed to make obsolete traditional incandescent bulbs.

Now, the company is hoping for a quick end to the $3.2 billion lawsuit filed by co-founder Eric Hunter and his wife.

Last month, Hunter dropped claims of federal securities fraud and unfair or deceptive trading practices that he had lodged earlier this year against the company and his brother, chairman Neal Hunter.

A federal judge in Greensboro has scheduled a Nov. 25 hearing on all outstanding issues in the suit. Cree officials, who have denied the allegations from the beginning, hope for the dismissal of all remaining claims.

"We need the legal process to move ahead, to really resolve this," Cree chief executive officer Chuck Swoboda said in an interview this week. "These distractions unfortunately are part of life as a public company."

Still pending are Eric Hunter's claims that the defendants violated state securities laws, breached their fiduciary duties, and ignored federal protections for whistleblowers when he threatened to tell the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cree was born out of research Eric Hunter and others carried out at North Carolina State University. Eric Hunter has said that financial irregularities started as soon as he left Cree in 1995 to found a separate company.

His claims of financial shenanigans have split his family, with Neal Hunter, mother Annabel Harrill and other associates giving sworn statements describing Eric Hunter as suffering from mental problems.

Cree's attorneys are asking that Eric Hunter and his wife be forced to pay their "significant" fees.

Cree says it has spent well more than $1 million on costs stemming from the Eric Hunter lawsuit, including about $900,000 to have two independent members of its board of directors investigate Eric Hunter's claims. They reported in October that they found "that all of the allegations lack merit," Cree said in a statement to federal securities regulators.

It is unclear where the federal Securities and Exchange Commission stands. Cree has said the agency launched an informal inquiry following Eric Hunter's allegations; an SEC spokesman said the agency is unable to comment.

The Eric Hunter suit also helped spawn 19 subsequent shareholder lawsuits, many of which remain unresolved.

Analyst Hans Mosesmann said the claims of financial misconduct are behind Cree.

"We believe that since Eric Hunter first pressed charges, much of the validity of his case has diminished and this dynamic has been reflected in the stock," said Mosesmann, who works for the SoundView Technology Group.

Moving forward, Cree has its eye on the $40 billion world market for ambient lighting.

About three-quarters of Cree's current revenue comes from selling chips to companies that package them into high-brightness LEDs that wind up in car dashboards, cell phone displays or the kind of massive videoscreens seen at Seattle's new football stadium.

That market grew by 50 percent last year to $1.84 billion and is forecast to grow to $4.7 billion in four years, according to market research firm Strategies Unlimited.

"It's actually a growing business opportunity for us. But if you look at the growth rates, you realize all of that growth combined is still smaller than the market for (ambient) lighting," Swoboda said.

Cree's planned XLamp line will replace conventional light bulbs with arrays of LED chips that shine light that looks white to the human eye. For the first time, Cree will assemble lighting fixtures itself and employ a sales team to reach manufacturers by the second half of next year.

Sales of lamps and lighting controls are worth about $12 billion per year in the U.S. alone, according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. The 4.2 billion incandescent lamps in use nationwide consume the output of 41 large power plants, the trade group estimates. It costs $25 billion to keep the lights on.

The possibilities - both to make money and to save money and resources - are enormous. Once LEDs become broadly competitive on price and light output, the group said, their increased efficiency could save the output of about 30 power plants and cut costs by about $17 billion a year.

"We don't need to create demand for light. It's already there. We just need to fill it in some better way than it is today," Swoboda said.

To demonstrate the technology's potential, Swoboda drops a battery-powered flashlight that shines a Cree LED.

"There's no bulb to break. It's still going to turn on. So you're going to have reliability. You're going to have longer life because it's going to use about half the energy of a standard bulb" allowing batteries to last longer, he said.

Ultimately, LEDs will replace fluorescent tubes and traditional light bulbs, he predicted.

With San Jose, Calif.-based Lumileds Lighting and a handful of other companies competing to enter the market, Swoboda said he's confident Cree's technology will allow it to stake claim to a good share of the emerging market.

According to Cree's SEC filings, as of Sept. 30 the company had no debt, cash and investments of $195 million and faces little risk from foreign currency fluctuations.

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Infineon to Create up to 400 Jobs in North Carolina by 2007 -- Top 5 Semiconductor Company in North America Celebrates Expansion in Research Triangle Area

Nov. 12, 2003
Business Wire
By staff report
 © Copyright 2003

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2003--Infineon Technologies (FSE:IFX)(NYSE:IFX), the world's sixth largest semiconductor manufacturer(1), will celebrate the official opening of a new office in CenterGreen office park in Cary, North Carolina, today. Since announcing its planned expansion in May, Infineon has doubled its work force in the area, to 150 employees, and is on track to grow up to 400 employees in Cary by 2007. The new location is a "win-win" for the company and the state, as it represents a key step in Infineon's commitment to expand its North American presence, and marks the first success of North Carolina's new job development grant program.

"The expansion of our business operations in North Carolina plays a key role in our growth strategy for North America. We get much closer contact to our customers in the Eastern U.S. and create a new link in a worldwide network of offices that can work 24-7 to meet our customers' needs. In addition, we further build up our innovative strength by integrating our memory product design center for the development of next generation high performance memory chips for desktops, laptops and servers," commented Robert LeFort, President of Infineon Technologies North America Corp.

For the state of North Carolina, Infineon's expansion boosts the local economy by creating new jobs for skilled professionals in the high-tech industry sector. Economic models project a gross state product increase of $620 million and more than 650 jobs created in the next ten years (including the 400 direct employees of Infineon) according to Dr. Michael Walden of N.C. State University.

Background

Infineon Technologies' products add chip-based intelligence to thousands of digital devices that people use every day. From automobiles and industrial machinery, to wired and wireless communications, computer memories and other advanced applications, Infineon solutions power electronic products that are a part of 21st century lifestyles.

Ranked as the world's sixth largest semiconductor manufacturer in 2002 and the number five supplier in North America for the first six months of 2003, Infineon is headquartered in Munich, Germany. The company's U.S. sales grew from Euro 1.2 billion in fiscal year 2002 to Euro 1.4 billion in fiscal year 2003. Infineon's commitment to North America is backed by an expanding presence in the United States, where its subsidiaries employ nearly 2,800 people. The company has seven development centers and operational offices, with locations in San Jose, California; Williston, Vermont; Cary, North Carolina; the Hudson River Valley Corridor of New York; Longmont, Colorado, Morgan Hill, California; and Princeton, New Jersey. Additionally, almost 1,800 employees work at a state of the art manufacturing site in Richmond, Virginia, where Infineon has invested more than US $1.7 billion.

About Infineon

Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for the automotive and industrial sectors, for applications in the wired communications markets, secure mobile solutions as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In fiscal year 2003 (ending September 2003), the company achieved sales of Euro 6.15 billion with about 32,300 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol:IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com. (1) Based on 2002 sales, as reported by iSuppli Corp.

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Virginia Tech and North Carolina State University to run Forest Nutrition Research Cooperative

Nov. 11, 2003
EurekAlert!
By staff report
 © Copyright 2003 EurekAlert!.

Blacksburg, Va. -- Virginia Tech's department of forestry in the College of Natural Resources and the department of forestry at North Carolina State University have formed a partnership to jointly run the Forest Nutrition Research Cooperative. Thomas Fox, associate professor of forestry at Virginia Tech', and H. Lee Allen, professor of forestry from NCSU, are co-directors.

The Forest Nutrition Research Cooperative, a forestry industry and university cooperative, was founded in 1969 to conduct applied research on forest fertilization in pine plantations in the South. In recent years, the program expanded its activities into silviculture (care of forest trees), remote sensing, growth and yield, and basic research on nutrient cycling in plantation forest ecosystems. The program has also expanded internationally, and conducts research on nutrition of pines and eucalyptus species in Argentina, Chile, and Columbia.

There are currently 25 members of the program, including U.S.-based industrial forest products companies, large pension funds, South American industrial forest product companies, large forest consulting companies, and a number of forestry suppliers. These companies own and manage more than 20 million acres of pine plantations in the southern United States, and 3 million acres of pine and eucalyptus plantations in South America.

"This new partnership will strengthen the existing connections between Virginia Tech and the forest industry," Fox stresses. In the past, there have been close links between the Forest Nutrition Research Cooperative at NCSU and the Growth Yield Cooperative at Virginia Tech.

The annual budget for the program will include projects involving graduate students and postdoctoral students in Blacksburg. It will also provide opportunities for exchange of graduate students between the two institutions. "This formal partnership will generate many opportunities for us at Virginia Tech because the strengths of the forestry program here compliment those at NCSU," Fox explains.

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