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NC State University News Clips for November 23-28, 2005

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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Opinion: Bowles' way
UNC system president

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Bowles' way

Nov. 23, 2005
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2005

If the heads of the 16 campuses of the University of North Carolina system were listening closely, they didn't just hear what they wanted to hear from the man who in a few weeks will become their boss.

Erskine Bowles, set to become the system's next president, has completed a tour of the schools. Along the way, the North Carolina native and former White House chief of staff modestly told chancellors that he was "staff," that he didn't intend to dictate policy, that he wanted to hear what they thought, that he wanted to be the one who helped them achieve their aims on their campuses.

But Bowles, 60, didn't get to the upper reaches of Wall Street by beating around the bush or by being patient to the point of passivity. One doesn't negotiate a balanced budget with congressional Republicans, as Bowles did for President Clinton, by just sort of cruising along. He's willing to work. He's willing to negotiate. He's willing to listen. He meant what he said to the staff and faculty and students of the UNC system campuses. But he also will expect action, expect goals to be set and met. And he won't like to be disappointed.

Set to take office in January from the retiring Molly Broad, Bowles finished his visits earlier this week at his alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill. He has called the tour homework, a way of familiarizing himself with what folks on the campuses are thinking. And he's made some early comments about what he is thinking.He endorsed the idea of low tuition, saying "It's who we are as a state." One hopes the new president will stand firmly behind that principle, perhaps even seeking lower tuition after years of steady raises. Broad's predecessors, C.D. Spangler and William Friday, were adamant during their tenures and afterward that holding tuition and fees to a minimum helps keep a university education within financial reach for the broadest possible range of students. That benefits both the students and the state as a whole, and is simply the right thing to do.

And it was a good sign that Bowles seemed to question a leader of the political action committee formed by wealthy UNC-Chapel Hill boosters that tried to advance a divisive legislative agenda last summer (including a measure of tuition-setting independence for UNC-CH and N.C. State). Said Bowles: "If we're all on the same page, we'll have a much better chance of getting what we really want and getting it effectively." That doesn't sound like a president who would go along with the weakening of the UNC system -- a risk that hasn't seemed to bother some UNC-CH boosters.

Erskine Bowles is a North Carolinian of national stature and accomplishment. In entering the world of academe, he seems well-suited to bringing a sense of urgency to bear on the university system's many challenges.

He may have to trim a cumbersome bureaucracy. He may have to take chancellors into a classroom of sorts to teach them how to hold their own bureaucracies to a leaner standard, and to move more quickly with decision-making while also respecting campus cultures that value collaboration. And he must keep campus leaders focused on their first and most important mission -- public service to this state, in all the forms that service can take.

None of that is going to be easy. But the new sheriff in town is tough enough to do it.

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Looking and listening

Nov. 23, 2005
Charlotte Observer; Fort Wayne (Ind.) News Sentinel
By staff report
© Copyright 2005

It's still more than a month before Charlotte businessman Erskine Bowles succeeds UNC President Molly Broad, but he's using the run-up time wisely. Mr. Bowles has toured each of the university's 16 campuses and evidently spent more time listening and asking questions than offering up his vision for the system.

Good. Mr. Bowles, who has a reputation for careful attention to detail, understands that each campus in the UNC system has a distinct role to play in delivering higher education services to students, nurturing academic research and otherwise serving the public. In his final campus visit Monday -- to his alma mater at UNC Chapel Hill -- Mr. Bowles said he brought no preconceived vision to the job. His talks with faculty, staff members and students have given him a valuable perspective, he said.

His considerable knowledge of the state's far-flung university system and the special regional functions many of them serve -- honed while chairing a rural prosperity task force in the 1990s -- will stand him in good stead. So will his respect for the N.C. Constitution's requirement that the costs of college tuition be as low as practicable. That potentially puts him in conflict with leadership at UNC-Chapel Hill, which recently sought, unsuccessfully, special tuition authority from the General Assembly.

Mr. Bowles believes that campus's policy of measuring its tuition as a fraction of its national peers, such as the University of Virginia, makes sense. Still, he says, "I think you want to have some cap and some predictability."

Indeed. Most North Carolina students do not have Mr. Bowles' family wealth. For many students the prospect of higher tuition is so daunting as to discourage them from even applying. That is not the North Carolina way, as Mr. Bowles surely realizes.

Mr. Bowles also seems to recognize the opportunity to build better lines of communication between individual campuses and the university's general administration, and to strengthen its relationship with the General Assembly. He appears well-suited to that task, though satisfying the needs of a growing system with limited resources will test his talents.

Mr. Bowles won plaudits from across the political spectrum when as White House chief of staff under President Clinton he helped arrange for a balanced federal budget that included rare surpluses. He faces a new challenge in persuading state legislators not only to continue their traditional strong support for the flagship campuses in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, but also to significantly address the needs of UNC Charlotte as well as the system's other campuses.

Mr. Bowles' predecessors Bill Friday, C.D. Spangler and Molly Broad made significant and admirable contributions to the university system, polishing its image as a national model and nurturing its growth. As he prepares to take over, Mr. Bowles is wisely looking and listening first.

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Clayton abuzz over stalled land deal

Nov. 23, 2005
News & Observer
By Marti Maguire
 © Copyright 2005

About the time Clayton students were squeezing into mobile classrooms on the first day of school this year, a developer pitched a plan for a 2,000-home subdivision that included land for a new school.
Acumen Development of Maryland hoped to donate 80 acres for a high school in the Archer Lodge area north of Clayton, Town Manager Steve Biggs said.

The deal had promise. The fast-growing school district could save money in an area where land prices are rising and while the county needs more schools.

So far, though, there's no deal.The impasse has raised questions about whether the school district can afford to pass up such an offer to maintain control over where it builds schools.

Some elected officials blame Superintendent Tony Parker's lukewarm reaction for killing the deal with Acumen Development before it was even put in writing.

"They just didn't receive any response," Clayton Town Council member Alex Atchison said of Acumen, which had envisioned a neighborhood school as a selling point in a competitive housing market. (The developer may go ahead with the subdivision anyway.)

"But it's not really about pointing the finger on who did what. It's about next time, what do we need to encourage the schools to work with developers?"

In other words, county and town officials are sending a clear message to the school district: They want land offers from developers to be taken more seriously.

Parker said he didn't get a formal offer from Acumen, and he insists it is not his role to work with developers. "The developer had set aside land for a school, and the question was: Would we build a school there?" Parker said. "I can't commit to anything."

Once he gets a written offer, he said, district staff would determine whether the location fits the district's long-range planning. The land itself must be suitable for the school design Johnston uses. If the staff approves, it would recommend the offer to the school board for consideration.

The district is awaiting a report it commissioned from N.C. State University on where schools should be built based on growth projections. The report should be completed next month.

"We don't build schools where developers want them," Parker said. "We build them where there's a need."

The district is expected to grow from 27,000 to 40,000 students by 2014, with much of the growth in or near Clayton. Two elementary schools will open in 2006. The district is looking for land to build a middle school that would open in 2007 and a high school that would open as early as 2009.

The high school is being considered for the Archer Lodge area -- just east of the proposed Acumen subdivision.

Some elected officials say Parker should be working with developers to include schools as they plan subdivisions.

"They provide education to the people who live in them," Atchison said of school officials. "I'm not asking them to design the streets or work on the infrastructure.

In recent years, most new subdivisions have had a few hundred homes, but Clayton is starting to see proposals for subdivisions with thousands of homes. As the subdivisions get larger, more building plans include schools, with land for the schools being offered at a discount or for free.

Clayton requires developers to set aside up to an eighth of the land they're developing for open space. Schools with public athletic fields can fit this purpose, so even donated land helps developers.

"Typically, it turns out to be a very symbiotic relationship," said Billy Sutton, a developer who has worked with Wake and other counties to build schools along with new subdivisions.

Sutton has seen the good and the bad. Three schools in the Wakefield area went up without a hitch in the mid-1990s after Wake bought the land at a discount. More recently, another deal in Wake County was turned down. Wakefield parents supported the site, but school officials cited safety concerns and the expense of preparing the land for construction.

"Not all the times are our efforts appreciated, but we always make an effort to see if there's anything we can do to be helpful," Sutton said.

Most often, deals between developers and districts fall through when a planned development is not where a district most needs a school, Sutton said. In one case, his company took land back when Wake schools didn't build within the period they had agreed to.

School districts often move more slowly than developers, Sutton said. "It takes a lot of people to make a decision," he said.

Such deals also require a level of cooperation among school leaders, a town and a county that has long been absent in Johnston. Biggs, the town manager, helped arrange a meeting in October among school board members, county commissioners and town council members to increase collaboration on building schools.

"In the past, everybody's kind of looked after their own little area of responsibility," Biggs said. "Now we're understanding that what one does certainly has an impact on others."

School board member Donna White said communication is lacking even between the superintendent and the school board. She said she heard about the potential school site north of Clayton from town officials, not Parker.

"We can't just expect the ivory tower to hand down their plans and ideas," White said. "The school board has certain areas of responsibility, and land negotiation is a primary one of those."

County commissioners, whose board controls the schools' budget and oversees the spending of bond money, also want their say. Commissioner Allen Mims of Clayton said land prices are getting too high for school officials to put off a land purchase.

He stressed that working with developers is the best way to save taxpayer money. He is growing impatient with Parker's reluctance to deal with developers.

"Whoever is in charge of buying land needs to be talking to these people," Mims said.

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Getting involved

Nov. 23, 2005
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2005

EXPLORING YOUR WORLD: The theme for The Science House Imhotep Academy Spring session at N.C. State University is "Biotechnology III: Forensic Sciences." Middle school students will discover how mathematics, science and technology affect the various careers related to biotechnology. Interested students should pre-register online at www.science -house.org. Mandatory orientation is Jan. 19 at 6:30 p.m., and class sessions are Jan. 28 to March 11. Spaces are limited, and students are encouraged to enroll early. Teachers interested in becoming involved as Imhotep instructors should submit resumes and philosophies on education to Dr. Joyce Hilliard-Clark. Information: 515-9404.

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On religion and science

Nov. 23, 2005
Herald-Sun
By Ray Fritsch
 © Copyright 2005

Recently on these pages, letter writers such as David Sokal (Nov. 14), and columnists such as Leonard Pitts (Nov. 15) have used the ill-advised decrees of popes and Protestant windbags alike to erect a cardboard wall between religion and science.

For a copy of this article, contact the News Services office at 515-3470.

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White House bound

Nov. 26, 2005
News & Observer
By Ryan Teague Beckwith
 © Copyright 2005

Forget about barbecue for a moment. Set aside the debate over college basketball. There is another rivalry in North Carolina, and this one the entire state can get behind.

It's over Christmas trees, and this year the state beat its perennial rival, a little place in the Pacific Northwest called Oregon, along with two dozen other states.

A fir from North Carolina is on its way to the White House to be the national Christmas tree.

For the state's tree farmers, that's like winning an Academy Award. And the Miss America pageant. After watching your team win the NCAA title.At the Smokey Holler Christmas Tree Farm in Laurel Springs, it's a point of pride for retired N.C. State University forestry professor Earl Deal Jr. A sign outside the barn he uses as an office proclaims to all comers: "Hey!! We're going to the WHITE HOUSE!"

It was a sweet victory for Deal, who started growing Christmas trees in his grandmother's backyard in 1972 and who moved from Raleigh after retiring from NCSU in 2000.

Though it now has 500 acres, the Deal family still runs the business. Earl and his wife, Betsy, trim the trees. His daughter, Meg, a certified public accountant in Raleigh, does the books. His son, Earl "Buddy" Deal III, manages the crop.

The family credits the White House win to Buddy. After winning the state tree-farmers competition in 2002, he carefully planned their strategy for the national competition two years later.

With the help of state experts and former winners, he picked an 8-foot tree to show. In the weeks before the contest, he went out every afternoon to add water or fertilizer, to pluck unsightly needles and even to talk to the tree, though he won't say what the conversation was about.

In the end, the tree scored 198 out of 200 possible points. The win entitled the Deals to send a different, much larger tree to the White House in one of the next two years. (Washington state, the runner-up, sent its tree last year.)

This year is the ninth time the Tar Heel state has won top honors since the tradition began in 1966. That's more than any other state.

East-West rivalries

North Carolina's Christmas tree growers will tell you that's because they grow the best tannenbaums, even if Oregon does grow a whole lot more. (North Carolina is a distant second in annual sales.)

Given a minute, the North Carolinians also will explain that their trees are better because they are Fraser firs, while Oregonians grow noble firs.

"Nobles don't keep their needles as long," said U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, one of the dignitaries at a ceremonial tree-cutting Friday and a tree farmer herself on the side. "Fraser firs are considered the Cadillac of Christmas trees."

So what does that make noble firs?

"A Buick, I guess," she said.

That is news to Bryan Ostlund, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association in Salem, Ore.

With the patience of an Eastern North Carolinian explaining why Western-style tomato-based barbecue is not as good as his vinegar-only sauce, Ostlund carefully laid out the reasons why nobles are the better tree.

"I can set the record straight," he said. "A Fraser fir has a silvery underside to the needles and a much lighter green color overall. Noble firs have more horizontal-growing branches and a much darker green."

The debate is a modern one. Back in the old days, families would go out into the woods and cut down whatever was nearby, often a spruce. But by the 1950s, foresters started growing trees in cultivated rows like any other crop.

In Oregon, the noble fir grew best. In North Carolina, Frasers became king.

Within a few years, tree farmers found that they could use refrigerated trucks to keep trees fresh while they shipped them farther.

Though each tree tops its regional market, nobles from Oregon and Frasers from North Carolina sell side-by-side in the Midwest.

State-UNC rivalries

Deal is used to a little friendly rivalry in the Christmas tree business.

In the early 1980s, Deal, who earned an undergraduate degree and a Ph.D. from N.C. State, had the honor of selling a Christmas tree to legendary UNC-Chapel Hill basketball coach Dean Smith.

Somewhere between the farm and the Smith living room, someone painted "Go State" in red paint on the base of the trunk.

Coach Smith later called to say he liked the tree, despite its hidden message. To this day, Deal says he doesn't know how it happened.

"You know I wouldn't do something like that," he said, the sides of his mouth straining not to break into a smile.

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What's going on

Nov. 28, 2005
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2005

N.C. STATE

BOSS DONATES RAISE: NCSU Chancellor Jim Oblinger has donated his recent pay increase of about $35,000 to the university's $1 billion fund-raising campaign. NCSU has raised about $849 million.

HONORARY DEGREES: Wake County schools superintendent Bill McNeal, DEKA Research and Development founder Dean Kamen, Parkdale Mills chairman W. Duke Kimbrell and conservationist and photographer Hugh Morton will get honorary degrees during fall commencement Dec. 14. McNeal, who's stepping down June 30, will give the commencement address.

FILMMAKER TO SPEAK: Documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp will speak at the 15th annual Kwanzaa Celebration at 6 p.m. Thursday in the campus cinema and African American Cultural Center, located in Witherspoon Student Center. The Kwanzaa program will feature his film, "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till," and a discussion. It is free.

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Princeton and Wrigley say stress relief is but a stick away

Nov. 28, 2005
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2005

Chew on this for a minute. Then please dispose of properly.

A recent survey by the Princeton Review, in conjunction with Wrigley's chewing gum, showed that more than 85 percent of American and Canadian students feel increased stress at exam time.

Piling the predictable on top of the obvious, Wrigley suggests students could reduce that stress by finding a calm place to study, exercising during breaks and -- you never would have guessed this -- chewing more gum.

They even cite a June 2002 article in Appetite titled "Chewing gum selectively improves memory in healthy volunteers."Now for three days beginning Wednesday, students at N.C. State University are invited to the Wrigley Gum Lounge at the Talley Student Center. Just in case the Juicy Fruit isn't enough, the lounge will offer stress busters such as music, bean-bag chairs to hang out in and a drawing for $1,000 toward books and tuition.

It's the second time marketers have used the unlikely trifecta of gum, NCSU and the Princeton Review. In August 2004, the review's college guide ranked NCSU the 17th-ugliest campus in the country, prompting the student newspaper to suggest it might have something to do with a certain wall on campus where people are fond of sticking their used gum. At times, the wall sports thousands of unsightly dried little blobs, meaning Wrigley is probably onto something here.

College must be a very stressful place.

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Week Ahead

Nov. 27, 2005
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2005

North Carolina and Japan: Trade and Investment, annual conference by the N.C. Japan Center, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, N.C. State University, 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sheraton Imperial Hotel, Research Triangle Park. Lunch speaker is James M. Wiseman, vice president for corporate affairs with Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America. $85. Registration due by Wednesday. Contact: 515-3450 or tony_moyer@@ncsu.edu.

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Good news at gas pumps as prices fall

Nov. 23, 2005
WRAL-TV
By Mark Roberts
 © Copyright 2005

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Gasoline supply is up, gas prices are down and the forecast at the pumps for the holiday season is looking positive, but what about the long-term outlook?

"We've seen prices continue to fall rapidly over the past two weeks and I think we'll continue to see them fall in the upcoming weeks," said Gary Harris, a spokesman for the Petroleum Marketers Association. "Demand right now has probably leveled off."

Over the past month, AAA Carolinas says the average price of gasoline has dropped 62 cents, from $2.80 per gallon to the current average of $2.18. Prices are even lower around the Triangle. At an Exxon on Capital Boulevard, prices for regular unleaded were $2.04. And at Dean's Grocery on N.C. Highway 39 in Zebulon, a gallon of gas costs $1.98.

"We're getting a faster recovery in the Gulf and we're also seeing, I think, more action by consumers to conserve," said Mike Walden, an economist at North Carolina State University. "We've seen a big drop off in SUV sales. I think the $3-a-gallon prices really shocked consumers."

People are using less gas, and when they do use it, they are trying to be more efficient. Oil companies are also stepping up production and exploration for new oil reserves.

"I think that within two to three years we could actually be awash in oil in the world and we could see prices come down to perhaps as low as $1.20, $1.30 a gallon," Walden said.

But market watchers caution that another large national disaster, such as another hurricane or an act of terrorism, gasoline prices could quickly rise again.

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Pack's Fowler a patient supporter during stormy times

Nov. 25, 2005
News & Observer
By Chip Alexander
 © Copyright 2005

On the Monday after N.C. State's football loss at Wake Forest, with the Wolfpack 2-4 and many of its fans grumbling, a black Chrysler 300 pulled in front of the Murphy Center.

Out stepped athletics director Lee Fowler, his head down. He ducked into a side entrance, the one a few steps from coach Chuck Amato's red Corvette.

Fifteen minutes later, Fowler was back after having a few words with Amato.

"I told him let's move on," Fowler said.Fowler said that's his style: to be supportive. Drop by, talk, listen, hold back on any second-guessing and trust the coach and his staff to do their jobs.

NCSU probably has never had a more visible, quotable, folksy -- or taller -- athletics director than Fowler, 53, a former Vanderbilt basketball player who later was an assistant coach at Memphis. He is accessible to fans and media as well as coaches.

"I feel my job should be an open book -- we are a public university," he said.

During that brief visit to the Murphy Center, Fowler did not tell Amato to lose the sunglasses and red sneakers, he said. Nor did he tell Amato the offense needed revamping or suggest a change in quarterbacks.

"None of that was my idea," Fowler said. "I think when you're not being successful, you re-evaluate and change some things. I assume Chuck did that. I don't tell coaches what to do. They put enough pressure on themselves."

The Pack moved on to win three of its next four games. A victory over Maryland on Saturday would give State a 6-5 record and possibly a bowl bid.

Although saying success in football is not "a 6-5 year and going to a 6-5 bowl," Fowler said the season still could have a successful finish.

"I have a lot of confidence in Chuck," Fowler said. "I have a lot of confidence in this staff, and I really want to keep this staff together after the season.

"What I try to do is go by and ask what we need. ... I feel like my job as an athletic director really kicks in when you're struggling."

Continuity important

Since going to NCSU in September 2000, Fowler has made few hires. The men's and women's tennis programs underwent coaching changes. New volleyball and diving coaches also were hired.

Asked if he fired any of the former coaches, Fowler said, "Officially, they resigned."

When the men's basketball program went through a losing season in 2000-2001 and many Wolfpack fans were clamoring for a coaching change, Fowler defended Herb Sendek. Fowler also has shown loyalty to men's soccer coach George Tarantini and baseball coach Elliott Avent when their programs had some lean years.

"Continuity in a program is important," Fowler said. "My approach has always been that I believe our coaches need to have what other people [in the ACC] have in terms of facilities. George still doesn't have it. Elliott does, and you can see the difference."

The Pack's soccer team, which plays at aging Method Road Stadium, had disappointing seasons from 2000 to 2002. But this season the Wolfpack was 11-7-1 and reached the NCAA Tournament. A new soccer complex is planned.

"Lee understands the business," Tarantini said. "He coached, he understands athletics and he knows what it takes to win. That means a lot to a coach."

State's baseball stadium, Doak Field, has been totally renovated. Avent was voted ACC coach of the year in 2003, and the Pack was 41-19 this past season.

"It's not that I've been loyal but that I've been fair," Fowler said. "Facilities don't automatically make you win. And after we get the facilities finished, it will be a little shorter leash than the coaches had before."

In fall 1999, the men's basketball team moved into the plush RBC Center. State was 20-14 the first year but then 13-16 in Sendek's fifth season as coach.

Fowler didn't hire Sendek -- former AD Todd Turner did -- but Fowler stood by the coach. The Pack has reached the NCAA Tournament each of the past four seasons. Last year, NCSU advanced to the round of 16 for the first time since 1989.

"Like a lot of coaches, he came in looking for the formula," Fowler said. "Now, it's like he has broken the code. He realizes who to recruit to be successful."

Sendek, in turn, said he is grateful Fowler turned a deaf ear to the many critics.

"I think he is at his best when things aren't going well," Sendek said. "He has seen and weathered a lot of storms."

What frustrates many Pack fans is that NCSU hasn't won an ACC football championship since 1979 or a men's basketball title since 1987. In Fowler's tenure, the Pack has three ACC titles in wrestling, four in men's cross country and three in women's cross country.

Fans want titles

"The facilities are first-rate, but on the athletic performance we are just average," said Todd Huggins, an alumnus who lives in Berlin, Wis. "Not sure if this is him or the individual coaches. But ultimately, he is in charge of the coaches and thus the win-loss records."

Fowler, who has an annual salary of $226,000 and whose contract runs through September 2008, said conference championships are the goal for each of his programs, but with a caveat.

"Championships are important," he said, "but I don't think it's a negative year if you don't win the championship, if you've had a good year and gone to the NCAAs."

But can NCSU be competitive in men's basketball with UNC and Duke? Both recruit the top-rated players in the country. Sendek has had solid recruiting classes but has recruited few players rated among the nation's top 10.

"It's not an easy neighborhood," Fowler said, "but I feel comfortable that with what Herb has done, we can compete with them."

Fowler said he understands the expectations of NCSU fans who are proud of the Pack's two national men's basketball championships -- in 1974 and 1983 -- and believe State has the resources to win another.

"They know this university has done it and want to strive for it," he said. "Our goal should be to put a team on the court that gives you the opportunity. Does it happen every year? No. But that should be your goal."

Fowler was hired by former chancellor Marye Anne Fox, who fired former football coach Mike O'Cain after the 1999 season and approved of the hiring of Amato. Fox later left for California-San Diego, and former provost James Oblinger took over as chancellor.

Oblinger, unlike Fox, has not been outspoken on sports. He stresses general excellence, and called Fowler an "excellent manager" of the athletics department.

"He and I converse a lot," Oblinger said. "When I think I need to talk to him about athletics, I talk to him, and he has always been responsive."

Fowler, who said he answers all e-mail, receives a lot of it from Wolfpack fans. After Clemson battered State 31-10 at home Oct. 13 in a game carried by ESPN, the e-mail was heavy and vitriolic.

NCSU alumnus Mark VanMalssen of Midlothian, Va., e-mailed Fowler demanding Amato be fired at the end of the season.

Fowler's e-mail reply: "Thanks for your comments. The staff and players are working very hard to have a successful season. Let's support our team."

Said VanMalssen, "At least he was prompt getting back to me."

The day after the Clemson game, Fowler posted an open letter to State fans on the school's athletics Web site, www.gopack.com, urging patience and support for the team, for Amato.

"It's always good to have that," Amato said. "I know where Lee stands."

Fowler's name, from time to time, has been linked to openings at other schools -- Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio State. He said he has assured the chancellor and the school's trustees he is committed to staying at NCSU.

Philip Carter, former faculty chairman at NCSU, says he has a "high opinion" of Fowler.

Stressing academics

"He's committed to academic success as well as success on the court," said Carter, a microbiology and immunology professor.

Fowler said he will continue to push for higher graduation rates and monitor class attendance by athletes more closely. Upgrading facilities and making State's teams national contenders also are priorities in the next few years.

"Lee has done an outstanding job when you consider where our facilities were when he came and where they are now," said Wendell Murphy, a key Wolfpack Club contributor. "The turnaround is dramatic. ... He's the strongest advocate for our athletic program of any athletic director I can remember."

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Ex-governor still a force of nature four years later

Nov. 27, 2005
News & Observer
By Rob Christensen
 © Copyright 2005

There are few offices in Raleigh higher than Jim Hunt's -- a perch on the 21st floor of the Wachovia Building that offers him a bird's-eye view of the capital city he has dominated for a generation.

From his office, lined with photographs of the powerful and editorial cartoons lampooning his 16 years as governor, Hunt works his network like a concert pianist plays a keyboard.

It is a network that -- combined with his relentless energy and a lifetime in politics -- makes him still a major player in public policy nearly five years after leaving office.

There are notes to fire off to his successor, Gov. Mike Easley. There are his think tanks to direct -- one to tutor the nation's governors on education and another that is about to begin a five-year effort to reform North Carolina's antiquated tax structure.There are corporate clients to woo for Womble Carlyle, the law firm where he works. There are corporate board meetings to attend, education conferences to participate in and an endless round of speeches. Bill Clinton has him on his School of Public Service board. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has him on an advisory panel, and he has helped Virginia Gov. Mark Warner think through education problems there.

Every weekday morning, after putting out hay for the calves on his 300-acre Wilson County cattle farm, Hunt dons a power suit and climbs into his 2001 Lincoln Town car and heads west on U.S 264 for an hourlong commute. Frequently, the trip doesn't end here. In recent weeks, Hunt has been in Washington (six times), New York (twice), West Virginia, Indiana, Wyoming, New Mexico, Chicago and Toronto.

"I sometimes tell people that I am busier than when I was governor -- but without the security, the state helicopter and the state airplanes," Hunt said.

Many 68-year-olds would be looking to slow down. But Hunt's frenetic, post-gubernatorial career, with a particular focus on education, surprises few of his friends.

"I've known him so long I can't picture him any other way," said former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Phil Carlton of Pinetops, a Hunt friend since high school. "He was driven [in college]. He has never really let up. He has changed less than any man I've known, from adolescence to granddaddy."

It is a drive that took Hunt to the top of state politics -- first to lieutenant governor at age 35 (in 1972), then to four terms as governor (1976, 1980, 1992 and 1996.) No North Carolina governor matches that record. Hunt's only defeat was the 1984 U.S. Senate race to Republican Jesse Helms.

Hunt says he does not miss being governor. He says he accomplished most of what he wanted.

He also says he's a lot healthier. Hunt says he had frequent respiratory ailments while he was living in the Executive Mansion, ailments that cleared up as soon as he left office. Hunt says he is certain it was caused by mold, which is now being removed from the mansion.

No grand vision

Hunt said he didn't have any grand vision for his post-gubernatorial career when he and his wife, Carolyn, walked away from the inaugural ceremonies in January 2001 that turned the office over to Easley, a fellow Democrat.

But Hunt wanted to both do well and do good -- to earn a good living and to pursue his interest in education. Womble Carlyle, North Carolina's largest law firm with more than 500 lawyers, provided him with the opportunity for both.

Hunt is the sort of high-profile lawyer more commonly found in Washington. He doesn't appear in court, write legal briefs or lobby. Hunt is what is known as a rainmaker, using his broad connections to help bring corporate clients such as Dell, the computer giant, to the firm.

"Obviously he has entree into about every board room in the country," said Burley Mitchell, a Hunt law partner and a former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court. "When we have a lawyer making an initial contact with a corporate client, we include Hunt in the mix to make a telephone call to open a door for other partners or to actually go see them."

Mitchell said Womble Carlyle has profited from Hunt's connections. But he said the firm also provided Hunt with a free hand.

"Our agreement," said Mitchell, "was he could come here and do whatever he wanted to improve the condition of humanity -- whatever public project he wanted to participate in, serving on whatever commissions for children or education. If some business fell out of that, fine."

For the first time in his life, Hunt is making big money -- almost certainly a robust six-figure salary from Womble Carlyle. Hunt will only say that the firm "pays me well." His directors' fee from Nortel Networks, the Canadian company with a major facility in the Triangle, is $75,000 per year.

Feeding his passion

Hunt has two quasi-private organizations -- one in Raleigh and one in Chapel Hill -- that help feed his passion for public policy. Hunt has become the Yoda for other governors on education. He has done this by creating the James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy, which holds conferences in Chapel Hill for governors, lieutenant governors, legis- lators and educators.

Earlier this month, Hunt had 15 governors -- from Virginia's Mark Warner to Ohio's Bob Taft --attend a three-day private symposium at the Ballantyne Resort in Charlotte. Hunt brought in a series of education gurus to talk about what was working and not working in public education. It was off the record -- no aides, no lobbyists and no reporters. (Easley sponsored a NASCAR night, allowing the governors to race around Lowe's Motor Speedway.)

So many governors came because of Hunt's reputation as an education innovator, a track record of putting on quality conferences and his hard sell. He typically calls each governor five or six times.

"He plays on my Catholic guilt," said Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack.

Vilsack said he has gone to three Hunt-led conferences. At the end of the Charlotte conference, Vilsack held up a legal pad filled with ideas. "We came back [to Iowa] and announced a plan to provide access for every 4-year-old for preschool during the next several years, a plan to significantly raise teacher salaries in the state and an innovative grant program to spur development in K-12."

While many of those ideas had already been in the planning stage, Vilsack said the Hunt conference helped him crystallize the ideas and gave him a glimpse at what other states were doing.

"It got my creative juices flowing," he said.

Since it was created in 2003, the Hunt Institute has spent $4.5 million, mainly putting on conferences, nearly all from private funding such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.

Hunt is probably most associated in the public's mind with the Emerging Issues Forum, a two-day conference that brings nationally known speakers to N.C. State University once a year. The forum, which began in the 1980s, is broadening its mission to become a think tank.

Under Hunt's leadership, the Institute for Emerging Issues is beginning a five-year effort to reform North Carolina's tax system, which is basically unchanged since the 1930s. The Institute has an annual budget of nearly $1 million, about half of which comes from public funds.

The Institute is also planning a new building on NCSU's Centennial Campus that will serve not only as its headquarters but also as a training center and a repository for most of Hunt's records.

Despite his travels across the country and to Asia, Hunt said he remains most interested in North Carolina.

Hunt and Easley

Hunt was among those who successfully urged Easley in September to veto a bill to allow the hiring of schoolteachers with out-of-state teaching licenses. Local school officials said they needed the authority because of the teacher shortage, but Hunt saw the bill as a step back from his decades-long campaign to raise teacher standards.

Easley was already inclined to veto the bill. But Hunt's position reinforced that position. Hunt also lobbied Democratic lawmakers to not override Easley's veto.

Hunt plays down his role in the veto, saying he only helped. Hunt has been very careful not to be seen as crowding Easley.

The two men -- of different generations and styles -- were not close when Hunt was governor and Easley was attorney general. But both seem to have developed an appreciation of the other. They talk about once a month.

Hunt speaks approvingly of Easley's support for such Hunt favorite projects as Smart Start, the preschool program, and for raising teacher salaries. And Hunt praises Easley's education initiatives, such as one focused on improving high schools.

"I think it's been a good relationship," Hunt said. "It's certainly one I appreciate."

Some lawmakers say they hear more from Hunt than they do Easley.

"He's great at dropping you an article and writing a note: 'You should read this,' " said state Senate leader Marc Basnight. "He's keenly aware of what is happening in other states and in other countries. It's like having your own agent who is clipping for you."

No more elections

Being out of office has liberated Hunt to take some positions that he would likely have found radioactive as governor. This summer, Hunt voiced support for a controversial bill that would allow qualified illegal immigrants who graduate from North Carolina high schools to get in-state tuition to University of North Carolina campuses.

Hunt says he has no interest in running for political office again but has kept his hand in Demo-cratic politics.

Hunt was a key adviser for Erskine Bowles' two Senate campaigns, and he also made several appearances on behalf of Demo-cratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards. He and Carolyn knocked on doors in Wilson County last fall for Bowles.

The Hunts maintain a decidedly middle-class lifestyle in Wilson. They live in the same modern farm house they built in 1972, situated 75 yards from the house where he grew up. They have cut back the size of the herd of cattle from 100 to 20 prize cows so they can spend more time with their four grown children and 10 grandchildren. Although a son-in-law manages the farm, Hunt still helps on weekends by mowing pastures, fixing fences and putting out hay.

Carolyn Hunt, who always seemed more at home as mother and farm manager than in her public role, often spends a couple of days each week in Clayton caring for three grandchildren, including a 2-month-old baby, while her daughter Elizabeth works part time as a social worker.

Life would be easier for Hunt if he moved to Raleigh, cutting out a daily two-hour commute and living nearer the airport. But Hunt says he likes the idea of being rooted -- starting the day on the farm, even if he ends the day in a Manhattan office tower.

Hunt has been driven since he was a child -- a fierce work ethic instilled in him by his stern father, James Sr., a farmer/soil conservationist who was an elder in the Marsh Swamp Free Will Baptist Church in Wilson County and a New Deal liberal. The elder Hunt was working the farm nearly until he died at age 91 two years ago -- and Hunt seems intent on following his father's model of plowing to the end of the row.

Hunt said he is driven primarily by two things -- his rural Eastern North Carolina roots and his religion.

"I want to see things better," Hunt said. "I drove up here from Wilson County this morning where I live on a farm. Every day, I see poor people. I see uneducated people. I see Hispanic people and their children. I see a community that does not have enough jobs. ...

"I go to my Presbyterian church on Sunday and go to Sunday school. I think about what God wants us to do and what kind of people we ought to be. That helps drive me to try to make things better."

A Former Governor's Activity List

Here is a partial list of organizations that former Gov. Jim Hunt has been involved in since leaving office nearly five years ago.

* Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, member of the law firm. (Raleigh)

* James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy, founder and chairman of the board. (Chapel Hill)

* Institute for Emerging Issues, founder and chairman. (Raleigh)

* National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, chairman of the board. (San Jose, Calif.)

* U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' Commission on Higher Education, member. (Washington)

* Carnegie Corporation of New York, trustee. (New York)

* Asia Society of New York, trustee. (New York)

* National Commission on International Studies in the Schools, co-chairman. (New York)

* National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, co- founder, former chairman and current member of the president's roundtable.

* National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, former chairman. (Washington)

* National Center for Educational Accountability, board member. (Dallas)

* School Evaluation Services, a division of Standard & Poor's, chairman of the national advisory board. (New York)

* The Teaching Commission, member. (New York)

* The Trust for Early Education, former board member. (Washington)

* Research Triangle Region Clusters of Innovation Task Force, chairman. (Raleigh)

* N.C. Blue Ribbon Commission on Growing the Economy Through Biotechnology, co-chair with former Gov. Jim Martin.

* Food Bank of North Carolina, chairman of a capital campaign to raise $7 million.

* N.C. Coalition on Lobbying Reform, co-chairman with Martin.

* N.C. Public Campaign Financing Fund (Judicial campaign reform), co-chairman with former Gov. Jim Hols-houser.

* Amendment One (Self- financing bonds constitutional amendment), chairman.

* University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, board member. (Little Rock, Ark.)

* Nortel Networks, board of directors. (Ontario, Canada)

* Wireless Generation, chairman, advisory board. (New York)

* PepsiCo Blue Ribbon Health and Wellness Advisory Board, member. (Purchase, N.Y.)

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Broad's way

Nov. 27, 2005
Herald-Sun
By Eric Ferreri
 © Copyright 2005

CHAPEL HILL -- Not long ago, Molly Broad joined a book club -- one of those fun neighborhood groups where people read books and get together to chat about them over dinner or a glass of wine.

For eight years, Broad has had none of the down time required to be part of a book club. But she's trying, really trying, to ease off the pedal now as her run as president of the UNC system comes to a close.

So there she was at a neighborhood book club meeting recently. But rather than immersing herself in the subtext of "The Kite Runner," her mind still was a swirl of chancellor salaries, tuition rates and any number of other things on her mental to-do list.

Come January, Broad will be able to, as she put it during a recent interview, "be a real person again." She'll read and exercise and spend more time with her husband, two sons and two grandchildren, all of whom live in Chapel Hill or nearby.

She'll be on a one-year research leave, after which she'll return to the classroom as a faculty member at UNC Chapel Hill's School of Government.

She's been the boss for eight years, so loosening her grip on the reins of a $6 billion, 16-campus empire will not be easy. Can she let go? That, she acknowledges, is the question.

"It can consume your every waking minute," she said, describing the job she's held since 1997. "So part of this [retirement] will be to reclaim a healthier balance with my family."

An outsider

Broad, 64, arrived in North Carolina in 1997 with some very big chips stacked squarely against her.

First, she's not from North Carolina. Second, she's not from North Carolina. And, by the way, she's not from North Carolina.

In many states, university systems happily bring in leaders from other parts of the country. It is often seen as a point of pride, a mark of quality to lure a top leader from one end of the nation to the other.

Not so much here.

"She was a woman, and she's from out of state," said Ben Ruffin, a former chairman of the UNC system's Board of Governors and member of the search committee that brought Broad to North Carolina. "When she came in, people assumed she couldn't do the job."

From the outset, Broad -- a Pennsylvanian by way of New York, Arizona and California -- knew she'd have an uphill climb.

"If I had a magic wand and had one thing to change, it would have been to have been born in North Carolina," Broad said recently, a day removed from an emotional sendoff at her final meeting of the UNC system's Board of Governors.

Complicating matters, Broad was stepping into the considerable shoes left by her two predecessors, businessman C.D. Spangler and William Friday, the latter generally considered the father of modern higher education in North Carolina.

Up against all this, Broad set out to walk her own line and to cast her own shadows. In doing so, she has earned the respect and admiration of many who work with her -- but also the disdain of some who bristle at her management style or have been vexed by her perceived inability to grasp the intricacies of North Carolina politics.

This job, one of the state's most public positions, is not for the faint of heart.

"Being president of this university is a tough, hard job," James Holshouser, a former N.C. governor who sits on the university system's board, said recently. "By the very nature of the job, you unavoidably have to be the point person in times of controversy. Because of that, you pick up scars. It's part of the territory."

Most folks who don't know Broad don't see those scars. She hides them well -- or won't acknowledge them at all. She is famous for her steely smile, the deliberate forcefulness with which she speaks, and her encyclopedic grasp of even the most minute, arcane data.

"I have a lot of scar tissue," she acknowledged recently. "But happily, I heal quickly."

Growth and status

Along with the dozens of new academic and administrative buildings popping up across the university system in the wake of a $2.5 billion bond referendum (see accompanying article), Broad's impact also can be seen in the dormitories and cafeterias bursting at their seams.

The state's universities have expanded dramatically over the last eight years, a reflection both of the state's growing college-age population and, Broad says, of the university system's attempt to increase access to higher education.

Since 1997, enrollment systemwide has grown by 37,000 students to more than 196,000 this fall. Along the way, Broad and her legislative team have fought several successful battles to retain full enrollment funding from the state for those new students. In addition, the university created a new, need-based financial aid program early in Broad's tenure that is now worth $56 million.

"North Carolina has had a wonderful university for generations," Broad said. "But it wasn't accessible to a lot of North Carolinians who didn't have a family tradition of going to college or couldn't afford to go to college."

A higher education policy wonk, Broad has played key roles on a number of national higher education associations -- she currently chairs the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges -- and is well known within the world of academia.

"She has taken the influence of the system to a nationwide arena that hasn't really been done since Bill Friday," said Sheldon Steinbach, vice president at the American Council on Education in Washington.

Expense and criticism

But with growth and status comes expense, and Broad has taken some criticism for the money she's spent expanding the university's empire. New and ambitious programs -- like a new Washington, D.C., office; an information and technology department; and an advancement division -- require more staff to run them.

In 1997, 22 administrators at the UNC system's headquarters held some version of the title "vice president." Currently, 34 people are vice presidents of one sort or another, according to the system's Board of Governors manual.

This expansion has rankled some legislators who have expressed the desire that Broad's successor, former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, reel in spending when he takes over in January.

"Bill Friday was very, very prudent with the state's money, and so was Dick Spangler," Ruffin said. "[Broad] came [after] two very austere kind of people. She wasn't austere, and the contrast was very clear. But I don't criticize her for it."

Broad's management style clearly bothered some lawmakers, who had no reluctance earlier this year expressing their desire that the university be run more like a business.

Since Broad's tenure began in 1997, the state's appropriation to public higher education has increased from $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion annually. But it has declined in percentage terms. In 1997, the state's appropriation to the UNC system constituted 13.2 percent of the university's total budget. This year, state money makes up 12.4 percent.

"The Legislature is the ultimate authority and the ultimate source of revenue," Broad said. "They have an awesome influence on the university, and when you can't support what they're proposing, it inevitably leads to stresses and strains."

In early April, Broad was blindsided when a group of Republicans in the state Senate announced publicly their wish that Bowles be the next UNC president, citing the need for better fiscal responsibility. This none-too-subtle pronouncement came before Broad announced her retirement plans. Seven months later, she's still not sure what it was all about.

"I knew nothing about it before it happened, and I still know nothing about it," she said. "I was as surprised as anyone when I heard about it."

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'Construction president'

Nov. 27, 2005
Herald-Sun
By Eric Ferreri
 © Copyright 2005

CHAPEL HILL -- To many, Molly Broad will be remembered as the "Construction President." The compliment brings a grimace to her face.

"It isn't what I think of first," she said. "But I'm very pleased and proud of the accomplishment."

Like it or not, she won't escape that label, not after having presided over an overwhelmingly successful campaign in 2000 that, through a voter referendum, brought $2.5 billion in bond money to the state's universities -- and $600 million more to community colleges -- to repair, renovate and rebuild North Carolina's higher education infrastructure.

The bond campaign followed a consultant's study that revealed an infrastructure in need of more than $6 billion in improvements. For Broad, who had construction planning experience at previous administrative roles at universities in California and Arizona, the bond program became her primary focus.

Not only was it her job to promote it, but this dramatic boost to the university's infrastructure also was something she truly believed in.

"I don't have an 'edifice' complex," she said recently, laughing. "But I do think universities in the United States have been under-capitalized. If we're going to be the best universities in the world, we're going to have to have the capacity to do the research that will outstrip other universities across the world."

To that end, Broad became the bond campaign's chief salesperson, traveling the state to talk it up at Rotary clubs, newspaper editorial boards and anywhere people would listen. At times, she used her post as a bully pulpit, pitching the bond program at commencement ceremonies and other public functions.

For some folks, it was a bit too much.

George Leef, executive director of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, a conservative think-tank in Raleigh, was astounded in 2000 to see Broad selling the bonds message before a performance by cellist Yo-Yo Ma at UNC Chapel Hill's Memorial Hall.

"I thought it was in incredibly poor taste," Leef recalled recently. "It indicated she was willing to go to almost any lengths to persuade people, whether it was appropriate or not, that they had to go out and vote for the bond issue."

Others have wondered whether Broad has claimed too much of the credit for the bond referendum's passage and subsequent, well-executed construction program.

Judith Wegner, who chairs the faculty at UNC Chapel Hill, believes equal credit should be spread among community college leaders, politicians, students and the collective voice of the state's citizenry.

"I think she claims credit for that but it's not really hers to claim," Wegner said. "The fact that you happen to be there when the victory comes doesn't mean you can claim responsibility for having won."

But Ben Ruffin, who chaired the UNC system board during the bond campaign, credits Broad for leading the successful effort.

"It's phenomenal, and you can't miss it," Ruffin said of the bond campaign's impact on the university system.

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Growing alternatives to gasoline

Nov. 25, 2005
Charlotte Observer; Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC)
By Bruce Henderson
 © Copyright 2005

Corn squeezin's, years ago, were what moonshiners hauled in their car trunks through the N.C. mountains. A new generation of entrepreneurs want to put it in your gas tank.

Homegrown energy producers hope to turn crops such as corn and soybeans into North Carolina's first large-scale production of clean-burning vehicle fuels. Three-dollar gasoline, growing unease over foreign oil and the prospect of new farm markets stoke their interest.

The first ethanol plant on the Atlantic seaboard is expected to be announced in coastal Beaufort County in about a month, adding to the output of existing cooperatives. Ethanol, like white lightning, is distilled from corn.

"There's a lot of experience in North Carolina with doing exactly what we're doing," ethanol maker Terry Ruse said. "We're just doing it bigger and better."

The state's first commercial biodiesel plant, which uses vegetable oils or animal fats, is planned for the Eastern North Carolina town of Mount Olive. Another ethanol plant is being discussed in Hoke County, 100 miles southeast of Charlotte.

Crops, forestry wastes and agricultural residues could be turned into more than 1 billion gallons of ethanol a year, the State Energy Office says. That's about a third of the state's gasoline usage.

"The field is wide open," said Bob Leker, the office's renewable energy manager. "Now North Carolina imports 100 percent of its ethanol. There is no need for that -- we've got plenty of arable land and wood waste."

Beaufort County has offered incentives to Raleigh's Agri-Ethanol Products to build a plant that would produce 54 million gallons of ethanol a year from local corn. The $100 million plant hasn't been formally announced.

In Shelby, oil distributor Ray Thomas thought the time was right for alternatives as gas prices rose and more flexibly fueled vehicles rolled off assembly lines.

Since opening his first ethanol and biodiesel pumps last June, Thomas has expanded from Charlotte to Gaffney, S.C. He supplies the 10 percent ethanol blend called E10, which most gas-powered vehicles can use, to 55 service stations.

"Our goal is to be all over the Carolinas," he said.

Cheaper fuel crops

Biomass -- plant material and animal wastes -- could someday produce more than a third of the nation's transportation fuels, federal agencies say.A year-old N.C. law allows a 25 percent tax credit for the construction of building biofuel plants. Federal subsidies help make the alternative fuels competitive with petroleum.

But North Carolina isn't Iowa, with its miles of cornfields. Previous stabs at making N.C. ethanol haven't gotten off the ground.

The state already has to import corn and soybeans to feed the state's huge hog and poultry industries. Dedicating all N.C. corn, soy and idle farm acreage to biofuel production, the N.C. Solar Center has estimated, would make less than 10 percent of the state's gas and diesel usage.

Ethanol advocates say it makes financial sense to produce it on the densely populated East Coast, saving the cost of shipping fuel from the Midwest. The grain left over from making ethanol could feed N.C. livestock.

Plant scientists are searching for cheaper new fuel crops.

N.C. State University is developing sweet potatoes that are high in starch. Enzymes are used to convert starch to simple sugars, then distilled into ethanol.

Genetic modifications may someday implant those enzymes right in the potato, cutting out an expensive part of production.

"The economics have to balance," said Craig Yencho, the scientist leading the potato research. "As long as the costs of gas and oil go up, the equation becomes much more favorable."

Biodiesel network

Biodiesel, unlike ethanol, can be produced on a bucket-sized scale. It can be made from soy oil, which is plentiful in North Carolina, or even used restaurant oil. The N.C. Department of Transportation's fleet burned 2.5 million gallons last year.

Anne Tazewell, an alternative fuels specialist at the Solar Center, compares biodiesel to organic foods. Chemical-free food found its first markets in cooperatives, but now is common in mainstream grocery stores.

Biodiesel now fills such a small but growing niche.

Friends in Asheville formed Blue Ridge Biofuels three years ago, collecting used oil from local restaurants and selling biodiesel to a network of about 200 environmentally conscious buyers. Now incorporated, the worker-owned business opened its first public pumps this summer and hopes to sell 1 million gallons a year by late 2007.

At $3.37 a gallon, Blue Ridge's biodiesel is still an expensive alternative. But director Brian Winslett bets that rising oil prices will level the playing field.

"It seems to be the one sustainable energy that everyone is excited about," he said.

Confused by Biofuel?

Ethanol is blended with gasoline. E10 (10 percent ethanol) is a high-octane mix that can be used in any vehicle made after 1992. E85 (85 percent ethanol) is an alternative only for specific vehicles (list of "flex-fuel" vehicles: www.e85fuel.com/index.php). Both emit less carbon monoxide and other toxic chemicals than gasoline.

Biodiesel can be used in any diesel vehicle. It's usually mixed with diesel fuel, most often in a 20-percent blend called B20. Because it acts as lubricant, biodiesel reduces engine wear. The fuel also lowers engine emissions of soot, carbon monoxide, ozone-forming hydrocarbons and sulfur dioxide, which forms haze and acid rain.

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This tree is a big deal

Nov. 26, 2005
Charlotte Observer; The State (Columbia, S.C.); Sun News (Myrtle Beach, S.C.); Kansas City Star; Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald; Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat; Macon (Ga.) Telegraph; Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald; Kentucky; Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader; Contra Costa (Calif.) Times; Monterey County (Calif.) Herald; Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune; Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.); Bradenton (Fla.) Herald; San Luis Obispo (Calif.) Tribune; Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer; Billings (Mont.) Gazette; Provo (Utah) Daily Herald
By Jen Aronoff
 © Copyright 2005

LAUREL SPRINGS, N.C. - After spending most of its 24 years on a steep slope in the Blue Ridge mountains, one of Earl and Betsy Deal's beloved Fraser firs is on its way to a new home: the White House.

The 18 1/2-foot tree will spend the holiday season in the Blue Room as the official White House Christmas tree. Earl and Betsy, owners of Smokey Holler Tree Farm, earned the honor by winning a national contest last year and say it's a dream come true.

They began farming trees in 1972. Today, they have three farms on 500 acres.

On Friday, a crowd of friends, family members and local dignitaries watched and clapped as the couple's son, Buddy, sawed the tree, and 13 workers gently loaded it onto a trailer.

The tree - and two companions, for other White House rooms - hit the road Friday in a refrigerated big rig from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. The Deals are traveling to Washington this weekend with friends. Monday morning, they'll present the tree to Laura Bush.

But the fun won't last too long: The Deals expect to ship 30,000 trees this year, and they said they'll be back at their farm Tuesday, loading trucks.

---

Tree Timeline

The White House Christmas tree tradition began in 1889, when Benjamin Harrison was president. Today, the first lady selects a theme, and American artisans bring it to life through decorations.

Members of the National Christmas Tree Association have presented the official White House Christmas tree, which stands in the Blue Room, every year since 1966.

Here's how the Deal family tree got to the White House:

August 2002: A Smokey Holler Fraser fir is named the best tree in North Carolina by the N.C. Christmas Tree Association, and the Deal family earns the right to continue to the national competition.

December 2002: The Deals present trees and garlands to Gov. Mike Easley.

August 2004: The family's tree is named grand champion at the biennial National Christmas Tree Association convention, beating out 22 other entries. The Deals win the right to present the White House Christmas tree that year or the next and choose 2005, figuring they could use some more time to get the tree ready.

October 2005: White House chief usher Gary Walters and grounds foreman Mike Lawn visit Smokey Holler to select a Fraser fir for the Blue Room. The one requirement: It must be 18.5 feet tall, so they can hook it in to the White House ceiling. Walters and Lawn choose the very tree the Deals hoped they would - and liked the Fraser firs so much, they decided to bring back two more: one for the Oval Office and one for the president's private residence.

Nov. 25, 2005: The Blue Room tree - and the two companion trees - are cut down at the farm.

Nov. 28, 2005: The Deals will present the tree to Laura Bush at about 10 a.m. It will be decorated later in the day.

Dec. 7, 2005: "White House Christmas," a television special that includes the Deal family tree and its journey, will premiere at 8 p.m. on HGTV.

There is no official "lighting" of this tree because it is indoors. (The Blue Room tree - aka "The Official White House Christmas Tree" - is not the same thing as the National Christmas Tree.)

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The smells, the stillness, the satisfaction

Nov. 26, 2005
Charlotte Observer
By Jen Abonoff
 © Copyright 2005

Today is Earl and Betsy Deal's 40th anniversary. And for once, they plan to celebrate on time.

Understand that late November is generally not the best time for the owners of a Christmas tree farm, which Earl and Betsy are, to take a break.

Usually, their daughter Meg said, they take an anniversary fishing trip in February.

But now, the owners of Smokey Holler Tree Farm are preparing to leave Laurel Springs, near the Blue Ridge Parkway in Alleghany County, for Washington, D.C. There, they'll present Laura Bush with their carefully birthed pride and joy: the official White House Christmas tree, a 24-year-old, 18 1/2-foot Fraser fir.

With them will be son Buddy, 35, who runs the farm with them; Meg, 36, a Raleigh accountant who handles their books; and some close friends.

They earned the right to supply the tree in 2004, when a Smokey Holler tree was named grand champion at the National Christmas Tree Association convention. They've been preparing for it ever since.

Then again, Earl and Betsy will tell you, the road to Washington began long before that, in 1972.

Earl, along with a good friend from Raleigh and a college roommate, had already started growing trees at Earl's grandmother's house in Blowing Rock. But when they heard about a stand of trees for sale in Laurel Springs, they went to take a look.

When they arrived, the hills were covered in dense fog, and the men wandered up and down, trying to find the trees. Finally, they spoke to a neighbor who gave them good directions. In the fog, Earl said, the trees looked beautiful, "unbelievable."

"We thought, `we have to buy those,' " he said.

When Earl and his friends went back the next morning, he said, the sun was out -- and they saw the brambles, the overgrowth and how much work awaited them. They named the farm "Smokey Holler," in honor of the fog they saw that first day.

In the years that followed, the Deals commuted to the farm from Raleigh nearly every weekend, working on it as a family. The trees grew with the children.

"Since our children were old enough to stand up, they were out in the trees with us," Betsy said. Sometimes, they weren't even old enough to stand up: Meg said she once fell over backwards after her father strapped a backpack of tree spray on her.

They worked with friends, different partners and, ultimately, paid employees. They added more land and grew more trees.

Now, the Deals have three farms and about 500 acres. Their only partner is son Buddy. The chief crop is the Fraser fir, "the Cadillac of Christmas trees," Betsy said, which grows only in steep northern and eastern Appalachian slopes, above 3,000 feet. But they also grow varieties of pine and spruce, nursery stock and make garlands and wreathes.

They say they love the smells and the stillness, the satisfaction that comes with being good stewards of the land. And they say they take pride in producing something that's the center of folks' holiday cheer -- and a celebration of God.

"(Tree farming) has been the salvation of agriculture here in the mountain counties," Earl said. "It's what's kept it from being houses on every hilltop."

Earl moved to the farm permanently in the mid-1990s, not long after he retired from his job as a professor at N.C. State University Cooperative Extension. Betsy, a fourth-grade teacher in Wake County, stayed behind, commuting from Raleigh on weekends. She was nearing retirement age and figured she'd serve out her last two years.

Earl thought otherwise, Betsy said, and called in early 2000 with a message: "In 1965, I asked you to be my wife. I'm calling to ask you to be my wife again."

After finishing the school year, Betsy retired and went to live on the farm. She's never regretted it.

"It really has been our life," Betsy said. "And I guess when you've lived in Raleigh 30 years and you come up here where it's so quiet and peaceful, it's a special place here on this mountaintop. It really is."

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On top at the bank, not on TV

Nov. 24, 2005
News & Observer
By Frank Newton
 © Copyright 2005

Colon Terrell's heart sank when a psychiatrist told him he would probably not get a spot on "Survivor II, the Outback."

Weeks earlier he had submitted a short video to CBS to consider him for a spot on the reality TV show. Whim soon became passion.

"I started to want it," said Terrell, now chief executive of the newly started Greystone Bank in Raleigh. "I think that might have been my downfall."

The Republican banker with a military buzz cut was too sane and well-balanced for the casting crews' tastes, it turned out. They wanted histrionics and controversy to drive the second season.Terrell still went a long way. He charmed his way through dozens of shock-oriented and even raunchy interviews. He blew the doors off finalists half his age in a 7.5-mile run. Out of 51,00 people that applied, Terrell was one of the last 12 men, nine of whom would go to Australia.

Terrell, 57, says the experience tested him mentally, physically and emotionally. It brought out a layer in his personality that contrasts with his usual straightforwardness. "I found out that I didn't want to be normal. I didn't want to just come home and run a country bank," he said.

As the head of Greystone Bank, Terrell now draws from that extra layer. Not only must he get the bank up and running, he must fend off larger national competitors and hedge for possible slowdowns in some commercial real estate markets.

"We felt Terrell's background, creativity and drive would match this operation and its personality," said Stephen Rosenberg, who picked Terrell to run Greystone Bank out of dozens of candidates.

Rosenberg, a New York investment banker, founded Greystone Bank this year to leverage his existing family of real-estate and finance companies. His New York-based network has 30 offices and about $10 billion in assets in 18 states.

Greystone Bank is the only federally insured lender within the empire, which gives it access to lower-cost deposits. As such, Greystone will help finance development projects in Rosenberg's nationwide business network.

Greystone has no branches, tellers or checking accounts, which most banks use to gather deposits and resell as loans. At most banks, the spread between the cost of deposits and their resale value is profit, minus the overhead of running a branch network.

Greystone eliminates that overhead by purchasing deposits wholesale from financial brokers, rather than running a branch network.

Terrell estimates Greystone will spend roughly 25 cents for every $1 of profit. Typically banks spend around 60 cents for every $1 of profit, according to analysts.

And Greystone's geographic diversity should help protect against unexpected downturns in local real estate markets.

Terrell, a Raleigh native, was picked partly because he understands wholesale financial markets. He has started or run banks in North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida.

Six years ago, he helped found Paragon Commercial Bank in Raleigh. Paragon is the only other purely commercial bank in the Triangle. The company has grown rapidly since Terrell and is now expanding into Richmond, Va.

"Colon is a real competitor," said Bob Hatley, who Terrell hired as chief executive of Paragon Bank in 2000 before leaving. "He's a jock with a keen sense of how to make money. And not all bankers have that."

He'll need that at Greystone, where he will oversee day-to-day operations while trying to expand the portfolio of real-estate and development loans. He'll face stiff competition from larger real-estate lenders such as Bank of America of Charlotte and Wells Fargo of San Francisco, as well as dozens of smaller lenders.

Those companies have the advantage of more diversified revenue. If lending markets sour, they can turn to fee-based businesses.

That leaves Greystone with potentially more interest-rate risk than full-service banks. On the other hand, interest revenue is Greystone's sole reason for existence.

Terrell rarely wears suits but keeps a sports jacket and a suit in the office closet for emergencies. He wears the same closely cropped haircut as when he played football for Millbrook High School in Raleigh. He was an All-East running back. His Greystone office is 300 yards from the old field.

As a young high-school graduate, Terrell was headed for the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. He flunked the eye exam the first week of school and was sent home crushed. He thought of that experience decades later when turned down at the last stage by "Survivor." It probably made him stronger, he says.

After Annapolis, Terrell turned down an offer to enroll at West Point and instead talked his way into the political science program at N.C. State University. His Greystone office is decorated with a rough-hewn sculpture of a wolf pack.

While Terrell carried a full load in college, he also sold sporting goods to support his young family, living in a mobile home in Knightdale. He says the experience taught him to manage time.

It also taught him he could do anything in life, like pursue a spot on America's hottest reality TV show. Now he's taking the lessons learned from that experience as he tackles his new duties.

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Consistency is lacking

Nov. 27, 2005
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2005

In response to "Plea bargains: Is justice served?"on Nov. 13: I think it is not. Judge Donald Stephens is talking out of both sides of his mouth when he said that he wants to make sure that the sentences he imposes today are consistent with the sentences he imposed three years ago. He said he thought his sentences ought to make sense to the public so they are predictable and so that there is a certain degree of uniformity to them. In Tim Johnson's plea bargain in a home invasion, Stephens sentenced Tim Johnson to 10 to 14 years. Justin McCarty, who was involved in the same case, was sentenced to only four years with court recommended day-time work release. There is no consistency here. Tim Johnson was not fed from the same spoon as Justin McCarty. Tim was not any guiltier in this case than McCarty, but yet he received three times the amount of prison time that McCarty did.

The plea Tony Johnson entered into for his role in the shootings at an N.C. State tailgate was no deal. He received the maximum penalty allowed by law and was offered the so-called deal only because the state never had him charged properly from the beginning. He could not have done any worse if he had elected to go to trial. Justice isn't served.

Mitch Johnson

Littleton

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Whither the Southern accent?

Nov. 23, 2005
Associated Press; USA Today; Newsday; Chicago Sun-Times; Los Angeles Times; Philadelphia Inquirer; Kansas City Star; Fort Worth (Tx.) Star Telegram; The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.); Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN); San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News; News & Observer; Charlotte Observer; The State (Columbia, S.C.); Macon (Ga.) Telegraph; Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News; The Ledger (Lakeland, Fla.); Times Daily (Florence, Ala.); Fort Wayne (Ind.) News Sentinel; Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat; Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald; The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.); Guardian Unlimited (U.K.); Leading the Charge (Brisbane, Australia); Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal Gazette; Monteray County (Calif.) Herald; Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer; Herald News Daily (N.D.); Bradenton (Fla.) Herald; Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle; Southern Standard (McMinnville, Tenn.); Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald; The Gleaner (Henderson, Ky.); Roanoke (Va.) Times; The Daily Breeze (Torrence, Calif.); KSL-TV (Salt Lake City); WFAA-TV (Dallas)
By Jeffrey Collins and Kristen Wyatt, Associated Press
 © Copyright 2005 Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. - "Y'all" isn't welcome in Erica Tobolski's class in voice and diction at the University of South Carolina. And forget about "fixin'," as in getting ready to do something, or "pin" when talking about the writing instrument.

Tobolski's class is all about getting rid of accents, mostly Southern ones in the heart of the former Confederacy, and replacing them with Standard American Dialect, the uninflected tone of TV news anchors that oozes authority and refinement.

"We sort of avoid talking about class in this country, but clearly class is indicated by how we speak," she said.

"Many come to see me because they want to sound less country," she said. "They say, 'I don't want to lose my accent completely, but I want to be able to minimize it or modify it.'"

That was the case for sophomore Ali Huffstetler, who said she "luuuvs" the slow-paced softness of her upstate South Carolina magnolia mouth but wants to be able to turn it on and off depending on her audience.

"I went to New Hampshire to visit one of my best friends and all they kept saying was, 'Will you please talk, can you just talk for me?'" Huffstetler said. "I felt like a little puppet show."

Across the fast-growing South, accents are under assault, and not just from the modern-day Henry Higginses of academia. There's the flood of transplants from other regions, notions of Southern upward mobility that require dropping the drawl, and stereotypes that "y'alls" and "suhs" signal low status or lack of intelligence.

But is the Southern accent really disappearing?

That depends what accent you mean. The South, because of its rural, isolated past, boasts a diversity of dialects, from Appalachian twangs in several states to Elizabethan lilts in Virginia to Cajun accents in Louisiana to African-influenced Gullah accents on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina.

One accent that has been all but wiped out is the slow juleps-in-the-moonlight drawl favored by Hollywood portrayals of the South. To find that so-called plantation accent in most parts of the region nowadays requires a trip to the video store.

"The Rhett-and-Scarlett accent, that is disappearing, no doubt about it," said Bill Kretzschmar, a linguist at the University of Georgia and editor of the American Linguistic Atlas, which tracks speech patterns.

"Blame it on the boll weevil," he said, referring to the cotton pest. "That accent from plantation areas, which was never the whole South, has been in decline for a long time. The economic basis of that culture started going away at the turn of the last century," when the bugs nearly wiped out the South's cotton economy.

Even as the stereotypical Southern accent gets rarer, other speech patterns take its place, and they're not any less Southern. The Upland South accent, a faster-paced dialect native to the Appalachian mountains, is said to be spreading just as fast as the plantation drawl disappears.

"The one constant about language is, it's always changing," Kretzschmar said. "The Southern accent is not going anywhere. But you have all kinds of mixtures and changes."

For a long-term study on whether the Southern accent is disappearing, University of Georgia linguists went to Roswell, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is just the kind of transient place that leads to the death of indigenous dialects. It's packed with strip malls and subdivisions with no cotton patches or peach trees in sight.

"I don't hear it," 21-year-old Roswell native Amanda Locher said of the accent. She's never lived outside the South, but even Northern newcomers question her Southernness. "People tell me I sound like I'm from up North. To hear a true Southern accent, you'd have to go deeper south than here."

Adam Mach, a 25-year-old tire shop worker who moved to the Atlanta suburbs from Lafayette, La., has got a noticeable Louisiana lilt. But he said his accent seldom makes conversation because the area is such a melting pot of newcomers.

"Everybody I meet's not from here," he shrugged.

North Carolina State University linguist Walt Wolfram said it's a misconception among Southerners that Yankee newcomers are stamping out traditional speech. More likely, he said, is that newcomers pick up local speech patterns.

"When people move here and don't think they've changed at all, they go home and people say, 'Wow. You've turned Southern.' They pick up enough to be identified as Southern. So it's still there, still strongly identified with the South," Wolfram said.

But that doesn't mean that population change in the South isn't chipping away at old-timey dialects, especially in cities. Wolfram said the "dearest feature" of the Southern accent - the vowel shift where one-syllable words like "air" come out in two syllables, "ay-ah" - is certainly vanishing. Other aspects - such as double-modal constructions like "might could" - are still pervasive.

Kretzschmar, who has recorded Roswell speakers for three years, said his suburban Atlanta studies have backed up his suspicion that the Southern accent is morphing along with the urbanizing South.

"It's not really disappearing, but the circumstances of living make it different," he said. "People don't have connections with their neighbors to maintain their way of speech.

"The circumstances of how people get together and talk in the cities have changed; they're not constantly talking to people who talk just like them. But in the South outside the cities, you have a lot of similarities."

Georgia-bred humorist Roy Blount Jr. understands that people with strong Southern accents are often perceived as "slow and dimwitted." But he thinks it's "sort of a shame" that people should feel the need to soften or even lose their accents.

"My father, who was a surely intelligent man, would say `cain't'. He wouldn't say `can't.' And, `There ain't no way, just there ain't no way.' You don't want to say, `There isn't any way.' That just spoils the whole thing," Blount said.

"I just think that there's a certain eloquence in Southern vernacular that I wouldn't want to lose touch with ... you ought to sound like where you come from."

But never fear. There are still plenty of professions that thrive on a good Southern twang - from preachers to football coaches to a certain breed of courtroom litigators.

And South Carolina's Tobolski, an Indiana native who came south eight years ago, can help there, too. As a private coach she has even taught a politician she wouldn't name how to ratchet up his Southern accent to make him appear more folksy before certain crowds - a technique she calls "code switching."

"He didn't want to lose his dialect entirely. He just wanted to be able to adapt."

"I don't think that any regional accent is going to be eliminated," she said. "There's still people who want to hang on to how they sound. That's who they are. That's their identity. And that goes from New Jersey to Minnesota to Wyoming to Georgia."

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Kristen Wyatt reported this story from Roswell, Ga.; Greg Bluestein in Atlanta and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, N.C., also contributed to this report.