Archivist Stacy Guill
Old films decay
and history is lost
More than 1,000 reels of black and white film shot at campus events in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s are slowly but surely disintegrating in the Joyner Library archives. Most are movies of mundane activities but some are truly surprising, such as the one showing Edward R. Murrow as the 1963 commencement speaker. And as each aging spool of film becomes brittle, cracks and decays, University Archivist and Records Manager Kacy Guill knows a little bit of ECU history is lost.
“We have just stacks and stacks of these old reels of mostly 16 millimeter film and all of them will decay beyond any use unless we preserve them chemically and then digitize them so they can be opened to academic research,” Guill says. The only film that has been preserved that way, she adds, is the one of the 1970 Marshall football game shot from the press booth. It was a gift from the studio that produced the movie We Are Marshall about the tragic plane crash following the game. The studio used brief segments from the film in the movie and returned a preserved, digitized copy.
In the stacks are an early 1960s instructional film for drivers ed teachers, movies of homecoming parades, and countless football games and other sports events. A good many show Leo Jenkins bestowing awards, accepting donations and glad-handing visiting dignitaries. Other boxes contain reels of educational shows produced by East Carolina in the early days of using television for distance education.
With no money budgeted to pay for the preservation work, Guill is applying for state and federal grants. “This isn’t terribly expensive. I would guess that it would take $1,000 or less per film,” she says.
Step one of the preservation process is simply to remove the film from the metal spools and substitute plastic ones. Metal spools rust over time and the iron oxide degrades the film. Step two is bathing the film in a special chemical that makes it pliable and preserves the images. Finally, the film is fed into a computer to digitize each frame.
“We have a little of everything here,” says Guill as she gestures toward row upon row of boxes stored in the University Archives stacks on the third floor of Joyner Library. “This is a window into the past, and all of it is slowly but surely decaying.”
ECU loses a governor
East Carolina has dropped from three to two alumni serving on the UNC Board of Governors. J. Craig Souza ’71 of Raleigh, executive director of the N.C. Health Care Facilities Association, completed a third four-year term on the board and was not eligible for reappointment. There were no ECU alumni among the new Board of Governors members elected this spring by the General Assembly, although current member Phil Dixon ’71 was reelected by the Senate for a second term. The other remaining ECU member of the Board of Governors is Charles Hayes ’71 ’74, executive director of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, whose current term ends in 2011.
ECU Board of Trustees Chairman Bob Grecyzn ’73, whose term ends in July, was nominated in the Senate for one of the eight seats that chamber fills on the Board of Governors but he withdrew at the last moment. There were no ECU alumni nominated in the House for the eight seats that chamber fills on the board.
Board of Governors member Dudley E. Flood of Raleigh, former executive director of the N.C. Association of School Administrators and a graduate of N.C. A&T, holds a master’s degree from East Carolina. College affiliation is not supposed to be a consideration for election to the 32-member Board of Governors; some of the smaller campuses do not have any alumni currently serving. Graduates of UNC Chapel Hill and N.C. State University represent a large majority of the board.
Dixon and others say they are concerned more broadly with the fact that only five of the 32 board members live east of I-95.
Budget ax about to fall
East Carolina is preparing for an additional 7 percent cut in state funding for the fiscal year beginning July 1, a loss of roughly $25 million that would trim operating budgets throughout the campus and eliminate 137 jobs, including 73 faculty members. The university had managed to avoid layoffs when, at the direction of UNC President Erskine Bowles, it trimmed spending by $20.6 million in the current fiscal year as the recession took hold, but officials said that job losses now are all but inevitable because salaries are 80 percent of the budget.
In budget planning documents ECU submitted to the Board of Governors, achieving a 7 percent cut in spending would require eliminating 119 positions on Main Campus, including 63 faculty positions; and 28 positions on the Health Sciences Campus, including 10 faculty positions. Among the staff positions eyed for elimination are jobs in housekeeping, landscaping, accounting, administrative support and environmental health and training. Also on the chopping block are a few top administrative posts, including a position in the dean of students’ office. The plan envisions the loss of 23 graduate assistants with a corresponding decrease of 46 lab sections.
Reducing faculty will result in larger classes, particularly for freshmen and sophomores. The cuts also will impact staffing for student recruitment, administrative and technology support for the faculty, and academic advising. The School of Nursing would have to cut the number of students seeking undergraduate and graduate degrees by 15 percent, according to information ECU submitted to the Board of Governors. The medical school clinic would have to reduce its operating hours. The book budget for the Laupus Library would be cut nearly in half.
The plan also anticipates sharply reduced funding, or possibly even the elimination, of two centers on campus, the Institute for Coastal Science and Policy and the Center for Security Studies and Research. Degree programs serving just a few students may well be eliminated. ECU has had a hiring freeze for months now; spending on travel and other nonessentials has been eliminated.
Bowles is asking legislators not to cut the university budget by more than 5 percent and that all of it be taken from nonrecurring funds. He also wants each campus to be given wide latitude in implementing the cuts. Bowles said that a 7 percent cut would force the elimination of 1,600 jobs at the 16 UNC campuses.
The budget that Gov. Beverly Perdue submitted to the General Assembly does include an increase of $4 million for East Carolina to offset the losses sustained by the medical school practice plan in providing indigent care. Last year, East Carolina provided more than $9.5 million worth of medical care to patients who could not pay.
State appropriations account for 35 percent of East Carolina’s budget, or about $268 million last fiscal year. Student tuition and fees account for 16 percent of revenue and those will be going up again this fall. Tuition for in-state students will rise 1.9 percent, or $71, an increase that comes on the heels of a 2.8 percent increase last year. That’s less than the average 3.9 percent increase authorized for the 16 UNC campuses.
The student athletics fee will go up $15 to $496, the health services fee will rise $10 to $230 but the student activity fee will remain the same at $593. ECU also raised the cost of graduate school in the College of Business by $720 a year, to $4,795 a semester, and the Brody School of Medicine by $1,000 a year, to $8,213 a semester.
Tuition for out-of-state undergraduates will rise 2.8 percent to $13,325 a semester. Medical school tuition for new out-of-state students will be $33,203 a semester.
Finding history where
Raleigh lost his head
If you’re a big fan of Sir Walter Raleigh or his map-making buddy, Thomas Harriot, then the Tower of London was the place to be when 24 of the world’s leading scholars of the two explorers, including several from East Carolina, gathered there in January. Coordinated by ECU and St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge, the Raleigh Research Circle, as the 24 scholars are known, came to the Tower of London because that’s where Raleigh spent the last 15 years of his life and where he wrote the first volume of Historie of the World in 1614.
“We were very fortunate that all of the Raleigh scholars we contacted—whether in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany or France—were eager to participate in this new endeavor,” says ECU professor Larry Tise, co-organizer of the conference. “This was probably the largest gathering of Raleigh aficionados…since the day he was beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster in London on Oct. 29, 1618.”
Raleigh’s works were last published as a whole in 1829. After two days of conferences, a consensus emerged that a new analysis of the explorer’s writings and works is needed and could be timed for the 400th anniversary of Historie of the World in 2014. ECU professor Frank Romer, chair of the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, will serve as general editor of the project.
Harriot, for whom the ECU College of Arts and Sciences is named, was Raleigh’s accountant, ship designer and cartographer. When two of Harriot’s trainees returned with Raleigh from his first voyage to the New World in 1584 with two captured natives, Manteo and Wanchese, Harriot attempted to learn the Algonkian language from them, even devising a phonetic alphabet for the language.
The next year, the 25-year-old Harriot served as cartographer for Raleigh’s second expedition to Virginia and helped establish a small colony on Roanoke Island in the Pamlico Sound. In 1588 Harriot recounted his experiences and observations in A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia—the first book in English about the New World.
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The Golden Corral restaurant chain and its CEO, James Maynard ’65 (second from left), donated a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen in the Rivers Building. The Golden Corral Culinary Center features eight cooking stations with convection ovens and gas ranges similar to what students will encounter when they graduate and begin working for resorts and hotels. ECU has the largest hospitality management program in the state.
Bad economy good for tourism?
The recession probably won’t hurt and may even help the tourism economy in eastern North Carolina, according to an ECU professor who says the coastal region is increasingly being seen as a more affordable—and closer by—alternative to destinations like Disney World.
Speaking at a New Bern conference on sustainable tourism organized by ECU and several community partners, Jim Kleckley, director of ECU’s Bureau of Business Research, said the region appeals to travelers who want to venture away from home, but not as far as in better days.
“What is good for us is that gas is down, and because of the economy, we expect to be a big draw for people in other parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. We have historical sites that they can see with a day’s drive, and our beaches are different than the ones in Myrtle Beach.”
Kleckley said national trends indicate that consumers are cutting back on big-ticket items first—cars, appliances—but “they are still going to shopping centers; they are still going out to eat. Maybe not as often, but they are. The discretionary spending is still there.”
Kleckley thinks this is the year that eastern North Carolina sees a different kind of tourist: one who has never considered vacationing here. “We’re seeing a shift right now, though we can’t exactly define it,” he said. “But this is the time when a tourist who would normally go to Europe isn’t going, or when a family that would normally go to Disney World every year isn’t going. Instead, for the first time, a person who has never thought about eastern North Carolina is really intrigued by the idea of renting a beach house for a few days and then tooling around the region to see what he can find. We are the alternative to Disney World.”
Culture thrives amid recession
Even though its financial support from the university is dropping precipitously, East Carolina’s S. Rudolph Alexander Performing Arts Series is in the black and planning another impressive season for next school year. Cost cutting and increased fund-raising have kept the series in decent financial shape, according to Jeffrey Elwell, dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication that manages the program.
“We looked more closely at the bottom line for ways to clamp down on spending,” says Elwell, who also serves as the series’ producer, chief financial officer and principal booking negotiator. “We also secured more than $94,000 in grant support from external agencies.” Those moves have about offset declines in subsidies from the university, which come from reallocated funds. During the 2006–07 season, the subsidy was $125,000; the next year it dropped to $100,000, and for the season just ended, it was $75,000. For the new season starting this fall, the university contribution will be just $23,000.
Other campus cultural programs are cutting back, though. Tighter budgets are behind the decision by the ECU/Loessin Summer Theatre series to produce only one, instead of the usual two or three, summer stage productions. To make up for that a bit, the one stage production on campus this summer, Big River, a musical adapted from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, will have more than the usual number of performances—12—during its June 16–27 run.
There may be a silver lining in this gray cloud. “We have found out that the fees have not gone up, because many venues have less money to spend, and if the artists want to perform, they must adjust their fees,” Elwell says. “In some respects, the economy is helping us.”
ECU’s premier cultural series is named for S. Rudolph Alexander ’52 ’53, who worked here from 1962 to 1995 as associate dean of student activities and director of student unions. In his first year on the job he booked a string of highbrow performers and acclaimed musical groups as a way to bring some culture to campus. Over the years the series has showcased a number of symphony orchestras, world-class musicians and several opera and Broadway productions. Actress Dame Judith Anderson, comedienne Carol Channing and public radio star Garrison Keillor have appeared here as part of the series.
When Alexander retired, management of the series shifted to the Division of Student Life. At the time the program had a surplus of about $200,000. But without Alexander at the helm the series lost focus and patrons; annual operating deficits ate up the surplus. In 2005, supervision of the series shifted to the College of Fine Arts and Communication, where it seems to be thriving. The series patrons’ board remains active in helping plan programs and day-to-day management is running smoothly under Michael Crane, the assistant dean who became artistic director and co-producer of the series in January. “We’ve run in the black since we’ve started, and we still bring in world-class artists,” Crane says. Crane says Alexander series programs typically average about 60 percent capacity of Wright Auditorium’s nearly 1,500 seats, although some programs sell out. The series also adds occasional special programs—Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion last season is an example—and has sponsored dinner and discussions with visiting performers.
The new fall season continues the tradition of offering a range of entertainment events, with performances by the Oxford Philomusica from the University of Oxford, the Moscow State Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Otero Dance Company, the Chuck Davis African American Dance Ensemble, the St. Lawrence String Quartet plus one of the medal winners in the annual Van Cliburn Piano Competition. Also on the playbill are the a cappella singing group Chanticleer and the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).
Elwell and Crane now are turning their attention to the 50th anniversary season in 2012–13. “We’d love to get more household-name attractions, someone like Yo-Yo Ma,” Crane says. — Steve Row
CyberKnife aids cancer treatment
A new cancer-treatment tool at the Brody School of Medicine attacks tumors with nearly exact precision, making treatments more convenient and comfortable for patients. The CyberKnife, which began operation at the Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center in February, targets tumors using high doses of radiation from a linear particle accelerator and a robotic arm that delivers the radiation beam to any part of the body from any angle. The CyberKnife System is the world’s first and only robotic radiosurgery system designed to noninvasively treat tumors throughout the body.
The CyberKnife is a pain-free, nonsurgical option that causes minimal damage to healthy tissue near a tumor; it also can adapt to movement of the patient or the tumor. Because the machine can adjust to such movements, patients are more comfortable and less confined during the treatments, which can last as little as 30 minutes of actual radiation. Patients can relax and breathe normally during treatments while the CyberKnife uses image guidance software to track and continually adjust treatment. The CyberKnife can also treat benign tumors or other conditions anywhere in the body.
“The CyberKnife is critical for several reasons,” said Dr. Ron Allison, professor and chair of radiation oncology at the Brody School of Medicine and director of the cancer center. “First, in a rural population many cancer patients are so far from a radiation oncology clinic that they won’t get treatment. They can’t make the 10–45 visits required due to distance, gas costs and being away from home. For most of these patients, the CyberKnife is able to treat in one to five visits.”
The precision with which the CyberKnife targets tumors gives patients new hope for cancer treatment and cure. Some patients even feel less pain from their tumors after a CyberKnife treatment, which indicates that the radiation worked. Depending on his or her treatment plan, a patient may return over several days for more CyberKnife sessions.
ECU could potentially perform 500 treatments yearly using the CyberKnife. One of four such systems in North Carolina, ECU’s CyberKnife also can be used as an educational tool for physicians, medical students and radiation therapists. The technology for the CyberKnife was conceived in 1990 by Dr. John Adler of Stanford University, and is sold by Accuray of Sunnyvale, Calif. — Spaine Stephens
It’s getting tough to get into ECU
It’s getting harder and harder to get into East Carolina. Higher admission standards adopted by the Board of Trustees last fall are kicking in at the same time as a surge in the number of freshman applications. The roughly 18,500 who applied for the fall compares to 15,664 applicants last year, an 18 percent jump. “It means that admission to ECU has become more competitive,” said director of enrollment management Judi Bailey. “While we have grown in applications, we have not grown in capacity for classrooms or new faculty or additional residence hall space. We are having to admit from the top of the applications.”
The projected grade point averages and SAT scores of applicants also are increasing. Last year, the average SAT of students admitted was 1,046. This fall, the average SAT score is projected to be 1,075. The average predicted GPA of admitted freshmen last fall was 2.71; this year, the number is expected to be 2.75. These increases indicate that more students will survive freshman year and remain to graduate, Bailey said, which bodes well for the university’s goal of reducing the number of students who drop out.
The university had to lease rooms from local apartment complexes last fall to house 300 students from the largest incoming freshman class in school history, roughly 4,500 students. Officials say it is likely that they will have to do that again this fall. ECU also has moved its acceptance date back to May 1. Until this year, ECU has admitted students all the way up to the first day of class. —Greenville Daily Reflector
Stadium expansion on hold
The plan to enlarge Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium and add private suites has not fallen victim to the struggling economy, but the Pirate Club, which is backing the plan financially, definitely has adopted a wait and see attitude. Jimmy Bass, senior associate director of athletics for external operations, said a decision about the stadium fund-raising campaign will be made this summer, after officials gauge Pirate Club gifts in the first half of 2009 and the number of season tickets sold for the fall season. “We’re continuing with planning and design, and depending on the economy, we’ll make a decision in the summer about whether to begin,” Bass says.
Fund raising and season tickets serve as a barometer as to whether the expansion plan adopted a year ago should go on as scheduled, with groundbreaking this December. Already, the plan has been scaled back to take out the 24 luxury boxes that were planned above an enclosed east end zone. Without the suites, east end zone seating capacity rises from 4,500 to 7,000, which would push total capacity of the stadium to 54,700. Plans for a second expansion of Dowdy-Ficklen, including a new press box and other work on the south side of the stadium, have been postponed indefinitely, Bass says.
The other major capital campaign afoot in the athletics department, the Olympic sports facilities expansion plan, will begin as scheduled in June when construction starts on a new softball stadium. Financed through gifts and an annual student debt service fee, the improvements also include new facilities for the track, soccer and tennis teams. —Bethany Bradsher
Wachovia gift helps teachers
East Carolina’s Second Century Campaign has raised $130.5 million toward its $200 million goal. Among recent gifts, the Wachovia Foundation donated $75,000 to provide additional funding for Wachovia Partnership East, a program that joins university and community college resources to educate teachers in eastern North Carolina. This contribution supplements Wachovia’s $1.25 million gift in 2004, one of the largest corporate gifts ever to the university.
“The Wachovia Partnership East is a natural extension of our commitment to improving education,” said Tim Ballance, Greenville market president and senior vice president, Wachovia Bank. “We believe providing a quality education to all children is one of the most significant issues facing our country. This program takes a unique long-term approach to address this challenge by partnering with area colleges to build a talent pool of teachers for our communities. We are pleased to support Wachovia Partnership East and are excited about the positive impact this program is having in our region.”
Wachovia Partnership East eases the logistics of earning a degree for students throughout eastern North Carolina by enabling them to take classes close to their homes. Through 19 community colleges, one private two-year college, one U.S. Air Force Base, and 37 public schools, Wachovia Partnership East provides an education to people who might not have access to a degree program otherwise. Candidates complete the first two years of a four-year degree at one of the partnering community colleges and complete the second half of the program by taking ECU courses through one of the consortia hub sites.
“Wachovia Partnership East was designed to impact the teacher shortage in the rural communities of North Carolina,” said Dr. Chris Locklear, on-campus coordinator, Wachovia Partnership East, and assistant director, Enrollment Management. “By recruiting individuals who are rooted in these communities and providing them with access to high-quality degree-completion programs, we are creating a local pool of teachers.”
Since the program’s inception in 2002, more than 193 students have earned degrees through Wachovia Partnership East. An additional 29 students will graduate in summer 2009. “Last semester we had three graduates who worked together as paraprofessionals for Clinton City Schools,” said Locklear. “All three were nontraditional students and all three proved that having full-time jobs, being place bound, having financial needs, and fulfilling family responsibilities do not have to be barriers. Through the support of their families, the school system, and each other, they achieved their goal of becoming a classroom teacher.”
“We are grateful for the Wachovia Foundation and Wachovia Bank’s support of Wachovia Partnership East,” said Mickey Dowdy, ECU vice chancellor for University Advancement. “The program’s success making professional development and educational opportunities easily accessible is a great example of a successful public-private partnership.”
Each contribution, whether large or small, has a direct impact on East Carolina University. Contributions to the Second Century Campaign may be designated for the program, college, school, scholarship or endowment of your choice. For more information about how you can support the Second Century Campaign, please call 252-328-9550 or visit www.ecu.edu/devt.
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