Cunningham returns
as dean of med school
Paul R. G. Cunningham, who taught at the Brody School of Medicine for 21 years before leaving in 2002 to become head of surgery at the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center, is returning to East Carolina as the new dean of the medical school. He also will serve as senior associate vice chancellor for medical affairs. Cunningham is believed to be the first African-American to lead a medical school in North Carolina.

Chancellor Steve Ballard said Cunningham “is a highly accomplished, widely respected physician. He is familiar with the school’s mission and with the health care challenges facing this region and state.” Ballard thanked Phyllis Horns, the dean of the College of Nursing who also directed the medical school during the yearlong search for a new medical dean.

Cunningham said the medical school and the entire Health Sciences Campus have grown since he left. He said the university has all the tools in place to achieve “measurable positive statistics in the health indices for eastern North Carolina.”

A native of Jamaica, Cunningham graduated from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He completed surgery training there and at Mount Sinai Hospital, Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital and City Hospital at Elmhurst, all in New York City.

After beginning his career as a surgeon in New York, Cunningham moved to the Bertie County town of Windsor in 1981. He practiced there, was vice chief of the medical staff at Bertie Memorial Hospital and taught ECU medical students who rotated through his practice. Cunningham joined the ECU faculty full time in 1984 and became medical director of trauma the following year. He was interim director of the organ transplant division from 1990–1991 and chief of the medical staff at Pitt County Memorial Hospital in 1991. He rose to professor of surgery in 1993 and was chief of general surgery from 1999–2002. From 1990–1998 he also served as a major in the Army Reserve Medical Corps.

Walter Pories, a professor and former chair of surgery who recruited Cunningham to ECU in the 1980s, called him a role model, an excellent teacher and physician and a skillful leader. “I think we’re fortunate to have, first of all, someone who’s a passionate, thoughtful and highly competent physician,” Pories said. “He has the unusual capacity to pull segments together and unite. I can’t think of anybody who is more fitting in these times and the challenges that we face.”

He said his goals include expanding student enrollment, stabilizing the school’s finances and increasing the diversity of the school’s faculty and administration. He credited his wife, Sydney, with encouraging him to consider and accept the job as dean. They have four children, all of whom live in North Carolina.

Second Century campaign
off to energetic beginning
Generous support from alumni and friends has allowed East Carolina to surpass the halfway mark in its goal of raising $200 million. Just six months into the public phase of the Second Century Campaign, officials said more than $105 million has been raised for scholarships, faculty support and new campus facilities.

“We are absolutely ecstatic that we are off to such a good start and excited about what the future holds,” said Mickey Dowdy, vice chancellor for university advancement.

Dowdy pointed to a 120 percent increase in gifts to the East Carolina University Foundation this fiscal year over last as evidence of widespread support for the campaign. He also highlighted a 17 percent increase in gifts to the ECU Educational Foundation, more commonly known as the Pirate Club. Plus, the ECU Medical & Health Sciences Foundation leads the way in raising funds for distinguished professorships, having established seven new ones since the campaign’s inception. This fiscal year alone campaign donations include more than $2.7 million for new scholarships.

“We are benefiting from strong volunteer leadership by members of the boards of directors of the university’s Board of Trustees, the three foundations, the Alumni Association and the Board of Visitors,” Dowdy added. “We have seen a 40 percent increase in new members joining the Alumni Association. As we had hoped, the campaign is providing a margin of excellence for ECU as it supports the university’s strategic plan.”

To date, he said the campaign has recorded a 26 percent increase in deferred gifts received and more than 1,400 new first-time gifts to the annual fund.

Dowdy said the impressive totals come on the heels of generous individual, corporate and foundation support last year that funded the creation of the ECU Access Scholarship program, which is now providing full in-state tuition scholarships for 58 financially needy students.

Alumni and friends who have not yet contributed to the Second Century Campaign may send in a check by clicking here.


Chitwood passes milestone
Chief of Surgery Dr. W. Randolph Chitwood Jr. performed his 400th robot-assisted mitral valve repair in June and now has performed more of these surgeries than anyone. The operation took place at Pitt County Memorial Hospital, the teaching hospital of the Brody School of Medicine, with 11 cardiac surgeons from across the county obvserving the procedure while attending a two-day training program. Chitwood is a pioneer in the development and expansion of mitral valve repair surgery, producing outcomes better than valve replacement, a once-prevalent surgical treatment for a leaky or narrowing mitral valve. An estimated 40,000 patients a year, many under the age of 50, have operations on their mitral valve, the inflow valve for the left side of the heart. Most standard mitral valve operations require a sternotomy, or cracking of the sternum, resulting in a 12-week recovery. With a robotic device there are only three small incisions, scarring is minimal, infection rate is lower and recovery time is lessened to two weeks.

Athletics posts surplus
Revenue from East Carolina’s appearance in the Hawaii Bowl and an overall increase in football ticket sales helped the athletics department post a $1 million surplus for the fiscal year ended July 31, according to a report to the Board of Trustees. The budget surplus sharply reduces the $1.5 million deficit compiled the previous year, the report indicates.

Football ticket sales of $5.6 million were $270,000 over budget while the actual cost of football operations, at $6.2 million, was slightly more than expected. Total athletics revenues were $25.6 million, or about $2.7 million more than budgeted.

Total expenditures for the year were $24.2 million, abut $1.4 million higher than expected, for an overall surplus of $1.067 million.

East Carolina received $924,200 for its appearance in the December bowl game. After paying all expenses associated with the game, including flying the team and dozens of officials to Hawaii, East Carolina still made a profit of around $30,000 on the game, the report says.

ECU set a new stadium attendance record for the second straight year in 2007, averaging 41,537 fans in six home games. Total tickets sold for the year was 249,219.


Construction update

New Wright Fountain: Construction has begun on a new fountain on Wright Circle. The $600,000 project, which will replace the original fountain with an enhanced model, was undertaken when decaying utility lines caused the fountain to begin sinking. The old fountain was removed in early 2007. The project is expected to be completed in early fall 2008. The new fountain will have a stronger, more visible plume, better seating and markers containing trustees’ names.

Mendenhall renovation delayed: The $38 million renovation of the Mendenhall Student Center has been delayed because officials believed the plan didn’t offer enough additional space to accommodate East Carolina’s growing student body. The decision came at the April meeting of the ECU Board of Trustees, who were told that the project would add only 7,000 square feet of space. Kevin Seitz, vice chancellor for administration and finance, said that renovating Mendenhall will take two years, and staff members want to be sure that the outcome will justify the inconvenience. “We want to be more proactive in looking at the planning for future projects and make sure that we are looking at the distant future,” Seitz said. “We have a number of things going on institutionally that will have an impact on this project.”

Chancellor’s residence: Trustees have endorsed a plan advanced by its facilities and resources committee to form a commission to study updating or renovating Dail House, the chancellor’s residence. Over the past two years the board has considered and rejected a series of proposals to improve the residence. The house hosts many university functions and is essentially the same structure as it was when it was purchased in 1948. Trustees considered a suggestion for buying a larger house near campus but no suitable properties were available. The board also considered buying an adjacent property, demolishing it and building an expansion onto the current chancellor’s residence. Officials dismissed the proposal because of likely neighborhood resistance. Trustees then considered building a new house in the Rock Springs area, but that idea drew little support. A plan to give the chancellor a housing allowance and allow him to live where he wants, while keeping the Dail House for official functions, died because the UNC General Administration does not allow such a stipend. Trustees said they want the committee to get input from several groups on ways to improve the housing for the chancellor.

UNC needs $6 billion for buildings
The 16 campuses of the University of North Carolina need roughly $6 billion in capital improvements to respond to an unprecedented and continuing boom in enrollment, according to a long-range construction plan adopted by the Board of Governors. The biggest chunk of that money would go for new classroom buildings to provide seats for the 30,000 additional students expected to enroll in the next four years.

The 2007–13 Capital Improvements Plan provides for some new or renovated buildings at every campus but it directs a lion’s share of spending to those that have experienced the most growth. For East Carolina, the fastest-growing UNC campus over the past five years, the plan calls for $786 million in spending on 34 projects.

ECU’s top bricks-and-mortar priorities are the dental school and the new Family Medicine Center. The General Assembly funded both by including $107.3 million in the new state budget.

Next on ECU’s wish list are two major classroom buildings—a $130 million home for biology and science plus an $84.5 million classroom building to be shared by the colleges of Education and Business. The plan also calls for major renovations to more than a dozen existing buildings around campus.

Both N.C. State and UNC Chapel Hill need more than $1 billion for new and renovated buildings. Under the plan, State’s top priorities are a new library at the Centennial Campus, estimated to cost $114 million, and a $214 million complex for the College of Engineering. Expansion of its dental school is Carolina’s top priority, a $99 million project that is being coordinated with ECU. Next on its list is $169 million for initial development of the Carolina North campus.

Classrooms are the top priority at many campuses in the UNC system, including: Appalachian State, $42 million for a new College of Nursing and Health Sciences building; Elizabeth City State, $20 million for a School of Education building: Fayetteville State, $43 million for a general classroom building; N.C. A&T, $27 million for a general classroom building; N.C. Central, $25 million for a School of Nursing building; UNC Asheville, $27 million to replace Carmichael and University lecture halls; UNC Greensboro; $48 million for a classroom and office building; UNC Wilmington, $43 million for a health sciences classroom building; and Western Carolina, $40 million for an education classroom building.

Enrollment at North Carolina’s public universities grew by 37,000 in the last six years, to roughly 215,000, and is projected to climb by another 30,000 students by 2012, for an overall 33 percent growth in enrollment over the decade. ECU’s enrollment spurted from 20,600 in 2002 to 26,000 last year and is planned to hit 28,500 in 2012, a 38 percent growth in students. Ten years from now, ECU is projected to have an enrollment of 37,000.


State OKs $107 million to build
dental school, Family Medicine Center
East Carolina “had its best year ever in the General Assembly,” according to Chancellor Steve Ballard, receiving appropriations totaling $107 million to build the new dental school and a new Family Medicine Center for the medical school. With full funding now in place, both projects will begin construction and be ready in about two years.

The $36.8 million appropriated by the General Assembly in early July for the Family Medicine Center will create a new jewel on the Health Sciences Campus. Brody will have three times the space it now rents from Pitt County Memorial Hospital. Legislators also appropriated $69 million to complete construction on the new dental school and earmarked $1.5 million for its initial operating costs.

ECU doctors and medical students treat 52,000 patients a year at the Family Medicine Center, more than twice the number the facility was built for. The new structure will be 117,561 square feet and include a geriatric care practice. Architectural drawings show a facility with 33 exam rooms in the clinical area plus 12 other exam rooms for geriatrics.

In addition to the $36.8 million in state funding, East Carolina has set aside $10 million of its own money. BSOM also received a $2.5 million gift from the Monk family in Farmville and a $1 million grant from the Golden LEAF Foundation. Groundbreaking will be this fall, with construction taking two years.

“We are out of teaching space, and this facility will allow us to teach more medical students,” said Dr. Kenneth Steinweg, interim director of the Department of Family Medicine. —Greenville Daily Reflector




Professor turns Colbert into spider man
Biology professor Jason Bond didn’t want Comedy Central talk show host Stephen Colbert to feel jealous when he was being interviewed for the June 24 show about how he had named a new species of trapdoor spider after classic rocker Neil Young. To be gracious, Bond agreed to name a spider after Colbert, too.

After all, Bond has plenty of naming opportunities. He’s discovered 27 new spider species in the past 10 years, including one he found in rural Alabama in 2007 and named after Young. That spider now officially is known as Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi (right). Its body is about half an inch long and its bite is not harmful to humans.

He says he honored Young because he is a well-known peace advocate who supports environmental causes. Many species of spiders, Bond says, are being threatened by pollution and loss of habitat. Besides, Bond is a big Neil Young fan. “I play the guitar a little bit and I like to play his songs. I guess my favorites are Cowgirl in the Sand and The Needle and the Damage Done.”

Previously, Bond honored Nelson Mandela and his wife with spider names. Angelina Jolie also is on his list of people to honor, spiderwise. He received a number of grants from the National Science Foundation in 2005 and 2006 to classify the trapdoor spider species and contribute to the foundation’s Tree of Life project. He described the new genus of trapdoor spider in a paper he co-wrote with Norman I. Platnick, curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Bond is both a spider systematis—someone who studies organisms and how they are classified—and taxonomist—someone who classifies new species.

Spiders in the trapdoor genus are distinguished on the basis of differences in genitalia, Bond said. He confirmed through DNA tests that each species of spider is distinct within the trapdoor genus. For the one that will be named after him, Colbert told Bond on the TV show that he would like to examine the as-yet-unnamed species and choose one that is the best fit.





Film touts professor’s ‘forgiveness’ research
The old adage “forgive and forget” could be good advice for the body as well as for the mind and heart, according to Kathleen Row, the chair of the psychology department who studies correlations between a person’s health and the ability to forgive. Row has been studying how forgiveness relates to spirituality, well-being and health for almost a decade. Her findings were reported in a PBS documentary, The Power of Forgiveness, that aired in June. The documentary won the Best Film award at the Sun Valley Film Festival.

“Some people would like to forgive and they can’t; but they still see it as a value. Religions treat it as a value,” Row said. “From a psychological perspective, instead of moral or spiritual value, does forgiveness have a physical value?”

Row’s research has shown a marked difference in the blood pressure and heart rate recovery levels of those who can more easily forgive compared to those who cannot. “You literally carry it around with you,” Row said. “If you had a heavy sack on your back, your blood pressure would raise to let you be able to carry it around with you. My question is: how is forgiveness mapped onto the body?”

Row has found that older people, in general, are more likely to be forgiving, and that women are more likely to be forgiving than men, although men had shown to be more forgiving when considering specific situations.

For much of her 25-plus year career in psychophysiology, Row studied the mind-body connection of how certain behaviors could be predictors of cardiovascular disease. Her work in the past seven years, she said, validates that forgiveness can yield positive benefits not only for the forgiven, but for the forgiver as well. —Erica Plouffe Lazure





Busy hurricane season predicted
After several years with hardly any severe weather, the East Coast likely will see between two and five major storms make landfall between August and September, the National Weather Service said in predicating what it called an above-average hurricane season. The forecast is based on above-normal sea-surface temperatures in the Atlantic as well as lingering La Niña atmospheric conditions.

Some are worried that several years without a major hurricane has lulled coastal North Carolina into complacency. A similar lull came to an abrupt end in 1996 when Bertha and Fran devastated eastern North Carolina. The cycle continued with hurricanes Bonnie in 1998 and Dennis and Floyd (aerial photo above)in 1999. The four Category Four hurricanes that struck in 1999 were the most since records were first kept in 1886. Since then, only Isabel in 2003 caused major damage to the region. Officials say the absence of hurricanes the last few years is a fundamental cause of the drought gripping the region.

Should a hurricane threaten the Carolina coast, East Carolina will follow a natural disaster emergency plan that kicks in when the storm is still two to three days away.

Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback David Garrard ’01, still wearing No. 9, takes a break from filming a TV spot for a medication for Crohn’s disease, which he has. Garrard and a crew from NFL Films were on campus in July to film the public service announcement at the football stadium. Garrard recently signed a six-year, $60 million contract with the team.

NCAA penalizes basketball team
The men’s basketball program will lose one scholarship next season and will have to cut its weekly practice time from 20 hours to 18 because it failed to meet the NCAA’s standard for academic progress. The men’s team reported an academic progress rate (APR) of 861, an improvement of 12 points over the previous year but still below the 900 threshold required to avoid NCAA sanctions.

The football team reported a 922 APR and also must develop an academic improvement plan, though it will not be penalized. The APR was developed to better measure in “real time” how athletes and teams are doing in the classroom, based on eligibility, retention and graduation rather than just on six-year graduation rates. This is the fourth year of APR data.

East Carolina said it developed a required academic improvement plan for men’s basketball and that the two lost hours of practice time would be replaced by additional tutoring and study halls. Athletics Director Terry Holland said the grades of basketball players have improved in recent years, rising from 2.13 in 2004 to 2.78 in 2007. Holland said that every men’s basketball student-athlete recruited since the coaching change in 2005 has been eligible every semester in attendance and those who transferred did so in good academic standing.

Holland said the team played all of its non-conference schedule last season without missing a single class. By using chartered airplanes, the team missed only two days of classes throughout the 16-game conference schedule.

Sixty-two scholarship athletes were honored at this year’s Academic Excellence Awards banquet for posting GPAs of 3.5 or higher, up from 59 last year. Ten of the 59 scholar athletes boasted a GPA of 4.0.

“Our men’s basketball staff has worked extremely hard to address the factors under their control and the resulting GPA improvement is nothing short of spectacular,” ECU Chancellor Steve Ballard said.

The highest multi-year APR scores at East Carolina were earned by the women’s tennis (1,000), volleyball (994), women’s swimming (988), men’s golf (985) and women’s golf (984). Women’s tennis and volleyball, were cited as being in the top-10 percent nationwide for their respective sports.


Spiking the ball, hitting the books
The volleyball team is succeeding on the court and in the classroom, winning 16 games and compiling a team GPA of 3.521, the highest in team history.

Senior Kelley Wernert (right), chosen for the 2007 Conference USA All-Academic team, achieved a perfect 4.0 mark spring semester. Every member of the team was on the honor roll; seven of the 12 were either on the Chancellor’s List (4.0 semester GPA) or the Dean’s List (3.5 or higher).

“Our team goal since I’ve stepped foot on campus three years ago has always been to have a yearly team GPA above 3.3 and to have everyone above a 3.0 in a given semester,” said head coach Chris Rushing.

“Our team GPA has steadily risen since that day and this was the semester that eventually put us over the top. We shattered our goal this year with the high expectations these athletes have put on themselves.”

The Pirates return 11 letterwinners and welcome five newcomers for the 2008 season, which began in August.