S

enate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight was on his way from Raleigh to Manteo recently when he stopped in Greenville for updates on the new East Carolina Heart Institute and the new dental school, projects he championed in the state budget. You might say he was making a house call, checking to see how things are running at the $60 million institute one year after it opened. Out the window, he could see construction beginning on the $87 million dental school.

Basnight, who holds an honorary doctorate from East Carolina, also had occasion recently to see how things are running at another health care project he championed, the $180 million N.C. Cancer Center at UNC Chapel Hill, which opened in September. Five years ago, when initial state funding for the Heart Institute and the Cancer Hospital appeared to be in doubt, Basnight pushed to keep both in the state budget.

And last year, when the onset of the recession forced the General Assembly to curtail spending on many projects, Basnight made the tough decision allowing both major health-care facilities to be completed on schedule. He also was instrumental in securing state funding for the new dental school.

Meeting with Chancellor Steve Ballard and other university leaders, Basnight said the Heart Institute will save many lives, but he declined to accept much credit for its creation. “We all walk into buildings in different shoes and for different reasons. This building is important in what it houses and its cause and its purpose. Many people come in to get healed; that’s why we’re here. So how does it make me feel that I may have been a part of this cause, or the construction? It doesn’t make me any more important than any brick in the building.

“The purpose [of the Heart Institute] is paramount. That’s why I go to Raleigh.”

Now completing an unprecedented eighth term as the Senate leader, Basnight increasingly is being appreciated for his record on health care and other issues important to eastern North Carolina, including tourism. His interest in health care can be traced to the early 1990s when he championed a form of universal health care for every North Carolinian. His support for the new Cancer Hospital in Chapel Hill is touched with some sadness. His wife, Sandy, died from cancer two years ago. Basnight, 62, recently was diagnosed with a rare degenerative nerve disease that attacks the cells controlling balance, walking and speaking. The only evidence of it now is the pace of his speech has slowed a bit. The disease isn’t fatal but will become more pronounced over time.

“You might not always agree with Marc Basnight’s position on issues, but he has been without equal as the champion for the east,” said N.C. Spin moderator Tom Campbell, a veteran observer of the General Assembly. “On several occasions, funding for the ECU Dental School was taken from the budget. Many questioned whether or not the school would ever become reality but Marc promised leaders of Eastern Carolina it would happen, and it did.”

““Geographically, you have to have a balance,” Basnight said during his visit to the Heart Institute. However, he added, “we have to do certain things for this region of the state.” None of it has been easy, he said. “The attention is the most difficult problem I see in funding projects like this. We had to work a lot of hours [to educate the public on the health care needs of the east].”

Basnight said it helped ECU’s cause that university officials, trustees and other supporters came armed with statistics and talking points when they lobbied the General Assembly during crucial budget negotiations.

When East Carolina invited him to be the commencement speaker in 2005 and bestowed an honorary doctor of letters degree on him, he referred to Ballard in his remarks as “my chancellor” and to ECU as “my university.” He hung the diploma for all to see inside the Lone Cedar Café, the restaurant he owns in Nags Head. The diploma went up in smoke when the restaurant burned in 2007, and ECU is working to provide a replacement.

How does he decide which projects get funding while others don’t? “You take No. 1 off the list and then No. 2 becomes No.1 and you push that column up. I couldn’t tell you the difference between 1 and 10 [on the list of the state’s critical needs]. But for me and much of the Senate, I would say [the list] would be health care, it would be science and it would be … the related industries that surround medicine.”

ECU’s new dental school is an example of how improving health care also can improve the economy, he said. “You look at the rural clinics that the dental school will support. Those clinics will provide some company some business, and somebody who will start up something in that community because health care is available.” As important to him, though, are the ethics of the issue. “The very essence of what you would expect a society like ours to provide a child is good health care for the mouth.”
 
“With Marc it's the result, not the method people are looking for,” said commentator and media entrepreneur Henry Hinton ‘76. “The Heart Institute is a great example of a case where the east benefited. It was touch and go and more than a year after he made the commitment, but he came through in the end.”

Basnight scored a major environmental victory this legislative session with passage of a law banning plastic bags from most areas of the Outer Banks. Beginning this fall, grocery stores and other shops in Dare, Currituck and Hyde counties may only use paper bags made with recycled content. As an incentive to encourage recycling, stores will give shoppers cash refunds or store coupons for bringing in their own bags to cart purchases home.

Medical school Dean Paul Cunningham and other ECU leaders welcome Basnight to campus. Photos by Cliff Hollis

On the Outer Banks, "We sell beauty," Basnight said during legislative debate on his proposal. "We want people to come to our community to spend time, to see sunsets, shoreline, water, but [not to] see these flimsy bags on the shoreline, on the Wright Brothers Memorial."

Stores will display a sign saying the county “discourages the use of single-use plastic and paper bags to protect our environment from excess litter and greenhouse gases. We would appreciate our customers using reusable bags, but if you are not able to, a 100% recycled paper bag will be furnished for your use."  

Basnight knows how vulnerable the barrier islands are to environmental degradation and how expensive is can be to remove litter from such isolated places. Mainly, it deters tourism. The barrier islands also are home to some of the most important sea turtle nesting areas on the East Coast.  “They get up in the air and then into the ocean. And then where does the bag go? There was research that found plastic bag bits in the stomachs of 27 sea turtles out of 400 some that were tested.

“I did not believe that the cost to the landscape totally would warrant a ban on the bag; we could pick the bag up or we could just get used to seeing them at the Wright Brothers, waving in the oak trees, although that is not very becoming. It’s an economic issue. We are in competition with other vacation destinations on the East Coast to present our beauty.”

Nearly 20 states have considered or imposed legislation regulating plastic bags, but only the city of San Francisco –and now the Outer Banks--has banned them. -- Steve Tuttle



Clinic sites chosen as construction begins on dental school

Crews have erected a modular building near the site for the new dental school on the Health Sciences Campus that will provide interim office space for dental leaders and faculty until the school building is complete.

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fficials have identified three of the 10 towns where ECU’s new dental school will open service learning centers—clinical sites where fourth-year dental students will train. Chosen were Sylva in Jackson County, in the mountains west of Asheville; Ahoskie in Hertford County, about 20 miles south of the Virginia border; and Elizabeth City, in Pasquotank County in northeastern North Carolina.

The university plans 10 such centers in rural and underserved areas throughout the state. Dental school faculty members will be based in the centers, along with advanced dental residents and senior students who will receive enhanced dental education in real practice settings. Dr. James Hupp, dean of the dental school, said the clinic sites are being selected on the basis of need. “We are looking for the areas where dental care is in short supply and difficult to obtain,” he said.

Meanwhile, construction is beginning on the dental school building. The first stage, recently completed, is a utility tunnel that will connect the dental school and the nearby Family Medicine Center. In addition, crews have erected a modular building  near the site on the Health Sciences Campus that will provide interim office space for dental leaders and faculty until the school building is complete.

Faculty recruitment will be a focus for the next 12–18 months, but the school needs more funding from the state before that can be completed. Hupp said potential faculty members have been excited so far about the chance to start a school. “I think that’s what’s attracting people to us,” he said.

Faculty hiring is set to start in 2010 and continue to 2013. Altogether, the school will have about 65 faculty members and about the same number of staff members, Hupp said. The school is working with faculty of the Brody School of Medicine to develop basic science aspects of the curriculum.

Annual tuition and fees at ECU’s dental school will be similar to the costs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, or about $20,000, Hupp said.

The 185,000-square-foot dental school building will include about 50,000 unfinished square feet reserved for future use as funds and needs arise. Construction should begin in March and take about two years to complete. “We’re still going to start classes in 2011, but much of the first year of dental school can be taught in generic classroom space,” Hupp said.

Raleigh-based architectural firm BJAC is working with architects from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson of Pennsylvania to complete design work for the $90 million building. Balfour Beatty, which has a regional office in Charlotte, is the general contractor. Plans call for it to be one of the most technically advanced “green” buildings in the UNC system.

You can follow progress on construction of the dental school at its Web site and on Facebook.
—Doug Boyd