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Hello reader! Welcome back to Higher Stakes, your source for North Carolina’s higher education news. I’m Jane Winik Sartwell.
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Last week, UNC-Chapel Hill kept me very busy with Carolina North updates, an eventful board of trustees meeting, and even more drama in the football program. The school gets a lot of attention, and there’s seemingly always something to write about there.
Here’s what the new provost said about that phenomenon.
I asked Swedish roboticist Magnus Egerstedt — who took the job of provost at UNC-Chapel Hill in March — what the biggest unexpected challenge of his job has turned out to be.
His answer? The attention.
“What happens on Carolina’s campus gets national attention overnight in a way that no other university I’ve seen before does,” Egerstedt said.
“That means that the amount of noise that’s being created on almost a daily basis — that on any other campus would just dissipate — becomes a thing. You have to spend time dealing with the noisier things on this campus that perhaps on other campuses. I wasn’t fully prepared for that.”
Case in point: Just before this conversation, Egerstedt stood next to chancellor Lee Roberts, taking on a crowded semicircle of reporters, TV cameras, and lights during a question-and-answer period in a break during the board of trustees meeting.
Egerstedt told me he sees UNC’s history, its strong network of alumni and other stakeholders, and the combination of athletics and academics as reasons for the outsized attention.
But Egerstedt also sees a silver lining to the spotlight.
“There is a flip side to that. We really have a platform on this campus to articulate loudly and proudly to the world why what we do matters, and why public research universities play such an important role.”
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A new interim dean has been selected to run UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media: Harsha Gangadharbatla, whose research is mostly in advertising. He replaces Raul Reis, who stepped down in July.
A national search for a new permanent dean will launch in the fall, according to Egerstedt. The search will be led by Jill Hamm, dean of UNC’s School of Education. Trustee Ramsey White, an alum of the Hussman school, will serve on the search committee.
“The Hussman school is a really strategically important school to us as a university,” Egerstedt said at the board of trustees meeting on Wednesday. “It’s also a school that is in the middle of a lot of interesting, dynamic forces at play. The world of journalism, the world of media, and the world of advertising are evolving rapidly. It’s really important that we get an outstanding, forward-looking strategic view for this important school.”
On Monday, NC Central will host a grand opening for its Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research. The AI institute will be the first of its kind at a historically Black university.
The new building is 5,000 square feet and “represents a $7.2 million investment funded through Title III grant funding and NCCU trust funds,” according to the university.
“The facility will serve as a hub for hands-on learning and discovering, featuring dedicated spaces for AI literacy, machine learning, robotics, extended reality and ethical technology development,” a statement from the school reads. “Through experiential learning and collaborative research, IAIER will prepare faculty, staff, students and community members to shape the future of emerging technologies.”
— Jane Winik Sartwell
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