Lew Powell

Classroom to cloakroom, Chapel Hill to Capitol Hill

How many professors have represented North Carolina in the House or Senate? This somewhat imprecise list compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education says 11, each of whom taught at a different college — including of course UNC Chapel Hill.  

How many professors have represented North Carolina in the House or Senate?

This somewhat imprecise list compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education says 11, each of whom taught at a different college — including of course UNC Chapel Hill.

 

Prometheus undone and historic evidence gone missing

This account of how British scientists in 2006 accidentally killed the world’s oldest known clam reminded me of a how a UNC Chapel Hill scientist in 1964 accidentally killed the world’s oldest known tree. Felling the bristlecone pine that came to be known as Prometheus put geography graduate student Donald Rusk Currey at the center […]

This account of how British scientists in 2006 accidentally killed the world’s oldest known clam reminded me of a how a UNC Chapel Hill scientist in 1964 accidentally killed the world’s oldest known tree.

Felling the bristlecone pine that came to be known as Prometheus put geography graduate student Donald Rusk Currey at the center of intense criticism. But the incident led to greater protections for ancient trees and to the creation of Great Basin National Park in Nevada, thanks in part to Currey’s own lobbying of Congress.

He was professor emeritus of geography at the University of Utah when he died at age 70 in 2004.

Currey had been unaware of the age of the not-yet-famous tree until he took a pieced-together, polished cross-section back to his lab at Chapel Hill and counted its 4,844 rings.

I asked Barbara Taylor Davis, manager of the geography department, about the cross-section’s current whereabouts. “Dr. David Basile, who was Department Chair from 1967-1977, and retired in 1985, was the last known person with the slab,” she said.  “Unfortunately, he passed away in 1985…. I wish I could be more helpful — the department would love to still have ‘the slab’!”

 

History Ph.D.s casting their nets more widely

“The national conversation about the merits of graduate education has intensified, and concerns have grown about whether programs are admitting more students than the academic market can bear. Many colleges have shown reluctance to produce Ph.D.-placement information, knowing that it would underscore the stark reality that doctoral students often do not get the kind of […]

“The national conversation about the merits of graduate education has intensified, and concerns have grown about whether programs are admitting more students than the academic market can bear. Many colleges have shown reluctance to produce Ph.D.-placement information, knowing that it would underscore the stark reality that doctoral students often do not get the kind of jobs they want for the money and the time they have spent in their graduate programs…

“Universities’ track records on providing placement data for Ph.D. programs vary widely…. Some individual departments also have good information about their graduates, including the history departments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Rutgers University.”

– From “Do You Know Where Your Ph.D.’s Are?” by Audrey Williams June in the Chronicle of Higher Education (September 23, 2013)

So how do those Chapel Hill history grads use their doctorates? Ever more nontraditionally, says department chair W. Fitzhugh Brundage, William B. Umstead Professor of History:

“About 2/3 are in academia, either tenure-track or administration.  Roughly 10% are in public history positions (museums, etc.) while the remainder are pursuing all manner of careers.

“As a department we are now making a concerted effort to inform our graduate students that academia is not the only valid career path.  Just as no one would contend that any law school graduate who doesn’t practice law is a failure, so too we stress that the training one receives while earning a PhD has utility whether one enters academia or not.

“To better prepare our graduates for alternative careers we have now initiated a summer program of funded internships so that students can build networks outside of the traditional academic workplace.  And we are having alumni who have pursued non-academic careers offer wisdom and perspective as well.”

World rankings show UNC’s reputation sliding

Academics falls outside my usual hodgepodge of interests, but I couldn’t help noticing — hat tip, slate.com — the 2013 World Reputation Rankings published by Times Higher Education. According to the magazine, “The world’s largest invitation-only academic opinion survey [is intended] to provide the definitive list of the top 100 most powerful global university brands…. […]

Academics falls outside my usual hodgepodge of interests, but I couldn’t help noticing — hat tip, slate.com — the 2013 World Reputation Rankings published by Times Higher Education.

According to the magazine, “The world’s largest invitation-only academic opinion survey [is intended] to provide the definitive list of the top 100 most powerful global university brands…. The table is based on nothing more than subjective judgement — but it is the considered expert judgement of senior, published academics — the people best placed to know the most about excellence in our universities.”

In 2013, UNC Chapel Hill is included among those colleges clustered between Nos. 51 and 60 — a position most colleges can only envy, of course. In 2012, however, UNC ranked No. 46 and in 2011 No. 41.

Does anyone dispute that this decline in reputation is real?… Or that it is justified?

 

Where’s Hugh Bennett? Climate debate needs him!

“It’s one thing to persuade hipsters in Portland, Ore., or Brooklyn to grow organic — hey, how cool is an artisan radish — in their rooftop gardens. It’s a much tougher push to get Big Ag, made up mostly of stubborn older men, to change its ways. “But imagine if a farmer led the cause […]

“It’s one thing to persuade hipsters in Portland, Ore., or Brooklyn to grow organic — hey, how cool is an artisan radish — in their rooftop gardens. It’s a much tougher push to get Big Ag, made up mostly of stubborn older men, to change its ways.

“But imagine if a farmer led the cause against climate change. Franklin Roosevelt chose Hugh Bennett, a son of the North Carolina soil, to rally Americans against the abusive farming practices that led to the Dust Bowl. Big Hugh was blunt, smart and convincing. ‘Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people,’ he said, without apology.

– From “Hicks Nix Climate Fix” by Timothy Egan in the New York Times (March 7) 

For a little more background on the too-seldom-remembered Bennett (UNC, Class of 1903), click here.

For a lot more, click here.

 

UNC students, circa 1800, bridled at authority

“…When college students, like those at the University of North Carolina in 1796, could debate the issue of whether ‘the Faculty had too much authority,’ then serious trouble could not be far away…. “Between 1798 and 1808, American colleges were racked by mounting incidents of student defiance and outright rebellion — on a scale never […]

“…When college students, like those at the University of North Carolina in 1796, could debate the issue of whether ‘the Faculty had too much authority,’ then serious trouble could not be far away….

“Between 1798 and 1808, American colleges were racked by mounting incidents of student defiance and outright rebellion — on a scale never seen before or since in American history….

“In 1799 , University of North Carolina students beat the president, stoned two professors and threatened others with injury.

“Finally, college authorities tightened up their codes of discipline. But repression only provoked more rebellions. In 1805, 45 students, a majority of the total enrollment, withdrew from the University of North Carolina in protest….”

–– From “Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815″ by Gordon S. Wood (2009)