Trustees discuss 21st Century Vision

UNC officials focused heavily on innovative approaches to improve the University’s standing compared to its peer institutions during Wednesday’s Board of Trustees committee meetings.

The discussion in committee meetings centered around the University’s 21st Century Vision — a planning and fundraising initiative that Thorp announced in May. The initiative has been divided into three main focuses — college access, research and education models.

The committee focused on college access discussed revamping UNC’s financial aid program. The committee will research and discuss what an ideal financial aid program would look like at UNC if they were to rebuild it from scratch.

Board chairman Wade Hargrove said he believes the ideal model would look very different from the one currently in place.

Hargrove said making the University accessible for students is his main priority.

“We need to do this well,” Hargrove said. “That may well mean bringing outside people in to tell us things we don’t necessarily want to hear. I don’t think there’s a higher calling in this world than the initiatives being undertaken by this committee. I will commit to finding the resources.”

Board members brought up the fact that some of UNC’s peer institutions, such as Duke, are using online education programs to allow students around the world to take courses, even if the students aren’t enrolled in the institution.

While many board members agreed that online education will play more of a role in higher education in the coming years, Thorp said the committee’s definition of access should be limited to only give enrolled students the opportunity to take online courses.

The board briefly touched on academic integrity at UNC, in light of ongoing controversy involving academic fraud and other issues stemming from the 2010 NCAA investigation of the football team.

Faculty chairwoman Jan Boxill gave a report on behalf of the faculty in which she said the faculty fully supports Thorp and the administrators’ thorough and methodical efforts to prevent future issues that compromise the University’s academic integrity.

There was no board discussion following Boxill’s remarks.

At the afternoon committee meetings, members discussed how the University can continue to improve its ranking in research funding and build a strong and updated model for education.

The board and administrators are still in the early phase of planning for the 21st Century Vision initiative and each committee has been asked to prepare their final reports by the board’s May 2013 meeting.