Thursday’s Board of Trustees meeting — where Jim Dean, dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School, was unanimously approved as the University’s next executive vice chancellor and provost — opened with Student Body President Christy Lambden taking his oath of office.
“I will always fight to make Carolina the best, and to put Carolina first in all respects,” Lambden said later in the meeting.
He said there are three main issues that he will focus on as Student Body President — affordability, academics and safety.
He said his team will explore every expense that students face and seek to minimize them, improve the issues of increasing class size and decreasing number of class sections, and will continue to work with the Student Sexual Assault Policy Task Force that he created earlier this year.
Lambden also said implementation of gender non-specific housing, which is facing opposition in the N.C. General Assembly, is at the forefront of his concerns.
Earlier in the meeting, Chancellor Holden Thorp discussed the results of this year’s employee satisfaction survey, concluding that the University is a better place to work today than it was when the survey was given for the first time three years ago.
“We’ve made significant progress since 2010,” Thorp said. “And I’m very proud of that, given all of the trials and tribulations that we have experienced.”
Thorp also discussed the launch of a new scholarship program, the chancellor’s science scholar program, which aims to increase the number of minorities in science fields.
He also recognized Loren Shealy of the women’s field hockey team, who was named Sports Illustrated’s female college athlete of the year, and acknowledged the expansion of the University Child Care Center.
