Former chancellor Thorp visits UNC for ?rst time since leaving

Former Chancellor Holden Thorp said returning to UNC Thursday was just like coming home.

Thorp returned to the University he attended, taught and led as chancellor on Thursday for the first time since he left in June.

Thorp came to give a lecture for a Massive Open Online Course called “What’s Your Big Idea?” that he helped start this month. MOOCs are free online classes students can take.

“I lived here for 30 years and it’s very familiar for me to come back,” Thorp said in an interview. “It is great to see some of the things I worked on … still going strong.”

The MOOC, which opens Jan. 21, features guest lecturers discussing their experiences.

Thorp said he returned to do the lecture and see his son John, a freshman at UNC.

After resigning as chancellor, Thorp later took a job as provost at Washington University in St. Louis. He said there are huge differences between the two universities.

He said UNC has more ways to get involved on campus.

“At Carolina it’s more of a comprehensive collegiate experience: the Southern college town, football weekends, everybody wearing the colors all the time and a much greater variety of ways you can fit in at UNC.”

Thorp spent much of his time at UNC handling athletic and academic scandals, which began with an NCAA investigation into the football program in 2010. He said much of his time at Washington University in St. Louis has been spent working to improve academics.

“There I spent a lot of time thinking about what college education should be formed and the future of professional education,” Thorp said.

“Here, I worked on all those things but worked a lot on other things, like gaining political support for the University and marketing the University and making sure that our college sports program was successful.“

Thorp said he thinks the MOOC, which has enrolled 4,000 students so far, has the potential to greatly improve higher education.

“After this will be universe. We will put it in space,” Thorp said.

UNC economics professor Buck Goldstein, the co-teacher for the MOOC course, echoed Thorp’s sentiment. Goldstein said he learned a lot from the process.

“We think online courses are important,” he said. “We want to reach a lot of students.”

Goldstein said running a MOOC presented unanticipated roadblocks.

“It’s more complicated than we think just putting things on the web. Like we are interviewing some wonderful entrepreneurs and you need to think about where the interviews go.”

Goldstein said that Thorp’s return was emotional and incredible.

“One of my best friends is here. We miss him. It’s wonderful that he had a great opportunity. All of us who care about he and his family feel wonderful about that,” Goldstein said.

Lizzy Hazeltine, the director of UNC’s entrepreneurship minor, said the course is open to the world.

“As far as there is no limited access to the internet, there is no limited access to the course.”

Senior applied math major Ying Zhou said it was interesting to hear Thorp’s lab and corporate experience because that is what she wants to do, but she also appreciated the chance to see him.

“It was very sad that he left,” Zhou said. “He was a very good chancellor, dealing with issues, you know, scandals.”

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