“Our to-do list,” he said, “is nothing less
than the greatest problems of our time:
Cure diseases, and get those cures to all the
people who need them. Find and invent
clean energy. Inspire students in our public
schools. Feed 7 billion people. Describe the
world, and replace conflict with understanding.
“I would like Chapel Hill to be an even
better place for people to take risks. Most
of the great breakthroughs come from
crazy ideas that probably shouldn’t have
been tried.
“The whole idea of a research university is such an ambitious concept — that
you would have research and teaching,
which are two very difficult and challenging things to do, and you would insist you
were only doing your job if you had people that were doing both well. That’s an
audacious idea and is the idea that’s responsible for American innovation, so the better
job we do of articulating why that’s important, the easier it’s going to be for people to
want to be a part of it and for deans and
department chairs to get the people they
want to be here to do these things.
“It’s my job to talk about what a good
idea it is, and then it’s my job to support
the people who are going to make that
happen.”
Having enough runway
Karen Gil lives a couple of houses down
and across the street from the Thorps of
Carrboro. The neighborhood school bus
stop is smack in front their house, and on
weekday mornings “the kids are running
all over Holden’s front yard, hanging out of
the trees, playing handball off the garage,”
Gil said. “There will be a line of 15 to 20
elementary school kids lined up down
their driveway when the bus comes.
Another family might be trying to get the
kids off the front lawn.”
Thorp was too busy to schedule Gil during the work day when he wanted to make
her senior associate dean for social sciences,
so he made the offer on his back deck.
A psychology professor, she said that he
would ask her to attend meetings when
there was somebody at the table who
needed “figuring out” but that he usually
beat her to the figuring himself.
Gil’s experience in the office next to the
dean of the college is a window onto something Thorp put a lot of emphasis on in his
PHOTOS BY STEVE EXUM ’ 92
Patti Worden Thorp grew up in Hope Mills, near Fayetteville, and interacted with her future husband in the community theater. She is a UNC-Greensboro graduate, and they’re the parents of
Emma and John, joined here by Porgy. Above, Old West is a blur behind the new chancellor, in the
Mazda Miata he bought at a PlayMakers benefit auction.
