Conversation With the Chancellor-Elect
Less than a week after he was presented as the new chancellor, Holden
Thorp was off to New York and
Nashville for six days of fundraising for the
College of Arts and Sciences. Let it suffice
to say that if he weren’t good at asking for
money, and didn’t enjoy it, his candidacy
would be a distant memory.
One of his priorities when he became
dean a year ago was to expand the undergraduate honors program. On James
Moeser’s last appearance in front of the
trustees, Moeser was able to announce a $6
million gift that would do just that.
On Thorp’s first day back from the trip, his
luggage was sitting by the door, and lunch was
a bag of cashews from the Nabs rack, a box of
Sun-Maid Raisins and a Diet Coke.
He answered several questions about fundamental issues in the life of the University.
On some, he was carefully noncommittal.
No grand plans to be chancellor
“Being chair of the chemistry department
always seemed like the top job, and the only
reason I got interested in being dean of the
college was I got nominated in 2002 when
Bernadette [Gray-Little] was selected [to
leave the deanship to be provost], and I
started to learn a lot about the job then.”
Department chairs, he said, “are the people
who are really determining the character of
education and the interplay between research
and teaching that we have here — so that’s
the job I wanted to do, and if I had written
the script, I would have done that job and
this job a little longer.”
Groomed for the job?
“Under James Moeser’s leadership, we
developed a culture where people are
encouraged and brought along in leadership.
And we have a lot of people, young faculty
with significant leadership responsibilities
who are being brought along for various
things. So I think there has been kind of a
renaissance of young people moving into
leadership positions the same way Bill Friday
and Bill Little [a former chemistry chair who
held several top administrative positions at
UNC] did in the ’60s.
“So I think we had this lull, when
nobody wanted to admit they wanted to
do these jobs.” Moeser and former Provost
Dick Richardson worked to change that
attitude, he said. “So I think it’s overanalyzing to say that somebody picked me specifically all those years ago, but James Moeser
did ask me to go over there and work out
what we should do with the planetarium.”
Enrollment, retirement, research funds
At the beginning of the end of Moeser’s
tenure, he threw down three rather daunting issues UNC faces. The University will
be under pressure from the 16-campus
UNC System to take a share of enrollment
growth that comes with the state’s burgeoning population. By one estimate, five
of every eight faculty members will have to
be replaced in the next eight years due to
retirement. And much of the lifeblood of a
research university — government funding
— is increasingly harder to count on.
“If we can’t figure out a way to grow
the enrollment without enhancing the academic environment, then we’re not going
to do it,” Thorp said. “I’m confident we’ll
come up with a way, so that’s kind of a null
hypothesis. So what I need to tell the system is, this is how much we can grow if
we have these resources in place, and this is
why we think it won’t compromise what
we’re doing here. We want our students to
benefit from scholarship in the classroom.
That’s the thing. So if the students get to a
point where they can’t perceive that they’re
in a research university, then we’ve lost
what we’re here to do.
“Obviously, we want to be searching for
faculty ahead of retirements as much as we
can. We should be able to scale our search
process if we have the money to do it. And
I don’t think the retirement is going to
come nearly as abruptly as a lot of people
think. We’re not seeing that.”
As dean of the college, Thorp has
pushed UNC to put more emphasis on
hiring junior faculty.
“I think it’s realistic for us to ensure, if
it’s not already the case, that this is the best
place to be a junior faculty member in the
country. Getting the best junior faculty,
having them succeed here and keeping
them here is a whole lot easier and cheaper
than going and picking off the stars at other
places.”
He’s got faith that research funding will
be there for those who know where to
look. “I think if we focus on the things we
want to do, the diseases we want to attack,
the societal problems we want to work on,
the areas of the world that need our help, I
think if we have people who are passionate
and motivated and supported to do those
things, the numbers for our research level
will take care of itself. Creative people will
find the money to get the work done.”
The research university ‘difference’
The question of whether UNC and
N.C. State should in some cases be treated
separately from the other schools in the
UNC System is a persistent and prickly one.
“I would say that right now with President Bowles and the folks at [General
Administration], I think they have a pretty
clear and objective view of the roles of the
various universities, and I don’t feel any
need to try to change any of those things
out of the blocks, and I certainly haven’t
gotten any advice that I should do that
from James Moeser or anybody else. I think
Erskine’s open to discussing anything, and I
think [when] we have a problem we work
on it. Right now, I don’t think there are
things there that are holding us back.”
Undergraduate research
Today about 40 percent of students are
involved.
“I think we’d like to see that increase, but
that does take a lot of time and effort from
our faculty. I think we need to do a better
job of recognizing the importance of it. I
think study abroad, undergraduate research
— those are the things that help people
notice they’re at a research university.”
Intercollegiate athletics
It was suggested that anyone who doesn’t
“get it” where athletics is concerned would
not be a serious candidate for chancellor.
Thorp was asked what he thought that
meant.
“It’s impossible for anyone to imagine the
history of The University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill — which is one of great academic accomplishments — without athletics
being a part of it. You just can’t separate that
from the fabric of what we’ve done over the
last 215 years. I guess ‘getting it’ means rec-
