and that was the only avenue we
had, and it was the same avenue
pursued by every other research
university, pretty much.
“The searches that we did
complete in the college, we were
able to get our first choice 95
percent of the time. Our normal
rate is 60 percent. So it was an
incredible year to be out looking
for people. We’re hopeful that
having gotten this 10 percent
cut done, and with the [UNC
System] Board of Governors
tuition increase coming, that we
can do a little more hiring, not
just in the college but in all of
our instructional units this year.
“Every leader of everything
has had a difficult 12 months.
You’d love to have the ability to
start some new things and give
raises. There are years when
we’ve been able to do that, but
this isn’t that year. I think given
the constraints we’ve been
under, we’ve done as well as we
could have and probably as well
as any other university. We’ve
had a lot less-hard difficulties
with the circumstances than a
lot of our peers have had.”
With the UNC System
smarting from a newspaper
report that showed its campuses
were bloated with high-level
administrative positions, Thorp is
feeling good that Carolina got a head start
on an efficiency fix by hiring Bain & Co.,
a business consulting firm, to spend the
spring studying how the University could
streamline its operations. Bain found plenty,
including administrative growth that out-cost growth in spending for academics
from 2004 to 2008.
“My objective, and I think this is
doable, is for Carolina to be the best-managed university in the country. It is
easy to get caught up in the details … but
really what we’re talking about is changing
the nature of leadership in the University
so that people have a better feeling of
responsibility and more knowledge about
how we operate, which I think is the hallmark of well-managed organizations.
“Every university is going to cut costs,
and what you want to do is cut in a way
ating at a level that allows them
to communicate with each other
— so if there are certain [infor-mation technology] functions
that have to happen in the business school, because they’re specific to the business school and
there’s no reason to centralize
them, then they have to be at a
level that’s co-terminus with the
level at which we operate our
centralized services.”
Key to the ‘long runway’
Thorp addressed the University’s relationship with Chapel
Hill — strained at times in
recent years, particularly over
development of Carolina North.
The marriage may be warmer
with agreement last summer on
a special zoning district, to cover
the more than 600 acres the
town controls, and given town
officials’ excitement at the redevelopment prospects for University Square/Granville Towers
after UNC, through the UNC at
Chapel Hill Foundation Inc.,
purchased it this year.
“I think this is the best year
for UNC-town politics in history. I’ve worked at that, and
Patti’s worked at that, and it was
something we really wanted to
see happen this year. We suc-
ceeded in getting Halloween
scaled back; we worked out the airport
thing; we got Carolina North done. The
Carolina North city council meeting —
we had all nine members paying tribute to
the University. That’s downright surreal —
nobody thought that would happen.
“Because we’ve lived here, Patti’s done
Habitat, and she’s done all kinds of things
for the town, and she knows all those folks,
and our kids have gone to public school
here and [son] John’s going to East [Chapel
Hill High] [this] year, and you know, we’re
part of the community. And I guess we felt
that, over the history of the University,
there hasn’t been a recognition of the fact
that the people who work here are also the
town, and we’ve just got to put some
structure around that as well.”
He talked about the admissions myth …
“I knew this before I had this job, but it
Patti Thorp has been involved in the community for years, and she helped
in his work to improve town-gown relations. UNC and Chapel Hill began
to see eye-to-eye on the Carolina North campus.
DAN SEARS ’ 74
that when we have new money again, we
don’t just go back to the way we were. This
is one of the things that surprised me
about what the Bain people recommended.
I thought they’d just tell us to centralize
every service, and that’s not what they told
us. They said if you do that, you’ll never be
able to make that stick.
“So what you have to do is balance the
services you have centralized and decentralized … and make sure they’re all oper-
‘I think this is the best year
for UNC-town politics in history.
I’ve worked at that, and
Patti’s worked at that, and it was
something we really wanted
to see happen this year.’
