The UNC Board of Governors met to discuss the most recent developments affecting the UNC System schools on Thursday in Greensboro just before the snow. The meeting is still technically not over, with final points to resume on Tuesday at 10 a.m. at UNC-Chapel Hill. 

Talley to be renovated again

Designs for the Talley Retail Uplift project will begin Monday to be completed on March 16 and for construction to begin April 18 and conclude June 17. 

The project will cost $450,000 and renovate approximately 2,400 square feet of constructed space into a merchandise retail space near the University Bookstore. The cost will be paid using Campus Enterprises receipts. 

Included in the project is locker space, a customer service counter, storage racks, workstation space and associated support space. 

Protest postponed

Citing a new Faculty Forward Network survey of 1,400 UNC faculty which shows that many UNC professors are unhappy about the direction of higher education in North Carolina, protestors planned a demonstration during the Friday session of the meeting, though the meeting was canceled due to adverse weather.

In an email sent out prior to the meeting, the protesters outlined concerns over Spellings’ record as Education Secretary and her work on the board of directors of Apollo Education Group, Inc., parent company of the for-profit University of Phoenix, which they consider to be a predatory institution that targets low income students and students of color while “failing to deliver a high quality education.” 

Spellings has first meeting with Transition Committee 

Margaret Spellings, UNC System president-elect, held her first meeting with the Presidential Transition Committee responsible for acclimating her to the UNC System. 

Zack King, president of the Association of Student Governments, commented that Spellings is “definitely taking the job by storm” and that he expects a lot of changes when she takes over on March 1.

Referring to the claim by the protestors that Spellings’ record as a board member of the University of Phoenix, King said that the subject “doesn’t come up” in the board’s meetings. 

Discussion on SARA

Board members heard a presentation on SARA, the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements, which will allow for all North Carolina schools, not only those within the UNC System, to have access to distance education courses offered in other SARA member states, as well as those schools to have access to North Carolina courses. 

SARA relaxes the regulations on courses so that only an institution’s home state needs to approve the course for it to be taken online by students at another university. If North Carolina were not to join SARA, the presentation argued that the state’s universities would be at a competitive disadvantage as their markets would continue to be limited by authorization requirements which are expensive and time consuming.