29 December 2003:  UNC Black Enrollment Praised
        Once again, UNC-CH had the highest percentage of black enrollment among highly ranked universities around the nation, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.  Blacks make up 11.1 percent of the student body at Chapel Hill, the highest percentage of black students among the nation's 50 highest-ranked universities.  In this year's freshman class at Chapel Hill, blacks make up 11.7 percent of all entering students.  For details click here.

10 December 2003:  Luke Zannoni Defense Pictures (click on image to enlarge)

05 December 2003:  "Totally 'Green' Nanoparticle Synthesis" article in Chemical & Engineering News profiles the work of UNC's Assistant Professor of Chemistry Scott L. Wallen and coworkers Poovathinthodiyil Raveendran and Jie Fu.

04 December 2003:  Green Engineering
        The principles of Green Engineering are laid out in the outline of this course to be presented Spring 2004 semester from the University of Delaware. Click here for the course outline.

03 December 2003:  Green Engineering
CHEG 667-015
Spring 2004
Mon, Wed 5-6:15 pm
Professor Richard P. Wool

Course Description:
"Green engineering is the design, commercialization, and use of processes and products, which are feasible and economical while minimizing 1) generation of pollution at the source and 2) risk to human health and the environment. The discipline embraces the concept that decisions to protect human health and the environment can have the greatest impact and cost effectiveness when applied early to the design and development phase of a process or product." (EPA, 2003). 

Green Engineering transforms existing engineering disciplines and practices to those that promote sustainability.  Green Engineering incorporates development and implementation of technologically and economically viable products, processes and systems that promote human welfare while protecting human health and elevating the protection of the biosphere as a criterion in engineering solutions.

To fully implement green engineering solutions, engineers use the following principles:

1.                  Engineer processes and products holistically, use systems analysis, and integrate environmental impact assessment tools.

2.                  Conserve and improve natural ecosystems while protecting human health and well-being.

3.                  Use life cycle thinking in all engineering activities.

4.                  Ensure that all material and energy inputs and outputs are as inherently safe and benign as possible. 

5.                  Minimize depletion of natural resources. 

6.                  Strive to prevent waste.

7.                  Develop and apply engineering solutions, while being cognizant of local geography, aspirations and cultures.

8.                  Create engineering solutions beyond current or dominant technologies; improve, innovate and invent (technologies) to achieve sustainability.

9.                  Actively engage communities and stakeholders in development of engineering solutions

This course takes a multidisciplinary, problem solving approach, to developing the necessary tools and applying the principles of Green Engineering to analyze and address real world problems. 

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01 December 2003:  "Some Shops Offer a New Kind of Clean" article from the Washington Post
        Article covers how a shop owner has switched from using perchloroethylene as their standard solvent to the cutting-edge liquid carbon-dioxide cleaning method in an effort to be more environmentally safe and health-conscious.

11 November 2003:  UNC COVENANT CREATING RIPPLES
        A new financial aid program has been introduced at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill under which low-income students will have all their financial aid needs met through grants instead of loans.
        Shirley Ott, director of scholarships and student aid at Chapel Hill , reports that 11 states have inquired about the program since the announcement. She has been in contact with officials in California, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
        Virginia appears to be the most interested. John Casteen III, president of the University of Virginia, ordered his staff to prepare a report showing whether his university could implement a similar plan.
        For details of the Carolina Covenant click here.

10 November 2003:  UNC-Chapel Hill breaks new ground in college accessibility
CHAPEL HILL , N.C. -- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser has announced a groundbreaking initiative to give the children of low-income families an opportunity to attend college – without borrowing a penny.

The Carolina Covenant will enable low-income students to come to Carolina and graduate debt-free if they work on campus 10 to 12 hours weekly in a federal work-study job throughout their four years here, instead of borrowing. The university will meet the rest of students’ needs through a combination of federal, state, university and private grants and scholarships.

Carolina already meets 100 percent of the documented financial need of all students who apply for aid on time, but about a third of that need is being met through loans. To fund the Carolina Covenant, the university will make modest reallocations of existing funds in the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid and pledge growing private gifts dedicated to low-income students. The initiative is expected to cost about $1.38 million annually when fully phased in four years from now.

Carolina is believed to be the first public university in America to launch such an initiative to make college more accessible. Princeton , a private university, has also done much to alleviate the need for student borrowing.

The Carolina Covenant will go into effect next fall for the incoming freshman class of 2004. Eligible students must be at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Under current federal poverty levels, a family of four with an annual income of about $28,000 would qualify. For a single parent with one child, the eligible income would be about $18,000.

Moeser announced the innovative access initiative in his annual State of the University speech to the campus community Oct. 1. "College should be possible for everyone who can make the grade, regardless of family income," he said. "A covenant is a promise. With the Carolina Covenant, we are telling students that, despite what you may see in the news, college is affordable, no matter how much money your family makes."

Moeser credited Shirley Ort, associate provost and director of scholarships and student aid, and Jerry Lucido, vice provost for enrollment management and director of undergraduate admissions, for their vision in crafting this new initiative.

"We know that too many prospective students – especially first-generation students – may not be pursuing the opportunity because they don’t think their families can afford college," Ort said. "This initiative will help reverse that trend."

Studies show that the cost of college is rising steadily for low-income families. Nationally, the average student loan debt has nearly doubled to $17,000 over the past decade. About one-fifth of full-time students work 35 or more hours a week. As a result, many low-income youth abandon plans for college – or drop out – because the burden of that debt and workload is too much. The patterns are even stronger among minority students, experts say. Research also shows that low-income families need more information – and greater predictability – about the availability of financial aid.

Moeser cited the state of the economy and the rising number of families living in poverty as evidence of the need for the Carolina Covenant. Since one in four North Carolina children now live in poverty, the need for an accessibility initiative like the Carolina Covenant will remain strong, Moeser said. According to the N.C. Children’s Index of 2002, more than one-third of North Carolina’s families made less than $28,000 a year in 1999, the last year data were available.

This fall, 281 of UNC-Chapel Hill’s freshmen – 8 percent of the freshman class – came from low-income families. Most of those – 89 percent – were from North Carolina .  More than half were minorities. Federal and state financial aid covered about 60 percent of the college costs of those students.

The Carolina Covenant will supplement the university’s long-standing program of providing generous financial assistance to needy students and need-blind admissions, referring to the practice of granting admission to qualified applicants without consideration of their family’s ability to pay.

UNC-Chapel Hill has worked hard to bring low-income students to campus, Lucido said. In the last three years, the number of low-income students enrolling as freshmen rose by 20 percent. In recent years, when the university enacted a campus-based tuition increase, it dedicated 35 percent of the receipts to aid for needy students, and every needy student received a grant to cover any campus-based tuition increase.

But that’s not enough, Moeser said. "As the first public university in America , Carolina has always been committed to access," he said. "With the Carolina Covenant, we are strengthening our commitment to ensure that families from all income levels can afford a Carolina education."

The Carolina Covenant is the second major national initiative UNC-Chapel Hill has launched to benefit students. Starting with freshmen applying for admission this fall, UNC became the nation’s first major American public university to eliminate its binding early decision admissions plan.

*differences between high resolution liquids and solid state NMR
*information available from routine solid state NMR
*descriptions of some experiments
*instrumentation for solid state NMR
*setting up, running and processing the data

                If time is available, we can try some user samples. If interested, contact Marc ter Horst, by March 14th, with your UNC email address (onyen) and group affiliation. Also include your background in NMR and the kinds of samples or kinds of experiments you think you might be interested in.

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Regarding the Feb. 10 article "State cleaning up after the cleaners": I trust you know that an environmentally friendly dry cleaning process based on carbon dioxide was developed right here in North Carolina by myself and other scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill. This technology was refined and successfully commercialized through a Raleigh-based start-up company called Micell Technologies and was launched nationally through a new chain called Hangers Cleaners. Micell sold this garment care technology in 2001 to a company in Minnesota in order to focus on the use of CO₂ in the microelectronics industry. Today there are over 70 Hangers Cleaners open around the country. The CO₂ process used at Hangers just received the highest rating for dry cleaning methods from Consumer Reports (February 2003), even beating out perc.

Just two months ago, the State of California banned perc prior to making any investment by the state in cleaning up perc sites. Why might this be? Perhaps because, according to state authorities in Florida, even new perc-based dry cleaning plants installed after 1990 using supposedly "safe" state-of-the-art equipment are already contaminated. 

So why would North Carolina invest millions in cleaning up perc sites and still allow for perc to be used going forward? Greenpeace issued a "Report Card" in 2001 and gave Hangers' CO₂-based dry cleaning process their highest grade, along with wet-cleaning methods. Perc and Green Earth, a flammable organic solvent, both received a failing grade.

If dry cleaning sites in North Carolina became contaminated with perc even when responsible dry cleaning operators used the level of stewardship suggested by perc and equipment manufacturers, why shouldn't the state request clean-up cost support from the manufacturers of perc like Dow Chemical and Vulcan Chemical?

Joseph M. DeSimone
Chapel Hill
(The writer is a Kenan professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University, director of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents & Processes, and chairman and co-founder of Micell Technologies.)