Citadel of Light
Posted on March 1, 1992Yesterday the University of North Carolina celebrated its 150th birthday. With much pride this great citadel of learning in the South can boast that it was the first State university in America to open its doors.
But there is no particular virtue simply in growing old. It is in terms of achievement, in terms of character, of strength, of attitude that the glory of man or institution is established and in being established is maintained through the turbulent decades.
Cesare Borgia once said that happy nations have no history. That is true also of groups and institutions, and individuals. History and biography are created through struggle, sacrifice and achievement.
The University of North Carolina has always had a program larger than its means, a vision broader than its facilities for fulfilling it. But through the decades it has moved in a straight line toward the greater objective and the higher ideal. Especially has this been so during the past four or five decades under the leadership of the Battles, Winstons, Aldermans, Grahams and Dr. Chase.
The spirit of freedom, of democracy and true liberalism has come to find its natural habitat in the environs of Chapel Hill. There are few colleges or universities in this country where liberalism has a stronger hold on collegiate life than it has at the University of North Carolina. It is rather because of its ideals of democracy in education and in life, its belief in the obligation of a State university to provide guidance and leadership in improving the social and economic life of its people that the university has gained national renown despite its relatively small size.
— from the Winston-Salem Journal, October 13, 1943
This editorial is as revealing and enlightening today as it was nearly 50 years ago.
Our University is much different today from what it was in 1943, just as North Carolina and our nation are much different than they were 50 years ago. We have grown from a student body of 3,000 to one that now exceeds 23 ,000. Happily, we have a much more diverse student body which includes nearly 10 percent minority students and 55 percent women. The University in 1943 did not include the schools of nursing and dentistry, several of our institutes and many other programs.
Fortunately, while many institutions have in recent years placed increasing emphasis on their graduate and professional programs, our University has maintained its principal commitment to the undergraduate program. Those colleges and universities that moved resources and emphasis to their graduate and professional schools have now come to understand that a university without a strong undergraduate program is not, in the full meaning of the word, a university.
Just as the editorial above noted that for the decades leading up to the University’s sesquecentennial our University had strong leadership, so, too in Chancellors House, Aycock, Sharpe, Sitterson, Taylor, Fordham and Hardin, Carolina has greatly benefited from chief executive officers who valued the special, distinctive role and mission of our University.
These are days of uncertainty as well as transition for North Carolina, our University and our University System. Searches are underway for a new provost, and for new deans for the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Business, the School of Pharmacy, the School of Social Work and the School of Nursing, as well as the directorship of the Institute of Government. Seven of the 13 members of our UNC Board of Trustees have a year or less experience serving on this important body. And a recent announcement of the retirement of senior University System Vice President Dr. Raymond Dawson ’58 is just the beginning of an anticipated progression of retirements within the senior administration of the UNC System.
Many of the search committees for positions on our campus include alumni. Alumni, faculty and students on these search committees know that The University of North Carolina should seek — and can attract — men and women who have nationally and internationally recognized records of substantial professional achievement and personal qualities of sound judgment, uncompromising integrity, persistence, resourcefulness, humility, appetite for hard work and leadership.
As new leadership comes aboard, it is important that those who have the immense responsibility and great opportunity of recruiting new leadership for Carolina, as well as those who are selected, quickly come to understand, if they do not already know, that what distinguishes this University from other colleges and universities, is what editorial writers at the Winston-Salem Journal observed in 1943: “its belief in the obligation of a state university to provide guidance and leadership and in improving the social and economic life of its people … ”
Yours at Carolina,
Douglas S. Dibbert ’70
