Collegiality and Collaboration
Posted on July 13, 2003
Douglas S. Dibbert ’70
I once asked a finalist for the position of UNC provost what had surprised him most during his campus visit. He replied: “I was impressed by how much everyone genuinely seems committed to doing what is best for the entire University — not just for their constituency or for themselves.” At the public research university where he had worked, “We are instinctively inclined to play constituent politics,” he said. “Students want all decisions to be made based upon what they think will most advantage them, and faculty, staff and, too often, administrators think first and only about advancing their special interests. But based on my visit to Carolina, everyone here seems genuinely to want decisions based on what is in the long-run best interests of the entire University community. I find that refreshing.”
An outsider may see more clearly things that we overlook, and increasingly, it is important that we retain this part of our Carolina culture. Society encourages us to “look out for No. l.” That approach can pit individuals and groups against each other and tear a community apart. Nearly 20 years ago at a planning meeting for the College of Arts and Science’s Foundations for Excellence Campaign, the then-dean of UNC’s School of Medicine volunteered that he would like to encourage medical alumni to support the campaign. He observed that “it is impossible to have a truly distinguished medical school at a mediocre university, and without a strong College of Arts and Sciences, it is not possible to have a distinguished university.”
One of the remarkable reflections of this enlightened perspective is the daily collaboration, not just between departments within schools, but throughout the campus between and among all of our schools, the college, centers and institutes. While turf is aggressively protected and administrative islands encouraged at many research universities, at Carolina a natural collegiality fosters a community where deans, department heads and faculty comfortably explore and develop ways to collaborate.
This interaction is aided by the presence of the five health affairs schools — medicine, public health, dentistry, nursing and pharmacy — in close proximity to the College of Arts and Sciences and the schools of social work, education, journalism and mass communication, government, business, law, and library and information science as well as our many centers and institutes. These collaborations also result in greater efficiencies and needed stewardship of public and private dollars.
Carolina is a leader in studies of drug addiction, with a strong collaboration among researchers in psychology, psychiatry, neurosciences, chemistry, dentistry and others. Research is yielding treatments for addictions as well as an understanding of how they develop. By combining diverse perspectives, UNC researchers have investigated how experience and environment affect the biochemical processes involved in addiction.
Nanoscience at UNC includes highly productive basic and applied research involving collaborators in physics and astronomy, computer science, medicine, education and others. Several technologies from this research have commercial potential.
Genome sciences at UNC involve collaborations in most, if not all, sectors of the life sciences, including medicine, pharmacology, biology, chemistry, physiology and others.
Collaborative research on Fragile X syndrome, led by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, includes anthropology, speech and language pathology, audiology, neuropsychology, developmental psychology, occupational therapy and special education.
The Center for the Study of the American South includes faculty from more than a dozen academic areas. The list of examples could go on and on — the Carolina Environmental Program, the nonprofit certificate program centered in the School of Social Work, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, the evolving Arts Commons and Carolina’s growing international programs, which will become physically joined in a new Global Education Building.
This collaboration fostered by uncommon academic collegiality also exists among Carolina and other institutions, most especially N.C. State (the NSF National Science and Technology Center, bioengineering) and Duke (Latin America studies, women’s studies, Robertson Scholars). Carolina and Duke also have long coordinated library purchases and offer a joint lending program.
Society needs and expects higher education to continue to address public issues. Developing cures or treatments for cystic fibrosis, cancer and other diseases remain a priority at Carolina. Similar collaboration and cooperation is needed to improve the quality of public school education and to increase economic development across North Carolina.
By fostering a campus environment where everyone seeks to make the best decisions for all, we encourage the collegiality and collaboration that allows us to attract top students, faculty and administrators and to continue to earn the support of alumni, friends and the public. Collegiality and collaboration are among the qualities that continue to distinguish UNC and to make Carolina special.
Yours at Carolina,
Douglas S. Dibbert ’70
