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Prospects and Milestones

New calendar years customarily bring many things, including resolutions, predictions and wishes. I have a close friend who each year sends out a list of predictions and includes an accounting of how his predictions from the previous year fared. I will stop short of my friend’s practice, since this column goes to more than 55,000 people, and my friend sends his list only to those to whom he sends holiday greeting cards.

North Carolina voters in May and November will have the opportunity to determine who will lead and serve our state in the General Assembly and the Council of State. The Senate leadership already has pledged support for the bold challenge put forth by Chancellor Michael Hooker ’69 in his University Day address to match the tuition increase our Board of Trustees approved. It is likely that candidates for the General Assembly and for governor will affirm their support for a legislative package that will help our campus recover some of the ground lost in recent years. Your Alumni Association, working with our Tar Heel Network, will encourage alumni to affirm the link between their support for legislative and gubernatorial candidates to those candidates’ support for our campus.

Just as the elections could bring changes in our elected leadership, the new year also is likely to bring changes to the leadership of the UNC System. As UNC System President C.D. Spangler Jr. ’54 nears the conclusion of his 10th year of service, it is expected that he soon will announce his retirement plans. His retirement and any senior staff retirements or departures that might follow will come at a time when the future volunteer leadership of the Board of Governors is uncertain. Only 11 of the 32 elected members of the board have served more than one four-year term. Of the remaining 21, 12 have served for just six months. In the late spring the board will choose a new chair to assume that role on July 1. The person chosen will be the third board chair in slightly more than a year.

For the GAA the new year brings several milestones. We have just concluded the first year publishing our merged Carolina Alumni Review. Reader response has been overwhelmingly positive, but to learn more about your preferences, we will undertake a readership survey this year.

We are midway through the first year of a student membership in the Alumni Association. Our goal of 500 dues-paying student members has been exceeded by 400 percent! These 2,000 students are receiving and enjoying a special package of member benefits designed for them.

Among our most welcomed member benefits is our expanding alumni career services program.

March marks the third anniversary of the opening of our alumni home on campus — the George Watts Hill Alumni Center as well as the third anniversary of our alumni, faculty, staff and friends dining club, The Carolina Club. You will read more about what a difference the Alumni Center has made in the work of your Association and our University in a future issue of the Review.

During the several years of fund raising, building and programming for the Alumni Center, we suspended our alumni family camp. We are delighted again to offer Camp Blue Heaven for alumni families. It will be held in September at Camp Seafarer near Pamlico Sound.

We will continue to build upon our strong and expanding local club programs, making increasing use of Carolina faculty. For those of you fortunate enough to have been represented by your local club leader at our Club Leaders Workshop in September, you will be pleased to know that Chancellor Hooker pledged to visit each of the 29 clubs represented during the next two years!

Our class and affinity group reunions will continue to expand as we experiment with programs and scheduling. We are looking for additional collaborative opportunities to expand our enrichment program here in the Alumni Center, at local clubs, through distance-learning sites and on the Internet.

Speaking of technology, we will continue to explore opportunities to use technology to perform our central mission of connecting and reconnecting, informing and involving Carolina alumni in our University.

Please keep us informed should your address or business information change. Our records staff makes more than 50,000 address and name changes annually.

Critical to your Association’s success is your continuing membership. While we are proud that we have such a large portion of our alumni who are dues-paying members, we will not be satisfied until every former Carolina student is a member. Please retain your membership and ask your friends if they are members. If they are not, please encourage them to join.

While the nation may focus on the Summer Olympics and the presidential elections, we will work with you to ensure that the nation’s first state university is also the best.

Yours at Carolina,

Doug signature

 

 

 

Douglas S. Dibbert ’70

doug_dibbert@unc.edu

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