Welcoming Carolina's Ninth Chancellor
Posted on July 14, 2000James Moeser is only the second of UNC’s nine chancellors in the past 55 years not to be a North Carolinian, a UNC alumnus or both. As our first chancellor of the 21st century, Chancellor Moeser brings experiences as a student, faculty member or administrator at the universities of Texas, Michigan, Kansas, South Carolina and Nebraska as well as Penn State. It should be helpful to Carolina as well as to Chancellor Moeser that he has had so many public university experiences. He comes at a time when there are significant challenges and great opportunities.
Many have already volunteered what they believe should be Chancellor Moeser’s top priorities. Since November, Tar Heel Network Chair Tom Lambeth ’57 and I have held breakfasts with alumni in Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Hickory, Fayetteville, Raleigh, Rocky Mount and Asheville where we invited alumni to share with us what they believe should be the priorities of our newest chief executive officer.
Any priority list, whether suggested by Carolina faculty, students, staff, trustees, or alumni, clearly would include working with others to secure the public approval of the referendum for $3.1 billion of much-needed capital construction bonds for the 16-campus UNC System as well as the N.C. Community College System. Soon after his mid-August arrival, Chancellor Moeser should receive recommendations from search committees reviewing candidates to recommend for his consideration to serve as provost as well as vice chancellor for finance and administration. These will be critical choices for our University and for his administration.
Chancellor Moeser already has pledged his commitment to fulfilling the challenge by the late Michael Hooker ’69 to make Carolina the nation’s best public university, and early in his administration he will work with others to develop a strategy for achieving such an ambitious goal. Chancellor Moeser also will become familiar with plans for Carolina’s $1 billion capital campaign so that he can work with the deans, alumni leaders, campus development officers and others to ensure that a well-conceived plan focusing on Carolina’s greatest needs and highest priorities is successful. And, likewise, Chancellor Moeser will be familiarizing himself with the evolving campus master plan and help shape a thoughtful strategy for its implementation.
Always, Carolina’s chief executive officer must work with UNC trustees, alumni, the UNC System Board of Governors and the UNC System staff to advocate vigorously for more competitive faculty and staff salaries and benefits. Again, Chancellor Moeser already has pledged to be a forceful advocate for our campus while working cooperatively with each of the other UNC System campuses. Chancellor Moeser’s many years as an academic administrator will help him develop understanding among faculty leaders that a complex, $1 billion-a-year, 10,000-plus-employee institution requires different governing processes and structures than those in place 30 or 40 years ago.
Chancellor Moeser will instinctively know that it is the quality of the student experience that will determine whether as alumni our former students choose to be involved and supportive alumni. His commitment to a strong, enriching undergraduate education already has been affirmed throughout his career, and Carolina students can anticipate the same visible, accessible, engaging chancellor they knew in Michael Hooker.
Hopefully, each of us will understand and applaud Chancellor Moeser’s desire to learn about and visit the many schools, institutes, centers and departments across our campus before mounting an aggressive speaking tour to our alumni clubs. He should be permitted to run a marathon and not compelled to sprint. Further, while we might be tempted to expect him to immediately articulate his vision for Carolina, might he and we be better served if we thought in terms of Chancellor Moeser giving voice to our vision for Carolina?
Confidently, we can claim that the Chapel Hill and The University of North Carolina to which Susan and James Moeser come retains after 207 years a remarkable combination of spectacular physical beauty, world-class scholarship and deeply rooted commitment to teaching and service among our faculty, bright and enthusiastic students, and devoted and supportive alumni. Surely, Chancellor Moeser will find, as did those who have come before him and on whose shoulders we build, that this is the Southern Part of Heaven and North Carolina’s “priceless gem.”
Yours at Carolina,
Douglas S. Dibbert ’70
