The Quad: Did You Get the Memo?

From a new species of squirrel discovered by a UNC-Greensboro researcher to a new UNC-Chapel Hill study that provided the first empirical evidence on how loggerhead sea turtles use the Earth’s magnetic field, my inbox is always flooded with exciting academic updates from across North Carolina.

While it’s been a whirlwind of a few weeks keeping up with the directives coming out of the Trump administration—which we’re going to dive straight into in this edition—I also wanted to take a beat to spotlight some of the innovative research and higher ed developments I hear about every day. Send us your good news, too.

This week in The Quad: Matt breaks down the NIH cap on indirect costs and how researchers are responding. We also look at the impacts of the UNC System memo that suspended general education and major-specific requirements related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

—Erin Gretzinger

Universities Try to Keep Cancer Bipartisan

Last Wednesday, Robert Ferris, an oncologist and the new executive director of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, was—perhaps surprisingly—calm about threats to National Institutes of Health funding.

“Uncertainty in federal funding is not new,” Ferris told The Quad, pointing out that the federal government is currently only funded through March 14. “Even before the inauguration, we weren’t really sure what the level of funding was going to be for important programs.”

The fact that nearly everyone knows someone impacted by cancer helped give Ferris confidence that, when the dust settled, research funds would be available. “Congress, on both sides of the aisle, have been very supportive of the National Cancer Institute,” which is part of the NIH, he said.

Then, on Friday evening—its favorite time to announce major policy changes—the Trump administration said the NIH would cap indirect costs in its research grants at 15 percent. Those costs are the portion of grants that go toward maintaining facilities, administrative services, and other kinds of overhead. UNC-CH’s current indirect cost rate for NIH grants is 55 percent.

The change has been temporarily halted while a judge considers a lawsuit filed by North Carolina’s Jeff Jackson and 21 other attorneys general. But if the 15 percent cap goes through, the Chronicle of Higher Education predicts UNC-CH would lose $82 million this fiscal year. 

The new development has led many to worry about a looming apocalypse of American science. But UNC-CH leaders think Ferris’s tranquility is the best way to stave it off. 

“We’re in a really dynamic situation,” Penny Gordon-Larsen, the university’s vice chancellor for research, told an emergency meeting of UNC-CH’s faculty executive council on Monday. The important thing, she emphasized, is to “speak in one voice” as a research community.

Gordon-Larsen said UNC-CH was working with industry groups like the American Association of Universities and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. She also noted that the university’s federal affairs staff and Chancellor Lee Roberts have been in Washington, D.C., meeting with legislators.

Gordon-Larsen asked faculty to work through those official channels to ensure messaging discipline. 

“If anybody is thinking about working to contact legislators in their role at the university, they really need to be working through our federal affairs and state affairs folks,” she said. “That is essential and really, really important. It’s back to the one voice and coordination.”

During our conversation last week, Ferris told The Quad his message to Lineberger staff was, “Don’t stop for a minute. Keep doing what you’re doing. Keep writing grants.” But in a follow-up call yesterday, he admitted the threat alone is already causing problems for Lineberger, which currently has an $8 million a year grant as an NIH-designated comprehensive cancer center.

“The uncertainty is causing people to make immediate changes, which are already damaging,” he said. Though he didn’t give specific examples, Ferris said job searches have been put off until the funding picture is clearer. Labs have debated about accepting Ph.D. students. “And that will have economic impacts immediately to the region,” Ferris said.

–Matt Hartman

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Thanks for reading The Quad, a higher education newsletter written by The Assembly’s Matt Hartman and Erin Gretzinger. Reach us with tips or ideas at highered@theassemblync.com.

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‘You Can’t Just End DEI by Fiat’

When The Assembly spoke recently with the UNC System’s top in-house federal lobbyist, Elizabeth Morra, she said the system was taking a wait-and-see approach to Trump’s changes—including orders related to DEI.

It didn’t take long before the system decided to act. On Feb. 5, Andrew Tripp, the system’s general counsel, issued a memo that suspended “all general education requirements and major-specific requirements mandating completion of course credits related to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” effective immediately.

“Even though some form of additional federal guidance is expected, and the law in this area remains unsettled, the risk of jeopardizing over $1.4B in critical federal research funding is simply too great to defer action,” Tripp wrote.

In the days that followed, several institutions suspended or removed general education requirements, such as North Carolina State University, UNC-Greensboro, East Carolina University, UNC-Asheville, and UNC-Chapel Hill. 

Multiple universities told The Assembly that they don’t have any general education requirements that met the memo’s criteria, including North Carolina A&T State University, Appalachian State University, Western Carolina University, Winston-Salem State University, and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. 

Some schools say they’re still studying the issue. UNC-Charlotte and UNC-Wilmington both believe their gen ed requirements are in compliance and are now reviewing major-specific requirements. UNC-Chapel Hill, which removed a “U.S. diversity requirement” that it said was already being phased out, said it will continue looking at its new gen ed curriculum “IDEAs in Action.” UNC-Greensboro said it is reviewing “degree-specific” requirements for academic programs whose mandatory courses “may not be consistent with new guidance.”

Faculty are not pleased with the changes, and they’re looking for ways to mitigate its impacts. 

In a meeting yesterday, the UNC-Greensboro faculty senate approved a new “Civics and Community” core competency in place of its previous diversity requirement to ensure students meet the number of credits mandated by its accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. But the vast majority of faculty and students present didn’t want to comply with the memo and debated how to make their opposition clear.

“Maybe we can’t say it as a faculty together, but I sure would like somebody to be saying, ‘How do we get together and think about re-implementing these things in four years?’” said Anthony Cuda, an associate English professor. Jessica McCall, the chair of the university’s general education council, agreed that the “optics on this…are not good,” while pointing out that the new competency was intentionally left open enough to be “looked at from different perspectives” and could still encompass some current diversity and equity courses.

At a UNC-CH faculty executive council meeting, senior associate dean for undergraduate education Ian McNeely said that “the handling of human difference and inequality needed to be infused throughout the curriculum in very sophisticated ways that really only those of us who teach in the classroom can be trusted to handle. So you can’t just end DEI by fiat.”

The North Carolina American Association of University Professors strongly condemned the policy, calling it an “overt attempt at thought control” that “constitutes educational malpractice” and “diverges sharply” from the principles of academic freedom. (The System did not respond to a request for comment.)

The next step we have our eye on is whether chancellors bring exceptions to the Board of Governors. The memo said that chancellors could approve “tailored” waivers for individual major-specific requirements on the basis that it is “substantially related to its specific major.” Following a waiver’s approval, it must be reported at the board’s next Education Planning, Policies, and Programming meeting—meaning we could potentially learn more as soon as the end of February.

–Erin Gretzinger and Matt Hartman

What questions do you have about the system’s DEI memo? We want to try to answer them. Send us inquiries at highered@theassemblync.com.

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Class Introductions

• William Downs, president of Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, was named president of Campbell University. Downs will succeed J. Bradley Creed, who will retire at the end of June after 10 years as president.
• John Kane was elected vice chair of the North Carolina State Board of Community Colleges. He succeeded Grant Campbell, who stepped down from the board after being elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives.
• David Camps, vice president of operations at H4 Enterprises, LLC, was named assistant vice chancellor of research administration at N.C. A&T University. 

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