North Carolina Now; Episode from 1999-07-30

It's Friday, July 30th tonight, bringing a little bit of the tropics to North Carolina, now. Good evening, everyone. I'm Marita Matray. Welcome to North Carolina now for this Friday evening as we wrap up another extremely hot week here in our state. Our thoughts turn toward our weekend plans. And if you live in the central portion of North Carolina, there's an amazing new exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science that warrants your attention. We'll bring you there on tonight's program. Plus, we'll examine how an institution dedicated to helping children in need here in our state has changed with the Times Barclay Todd will profile the Methodist home. But at first tonight, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is working through some major challenges. The flagship campus of the UNC system is searching for a new permanent chancellor to replace Michael Hooker, who passed away at the end of June.

The school is also looking to hire a new provost and a new vice chancellor of finance. This at a time when UNC Chapel Hill is facing a $6.8 million budget deficit, a possible $20 million tax bill from the IRS and renovation and construction needs that are going unfunded because of the failed UNC bond proposal. Among those faced with addressing the many challenges confronting the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is this evening's guest. She is Anne Cates, the newly elected chair of the UNC Board of Trustees. Ms. Cates, welcome to the program. Thank you. You come at a trying time there at Chapel Hill or so much to talk about. Let's talk first about the budget deficit. How big of a problem is this for UNC Chapel Hill? Well, I think sometimes we get out of sync. We have a $1.2 billion budget. So this is less than 1%. And we enter them Chancellor McCoy addressed the other day we're down to I think about $6.7 million. So we are beginning to get our arms around how we will be able to handle this. So this will not impact the operating procedures of the University at all?

We do expect a few layoffs as he announced at his press conference the other day. But it's working out and I think we're going to come out in pretty good shape on that. But it is, I think it was sort of blown out of proportion because it is less than 1% of our operating budget. And when you are struggling to get hold of this budget deficit along comes the IRS and in their investigation into the finances there at Chapel Hill. And they have determined that some $20 million of taxes have gone unpaid. I think that they did determine that but I think that will be released later what figures but in most of these cases with the universities through negotiations it's far less usually than that. And in our case I expect that to be. And we should point out that the IRS investigation was not unique to Chapel Hill. This is something they do across the country. And so you're saying as though through the negotiations that you'll get a handle on that and it's not going to be nearly the $20 million.

I think that it will not be that. You know I get very concerned because everybody thinks we have had a tragedy we lost our chancellor and our provost had a heart attack he's back. So these things come out and but we can handle this we've been there over 200 years and we we started yesterday with our search committee had our first meeting and we're going forth. And then later on we will start the searches for the provost and the chief financial officer that sometimes in crisis like this everybody really rallies forth. And our faculty our employees our students our trustees and we are really united and determined and I really and truly feel that we're going to come out of this stronger than ever. Let's talk more about the search for the new chancellor. I know that an executive search firm out of Chicago has been hired to kind of head up this search. Explain to our viewers what this process is going to be like. Will they have any input the public.

Yes we will have sessions chairman Richard Stevens is chairman chairman he's chairman of the search committee from Carrier Raleigh and they're 14 on the search committee we always we in the last two searches in this one we will have consultants and they help us keep on track help us locating that we want the very best we had the best we want the best again and there will be input there we will have sessions where faculty the public students can have input so yes because we want to have everybody's input. What type of chancellor do you believe the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill will need to move the university forward. Well we are we will all collectively have input in that with Michael hooker I'm sure one of the words will be visionary. You know our industry the higher education is changing just like hot health care and all of the other aspects of life and we have to be agile thinking out of the box thinking about the future constantly and so vision I know was certainly be in that description. We talked a little bit about the UNC bond proposal was something that we reported a great deal on here on North Carolina now it did not go through the general assembly but just how critical is it to UNCCH to get the money needed for this renovation repairs.

It is very critical to our campus because we're the oldest and we have oldest buildings. Not the other day I was in the music library and it's that we have leaks in there from water and we have to send manuscripts off to be dried. We have some real critical areas paint not just paint peeling off the wall but one of the biggest problems we have in our labs and this will hurt us on research and having the facilities for just like the grant that was announced today we need to have better space and we were really hurt by that and I do hope that the people of North Carolina will help back us and talk to their legislators to help us something has to be done and we've got to have some money to help. Well you're really helping me segue from my one question to the next because you talked about the grant. Well it just all flows together.

It certainly does the grant that was announced today we're going to be having more information about it in our upcoming new segment but tell us about you know just how important this grant is to UNCCH Apple Hill. Well it will bring money into the university but this is quite a coup for our whole system. It will be North Carolina State University of North Carolina A&T with the University of Texas at Austin and from my and your standpoint I just am very excited because they're going to have dry cleaning with this carbon dioxide. It was just very exciting water will never touch our fabrics so it's just a very exciting it's going to be environmentally. It's just the start of great things and we're very proud of our scientists and state and the North Carolina State. It's a real coup for our system to get this award. We'll have more details of that coming up in the news but Miss Kate's first I want to thank you very much for being here tonight and good luck with your new role there at UNCCH Apple Hill. And we're thanking very positive we don't forget.

All right thank you. Now coming up on North Carolina now I trip to the Magic Wings Butterfly House but first here is Mitchell Lewis with the statewide news summary. Thanks Marita. Good evening everyone. Topping the news on North Carolina based advocacy groups and school officials need to revamp their safety programs to combat youth gangs. A recent statewide survey conducted by the Raleigh Bay Center for the prevention of school violence found that many of the state's 117 school systems are lacking in violence prevention measures. A school safety task force is expected to make recommendations to Governor Hunt next week. University officials have formally announced an $18 million research grant that will go to three UNC system schools. North Carolina A&T State University UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University will all get money to participate in a project designed to research environmentally safe solvents. Such technology could reduce the amount of water used in manufacturing. Today University officials spoke about how this research project and others like it are having a nationwide impact on the reputation of UNC system schools.

This is a remarkable story. It is a recognition of this wonderful university and its faculty. We are now ranked the University of North Carolina third in the United States in the volume of research that is awarded to faculty on the basis of the merit of their work. That in and of itself is an extraordinary achievement and this remarkable grant will only serve to enhance the future success of this university. The three North Carolina universities will conduct the research over five years in cooperation with the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Venice. UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University will be the lead universities in the project. And now for a look at tomorrow's weather, highs across the state will range from the upper 80s to 100 degrees. Sunny skies are expected throughout the state. In business news, Charlotte based First Union Bank will be getting a new president.

During a meeting of the company's board of directors, current president John Georgeus says he will retire at the end of the year. First Union officials say Georgeus is leaving to pursue other interests and his announcement has nothing to do with the company's recent problems. First Union has had troubles with several large acquisitions, including the money store and core states financial. Greensboro based Eastwind Airlines continues to face problems. The troubled company has announced the firings of three of its top executives, including its chief financial officer and two vice presidents. Ten senior managers have also been fired. Eastwind has been plagued with repeated customer service complaints. The airline has hired consultants to help turn the company around. Eastwind has lost $29 million in the last five years. An expansion plan from a Robinson County chicken plant is expected to create 600 additional jobs for the area's economy. Mountain Air Farms is planning to invest $21 million into the growth project. Local officials say the expansion is good for Robinson County.

The county, located in the sand hills region of the state, suffers with an unemployment rate about double the statewide average. Mountain Air Farms asks the expansion hinges on the county's decision to upgrade local water systems. Well, it was another big drop-on Wall Street today with the Dow Jones falling about 136 points. Here's a look at the numbers. Welcome. One hundred years, the Methodist home for children has provided kids with a safe place

to call home when they've had nowhere else to go. Tonight, Barclay Todd takes a look at how the Methodist home for children is changing with the times. The lyrics of the Methodist home alma mater is filled with words of adoration and honor for an institution that's been around for a century. Since its establishment one hundred years ago, the mission of the Methodist orphanage in North Carolina has been to provide children with a caring and safe environment in which to live and learn. When the first child of the home opened its doors to, in 1901, to today, the focus of the home has never changed, and that's to be a refuge for children in need. When I was eleven years old, my father had a sudden heart attack and dad, so my mother knew and she couldn't take care of us, she looked into the center of the Methodist

orphanage in the Rowland. Billy Griffin and his brother grew up in the orphanage. His father was raised there as well. For his part, Billy says he has many wonderful memories of growing up with the orphanage, but one stands out. Probably meeting my wife. She went there when she was five years old, and I was blessed I made her. Billy also remembers the daily chores on the farm where the orphanage grew its own food. Billy who now lives outside of Raleigh and is in his sixties, recalls fondly the peanut butter and molasses dinners, the boy sneaking down to the girl's cottages, and the sense of family he felt at the home. The orphanage means a lot to me, a lot of wonderful people. Someone said to me one time, did you miss your mother and father? I said yes, I did, but I had 320 brothers and sisters.

Those who still get together every year for a big family reunion on the old grounds of the home. They reminisce about their years at the orphanage, but times have changed, and so too has a Methodist home for children. Originally, this was part of the main campus, and it was very similar geographically to what it is now. Around the turn of the century, the city of Raleigh donated the majority of the 65 acre campus that once housed the main orphanage, the old schoolhouse, and later as media's 12 cottage homes. The campus with the exception of six acres was later sold back to the city by the home. The land that the Methodist home retains today houses its administration building. With the exception of one of the original homes, the boarding house, today all the other buildings are gone. But the rolling hills were here on the central campus, and over in this area where you see the condominiums now was the school building.

The rest of the campus is now a public park in downtown Raleigh. In the mid-1950s, the orphanage changed its name to the Methodist home for children. Other changes would follow. In 1955, the home closed to Thai school, and in the early 1970s, they started accepting children of color. Today the home cares for a different type of child than it did when it first started in 1899. We began a hundred years ago as an orphanage. Now we serve a whole totally different population. We serve young persons who are emotionally abused, abandoned, neglected, emotionally disturbed, those who have are juvenile offenders. So we serve a wide variety of young people now, as the needs of children and families have changed over the years. And where the children are cared for has also changed, the home has done away with campus style housing, replacing it with 18 community-based youth homes throughout the state.

Michael Cox lives at the Methodist Youth Home in Fremont. The Eastern North Carolina team was sent there after being caught selling drugs in school. As with the old Methodist orphanage, Michael also has daily and weekly chores. When I'm like the old home, these kids are working on things they need to do to be reunited with their families. I used to have a bad attitude just arguing out of town, not listening, now I can listen a little better. I think I'm ready to go home, see, it's going to be different when I get on the same friends out there and they're still doing the same thing. They're still my friends, but I just got to be more in my game, my basketball games, staying sports, and my school work, and stuff like that. I gotta be more to myself and my family. Justin Long also lives at the Fremont home. Like Michael, he was sent there after getting in trouble with the law and violating his probation. He says a home with his teaching parents has been a good environment for him and has helped

him with his disciplinary problems. He says he's also been able to refocus on his school work. Basically what got me in trouble was not going to school when I was under 16. Now, I'm making good grades in school, I go to school, I'm doing school, and I think I'll keep right on to doing school and I get up and finish high school. Long as I'm going to school, I think I can stay out of trouble. I know I can't. Like Michael, Justin is also looking forward to going back home to his mom. Unlike those who lived at the Methodist home when it was an orphanage, today's youth don't see the home or the children there in quite the same way. I don't really view them as a family, I view them as friends that I can go to when doing a weekday. That's why I view them as friends. The Methodist home is continuing to change its focus from solely rearing kids to reuniting them with their families or finding them new homes. We have become an adoption agency, the Methodist home for children, so that when we find that the family cannot be reunited, and that the court has decided to terminate the parental

rights. The child is then adoptable, we work very hard to find an adoptive family for that child. Jaffley says as the home moves towards a new century, its ultimate goal is not just reuniting families, but keeping them together. As the Methodist home heads towards a new century, they're planning to focus more on intervention programs aimed at keeping families together. Next year, the home plans to build a child and family enrichment center to provide early childhood care and intervention programs. A new exhibit recently opened at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham, it's the Magic Wings Butterfly House, and it's the only butterfly conservatory in North Carolina. Producer Carolyn Papa takes us to this tropical paradise. We're getting ready to enter the Magic Wings Tropical Conservatory here, and if you notice

the doors, we have vegetables at each entrance and exit to make sure that the butterflies don't get out of the butterfly house. We wait for the door to close before we walk into the door that enters, and you'll see some air, or hear some air come out and feel it, that's to keep the butterflies away from the entrance. See, and now we're in the butterfly house. A visit to the Magic Wings Butterfly House at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham is more than a lesson in botany and biology. It's a journey to a tropical landscape filled with vibrant butterflies and fragrant plants. The three-story glass structure is home to more than 1,000 butterflies and hundreds of plants. Visitors to the museum include almost 100,000 school children from 71 counties in North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina.

The butterfly conservatory is not just for school groups. We have all types of visitors from all ages and backgrounds. One thing about butterflies is that they're universal. We have found that all ages love the butterflies, and I think we're tapping into a new audience here. The Magic Wings Butterfly House completes the first phase of BioQuest, the museum's outdoor expansion project. BioQuest will feature exhibits, encouraging visitors to experience hands-on science and an outdoor atmosphere. The purpose of BioQuest is to connect people with nature and animals in an interactive setting. The Magic Wings Butterfly House fits in with our mission, which is to create good experience for our visitors. When you come into Magic Wings, you can get what you want to out of the experience. You can see butterflies, immersed. It's kind of a full immersion exhibit is what we like to call it. You can see butterflies right in your, in front of you, and you can see them interacting in an environment that you would never see, a tropical environment that you would never

see in this area. Because the butterflies are tropical creatures, they are purchased by the museum from butterfly farmers in Africa, Asia, Central, and South America. The process is closely regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The museum has permits to import 200 species of butterflies, and the museum must ensure that no butterflies escape from the conservatory or reproduce, because no one is quite sure what they would do in this environment. At any one time we hope to have about a thousand, and we have about 50 species lying around. That's a pretty one, how do you think? This is like the perfect home for us, 80% humidity and 80% for 80 degrees, and just, you know, the perfect environment for butterflies plants and pests. And while keeping the plants healthy for the butterflies is time consuming, so is dealing with the 700 new butterfly chrysalises arriving each week. Posting what we call is putting the pup up in the window, and then taking out ones that

have emerged, and that happens almost all day long, because when you go out to do it, everybody gathers around. It feels like a rainforest in here. The most common question is how long do butterflies live? Each type of diet determines the butterflies lifespan, too. The nectar feeders, it's basically a junk food diet, sugar water, so they live for only like a week to four weeks, where the fermenting fruit feeders feed on that, and there's more amino acids, so they can live up to three months. And then the butterflies that feed on nectar and pollen, it's just a small group. The pollen gives them even more amino acids to live up to six to nine months. And there are plenty of nectar sources for the butterflies to feed on, and even some fruit fit for humans. It's called a Jabba Takaba, and it's supposedly Brazil's most popular fruit that they eat there.

But the insides and the skin's kind of sour kind of peppery than the seed you can spit out, and hopefully a trio grow. The conservatory is filled with such exotic plants, including some rare species. An observant visitor might notice a color scheme among the flowers. Well, lots of tropical butterflies like reds and oranges, and if you see the common theme in here is those two colors for nectar sources, and then there's variations often to a lavender, seems to be, lavender, who seems to be their second group. But there's no denying the best part of magic wings is being so close to the butterflies that you can reach out and touch them. Just make sure you don't touch the wings. No touching. Well, we're trained to touch them, but it's a proper way to handle butterflies. I think they're like having an animal so close to them, such as the butterfly, and being able to sometimes the butterflies land on them, and I think they enjoy that the most. What we're trying to do here besides the butterflies is show a lot of the neat plants that come

from the tropics and educate the public on why the tropics are so important, and each plant in here has a story like this that you can go on, and hopefully people are excited about the butterflies, but the extra bonus is learning about tropical plants. How did they learn to appreciate the plants and the life around them, and they learn more about metamorphosis, the life cycle of the butterfly, and how it interacts with nature, how nature is needed to support animals and butterflies, and just to gain an appreciation of that beauty. With funding provided by the National Science Foundation, the Museum of Life and Sciences partnering with other institutions to develop and test interactive exhibits. And that's all we've got time for tonight, have a wonderful weekend, and we'll see you back here on Monday. Good night, everyone.