Topping Out the New Bioinformatics Building

Topping Out the New Bioinformatics Building (Photo: Wade Bruton)

On Thursday ( 7/17/08 ) was the topping out ceremony for the new bioinformatics building located at UNC Charlotte’s CRI campus. As one of the speakers at the event put it ‘the 20th century was about electronics, the 21st century will be about bioinformatics.’ I’m glad to see that Charlotte has the foresight to begin working on this now, but I wouldn’t expect anything less. I also think there’s a great opportunity for collaboration on bioinformatics between the College of Computing and Informatics and the College of Engineering.

A topping out ceremony is a Scandinavian tradition where the last beam is ceremonially lifted into place with an evergreen tree sitting atop.

Testing out ping.fm to update all my social status services

ITS Talks with UNCG About Gmail

The new CIO, Jay Dominick, keeps his own blog. The most recent entry is about their trip to UNCG to find out more about Gmail. As you know Gmail is something that SGA has been working on and something I’m personally very excited about.

You can view Jay Dominick’s blog post at this link:

http://cio.uncc.edu/?p=25

Trustees’ Discuss Football

As I feared cost was the only consideration at the trustees’ discussion of football today. I don’t want to trivialize the importance of how much football will cost students and the university, but there’s much more to this equation that was never talked about. If we’re going to give this thing its due diligence at some point we have to discuss the intangibles of football. The things that count but can’t be counted; quality of student life, connections to alumni, connections to the community, national recognition, etc.

I’m also worried that the chancellor’s research overshadowed the research of the Football Feasibility Committee. There’s already been a committee to look at the whole picture of football and make a recommendation. But that report seems to be nearly forgotten about.

We still have a lot of work to do, and it’s very hard to read whether a majority of the trustees are for or against football so these next few meetings are going to make or break things.

Decisions can’t be made based purely on emotion, but I don’t think they can be made based purely on whether it makes perfect fiscal sense, and I’m an economics major. I just hope that at some point the intangibles of football are given their fair weight.

Update: Charlotte Football

There seem to be a lot of rumors flying around about football at Charlotte so I wanted to clear up a few of them. As far as the time line goes, the chancellor will present his research to the trustees on Thursday (6/04/08), and we will be discussing it in further detail. The chancellor will then make a recommendation to the Board of Trustees who will make a decision probably at the September board meeting. If the BOT recommends football we will have to ask the state to waive the tuition and fee cap so that we would be able to gradually instate the approximately $300 additional fee for football. Recently a received a letter regarding football from the new president of ASG, T. Greg Doucette. He fairly well summarized the arguments against football, which shows that he’s been paying attention to the issue and done his homework. You can read his letter and my response here:

Letter from T. Greg Doucette

Response from Tim Ernst

Check back soon because I’ll be sure and write a post about how the Board of Trustees meeting goes tomorrow.

Your New 49er President!

Vice President Jacob Pierce (left) and President Tim Ernst (right) in the SGA office after winning the election.

As the new Student Body President at UNC Charlotte I thought I would take a minute to introduce myself and give some background information;

I’m a senior Economics major from Fullerton, CA. This will be my third year in SGA. My first year I was a senator for the Belk College of Business, and last year I was the Student Body Vice President. I’ve also been involved in other areas around campus. I’ve been an Emerging Leader, an RA, an Alumni Ambassador, a Leadershape graduate, and an officer in the Young Entrepreneurs Association.

I just wanted to thank everyone who voted for me and those that helped with the campaign. This next year is going to be a very pivotal one, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to represent students in those decisions. This blog is an excellent form of communication but if you’d ever like to get a hold of me please don’t hesitate to e-mail me at sbpres@uncc.edu, call me at 704.687.4607, or feel free to drop by the office in Cone 369A. Go NINERS!

Ritchie-Ernst Administration Releases Final Report

Dear UNC Charlotte Friends and Family,

I have had an amazing
year working with you while we built a stronger community on UNC
Charlotte’s campus and in the city of Charlotte. Now that my time as
Student Body President is over, I look back on the year as being
consistently rewarding and exhilarating. We have worked together as an
organization to compile our work this past year in the SGA 2008 Final
Report available online at http://sga.uncc.edu/08finalreport. I hope that you will find some time to review the many remarkable things that this group of students have accomplished.

After I complete the 2nd summer of my work at Pisgah Astronomical
Research Institute I will be back on campus in the fall to finish my
dual-degree program receiving a BS Electrical Engineering and BS
Physics while hopefully working as an intern in the Charlotte area (not
sure where yet) before graduating in December 2008. I aim to begin
graduate school soon after that either abroad or domestically.

Even though I am now retired from the Student Government
Association at UNC Charlotte, I will remain an active and integrated
member of the Charlotte community. I’m sure you will see me several
times throughout the coming year in that role.

I could not be more excited about the prospect of Tim Ernst leading
SGA to future goals and aspirations during 2008 and 2009. Knowing that
I am leaving the organization in good hands gives me a lot of
confidence in the future of Charlotte 49er student leadership.

As of today, the email address of sbpres@uncc.edu, the http://your49erpresident.com blog
and the Student Body President’s office belong entirely to Mr. Ernst as
he takes on all the responsibilities of being “the prez”.

For the future, please do not hesitate to contact me via my personal blog at http://jritch.net
and over the phone at 7043235977. I would welcome the opportunity to
work with you again on projects to improve the Charlotte community.

Thank you once again.

Sincerely,

Justin Ritchie

Front Entrance Construction Progressing Quickly

The work on UNC Charlotte’s new front entrance is moving fast. Current plans include an aggressive time line that will hopefully allow two-way traffic before graduation on May 10th. As you can see from the photo below, the roundabout is already complete and the traffic pattern for the new entrance is ready to go.