Your Charlotte 49er President

Topping Out the New Bioinformatics Building

timernst — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:13:29 +0000

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.

jritch — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:32:46 +0000

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

ITS Talks with UNCG About Gmail

timernst — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:43:13 +0000

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

timernst — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:46:14 +0000

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

timernst — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:56:18 +0000

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!

timernst — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:44:50 +0000

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

jritch — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:36:11 +0000

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

jritch — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:08:22 +0000

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.

April 2008 Update on Football at UNC Charlotte

jritch — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:05:16 +0000

Charlotte 49er Students,

I am writing today to update you on football at UNC Charlotte as of April 13th, 2008. The Chancellor appointed a Football Feasibility Committee last February after you turned out in force, voting in the Spring 2007 SGA football poll to say that you wanted football and that you wanted to pay for it. The Football Feasibility committee reported back in February 2008 with a unanimous recommendation to kickoff in 2012.

Now the Chancellor is exploring the topic even deeper and will discuss some of his findings to the UNC Charlotte Board of Trustees in June and will likely present his yes or no decision at the September 18th Board of Trustees meeting. After seeing some of his initial work, he is delving into the topic and exploring how football has been implemented at other schools to ensure that a permanent decision on adding football will be a success. Any Charlotte football program may lose money on the balance sheet for a long time but I think Chancellor Dubois understands that we would lose that money to gain the community which a shared experience on a Saturday afternoon between 20,000 49er fans can be.

The Athletic Department has engaged leaders in the community and its own staff in generating plans on how to deal with a yes-to-football/no-to-football decision by the Chancellor and I have been impressed by their diligence on the issue.

A national football stadium consulting firm recently took a look at Memorial Stadium and determined that the upgrades would be expensive and ineffective for the future. Likely our best option is to upgrade the Belk Track facility as any long-term commitment to that facility would benefit the soccer programs and the track team. Even successful Division 1AA programs like App St. play football on a field with a track running around it.

Clearly these are exciting times for Niner Nation so stay posted for the latest developments.

According to the Chancellor’s timeline, we’ll know the final decision on Charlotte 49er football by the 3rd week of September, 2008.

Go Niners!

Cordially,

Justin Ritchie

Student Body President

Students Really Do Use Benches

jritch — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:01:09 +0000

Recently benches were placed in the Education/Woodward Hall/Health and Human Services Quad (from now on referred to as the Student Union Quad) and the area has finally taken shape as a quality spot on campus.

As you can see from the photo above, students use the benches. However, often overlooked is the contribution that these benches have on the student experience. UNC Charlotte is frequently classified as a “commuter school” even though more the 50% of our students live within one mile of the campus, as much as any other traditional university in the state. Part of the reason we have the commuter school stigma is that there aren’t any real areas on campus that students hang out in. Benches give students a place to stay between and before classes, encouraging more students to hang out in the area.

This not only plays into campus safety, because the more students in an area decreases the likelihood of criminal activity, but it also gives a sense of community because people have a place to exchange ideas.

Sadly, the way our campus is set up, even if we get rid of the stigmas of a commuter school by adding football, having more residents, gaining a rec center and moving into the student union, we’ll still have a commuter feel. Why?

The campus is set up just like a suburban/urban environment that is the bane of smart growth and development.

On the outer parts of the campus are the residence halls while the inner portions of the campus contain all of the classroom buildings. Thus, students living on campus perpetually must “commute” by walking which can take just as long as students that have to drive in and park.

Hopefully our master planners will consider this in future recommendations and will think about replacing the Denny building with a future residence hall. Think of the different atmosphere our campus would have if there were 300-400 students always near the academic buildings. We would have a much more welcoming atmosphere and people would hang out, starting the avalanche effect… leading towards more students hanging out.

It would be great!