Molly Corbett Broad, president of the University of North Carolina system, said last week that her institution will have to adopt new tactics to deal with "the tidal wave of students heading our way."

She talked about the future of North Carolina education at Wednesday’s meeting of the Southern Pines Kiwanis Club.

The theme of Broad’s presentation was "The Challenge of Change," and the biggest change she wants to make is to put North Carolina’s public school system at the top of the national heap by 2010. But in order to change the state’s academic standing, Broad said, it’s going to take new teachers — lots of new teachers.

"We haven’t enjoyed the best schools in the past," said Broad. "But the University of North Carolina system has pledged to do its best to improve the state’s schools. We’re going to need 80,000 more teachers to make it happen. That’s a number equal to the total number of teachers in the North Carolina public school system today."

Broad emphasized that improving the state’s public schools is a priority because of the relationship between public schools and higher education. She said that there is an "interlocking box" made up of the following requirements: graduating qualified high school students, hiring qualified teachers, graduating qualified teachers, and admitting qualified students to the university system.

Broad also pointed to the growing population trends in the "New South." She pointed out that within the next 10 years, 40,000 to 50,000 more students would be enrolling in the state’s university system.

"A tidal wave of students is heading our way," said Broad. "This will require us to adopt new strategies such as distance learning for areas where there isn’t a state university campus."

And Broad told the audience that one factor making the population boom even more difficult for the university system is the fact that the system has had to handle more and more students with less and less of the state budgetary pie. She produced statistics showing that in 1986, the university system had an enrollment of 129,800 students and received 17.4 percent of the state’s general fund. However, UNC has a projected enrollment of 202,543 in the year 2008 and is expected to receive approximately 13 percent of the state’s budget.

Broad said the projected budget and enrollment figures have forced the university system to improve its efficiency. So instead of spending the projected $6.9 billion the university system says it will need to accommodate the student influx on new buildings, the UNC system plans to refurbish as many old buildings as possible.

Unfortunately, in an increasingly technical age, it’s the most technical buildings — the laboratories — that need the most refurbishing.

"We have a lot of buildings in serious need of repair," said Broad. "And that’s most evident in our laboratories. We must have labs that will make it possible for students to take advantage of the new technologies."

Despite the outdated labs, Broad told the audience that North Carolina has managed to climb from a ranking of seventh in the nation in volume of research in the 1980s to the lofty position of third nationally — just behind the university systems of California and Texas.

She added that the UNC system brought in approximately $560 million last year in research done for private industry and the federal government.

"This has the potential to make North Carolina a major player in the biotech field," added Broad. "We’re not that far away from the complete decoding of human DNA — genomic science. We have an extraordinary potential in genomic science at UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina State."

In a less futuristic vein, Broad told The Pilot that the search for a new chancellor to replace the deceased Michael Hooker at UNC-Chapel Hill has just begun in earnest.

"We recently wrote a leadership description of the job and are just now advertising the position," said Broad. "I’m sure there will be an open hearing when serious candidates are considered, but the search committee is still wrestling with whether they want to make the names of all candidates public.

"And even though I will be consulted before a hiring decision is made, the final decision will be, ultimately, in the hands of the UNC Chapel Hill search committee."