Editorial: C.D. Spangler's priorities need to be emulated today
Friday, July 27, 2018 -- C.D. Spangler's life, most particularly the 11 years of it he spent as president of the UNC system, offers those who serve that system today with the critical qualifications and priorities for successful service.
Posted — UpdatedC.D. Spangler’s life, most particularly the 11 years of it he spent as president of the University of North Carolina system, offers those who serve that system today with the critical qualifications and priorities for successful service.
He lived and believed that:
- Public education is THE key to improving the lives of all citizens and making North Carolina a better place to live.
- ALL North Carolinians must have REAL access to higher education.
- Service to the state came from his love of North Carolina and all of the people in it.
The current Board of Governors and system president would do well to make those their primary priorities to emulate.
More so, Spangler didn't need the work. He was one of the wealthiest people in the nation. Why would he want: a government job; to deal with a board of governors not of his choosing; to wrangle with 180 state legislators who controlled his budget and believed they knew best how to run things; to oversee 17 campuses with 225,000 students along with 44,000 faculty and staff spread across every region of the state?
He did it because it was in his soul to uplift others.
At a time when many responsible community leaders worked to denigrate public education, Spangler sent his children to public schools in Charlotte and served on the local board of education. It was amid the 1970s turmoil over busing students to support integration and he worked to bring a very divided community together and improve the quality of its schools.
Gov. Jim Hunt appointed Spangler Chairman of the state Board of Education, where he served from 1982 to 1986, fostering significant statewide improvements in education quality and teacher pay.
Spangler would say leading the UNC system was the best job in the world, recalled Wyndham Robertson, who was the system’s first female vice president. It was Spangler who convinced Robertson, a Salisbury native, to leave her job as a publishing executive in New York City to work for the university system.
During his tenure the UNC system instituted minimum admissions standards and other intercollegiate athletic reforms – some growing out of the 1989 scandal involving academic abuses connected with N.C. State University’s basketball program.
Spangler also made a point to connect with students. His habit of taking lunch at the Lenoir dining hall on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus inspired the staff there to name a salad in his honor.
In 1986, many focused on the expectation that Spangler would bring a nuts-and-bolts business sense to leadership of the state's universities. North Carolina was fortunate to get much more.
His legacy demonstrates for leaders now and those in generations to come, that it is good business to love your state. And that an accessible high-quality public education is the key to uplifting all of its citizens.
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