UNC Faculty Chair Stepping Down

The chair of the faculty at UNC is stepping down from that role.

Leslie Parise wrote in a letter to the faculty on Monday that she would be vacating her role as faculty chair at the end of the semester.

“In balancing the demands of this position with those of chairing my home department and running a research lab,” Parise wrote, “it has become apparent that I will not be able to do justice to all these efforts in the coming year.”

Parise was elected to the three-year term as chair in 2017. She succeeded Bruce Cairns, who is the director of the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center in addition to being a professor in the UNC School of Medicine.

Parise is also a professor in the medical school and chairs the department of biophysics and biochemistry.

“This decision was not easy because of my desire to continue working on the faculty’s behalf, particularly given the recent transitions in senior leadership,” she wrote Monday. “However, I also felt it was important to be realistic about the time I could devote, and to provide an appropriate time line for one of our many talented colleagues to take the helm as we move forward.”

Parise’s decision to step down comes amidst turnover for the UNC – Chapel Hill campus administration and UNC System leadership. Margaret Spellings was replaced as system president by William Roper – former dean of the UNC School of Medicine – earlier this year. Former UNC – Chapel Hill chancellor Carol Folt announced in mid-January she would be resigning at the end of the semester. The UNC System Board of Governors accelerated that timeline to the end of January after Folt ordered the removal of the remaining base of the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam from the Chapel Hill campus. Folt has since been named the next president of the University of Southern California.

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC Kevin Guskiewicz is serving as the interim chancellor after Folt’s departure.

Multiple high-level administrators have left UNC – Chapel Hill in recent months, including former vice chancellor for student affairs Winston Crisp and university legal counsel Mark Merritt.

An interim faculty chair will be appointed by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee, per faculty code, according to Parise’s letter.

You can read her full letter here.

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