UNC Provost Jim Dean, who helped lead the campus through the recent student athlete literacy scandal, will present suggestions to University leaders Wednesday that could be used as a framework for measuring Chapel Hill’s academic status.

“The Carolina Metrics Project” seeks to build a set of guidelines to measure academic performance and set targets for improvement. Dean will deliver the presentation during a Board of Trustees University Affairs Committee meeting.

This comes in the wake of the academic and athletic controversies that have haunted the University for more than three years. Those controversies continued in early January when former UNC athletic tutor, Mary Willingham, told CNN that a majority of Carolina’s basketball and football student-athletes which she studied read at a level no higher than the eighth grade.

Following the release of that article and the resulting media super storm, University leaders went into defense mode, refuting Willingham’s claims.

UNC has since changed its sentiments slightly, switching from defense to acceptance. At a meeting of the Board of Trustees in late January, Folt said the University takes responsibility for past misdeeds regarding academic oversight, including the fraudulent classes within UNC’s African Studies Department. But she also said she supports UNC’s current course of action to ensure those misdeeds don’t recur in the future.

In February, UNC retained lawyer and veteran of the U.S. Justice Department, Kenneth Wainstein, to address “any questions left unanswered” from previous reviews of course irregularities in the African Studies Department.

UNC has also continued to address the issues surrounding academics and athletics internally. That includes a working group led by Dean and Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham.

The University Affairs Committee meets from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Wednesday at the Carolina Inn.

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