Ahalt's appointment is effective Sept. 28. He also will hold a tenured faculty position in the university's department of computer science.
Ahalt, a native of Virginia, comes to RENCI from Ohio State University, where he led the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) for six years and held a faculty position in Ohio State University's department of electrical and computer engineering for 22 years.
"RENCI is positioned to build fruitful partnerships that span campuses and research domains, academia, business and government," Ahalt said. "I look forward to bringing together the intellectual strength of our universities and RENCI's advanced technology infrastructure to solve critical problems and to help build a robust North Carolina knowledge economy."
Founded in 2004 as a major collaboration of Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill, N.C. State University and the state of North Carolina, RENCI is a statewide virtual organization.
Ibiblio part of Open Source
CHAPEL HILL -- Ibiblio, a conservancy of freely available information on the Internet that is based at UNC, is a founding member of the new group Open Source for America.
The group represents a cross-section of more than 50 companies, universities, communities and individuals that aim to promote use of open-source technology by the federal government. Open Source holds that government can and should become more transparent, participatory, secure and efficient by using open-source software.
The term "open source" refers to software that is distributed with its source code, so that user organizations and vendors can modify it for their own purposes. Most open-source licenses allow the software to be redistributed without restriction under the same terms of the license.
For more information, visit www.opensource.org.
Ibiblio, accessed at www.ibiblio.org, was one of the world's first Web sites and is the largest collection of collections on the Internet. It is supported by UNC's School of Information and Library Science and School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
"We're delighted to help explain and promote the rewards and benefits of open sources to the government sector," said Paul Jones, director of ibiblio and clinical associate professor at both schools. "Open code is a giant step toward providing the kind of transparency and accountability that democracies require."
Event welcomes American Indians
CHAPEL HILL -- Music and information about American Indian student organizations at UNC will be part of a welcome event on campus beginning at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
The UNC American Indian Center will host the event, a Welcome Extravaganza for the Carolina American Indian Community & Friends, on the lawn of Abernethy Hall at South Columbia Street and Cameron Avenue.
The public, including American Indians from the surrounding area, are invited.
Live music and dancing will be performed by drum groups and intertribal dancers. The event is part of a Week of Welcome at Carolina to start the fall semester.
The student groups Carolina Indian Circle, First Nations Graduate Circle, Native American Law Students Association, Native Health Initiative, Alpha Pi Omega Sorority Inc., Phi Sigma Nu Native American Fraternity Inc. and American Indian Science & Engineering Society will provide information about their activities.
Also represented will be the UNC offices of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs and of Student Academic Counseling.
These units and the American Indian Center are sponsoring the event. For more information, contact Brandi Brooks at (919) 843-4189 or brandi_brooks@unc.edu.
Kell to talk on Baptists, race
CHAPEL HILL -- Communication professor Carl Kell from Western Kentucky University will discuss Southern Baptists and race relations at 4 p.m. Sept. 1 in the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on Stadium Drive at UNC.
The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845 in Augusta, Ga., in part as a response to slavery and as an assertion of fundamental, conservative rhetoric about the Trinity.
Kell holds that in recent years, the convention has expressed shame for earlier positions on race and Holy Scripture. The convention and the moderate Baptist community have embraced their brothers and sisters in the African American community, but there remains an uneasy peace in matters of race and religion, he says.
Kell's talk, "Build the Wall ... Save the Castle: Southern Baptists and Race Relations," examines and evaluates rhetoric on both sides of the issue.
For more information, call the Center for the Study of the American South at (919) 962-5665.
