UNC Academic Department In Turmoil

An academic department at UNC-Chapel Hill is under fire after a scathing internal report discovered numerous no-show classes and grade changes from 2007 to 2009.

Dave DeWitt: Thousands of students take classes every year in the African and Afro-American Studies Department. The vast majority of those classes are like any other at UNC. But in more than 50 of them, offered in the summers between 2007 and 2009, grades were changed, students never met for class, and faculty did not adequately oversee the courses.

The department chair, Julius Nyang'Oro, was listed as the instructor for 43 of the classes. He says a former department manager, Debbie Crowder, may have been responsible for creating the courses and changing grades. The irregularities stopped upon her retirement in 2009. She did not cooperate with the internal investigation.

Nyang'Oro has announced his retirement in the wake of the report. Eunice Sahle was named the new chair of the department in December.