The UNC System has officially adopted a policy to force all state university professors to publicly post their syllabi.

System President Peter Hans approved the policy measure Friday evening, which didn’t require a vote from the UNC Board of Governors. The new regulation was posted on the System’s website without a public announcement and while all campuses are on winter break.

The decision puts North Carolina in league with other Southern states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas; two of which legislatively mandate syllabi to be public records.

The UNC System’s new syllabi policy not only requires the documents to be public records, but universities must also create a “readily searchable online platform” to display them.

All syllabi must include learning outcomes, a grading scale, and all course materials students are required to buy. Professors must also include a statement saying their courses engage in “diverse scholarly perspectives” and that accompanying readings are not endorsements. They are, however, allowed to leave out when a class is scheduled and what building it will be held in.

This policy goes into effect on Jan. 15, but universities aren’t required to publicly post syllabi or offer the online platform until fall 2026.

Hans had already announced his decision to make syllabi public records a week in advance through an op-ed in the News & Observer. He said the move would provide greater transparency for students and the general public, as well as clear up any confusion among the 16-university System.

Before now, a spokesperson told WUNC that the syllabus regulations were a “campus level issue” that fell outside of its open records policy. That campus autonomy assessment began to shift after conservative groups started making syllabi requests – and universities reached opposing decisions on how to fulfill them.

Earlier this year, UNC-Chapel Hill sided with faculty, deciding that course materials belong to them and are protected by intellectual property rights. UNC Greensboro, however, made faculty turn in all of their syllabi to fulfill any records requests.

“Having a consistent rule on syllabi transparency, instead of 16 campuses coming up with different rules, helps ensure that everyone is on the same page and similarly committed heading into each new semester,” Hans said in the op-ed.

Still, faculty members from across the UNC System tried to convince Hans to change his mind before his decision was finalized.

About a dozen attempted to deliver a petition to his office days after the op-ed. More than 2,800 faculty, staff, students, and other campus community members signed the document – demanding Hans protect academic freedom.

One of those signatories is Michael Palm, the president of UNC-Chapel Hill’s AAUP Chapter. He spoke to WUNC shortly before the petition drop-off.

“Transparency, accountability accessibility – these are important aspects of a public university system, but that’s not what this is about,” Palm said. “This is about capitulating to pressure at the state level and at the federal level to scrutinize faculty and intimidate faculty who are teaching unpopular subjects right now.”

A public records request from The Oversight Project put UNC-Chapel Hill at the epicenter of the syllabi public records debate in North Carolina this summer.

The organization, which is a spin-off of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, requested course materials from 74 UNC-Chapel Hill classes. This included syllabi, lecture slides, and presentation materials that contained words like diversity, equity, and inclusion; LGBTQ+; and systems of oppression.

Mike Howell, The Oversight Project’s president, told WUNC in September that his goal is to ultimately get DEI teachings or what he calls “garbage out of colleges and universities.”

“One of the ends will be the public can scrutinize whether their taxpayer dollars are going toward promulgating hard-left, Marxists, racist teachings at public universities,” Howell said. “I think there’s a lot of people in North Carolina and across the country that would take issue to that.”

Faculty say pressure from outside forces is why they petitioned Hans to protect their rights to choose how and when to disseminate syllabi.

“There are people who do not have good intentions or do not have productive or scholarly or educational desires when looking at syllabi,” said Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, a history professor at NC State. “They’re more interested in attacking faculty and more so attacking ideas that maybe they have not fully engaged with themselves.”

In his op-ed, Hans said the UNC System will do everything it can to “safeguard faculty and staff who may be subject to threats or intimidation simply for doing their jobs.”

Hans has yet to share details about what those measures will look like, and turned down a request from WUNC for an interview to explain what safety measures the UNC System may enact.

WUNC partners with Open Campus and NC Local on higher education coverage.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – Since the Declaration of Independence was signed nearly 250 years ago, maps have played an important role in the development of our country, including here in North Carolina.

But interestingly enough, some of the most important maps in North Carolina weren’t about roads or how to get around.

If you were to visit Chuck Ketchie’s home in Charlotte, you would find it filled with maps…thousands of them.

When asked why he was so fascinated with maps, he said he had to credit his father, who loved history.

Ketchie’s collection includes maps of North Carolina, maps of grist mills, terrain, cities, and towns. He has original maps of just about everything in North Carolina dating back to the 1600s.

“And what they do is they pinpoint the exact location of all the place names in the history of North Carolina,” said Ketchie. “The towns, the communities, post office, churches, cemeteries, mountains, streams, all the place names that have ever been on a map throughout North Carolina history, going back 17 hundred years, are now put on a scaled county map.”

Maps have changed considerably over time. They’re much more detailed now thanks to technology and updated mapping systems. Compare that to the 1700s when the Battle of Kings Mountain was fought. The battle helped turn the tide of the Revolutionary War.

But the map that was used by both sides in the conflict was not as detailed as you might expect, according to Ketchie.

“So what they were looking for with those were, I think, from my military friend, Tom, Waypoints, where the creek, where the fords were, I mean, that was the most important things for those maps, where they could cross the major rivers at, or were strategic locations looking for mills, that early map that I said had 30 mills on it,” Ketchie said. “So they would notice that, and that would be a strategic item possibly, you know, during that war for both sides.”

Maps played an important role in the early development of North Carolina, but not necessarily because of the routes and roadways they showed.

“Those would be county soil maps that were done between 1900 and 1920 by the state of North Carolina to promote our agriculture,” Ketchie said.

In order to attract more people and business to North Carolina, the state used maps to show potential farmers what good soil was available and where.

These older maps are a wonderful window into the history and growth in the state.

“So for historians doing research on their family and they can’t find the town that their grandfather or grandma was born in, it might have changed names or it might have gone away,” Ketchie said. “A lot of towns have gone away. When the post office went through their cleaning period, 1903 was one, a lot of communities disappeared because that was their only mark on the map was a post office, basically.”

When you look at early maps of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, it makes you appreciate just how much the city and county have grown over the years.

“The earliest map from the Spratt collection is 1872,” Ketchie said. “And that’s the William Springs property that went from Providence, Providence Road to Providence, Sharon Amity.”

And a fun fact, Ketchie said most of these early maps were drawn by members of one family.

“Now the Spratts were the official county surveyors in Mecklenburg County from around 1920 up until 1970 when they got rid of the position of official county surveyor,” Ketchie said.

One other aspect beyond what the maps show, and they certainly show a lot, is simply the fact that they are works of art.

“The ones in the 20s, or I mean, they were done on a starched linen paper, which is a unique paper. And these things are 100 years old,” Ketchie said. “It looks like they were done yesterday. So the craftsmanship, you know, some of them have a million lines meeting, and there’s not one. These are hand-drawn maps.”

Ketchie is now in the process of digitizing all those maps and indexing each little nook and cranny on them.

It’s a huge project, but a labor of love for Ketchie, who majored in geography in college.

He’s a printer by trade, and all this map stuff is actually a hobby for him.

Copyright 2025 WBTV. All rights reserved.

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. (WBTV) – President Donald Trump is coming to North Carolina on Friday.

Trump will give remarks around 9 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 19, at the Rocky Mount Events Center along Northeast Main Street in Rocky Mount.

–> Also read: North Carolina bar continues selling Sycamore beer, but condemns child rape allegations against co-owner

Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Michael Whatley confirmed Trump’s visit, though it wasn’t immediately clear what the President would be discussing.

Guest registration for the President’s visit can be accessed at this link.

Copyright 2025 WBTV. All rights reserved.