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The Commission recommended that the existing community colleges in Charlotte, Wilmington, and Asheville be expanded to four-year state supported colleges - also non-resident - in order to meet the needs for a more comprehensive education required in these centers of population.

As they faced the prospect of developing four-year colleges, the cities of Asheville, Charlotte, and Wilmington requested affiliation with the University of North Carolina and petitions were filed with the Board of Trustees of the University asking that the University take over the community colleges in these cities and expand them as new campuses of the University.

The Commission also recommended that the responsibilities of the University be defined so that its place in the state system of higher education would be clearly identified.

The problems presented by these petitions and the other recommendations of the Carlyle Commission led the Trustees of the University to request a special committee of Trustees of the University to be appointed by the Governor to study the wisdom of expanding the University to include the proposed new campuses and to consider the steps the University should take to meet the new responsibilities imposed by the recommendations of the Carlyle Commission.

The Work of the Special Committee of the Board of Trustees

On July 23, 1962, Governor Sanford appointed eleven members of the Board of Trustees to a Special Committee and requested them to study proposals which had been advanced for the establishment of additional campuses of the University in the state. The Governor also directed the committee to study other questions pertaining to the future of the University, and he referred expressly to the improvement of the educational facilities of the three existing campuses.

The appointment of the committee of trustees came just at the time when the Governor's Commission on Education Beyond the High School was completing its study and announcing its recommendations. It was evident that in carrying out its study the Special Committee should pay careful attention to the broad objectives underlying these recommendations and project the future of the University as a part of the total system of higher education which they envisioned.

The fact that members of the University administration and the Board of Trustees had taken an active part in the work of the Governor's Commission was a great advantage in accomplishing this purpose. Also, it was incumbent upon the Special Committee to assist the Board of Trustees to speak in its own right for the University and formulate a sound plan of action according to its own appraisal of future needs of the state and the future interest of the University.

The committee members realized from the outset that they confronted a task of great significance for the University. Not since the Act of Consolidation had there been such a compelling combination of forces for change in institutional arrangements for higher education. The action taken a generation ago contemplated the development in North Carolina of one eminent state university by combining three existing state institutions under one board of trustees and one president - all dedicated to one transcendent educational purpose and sustained by one body of popular support. That was in the depths of an economic depression. Now in a time of economic growth and prosperity new reasons proclaim the urgency of new vision. We felt that nothing less than a new assessment of the University mission and a positive assertion of the best means of advancing its purposes would answer the Governor's assignment.

Given a charge of such importance for the future of the state, the Committee undertook to acquaint itself with the basic concept and purpose of universities. And particularly it re-examined the foundations of the fruitful partnership between the state and the state university in North Carolina. In all of this, the Committee felt that it could be guided by no surer standard