PASS/FAIL.

• Author: Gray, Tim

Molly Broad has scored high marks as the UNC system's CEO.

Now she faces her biggest test -- getting graded by the voters.

The Pledge of Allegiance has been recited. My Country 'Tis of Thee sung. A prayer offered. A slim, blond high-school student, winner of a county Shakespeare competition, has performed a monologue from Henry VIII, dropping to her knee to plead with a startled "Henry" in the front row. Hearing aids have been turned up, and errant strands of white hair brushed back across liver-spotted scalps. Now roughly 150 members of the Kiwanis Club of Greens-boro are on their feet, clutching worn copies of the Songs of Kiwanis booklet. Clanging notes from a battered piano rattle off the bare beige walls and terrazzo floor.

"Remember me to Herald Square.

Tell all the folk on 42nd Street

That I will soon be there.

Whisper of how I'm yearning

To mingle with the old-time throng.

Give my regards to old Broadway ..."

Molly Broad, the 59-year-old president of the 16-campus University of North Carolina system, stands on the dais, singing along. After all, it's her introduction. As the emcee announced, "I was looking for a song to honor our guest, and this was closest thing I could come up with." Now it's her turn to speak. "I want to talk to you about the challenges the University of North Carolina -- your university -- faces," she begins. As usual, she's perfectly put together, conservatively but stylishly dressed. Charcoal suit, black blouse, black pumps. Her hair is a meringue of dark brown, highlighted at the tips. As is her habit, she uses PowerPoint slides, running through colorful bar charts and pie charts, even a blowup of a New Yorker cartoon. But they're just filigrees. What Broad needs is money. And she wants the Kiwanians, and every other Tar Heel taxpayer, to cough it up. "We've seen a steady decline in the portion of state resources going to support your university," she says. "It's not feasible for your univ ersity to support the kind of increases in enrollment we expect unless resources are increased."

Since becoming president of the university system in 1997, Broad has viewed speaking to Kiwanis and Rotary dubs and other civic groups as part of her job. Ever the politician, she even claims to enjoy it -- "I draw energy from those experiences." But there's more reason than ever for doing it now. As anyone who's tuned to the TV news or opened a newspaper in the last year knows, the university system wants to borrow $2.5 billion -- $600 million more would go to community colleges -- to repair and, in some cases, replace run-down buildings.

Broad pushed for a bill last year to permit issuing the bonds, but it died amid wrangling between the Senate and House over whether a referendum should be attached. This year, both houses and both parties want the referendum. Her challenge now is the vote itself, slated for November. Broad, with the help of the UNC Board of Governors, has to sell the measure to the people of North Carolina, roughly three-fourths of whom didn't go to any college, much less one in the UNC system.

Since her arrival, Broad has won kudos from members of the UNC board for confronting and nimbly dispensing with a series of problems. But with the referendum, none of that matters. If it fails, she'll be hobbled -- at least temporarily. A rumor, probably apocryphal, has circulated in Raleigh that the board might even fire her and install Gov. Jim Hunt after he leaves office. If the bonds pass, as seems more likely, she'll be lauded and see her power grow. "If she gets this funding through, she'll have a greater impact on the university system than anybody's had," says Paul Fulton, a former dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC Chapel Hill.

The university system remains the most powerful and popular statewide economic-development engine Tar Heels have. The jobs and dollars flowing from Research Triangle Park or the banking industry may be more obvious. But neither touches as many people in as many different ways as the UNC system. In 1999, its 16 campuses, stretching from Cullowhee to Wilmington, employed 32,000 workers and educated 156,263 students. Its two major medical centers treated 775,000 patients. And its sports teams put the state's name before a national audience.

Then there's Broad herself. Part pol, part bureaucrat, part executive, she could be the most influential woman in the state -- if the bonds pass. Yet she remains something of an enigma. She's a public person who guards her private life. A cogent public speaker whose voice drops almost to a whisper when asked about her Catholic faith. A university president who never finished her Ph.D. (Neither of the men she followed, lawyer Bill Friday and billionaire investor C.D. Spangler, had doctorates.) A technocrat whose career has taken her zigzagging across the country in a state where the powerful have known each other since they were students at Carolina and State.

The child of schoolteachers -- Dad taught phys ed; Mom, grammar -- Broad was born in Wilkes-Barre, a coal-and-steel town on the banks of the Susquehanna River in northeastern Pennsylvania. Her parents expected her to study hard, and she did, winning a scholarship to Syracuse University, a private college in western New York. Molly Corbett went thinking she'd major in...