Ort ready to write next chapter

A few days ago, Brian Hogan ambled into Shirley Ort’s office and spotted a replica of the Magna Carta on the nearly empty bookcase in her Pettigrew Hall office.

Without missing a beat, Hogan deadpanned, “Shirley, I knew you were old, but I didn’t know you were that old.”

As the creator of the Carolina Covenant, Ort knows a thing or two about the enduring value of historic documents – both the replica of the English one she will take with her and the one she authored and will leave behind when she retires next month.

Hogan’s playful teasing reminds Ort of the man Hogan replaced. Fred Clark, her longtime friend and colleague who helped run the Covenant since its inception in 2004, died two years ago — the same year the Covenant marked its 10th anniversary.

For 19 years, she has served as the director of the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid. But after the Covenant – a financial aid program that “Fred used to call me ‘Our Lady of the Covenant’ to tease me,” Ort said, but he also did it to keep her from getting carried away by all the praise and attention that has been heaped upon her over the years.

Ort first considered retiring while Clark was dying. “Fred was so sick that my first inclination was to quit and take care of him without the distraction of my work,” Ort said, but Clark would not allow it.

While Ort worried about Clark’s needs, Clark worried about hers – and the void she would face after his death without the distraction of work. Now, two years later, finding something to fill that void is the challenge she is ready to face.

“People say you shouldn’t retire until you have a clear sense of what you are going to do next, and, in my tidy little world, that might have been nice,” Ort said. “But the bell in my head went off when I turned 70, telling me it was time to make a move.”

Mission to Carolina

The last time Ort gave up a job she loved was 19 years ago, when her former mentor and boss Elson Floyd asked her to leave her job as deputy director for student financial aid for the Higher Education Coordinating Board in Olympia, Washington, to apply for a similar position at Carolina.

She wasn’t interested, but Floyd, who had been recruited to Carolina two years before to serve as executive vice chancellor, refused to take no for an answer.

He knew that tuition increases were being considered by the UNC Board of Governors in order to bolster operating revenues across the UNC system. If and when those increases happened, Carolina would need someone who knew how to protect students from low- and middle-income families from being priced out of college. He believed that person should be Ort.

Ort applied for the job and got it. And just as Floyd had anticipated, annual tuition increases began happening soon after she arrived. Borrowing from a Washington state statue that allowed a percentage of new tuition revenue to be set aside for needy students, Floyd had introduced, and Ort implemented, a plan at Carolina in which no needy student ended up paying the tuition increase for 15 consecutive years.

That policy worked flawlessly until August 2014 when the UNC Board of Governors approved a policy limiting the amount of tuition system schools could set aside for need-based aid to 15 percent of gross tuition.

At the time, Ort was uncertain the University could make up for those lost revenues. “It’s a challenge, but one that the University remains steadfast in meeting,” she said.

That gap, so far, has been filled with a surge of private fundraising. During the 2014–15 fiscal year, Ort’s office received nearly $13 million. The goal this year is $20 million.

‘The last 100 days’

Nobody is irreplaceable, not even – to borrow Clark’s term – Our Lady of the Covenant. Knowing that, Ort said, makes it easier to walk away.

“I am very pleased with what I have accomplished here and I think it has taken root,” Ort said. “The University owns the Covenant. It is not like any other financial program that could be done away with because there isn’t enough money there. It is part of the soul and fabric of what’s here. I don’t know how it will go on, but it will go on and it will go on well.”

What is important for her, she knows, is conceiving of her future without it, finding something she can do that can fill her days with as much meaning and purpose.

“Frankly, I haven’t had the time to think about what it is going to be,” Ort said.

She began writing a journal to capture the historical grace notes of her last 100 days at Carolina. And as the number of staff meetings dwindle down to the end, “I have felt more free to say what is in my heart and mind.”

She also dispenses final bits of advice – she jokingly calls them “Aunt Shirley practice tips” – to her dedicated staff that includes Hogan as well as longtime assistant directors Eric Johnson and Holley Nichols and many others.

“The last one I told them was while we were talking about transition because people are anxious when there is going to be new leadership – the known is much more comfortable than the unknown for any of us. I wanted to reassure them that there is continuity at Carolina, even amid constant change.

“I said, ‘The mistake we make, and I’m subject to it as well, is thinking that the methods that we’ve used are all encompassing. We tend to trust methods because they worked and they gave us what we have, but what we forget is how easily methods get out of sync with changing terrain.

“And so the practice tip is adaptability. Keep your core values in place. Keep your pride in heritage in place. Then adapt.”

As will she.

The joys of giving

Her father lived until he was 98 and was healthy until the end. Her mother lived to be 89. At 70, she is ready to write the next chapter of an extraordinary life. Even if that chapter remains a mystery still to be solved.

“I would love it if I could use my law degree in public service,” Ort said. “What I know I don’t want is a paycheck. And I don’t want to be tied down. If I had wanted to stay fully employed, I would have stayed right here.

“I also know I don’t want to consult – I don’t want to write any more term papers out of obligation in exchange for a paycheck. I will be happy to help whatever I care about and it’s not going to be about money, it’s going to be about mission.”

She will also work harder on the one aspect of life she has yet to master: leisure time.

In a conversation with former UNC system President Tom Ross, he asked, “What are some of the things that you are going to do when you finally have time?”

She laughed remembering the look of surprise on his face when she told him she would be making cookies.

But not just any cookies, Ort said. She makes the kind of cookies that are as pretty to look at as they are good to eat.

They taste so good because of the cream cheese in the cookie dough recipe. They look even better because of the 60 or so cookie cutters she has collected and the way she decorates those specially shaped cookies. For nearly 30 years, she has cut out magazine articles on how to paint her cookies with colored icing and add decorative touches.

Her favorite cookie cutter makes cookies in the shape of a fish, which she “paints” with light pink frosting on the fins, and lavender icing for stripes, using toothpicks to draw on the scales and a black dot and a silver bead for the eye.

One of the most coveted gifts from her is a box of six of those cookies, surrounded by shredded tissue paper in coordinating colors.

She gave an IOU for one of those boxes to a longtime friend, former Carolina provost Robert Shelton, Ort said.

The cookie box was supposed to be a gift for his October birthday – in 2002.

“He still doesn’t have a box of cookies,” Ort said.

This October, he just might.