After four months of saying goodbye to colleagues at a school in North Carolina where worked for seven years, Jim Eck said he is happy with his “fresh opportunity” as provost and vice president of academic affairs at Brenau University. Eck, who served at Louisburg College in North Carolina, was selected for the Brenau post in January, but stayed at Louisburg until the end of the semester and started his new job May 31. “I think the newness and the challenge and Tabula rasa (a Latin term often translated as “blank slate”) are all things that make this exciting to me,” Eck said in an interview with The Times Friday.