The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill community will celebrate its history as the nation’s first public university on University Day, Oct. 12.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill community will celebrate its history as the nation’s first public university on University Day, Oct. 12.
The featured speaker, Thomas W. Ross, president of the University of North Carolina, will give the keynote speech for the convocation, which begins at 11 a.m. Classes will be canceled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Chancellor Holden Thorp will preside.
University Day marks the laying of the cornerstone of Old East, the nation’s first state university building, in 1793 and the beginning of public higher education in the United States. The campus first celebrated University Day in 1877.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the 1971 consolidation of North Carolina’s public institutions of higher education under one governing body and president. Ross became the fifth president of the 17-campus UNC system on Jan. 1, 2011, and will be inaugurated on Oct. 6 at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro.
A native of Greensboro, Ross earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Davidson College in 1972 and graduated with honors from Carolina’s School of Law in 1975. After a short stint as an assistant professor at the School of Government, Ross joined the Greensboro law firm of Smith Patterson Follin Curtis James & Harkavy. He left the firm in 1982 to serve as chief of staff in the Washington, D.C., office of U.S. Rep. Robin Britt.
The following year, at the age of 33, he was appointed by Gov. Jim Hunt as the youngest North Carolina Superior Court Judge at the time, a position he held for the next 17 years.
In 1999, Ross was appointed director of the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts. Two years later, he became executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and in 2007 he was named president at Davidson, serving in that role until he assumed leadership of the UNC system.
He has served on the boards of trustees at Davidson and UNC Greensboro, as well as the boards of visitors at Wake Forest University and Carolina. In addition, his many honors include Distinguished Alumni Awards from Davidson and the law school at Carolina, and an honorary doctorate from UNC Greensboro.
Other University Day convocation highlights will include the presentation of Distinguished Alumna and Alumnus Awards, a practice begun by the faculty in 1971 to recognize Tar Heels who have made outstanding contributions to humanity.
This year’s recipients are prize-winning songwriter Alan Bergman; Denise Jean Jamieson, a physician and national leader in promoting women’s reproductive health; Frederick Otto Mueller, professor emeritus and former chair of the department of exercise and sport science; Linda Ellen Oxendine, one of the first American Indian woman to receive a bachelor’s degree from Carolina; and Thomas Hart Sayre, co-founder of multidisciplinary design firm Clearscapes.
This year, the University will grant the first Edward Kidder Graham Faculty Service Award, established by the Faculty Council to recognize outstanding service by a faculty member.
David W. Owens, Gladys Hall Coates Professor of Public Law and Government, will receive the award in honor of his distinguished service to the state, the University and countless communities through his scholarly work and activism in the School of Government.
The award was named in memory of Edward Kidder Graham, University president from 1914 to 1918, who committed the University to public service by vowing to “make the campus co-extensive with the boundaries of the State.”
In keeping with a tradition of celebrating milestones on University Day, Carolina will place a marker on the stone wall between McCorkle Place and Franklin Street to commemorate the 1966 student protests that overturned the Speaker Ban Law. The marker recognizes the student leaders who spoke out against the law and organized the protests, especially Student Body President Paul Dickson III.
A public unveiling ceremony will be held at the marker’s site at 3 p.m., followed by a reception in the Johnston Center.
For more information about University Day, refer to www.unc.edu/universityday.
Photos: Ross: http://www.northcarolina.edu/images/Ross.jpg
Bergman: http://urxserve.ur.unc.edu/netpub/server.np?f
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=itemid&op=matches&value=10600
Jamieson: http://urxserve.ur.unc.edu/netpub/server.np?
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=itemid&op=matches&value=10601
Oxendine: http://urxserve.ur.unc.edu/netpub/server.np?
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=itemid&op=matches&value=10604
Sayre: http://urxserve.ur.unc.edu/netpub/server.np?
find&catalog=catalog&template=detail.np&field=itemid&op
=matches&value=10605&site=Luminosity
Owens: http://urxserve.ur.unc.edu/netpub/server.np?
find&site=Luminosity&catalog=catalog&template=view.np&field
=itemid&op=matches&value=10587
Contacts: Susan Houston, (919) 962-8415, susan_houston@unc.edu; and Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu