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Teaching Stars
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Teach
LEFT TO RIGHT: Professors Julia Wood, Marianne Gingher, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Laurie McNeil and Michael Lienesch in the historic Playmakers Theatre.
They inspire, motivate, challenge and engage. They shape lives. They teach, and they do it very well.
Many alumni cherish the great teachers they had at Carolina. Over 30 years, 66 Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorships have been awarded to the best undergraduate teachers in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. You’ll read about some of these luminaries in the following pages. A handful of faculty have been awarded the honor twice. These coveted term professorships were established in 1980 by the late Gordon Gray, who graduated from UNC in 1930, and the estate of his brother, Bowman Gray Jr., a 1929 graduate. But the Gray family’s initial support of teaching dates to nearly 50 years ago, with gifts to support separate undergraduate professorships.
6 • college.unc.edu • Fall 2010 • Carolina Arts & Sciences
Bernard Gray ’72, Gordon’s son, significantly enhanced the Bowman and Gordon Gray professorships with a gift in 1999 that doubled the annual salary supplement, extended the award period from three to five years, provided an annual fund for research support and included a highly valued sabbatical. They remain today among the University’s most esteemed awards for outstanding undergraduate teaching. In 2009, Gray strengthened the teaching emphasis by creating the Bernard Gray Distinguished Professorship, a permanent chair to be awarded to a faculty member who has served as a Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor. Gray remembers the impact that political science professor emeritus Joel Schwartz had on him at Carolina. Years later, Schwartz would receive one of the first Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorships.
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