Highlights
Dan Sears
H i g h l i g h t s
Seeing Double
New gifts enable Honors to invite twice as many first-year students to program By Del Helton
P
izza will never look the same to students in the Honors course they call “Eats 101.” For Catherine Williams, it was the best class she took at Carolina. “It was a great example of what an Honors course ought to do. It brought together so many academic disciplines — health and nutrition, archaeology and environmental history, anthropology and economics — that it was truly impossible not to engage with some part of the syllabus,” said Williams, of Matthews, N.C., who graduated Phi Beta Kappa in May 2008. Now, twice as many first-year students, or 10 percent of each entering class, will have the chance to take similarly engaging courses, and join one of the nation’s top Honors programs. Four major gifts in the past year totaling $21.5 million — including state matches from the Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust — will enable the Honors Program in the College of Arts and Sciences to invite nearly 400 students in the Class of 2012 to participate. The gifts fund faculty positions in high-priority areas of the College to teach Honors courses. They also will increase the University’s yield of high-ability students, many of whom are attracted to Carolina because of the Honors Program. In July, the Hyde Family Foundations, with support from Pitt ’65 and Barbara ’83 Hyde, made a $2 million capstone gift to complete the goal of doubling first-year invitations to the Honors Program. Two months earlier, the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust made a $6 million gift to create six $1.5 million endowments, including $500,000 in state matches for each, to support a minimum of six assistant or associate professors who will be designated as William R. Kenan Jr.
Fellows or William R. Kenan Jr. Scholars. The MoreheadCain Foundation in December 2007 created the Mary H. Cain Distinguished ABOVE: New gifts will enable twice as many first-year students to join Honors. Professorship in Art History, resulting in a $2 million Hyde Family Foundation of Memphis, endowment, including state match, that Tenn. Hyde serves on the University’s will add four Honors courses in art history. Board of Trustees. “We believe the gift In September 2007, an anonymous to Honors is a great complement to our donor gave $5 million to fund five new support of faculty through the Institute for professorships named for alumni Peter T. the Arts and Humanities. As Chancellor Grauer and William B. Harrison. Thorp recently said, ‘Carolina is the best For the Kenan Trust, the gift served place to teach, discover and learn.’ We hope to recognize past and present chancellors. this gift helps faculty and students do all “This gift reflects the desire of the three.” Kenan Trust to pay tribute to Chancellor Joshua Knobe, assistant professor of Moeser for the leadership he has provided philosophy, recalled at least two inspired to Carolina over the past eight years, and students from his Honors classes. One to his desire to double the number of student was so enthused about a class participants in the Honors Program,” said discussion on the concept of eudaimonia Richard M. Krasno, executive director of (state of happiness and well-being), that he the Kenan Trust. “We also want to signal wrote a rock song about it. our confidence in Chancellor Thorp, who “Another student in my Honors class has been a tremendous champion for the became so intrigued with the subject of Honors Program as dean of the College moral cognition, or how people make of Arts and Sciences. These are two great judgments, that he developed his own leaders for the University, and we are hypothesis, then applied to work as a proud that this gift honors them both.” researcher. It was a pretty advanced topic for The Hyde Family Foundations’ gift a first-year student.” creates two $1.5 million endowments, Knobe said he can often let Honors each augmented by the state match of students guide discussions, a practice that $500,000, and will support a minimum of worked well for Williams and her classmates two assistant or associate professors in the in the social sciences Honors course. College. “Dr. [Jim] Ferguson taught us to “In response to Chancellor Moeser’s take notice of the rich informational challenge to trustees to help him complete environment we live in by sending us news the goal of doubling the Honors Program, stories and anecdotes that related to our and in honor of Chancellor [Holden] studies,” said Williams. “The 14 of us in the Thorp, we are thrilled to support the class really became a family, and all of us felt expansion of the Honors Program and comfortable to explore the subject in our follow the leadership of the Kenan Trust,” own way, something that no other class has said Barbara Hyde, president of the J.R. done for me.” • Carolina Arts & Sciences • Fall 2008 • 21
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