Anything is possible at Carolina.
We see that every day. From finding new cures to providing new scholarships, at Carolina we know that the best is yet to come. And we hope you see it, too.
This site is a resource and playground. It is a place where you can learn about some of the incredible stories that happen here. Or perhaps you have a story to share? Help us create this site by sharing something bold, innovative or inspirational that you experienced at Carolina, particularly because a private donation made it possible. Anything is possible here, but it isn’t free. Thankfully we have generous donors who see the potential and help make it happen.
We know there are many more to tell, maybe even yours.
We want to hear them. We need your help to collect them.
Click here to share your stories or the ones you’ve heard. This is your site, so help us fill it with all the ways Carolina is making a difference in the world.
A transformational gift to the UNC School of Education will create a unique fellowship program that will enable a multi-faceted approach to ensure highly effective educators serve students in rural, high-needs North Carolina communities.
State-wide data has shown that having a Carolina-trained teacher can boost student learning beyond what is expected for learning in a given school year. The largest gains were among students from underrepresented backgrounds and economically disadvantaged schools.
With a $3 million commitment over the next four years, the Fellows for Inclusive Excellence program will remove barriers and support current UNC School of Education students and recent graduates to serve as teachers and school counselors in Title 1 schools, starting in Chatham County Schools and Person County Schools.
Ultimately, the Fellows program aims to create high-quality professional learning communities that provide school students with enhanced opportunities to succeed and thrive.
The Fellows for Inclusive Excellence program was made possible by donors who wish to remain anonymous.
Students in the UNC School of Education’s Master of Arts in Teaching and Social Counseling programs will work with teachers and counselors in Chatham and Person counties’ Title 1 schools.
Once graduated, those teachers and school counselors will have the opportunity to return to those schools as new school professionals and receive professional development opportunities to help them thrive in their profession. Combined with district funding, they will also receive a generous graduated bonus, earning more money over a 3-year period if they choose to continue working in their school.
“I do not know of another program like the Fellows for Inclusive Excellence,” said Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, dean of the UNC School of Education and Alumni Distinguished Professor. “One that takes a comprehensive approach, beginning within an educator preparation program and engaging nearly every level of school personnel, to create the highest quality professional learning communities.
“The best education begins with investment in educators. The Fellows for Inclusive Excellence program exemplifies that.”
Brad Hendricks – assistant professor of accounting at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School – is an expert on corporate disclosure, initial public offerings (IPOs) as well as entrepreneurship. So it’s only fitting he’s teaching a new course, Profits, People, Planets and Purpose, designed to inspire undergraduates to pursue business education and opportunities.
The course also presents undergrads with a unique experiential learning opportunity to apply theory to practice. Students manage “companies” while competing against their classmates in a simulation.
Hendricks likes to see their competitive natures show: “This generation is so adept at self-learning, experiential learning, that putting them in a gaming scenario that mimics the workplace is a fun, intuitive and risk-free way for them to learn how to make smart business decisions.”
Profits, People, Planets and Purpose is just one example of Hendricks’ impactful teaching at UNC Kenan-Flagler.
“Brad is a top-tier researcher and an amazing teacher,” said Jana Raedy, associate professor and EY Scholar in accounting and senior associate dean of business and operations. “He has not only made a major impact on the academic community with his research, but also has had a significant impact on the business community more broadly. He teaches extremely difficult material in a way that, while challenging the students to think critically, is accessible to them.”
He won the Business School’s 2021-22 Bullard Faculty Research Impact Award, which recognizes a professor each year whose research has had a significant effect on the practice of business. He is the first assistant professor to win it. Additionally, Hendricks received the Glenn McLaughlin Prize for Research in Accounting and Ethics and the Morgan Stanley Prize for Best Paper in 2021.
UNC Kenan-Flagler students also recognized his work in the classroom: He won the prestigious Weatherspoon Teaching Excellence Award in the Master of Accounting (MAC) Program in 2016 and again in 2022.
“Teaching really matters here at UNC Kenan-Flagler. There’s a high value placed on it, and I do the best I can. I am glad that students find such value in my class, despite its reputation for also being the most difficult class in the MAC Program,” said Hendricks.
Vincent Brown is on a mission to open minds to a much broader view of American history, one that incorporates Black history and Black perspectives into the canon.
“We need to have a much broader sense of what American history is, who counts within American history and how it develops over time,” said Brown, the Charles Warren Professor of American History and professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University. He teaches courses on the history of slavery in the Americas.
Although Brown grew up in Southern California, his visit to Carolina “is going to be a bit of a homecoming for me,” he said, pointing out that he did research in Wilson Library and completed his dissertation at neighboring Duke University.
Brown returned to North Carolina to give the first Dr. Genna Rae McNeil Endowed Black History Month Lecture, named for the first Black tenure-track faculty member in the history department. McNeil retired in 2021 after 36 years at Carolina, where she helped establish what was then known as the African American History Month Lecture.
The University’s establishment of an endowed lecture series on Black history and Brown’s talk come at a critical time.
“It has always been a struggle to establish the very idea that Black history is something worthy of study. It is something that people have had to fight for, from when Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week way back in 1926. Even today, it’s something that is contentious,” Brown said.
Brown believes both Black history and Black perspectives are worthy of study, for understanding racism and much more. “Certainly the history of race and racism is fundamental to the way we have to understand the Black experience in the Americas and in the United States. But then the Black experience and Black struggles exceed the history of racism as well. And I think if we collapse the two too neatly, we can miss all of those things that Black people have done, all the consequences of their history that are not easily reducible to the study of racism.”
