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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.”
The archive of one of the country’s most important and prolific photographers of Black life in the twentieth century has a new home at UNC-Chapel Hill’s University Libraries.
The Roland L. Freeman Collection is now part of the Southern Folklife Collection at the Wilson Special Collections Library. The collection is a gift from the Kohler Foundation, a family foundation that supports the arts and education.
Carolina now gains access to a massive compilation of work by Freeman from a career that spans more than fifty years of documenting Black communities, public figures and folk art and artisans. It consists of nearly 24,000 slides, 10,000 photographic prints, 400,000 negatives and 9,000 contact sheets. Also included are publications and an archive of Freeman’s papers.
Freeman devoted much of his career to documenting Black communities across the South, with a particular emphasis on art, cultural events and folk culture in all its manifestations. He co-directed the Mississippi Folklife Project for the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in 1970 and was later a research associate there.
“Roland provides a portrait of Black style and Black aesthetics that is unparalleled in the history of American photography. He understood the possibility of capturing deep narratives of tradition, especially in the Black South and the journey of those traditions in the Great Migration, that no one else has done” said Glenn Hinson, associate professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s department of anthropology and a longtime collaborator with Freeman.
“The Southern Folklife Collection is deeply honored and excited to preserve and provide access to Roland Freeman’s photographic archive,” said Steve Weiss, curator of the Southern Folklife Collection. “Freeman’s research and documentation of African American Folklife is innovative in its collaborative methodology and a landmark in the study of African American quilters. His collection will be an invaluable resource for students, historians, folklorists, documentary filmmakers and many more groups.”
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.
