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.”
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.”
The UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Center for the Business of Health (CBOH) and Acadia Healthcare have announced a partnership to fund a two-year project to create an adaptable opioid settlement playbook for state, municipal and local governments to effectively address America’s opioid epidemic.
The project’s goal is to review the opioid epidemic’s deep impact, address untested or under-researched treatment and prevention approaches, and develop best practice recommendations tailored to individual communities.
The partnership with Acadia Healthcare comes as thousands of communities across the U.S. are receiving money to support opioid recovery efforts, the result of legal settlements with opioid manufacturers and pharmacy chains. North Carolina has already received about $30 million in settlement funds of the nearly $758 million coming to North Carolina communities through 2038.
“States and municipalities are receiving these funds without any guidance on how best to deploy them,” said Professor Brad Staats, CBOH faculty director and senior associate dean for strategy and academics at UNC Kenan-Flagler. “As settlement funds flow into communities across the country and North Carolina, we hope a playbook will help guide policy and other decision makers as they allocate resources.”
