Carolina Center for Public Service honors campus units, individuals for service to state
March 12, 2004
CHAPEL HILL — Diabetes prevention, environmental protection and oral history research are a few of the outreach efforts led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty, staff, students and organizations in the past year.The Carolina Center for Public Service is recognizing those and other initiatives through its annual awards for exemplary service benefiting North Carolina. Eight individuals and organizations will be recognized at the center’s awards program April 8 on the UNC campus. More than 50 individuals and university departments and units were nominated for the awards, and a selection committee of students, faculty, staff and community representatives selected the eight recipients.
“The array of efforts represented in the pool of nominations and resulting winners is strong evidence of the breadth and geographic reach of Carolina’s response to addressing pressing community issues facing North Carolinians,” said Dr. Lynn Blanchard, center director.
“As always, the selection committee was faced with a stellar group of nominations. Those selected demonstrate that even in a time of limited resources and increasing demands, there are folks in the university community who exemplify Carolina’s tradition of service and engagement.”
Dr. Michael Stegman, MacRae professor of public policy and business and chairman of the department of public policy in the College of Arts and Sciences, is receiving the second annual Ned Brooks Award for Public Service. Named for Ned Brooks, a UNC faculty member and administrator since 1972, the award recognizes a UNC faculty or staff member who has built a sustained record of service to the community through individual efforts and the involvement and guidance of others.
Stegman created, and now directs, the Center for Community Capitalism, based in the Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. This center engages in multi-disciplinary research and outreach focused on applying private-sector knowledge to revitalizing distressed communities.
Stegman, who joined the UNC faculty in 1966, also leads a major initiative to improve UNC’s outreach to low-income employees and to provide free tax services on federal tax benefits.
“Throughout his career, Mike Stegman has risen to the challenge of making his teaching and research relevant to solving the problems of real people,” said Blanchard. “In addition, he has served as mentor and champion for untold young faculty members and graduate students – he personifies what we mean by servant leadership.”
The Carolina Center for Public Service is also presenting three Office of the Provost Public Service Awards, honoring university units, departments or student organizations for service to North Carolina. This year’s recipients are the N.C. Institute for Public Health, based in the School of Public Health; the Carolina Environmental Program; and the Student Health Action Coalition (SHAC), involving students in the schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health and social work.
The N.C. Institute for Public Health is honored for its Management Academy for Public Health, a partnership between the School of Public Health and Kenan-Flagler Business School. Faculty from both schools have worked together to develop customized courses for public health managers to improve the effectiveness of public health organizations.
The Carolina Environmental Program is selected for One North Carolina Naturally, a statewide program seeking cooperation among conservation, agricultural and development interests in an effort to conserve targeted bodies of land and water in the state.
SHAC is recognized for its Hurdle Mills Food Clinic, an effort developed in collaboration with community members to address diabetes prevention in a rural community.
The Robert E. Bryan Public Service Award – recognizing individual students, faculty and staff for exemplary public service efforts – is going to students Megan Davy and David Edwards and staff members Katrina Coble and Elizabeth Millwood.
Davy, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences’ department of public policy, is the founder of Project OpenHand in Chapel Hill. This project links members of the UNC campus community with Alamance and Chatham county residents who are living with HIV and AIDS. Preparing and delivering seven home-cooked meals a week, Project OpenHand is designed to meet the nutritional needs of these residents.
Edwards, a graduate student in the School of Public Health’s department of epidemiology, is honored for his work with mothers and children at the Carolina Children’s Clinic in Raleigh’s Salvation Army Shelter. Edwards has brought together pre-medical and nursing students and other prospective future health-care professionals from throughout the Triangle to provide health-education services to mothers and children.
Coble, administrative manager in the College of Arts and Sciences’ department of computer science, is the chair of the university-wide blood drive, the nation’s second-largest blood drive. She manages the blood drive’s kickoff and recruiter training; this year, she led one of the university’s most successful drives, with 1,031 units of blood collected.
Millwood, an administrative assistant for the Center for the Study of the American South, supports grassroots oral history research under way across North Carolina. A frequent workshop leader, Millwood also trains graduate students to deliver oral history short courses. They, in turn, fan out statewide to work with local historical societies, community groups, museum staffs and others seeking to create a connection to the past through oral history.
The Carolina Center for Public Service, created in 1997, leads UNC’s engagement efforts and service to North Carolina and beyond by linking the expertise and energy of faculty, staff and students to the needs of the people.
Carolina Center for Public Service contact: Elaine Tola, (919) 843-7568 or etola@email.unc.edu
UNC News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu
