Tar Heels on the Robben Island ferry after touring Nelson Mandela's cell. (photo by Leah Hawker)

Like many Carolina undergraduates, Allie Van Vliet and Bowen Kelley wanted a unique internship experience in a foreign land. They hoped to work with people affected by real-world problems.

They got that and more at the Cape Town Refugee Centre in South Africa, where they served as interns as part of an unusual study abroad program that attracted a dozen Carolina students last fall.

UNC’s Honors Semester in Cape Town featured opportunities to live, work and learn in an exciting international city, while confronting some of the most complex challenges facing post-apartheid South Africa.

The 2011 program was led by Mike Lambert, UNC professor in the department of African and Afro-American studies and director of the African Studies Center, both in the College of Arts and Sciences. Carolina students worked at local agencies, conducted independent research and took classes based at the University of Cape Town. They studied with Lambert, South African Chris Ahrends, a former chaplain to Desmond Tutu and founding director of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, and internship coordinator Julie DeNicola. The semester also offered a course for education majors, taught by UNC education professor Suzanne Gulledge. And there were numerous field trips and excursions, coordinated by local resident Ruth Parker.

Bowen Kelley (right) exchanges information with refugees seeking re-settlement assistance. (photo by Leah Hawker)

On a typical weekday morning at the refugee center last fall, the waiting room was packed with adults and children who had fled violence and persecution in Somalia, Zimbabwe and other conflict-torn homelands across the continent. They were hungry and homeless, scared and scarred.

Kelley and Van Vliet were conducting “intake.” Their job was to help determine which of the newcomers were “vulnerable” enough to qualify for modest resettlement assistance.

The problem was that they were all vulnerable. They had heart-wrenching stories to tell. Some had bullet wounds and missing appendages to illustrate their hardships.

“It’s troubling,” said Kelley, a junior majoring in African studies and French. “I struggle with how we define ‘vulnerable.’ The magnitude of their problems is overwhelming.

“We do the best we can and realize we can’t solve it all,” he said.  “We have to be okay with that. It’s hard.”

Though the center is funded by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), the budget can’t fil all the needs apparent in the waiting room every day.

The fact that there is such assistance to those fleeing other lands is a reflection of South Africa’s greatest strength, its commitment to social justice. Indeed, the Rainbow Nation’s constitutional bill of rights is considered one of the most progressive in the world — guaranteeing equality, freedom, life, property and security.

But it’s a Sisyphean task for South Africa’s fledgling democracy to heal those afflicted by political violence beyond its borders, while it struggles to improve the lives of its own population, especially now during a global recession.

Today, two decades after apartheid was abolished and Mandela was freed from prison, South Africa enjoys the healthiest economy on the continent. Yet the gap between the predominantly white “haves” and the “have-nots” remains huge. According to the World Bank, nearly half the population lives below the poverty line (98 percent of them black or “coloured,” the term used in South Africa for persons of mixed ancestry). One in four is unemployed; the jobless rate is much higher in the poorer townships.

Immigration has brought new challenges including increased rates of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Xenophobic violence is also on the rise as some of the poorest South Africans start to blame newcomers for their woes.

Tar Heels in South Africa experienced both sides of the socio-economic gap. They lived together in Tamboerskloof, a comfortable residential neighborhood within reasonably safe walking distance of cosmopolitan eateries and clubs. Students shared a cozy hillside guest house complete with electronic security, Wi-Fi, a swimming pool and a stunning view of majestic Table Mountain, Cape Town’s top natural tourist attraction. “It’s a tale of two cities,” said Ahrends. “The affluent are still mostly white. There’s been some movement, but it’s still a huge divide.”

Carolina students commuted across that divide regularly to reach their internships in the inner city and impoverished outer townships.  Students worked for a social-economic development agency, a Parliamentary monitoring group, a legal advocacy organization, a fisheries research center, a model K-12 school for impoverished students, and an innovative literacy program serving at-risk younger kids.

“I don’t know of another program quite like Honors Cape Town,” said James Leloudis, associate dean of UNC’s honors program. “It offers Carolina students and faculty a unique opportunity for hands-on involvement with the ongoing project of building a multiracial democracy in post-apartheid South Africa”

[ Excerpted from the cover story by Dee Reid in the latest issue of Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine. For more photos from South Africa, visit student Rachel Hamlin's blog at http://rhcpt.tumblr.com/ ] 

Wyatt Bruton (center) with his students. Alex, top row, far right, is wearing a gray shirt with white sleeves and flashing the peace sign.

Every morning, I stand in front of 80 Chinese 7^th graders and see students at all ends of the spectrum — the few with nearly perfect scores have a great shot at getting into a good high school and maybe going to college one day. And then there are those who have been left behind by a challenging, fast-paced education system where only the strongest survive. They are disillusioned, apathetic and bitter.

Alex is one of those students. At the beginning of the year, I quickly learned Alex didn’t know a word of English. Though students in Guangdong Province start studying English in 3^rd grade, it seemed as if he hadn’t learned anything.

As we began to sit down every morning before class, Alex seemed shocked that we were taking the time to work with him one-on-one. “I’ve been ignored by every teacher I’ve ever had,” he told us. And yet after three weeks, Alex could read, write and say the entire alphabet. Alex can learn just like any other student, just not at the same pace or in the same way.

We are constantly shocked by the overwhelming amount of tedious, difficult content we have to cover this semester and year, and students like Alex are struggling to keep up.

For his entire life as a student, Alex has been ignored and his current attitude reflects it; I can’t blame him for that.

This afternoon, I sat down with Alex for about an hour. Though my broken Mandarin sometimes puts some roadblocks in the way when we communicate, today I saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes as I realized that Alex, just like all of us do at some point and throughout our lives, is trying to figure out who he is, why he’s here, and what he’s supposed to do with his life.

I am hoping that my time with Alex as his teacher and advocate will help him find the answer to those ever-important questions.

Whatever happens with Alex’s test score this year, I hope Alex begins to believe perhaps for the first time that he is an intelligent, capable young man who has a great capacity to achieve big things in his life.

I teach for Alex. I teach for China.

[ By Wyatt Bruton '11, a 2011 UNC graduate who received an undergraduate major in journalism and mass communication and a minor in entrepreneurship. He was also a UNC Phillips Ambassador. Today Bruton is serving as a fellow with Teach for China. Follow his teaching adventures at Zhiying Middle School, located in a small village in eastern Guangdong Province, by visiting http://wyattinasia.com/. This essay appears in the spring '12 issue of Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine. ]

Music professor Louise Toppin directs Videmus, an organization that promotes the works of under-represented composers.

The musical works of women, African-American and other under-represented composers will be highlighted March 21-15 in a festival at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Videmus @ 25: Reflecting on the Past … Reaching Toward the Future,” features concerts, lectures, panel discussions and master classes by artists including composer and Tufts University professor emeritus T.J. Anderson, Grammy Award-winning musician Herbie Hancock, opera stars Leona Mitchell, George Shirley and Marquita Lister, and Judith Ann Still, daughter of composer William Grant Still.

Videmus (from Latin, “to see”) is a nonprofit organization that promotes the classical works of under-represented composers through recordings, concerts, scholarships and educational programming. It is under the direction of Louise Toppin, professor of music in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. The series of events honoring the 25^th anniversary of Videmus is the focus of this year’s “Festival on the Hill.”

Many of the events are free. For a complete schedule and to register, visit http://www.videmus.org or call (919) 962-1039.

Highlights include:

• March 21: Music of African-American composers, featuring compositions of Adolphus Hailstork and Samuel Coleridge Taylor. Performed by members of North Carolina Central University music faculty. 7 p.m. Person Recital Hall. Free.
• March 22: An Evening with Herbie Hancock, part of Carolina Performing Arts season. 7:30 p.m. Memorial Hall. The legendary pianist and composer is the recipient of an Academy Award and 14 Grammys. For ticket information, call (919) 843-3333. (Note: Student tickets no longer available). http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org
• March 23: The UNC Jazz Band, directed by music professor Jim Ketch, performs compositions of Sherisse Rogers. 4:30 p.m. Kenan Music Building rehearsal hall. Free.
• March 23: Faculty Chamber Music Recital, featuring the works of David Baker, Zenobia Perry, Anthony Kelley, Leslie Adams and Margaret Bonds. Performed by guest artists and UNC faculty Brent Wissick, Cameron Britt, Donald Oehler, Brooks de Wetter-Smith and Thomas Otten. Conducted by UNC’s Evan Feldman. 8 p.m. Hill Hall Auditorium. Free.
• March 24: Operas by African-American Composers: Reflections on composer William Grant Still. UNC Opera presents “Highway One USA” and “Dream Lovers,” with post-concert Q&A with Judith Ann Still. 4 p.m. Hill Hall auditorium. Free.
• March 24: A Night at the Opera, featuring artists including Louise Toppin, George Shirley, Marquita Lister and others. 8 p.m. Hill Hall auditorium. Free.
• March 25: Music of Living Women and African-American Composers. Part of the William S. Newman Artists Series. Featuring countertenor Darryl Taylor. 3 p.m. Hill Hall Auditorium. $15 general admission ($10 students, faculty and staff). For ticket information, call (919) 962-1039.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This computer science course designed for new undergraduates includes both lectures and labs and begins with an introduction to programming in the Java language. Students design, build and program robots to solve problems, which become progressively more complex through the semester. The course was created a decade ago by Anselmo Lastra, in collaboration with computer science professors Henry Fuchs, Gary Bishop and Fred Brooks.

Know the basics

Some students in the course already have some knowledge of elementary computer programming. UNC uses the Lego Mindstorms Robotics Systems for the robot materials and a public domain Java programming language environment instead of the simpler software that comes with the LEGO kits.

For every problem, there’s a solution

Much of the course focuses on problem solving. “Often students try to solve a problem all a once,” Lastra noted. When they learn to break a problem down bit by bit, they move closer toward a solution. Students program their robots with special software, smart sensors and other features.

“I think the course is an avenue in creativity for many students,” Lastra said. The completed robots are small, measuring from 6 to 8 inches tall, but can be quite complex.

Robots on the run

Once students complete their robots and become adept at operating them, it’s time for the competitions. Though fun, these events also serve as an evaluation of how well the robots are constructed. The competitions vary. Robots may race through a maze, or participate in robot soccer or another athletic event. Occasionally in the heat of competition, a robot may spin out of control. Some robots fall behind. Other robots just fall. However, most of the robots perform perfectly — just as their creators programmed them.

Lastra is professor and chair of the computer science department. His research is in 3D computer graphics. 

[ Story by Eleanor Lee Yates ’78, video by Mary Lide Parker '10, from spring '12 Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine ]

William Leuchtenburg in the study of his home in Chapel Hill. (photo by Dan Sears)

In the late spring of 1847, a current of excitement ran through Chapel Hill: The president of the United States was coming to town. No such event had ever happened before. Moreover, he was a very special president. Though now of Tennessee, James K. Polk was a Tar Heel born (Mecklenburg County) and a Tar Heel bred, Carolina Class of 1818.

As a student, Polk had made an impression less by native intelligence than by the way he applied himself. To clinch an argument, his fellow students would say the point they were making was as surely true as “that Jim Polk will get up in the morning at first call.” An indefatigable self-starter, he was graduated with highest honors in both mathematics and classics; delivered a commencement oration in Latin; and finished first in his class. Since there were only fourteen students in the class, that may not seem much of a distinction. But consider that one of his classmates would become the governor of Florida; another, paymaster-general of the United States and consul general in Italy; another, president of Davidson College; yet another, bishop of Mississippi and chancellor of the University of the South. Among his fellow students in his Chapel Hill years were two future governors of North Carolina (one of them John Motley Morehead), as well as the future presiding officers of the Virginia and North Carolina Senates and the secretary of the navy who would be with Polk on his historic visit to Chapel Hill in 1847.

Annex to the Eagle Hotel, which was erected to receive James K. Polk. (photo courtesy of N.C. Collection, Wilson Library)

At eight in the morning on a warm spring day, the president and his entourage left Raleigh in a dozen carriages and other conveyances bound for Chapel Hill, a trip that required nine hours. He stopped often at farms to rest the horses and to shake hands with well-wishers, and took midday dinner along the route. Not until early evening did he arrive at the Eagle Hotel in Chapel Hill where, in his honor, the proprietor, Nancy Hilliard, had constructed an annex to house him and his companions. His large party included a naval officer: the brilliant Matthew Fontaine Maury — who was to win renown as “Pathfinder of the Seas” — the father of modern oceanography.

After checking in at Miss Nancy’s, Polk strolled to campus, where at the chapel, Gerrard Hall, he responded graciously — though with characteristic ponderousness — to an address of welcome from the president of the university, David Lowry Swain. It was “to the acquisitions received” at this university, Polk said, “I mainly attribute whatever success has attended the labor of my subsequent life.” Afterwards, he spoke to the only professor from his student years who remained: the noted scientist Elisha Mitchell, after whom Mt. Mitchell is named. Over the next two days, Polk renewed acquaintance with the campus. Accompanied by college chums, he reconnoitered the buildings of his youth, and with his wife returned to his old dorm room on the top floor of South Building, which had been completed only the year before he arrived as a student.

Polk’s stay came to a climax on Commencement Day, a magnet for hundreds of visitors. The correspondent for the New York Herald reported: “The little village of Chapel Hill is overflowing with people and they continue to pour in from all quarters, a number of persons having arrived all the way from Tennessee. There are tents pitched and wagons occupied by visitors, as at a camp meeting, for want of accommodations in the houses, which are filled to their fullest capacity, ‘Miss Nancy’ having the prospect of a thousand guests for dinner.” After observing the Class of 1847 graduated, the president returned to the White House, where he entered in his diary: “& thus ended my excursion to the University of N. Carolina. It was an exceedingly agreeable one.”

– By William E. Leuchtenburg. Excerpted with permission from 27 Views of Chapel Hill: A Southern University Town in Prose & Poetry, Eno Publishers, 2011. Leuchtenburg, William Rand Kenan Jr. professor emeritus of history in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, is a leading scholar of the presidency. He is the author of more than a dozen books on 20^th century American history, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940.

Michael Tsin (foreground) and Laurie Maffly-Kipp share a cup of coffee and conversation in the kitchen of Hyde Hall, home of the IAH. (photo by Steve Exum)

In 2012, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH) in Hyde Hall in the College of Arts and Sciences celebrates 25 years of providing support to faculty to ensure that Carolina recruits and retains outstanding teachers, leaders and researchers. A cornerstone of the IAH’s offerings are its faculty fellowships, which connect faculty in the arts and humanities to one another while providing them dedicated time to pursue scholarly projects. We asked two faculty members about how IAH fellowships have refreshed and informed their work. For more on IAH anniversary events, visit http://iah.unc.edu.

Laurie Maffly-Kipp, professor and chair of the department of religious studies, has received an IAH summer fellowship, a leadership fellowship and two semester-long faculty fellowships. In January 2012, she began serving as associate director for the IAH Faculty Fellows Program.

Q: You have had two semester-long IAH faculty fellowships — one in 1998 and one in 2008. How has your work benefited from each of those?

A: Both of the fellowships helped me shape my ideas for two of my books. During my 1998 fellowship I was working on a book about African-American religion (Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.) The fellowship allowed me to try out some of my early ideas for that book project with scholars who knew about critical race theory and the history of African-American life. During the 2008 fellowship, I was at the beginning stages of thinking about a book on Mormons that is intended for a general audience, not a scholarly one. So I needed to hear from people who didn’t know much about Mormons. The fellowship was a great sounding board for that project. I’m still at work completing that book.

Q: Please share a specific example of how the chance to connect with other scholars helped shaped your work.

A: During the 1998 fellowship, I was struggling with how to talk about African-Americans who were building ideas of racial history in the 19^th century. I asked the other fellows to draw me a conceptual map of how they understand the relationships between race and identity. It was a mind map — a picture of how things are related to each other. One of the other fellows, a professor of women’s studies, drew this incredibly complicated prismatic picture for me that helped me think about how I was going to organize the book in a different way. I kept that map in front of me as I was writing the rest of the book, and it was incredibly helpful.

Q: What has been the biggest benefit of your association with the IAH?

A: The IAH has helped me build relationships with people all over campus. My work tends to be very interdisciplinary, but always during the course of IAH seminars and other events I find people I didn’t know before who know a lot about a subject or who give me help in unexpected ways.

Michael Tsin, associate professor of history, and acting director (2011-2012) of the Carolina Asia Center, received an IAH faculty fellowship in fall 2010.

Q: What did you work on during your IAH faculty fellowship?

A: I used the time to work on my upcoming book. The working title is Cultural Politics of Chineseness in the 20^th century.  The starting point for the project was that, in casual conversation, you often hear people say, “That is very Chinese,” or “That is very American.” I wonder what people really mean by that. I’m a historian by training, so the book tries to answer that by examining events in the late 19^th century and into the 20^th century. The book is organized into four different case studies. Each tells us something about why the notion of Chineseness has become so prevalent in the way people think about China.

Q: What was the biggest benefit of the fellowship for you?

A: The opportunity to interact socially and intellectually with people in the College of Arts and Sciences who don’t work in the field that I do has been greatly rewarding. We talk a lot about interdisciplinary studies, but in reality, in everyday life in the university, we teach and interact mostly within our own disciplines. So it is quite rare for us to have a sustained opportunity to interact formally or informally with colleagues in other fields, even other fields within the social sciences.

Q: How did that interaction inform your work?

A: Even when other fellows’ work did not seem directly relevant to my own, when I listened to what they had to say, new patterns emerged. For instance, an art historian in my group was studying sculptures during the Harlem renaissance, which seems quite far removed from my own work. But he talked about African American artists in the 1920s and ’30s and the influence that Asian materials had on their work. It was fascinating, and it opened up new ways for me to think about my own project. To some extent we were both looking at issues surrounding identity, even though he was tracking different cultural currents.

[ By Angela Spivey '90, spring '12 Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine ]

Before anyone yells 'play ball,' head athletic trainer Sue Falsone makes sure the LA Dodgers' players are healthy. (photo courtesy of Athletes Performance)

Growing up in Buffalo, N. Y., Sue Falsone (M.S. ’00) loved watching the games of the hometown professional football team, the Buffalo Bills.

“I used to tell my mom all the time that I wanted to work for the Buffalo Bills,” she says. Although few women at the time held high-ranking positions with major professional teams, Falsone’s mother encouraged her to follow her dreams. “Go for it!’” her mother told Falsone.

Falsone never worked for the Bills. But she recently landed a major job with a reasonable facsimile — the storied Los Angeles Dodgers. The baseball team announced last October that it had named Falsone its head athletic trainer. Officials said Falsone, 37, was the first woman to hold such a position on a major professional team in the United States.

Falsone, who joined the Dodgers in 2007 as an assistant athletic trainer, says there was no objection from players to her promotion. “There have been a lot of congratulations from some of the guys in person and from others in text messages or on the phone,” she says. A sign of the players’ feelings toward Falsone came in September when outfielder Andre Ethier waited 10 days to have knee surgery because he didn’t want to start rehabilitation until Falsone returned from Europe.

A good relationship with the players is important because Falsone, who earned an M.S. degree in human movement science with a sports medicine concentration from UNC in 2000, will be as responsible as anyone for the Dodgers’ performance this season as she strives to keep players healthy.

Falsone is up to the task, says professor William E. Prentice in the department of exercise and sport science. He is director of UNC’s graduate athletic training program and Falsone’s former academic adviser. “She’s extremely intelligent,” Prentice adds. “The thing that sets her apart is that she has a terrific personality. She’s the kind of person you want to be around all the time.”

Falsone said she had “the most amazing experience at UNC.”

“The professors and clinical instructors were all unbelievable,” she said. “Mike Gross, Bill Prentice, Dan Hooker and Kevin Guskiewicz are just a few of the people at UNC that significantly impacted my career.”

Falsone will institute one major change with the Dodgers. To manage injuries and reduce their frequency, the Dodgers’ medical staff will evaluate injuries collectively. The caretakers include a senior director of medical services, two assistant athletic trainers, a strength and conditioning coach, a massage therapist, several team doctors and Falsone.

“Each of us brings something unique to the table,” Falsone says. “We’ll get different perspectives on the way we evaluate players, the way we look at their movement, things that can prevent injury and how we manage those things proactively.”

Falsone will also develop individual training programs so that each player can maximize his ability over a season. In addition, Falsone will decide whether ill or injured players are fit to perform when the Dodgers play away games. Falsone assumes this duty because team doctors at Dodger Stadium don’t accompany the team on road trips.

To gather information for all these decisions, Falsone works long hours with the players. The season could last from the start of spring training in February until November if the Dodgers reach the World Series.

For a typical 7 p.m. game, Falsone arrives at the stadium clubhouse around noon. She does as much paperwork as possible before players start trickling in between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. She spends the rest of the day and evening treating players or observing them on the field and usually doesn’t leave the stadium until around 11:30 p.m.

Falsone says that she loves her work but that “the hardest thing [about the job] is that it’s a very long season. It’s hard to stay fresh mentally and physically. We get one or two rare days off during the year. The majority of our off days from playing are days when the team travels.”

“You have to have great regenerative powers,” she says. “You’ve got to keep yourself healthy and make sake sure you get in your own workouts, and that you’re eating well and getting enough sleep.”

[ Story by Gary Libman, spring '12 Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine ]

Bill Andrews, in the Rare Book Room in Wilson Library, is an expert on African-American slave narratives. (photo by Donn Young)

Bill Andrews, senior associate dean for the fine arts and humanities, had never Skyped before, but he agreed to give it a go to continue meetings on the University’s new academic plan while his co-chair on the project, Sue Estroff, was away for the summer. He and Estroff, professor of social medicine at the medical school, wanted to stay on pace in creating the 10-year aspirational plan for the academic mission of the campus. They set up a practice Skype meeting, and he logged on at the appointed time.

He didn’t know about the webcam. When Estroff logged on, there was Andrews, shirtless and chagrined.

“He was as shocked as I was,” Estroff recalled. “But he got over it, and we had a good laugh.”

Andrews, a renowned scholar of African-American literature, will step down from the senior associate deanship at the end of the spring semester. After seven years in the post, a period plagued by a protracted recession and unprecedented budget cuts to the University, he nevertheless manages to leave the fine arts and humanities in very good shape. He has proven to be a stellar fundraiser for the College of Arts and Sciences, and department chairs say they will genuinely miss his advocacy and imaginative leadership.

The trust he has earned by working closely with faculty and administrators over the years has enabled him to sometimes deliver bad news without engendering resistance, said Terry Rhodes, former chair of the music department who will succeed Andrews.

“He’s very measured and fair and a great listener,” Rhodes said. “He responds quickly with timely decision-making, and he’s always at the ready to help our departments.”

Many responsibilities of a senior associate dean are tied to “money,” Rhodes said: budget allocations and reductions; reviews of instructional budgets; counteroffers and pre-emptive retentions of faculty; and fundraising, which has become increasingly important as state funding has declined and grants have become ever more competitive.

On an individual level, Andrews has written three grants to the Mellon Foundation that have brought in $7.1 million to the College. He’s been similarly successful in working with departments to bring in donations from alumni and friends.

Andrews has won admiration for advocating for faculty while budgets shrink. The number of tenured and tenure-track fine arts and humanities faculty has grown under his leadership, thanks to private support. He put together a professional development package for tenured associate professors that includes a research fund. He also led the creation of a promotion track for fixed-term (non-tenure-track) faculty.

Recently, Andrews has launched an exciting initiative to expand research and scholarship using digital media for the humanities, said Karen Gil, dean of the College.

“I’ll miss him a great deal,” Gil said. “He is an invaluable member of our senior leadership team for the College. He’s a great writer, thinker and planner. He works tirelessly to support the faculty and department chairs and help them advance their priorities.”

One of his colleagues, American studies professor Joy Kasson, agrees. Andrews has nurtured imaginative projects and encouraged departments to collaborate in national and international consortia. He takes a balanced approach to dealing with problems and opportunities.

“Even in times of financial constraint, his focus remains on what the College can and should do for students and faculty,” Kasson said.

Come summer, Andrews will return to his scholarly research — a study of class ideas and awareness in the autobiographies that African-American slaves wrote before Emancipation in 1865. And he’ll return to teaching — as the E. Maynard Adams Professor of English — after having been out of the classroom since he moved to the deans’ office in spring 2005.

A leading expert on African-American slave narratives, Andrews has written or edited numerous articles and about 40 books, including two published in 2011.

Jonathan Hess, director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, pointed out that Andrews got his Ph.D. in 1973. “In those days, it was unthinkable that you’d make African-American literature your specialty,” Hess said. “He was a pioneer who went into that field when there was no field. That speaks volumes about how innovative he is as a thinker.”

Andrews also composes; he has set many Emily Dickinson texts to music.

Despite being extraordinarily productive and effective, Andrews doesn’t “walk around talking about how he has so much to do,” Hess said.

“The humanities are thriving at Carolina — that’s to his credit,” Hess said.

[Story by Nancy E. Oates, spring '12 Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine ]

The Lillian Chason Scholarship and the Lillian Chason Undergraduate Excellence Fund honor Lillian Chason, a first-year drama student who died following an illness in December 2009.

The Lillian Chason Scholarship will be awarded to undergraduates with an interest in dramatic arts. Selection for the merit scholarship will be based on the nominee’s contribution to the classroom, studio and productions of the department of dramatic art. The Lillian Chason Undergraduate Excellence Fund will support the overall enhancement of the undergraduate experience in dramatic art. Supported priorities will include the Lillian Chason Theatre Arts Weekend, undergraduate productions and performance, research projects, and undergraduate participation in national conferences and competitions.

“We only knew Lillian for a short time, but she proved to be a true talent,” said Professor McKay Coble, chair of the department of dramatic art in the College of Arts and Sciences. “These new resources created in her memory are a fitting tribute to a special young woman and will enable future undergraduates to take advantage of enhanced opportunities in dramatic art.”

Both the University and the family encourage others who want to honor Lillian’s memory to make additional private gifts to support the scholarship and excellence fund. See http://drama.unc.edu/giving.html for more information.

Before her illness, Lillian Chason, a veteran performer, had been cast to play the lead in the play “A New Dress for Mona” at UNC. She won the role, and the respect of her fellow students and professors, through her determination to perform despite gradually losing her eyesight due to macular degeneration.

“Lillian was a compassionate, talented and intellectually gifted young woman who lived fearlessly and had an enormous passion for acting,” Eric and Cate Chason said. “The new scholarship and excellence fund honor Lillian by supporting students in the dramatic arts program who embody her love for the theater and learning.”

The Chasons previously set up a trust fund called Prayers for Lillian to accept donations in her honor.  A portion of those funds have supported the undergraduate experience in dramatic arts at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Amber Koonce. Photo by Mary Lide Parker.

Amber Micole Koonce and Cody Mitchell Poplin, seniors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have earned 2012-2013 scholarships from the Henry Luce Foundation in New York City.

The Luce scholarship funds a year of living and learning in East and Southeast Asia for recent college graduates with no prior experience of the continent. The foundation’s goal is to connect future American leaders with Asian colleagues in their fields. Selection criteria include outstanding academic achievement and leadership ability.

With 33 Luce Scholars since the program began in 1974, Carolina leads the nation in its number of Luce recipients. This year, 62 colleges and universities nationwide nominated 143 candidates for the Luce; the foundation chose 18 scholars.

“Amber and Cody are smart, capable and enormously dedicated to their future professions,” said Raymond B. Farrow III, executive director of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, chair of the UNC Luce nominating committee and a former Luce Scholar. “They have proven themselves at Carolina and will, no doubt, be the kind of transformational leaders that the Luce Foundation seeks to identify through the competition. Their year in Asia will be life changing, and I couldn’t be happier for them.”

The value of the award varies by assignment. The scholars will learn their assignments in June, spend part of the summer in language study and start their 10-month internships in September.

“Not only are Amber and Cody remarkable scholars, they are also committed to using their skills to address problems across the world,” said Linda Dykstra, director of the office of distinguished scholarships, which serves as an information clearinghouse for prestigious scholarship opportunities like the Luce. “For Amber this commitment is seen through her service to disadvantaged youth and for Cody it is apparent through his commitment to be a champion for the ideals of democracy and sustainable development.”

Amber Koonce

Koonce, 22, is a public policy and cultural studies double major with a minor in entrepreneurship. She is a Morehead-Cain Scholar.

The daughter of Donnie and Masherrill Koonce, Koonce graduated from Providence High School in Charlotte in 2008. She was also inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s highest honor society for college students, and serves as president of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

While mentoring incarcerated girls in Ghana during the summer of 2009, Koonce noticed that many of them were carrying dolls with blond hair and blue eyes – a contrast to their own features. It was then when she made the connection between that and the discontent with their bodies so she started BeautyGap, which hopes to promote a standard of beauty unique to women of color by collecting and shipping dolls of color to children of color around the world.

She was recognized by Glamour magazine as “the social entrepreneur” in a list of the top 10 college women of 2011 for founding BeautyGap.

After returning from Ghana, Koonce became co-chair of the Campus Y’s criminal justice awareness and action committee, which seeks to enhance student awareness of issues in the criminal justice system through volunteer projects and activist efforts. Through this organization, she mentors incarcerated juveniles to ease the transition from detention centers to school systems.

The following summer, Koonce analyzed the effectiveness and execution of juvenile rehabilitation programs in the Scotland Prison System while mentoring and leading a group through self-reflection and goal-setting workshops.

When she returned, she used her experiences at home and abroad to create a photography exhibit called “Behind Bars,” which displayed the plight of incarcerated youth through images from detention facilities in Ghana, Scotland and North Carolina.

In the future, Koonce hopes to earn a juris doctorate and master of public policy dual degree and become an international children’s rights attorney for UNICEF. For now, she plans to continue her research and understanding of children’s rights and social welfare policy as a Luce Scholar.

Koonce also was recently named by The Root as one its 2012 Young Futurists, an annual list spotlighting the top young African-American leaders and innovators of the future. The Root is a news site featuring an African-American perspective and is owned by The Washington Post.

Cody Poplin

Cody Poplin

Poplin, 21, is a political science and peace, war and defense double major and history minor in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences.

The son of Starr Poplin of Thurmond, Poplin graduated from North Wilkes High School in 2008. At Carolina, he serves as president of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity and a committee member for the Great Decisions program in the international studies department. He has also been on the dean’s list every semester at UNC and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

In the spring of 2010, he completed a Burch Field Research Honors Seminar on international relations and democratic empowerment in Washington, D.C.  At the same time, he interned at World Vision, a nonprofit organization working for sustainable development and the alleviation of world poverty.

Later that year, Poplin received a fellowship to study with the department of war studies at King’s College London, where he researched the effectiveness of U.S. information and democracy promotion programs in foreign countries during the Cold War. He is now using his work to write his honors thesis on the impact U.S. public diplomacy has on the understanding and international support of U.S. policy goals.

Poplin spent his most recent summer as a cyclist and volunteer for Push America’s Journey of Hope across America, an outreach program that raises awareness and understanding of people with disabilities. For this cross-country trip, he raised more than $9,000 and volunteered for 1,000 hours with people with disabilities.

Back on campus, he has also held various positions in Carolina United, Carolina Mock Trial and Student Congress.

Poplin hopes to explore development and democracy promotion in Asia as a Luce Scholar in an effort to create a network of international cooperation.