The Carolina Center for Public Service recently hosted the University’s annual Public Service Awards ceremony. The following students from the College of Arts and Sciences were recognized:
- Psychology student Allison Norman ’12 received the Robert E. Bryan Public Service Award for her work with Students Working for Environmental Action and Transformation (SWEAT), a Campus Y group committed to defending social justice through environmental initiatives.
- Ashley Chaifetz received a Community Engagement Graduate Student Fellowship for her work with Growing Safer Gardens.
- Patrick Heenan ‘13, received a Robert E. Bryan Social Innovation Fellowship for his work with Technology Education in Chapel Hill, affiliated with the Campus Y.
- Alex Biggers ’13 and Meg VanDeusen ‘14 received a Robert E. Bryan Social Innovation Fellowship for their work with HOPE COOKS, affiliated with the Campus Y.
- Jillian Griffith ‘14 and Reena Gupta ’15 received a Robert E. Bryan Social Innovation Fellowship for their work with Healthy Girls Save the World.
- Gautam Sanka ’14 received a Robert E. Bryan Social Innovation Fellowship for his work with El Fondo de Apoyo Comunitario Internacional, affiliated with the Campus Y.
- Elizabeth Cotton ‘12 and Gabrielle Neri-Mynatt ‘13 were recognized as recipients of the Ronald W. Hyatt Rotary Public Service Award for their work with Ugandan HIV-positive youth in their initiative Empowerment Through Technology.
- Morgan Smallwood ’12 and Amna Baloch ’12, creators of Zenica Peace Alliance, received the Davis Projects for Peace Award. The award provides $10,000 to create a safe space in which children from diverse backgrounds in the city of Zenica, Bosnia can develop relationships to overcome dangerous ethnic divisions.
The Carolina Center for Public Service honored 20 individuals and organizations. Awards went to students, faculty and staff members from eight of Carolina’s 13 schools and more than 30 different departments.
“The students, faculty, staff and University units being honored with these awards exemplify Carolina’s commitment to service and engagement across North Carolina and far beyond,” said Lynn Blanchard, the center’s director. “Their efforts demonstrate the interconnectedness of the University’s three-part mission of teaching, research and service. We are pleased to have such outstanding examples of public service and engaged scholarship to celebrate at UNC.”
The Ronald W. Hyatt Rotary Public Service Award, named for the late professor of exercise and sport science and longtime member of the Chapel Hill Rotary Club, honors innovative public service projects that exemplify the “service above self” motto of Rotary International. This year’s award went to senior Cotton of Battleboro, junior Westphalen of Raleigh and junior Neri-mynatt of Waynesville for their work with Ugandan HIV-positive youth in their initiative Empowerment Through Technology.
The Davis Projects for Peace Award, funded by philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis, provides $10,000 to support the Zenica Peace Alliance, developed by seniors Baloch, Sarah Mohamed and Smallwood, all of Raleigh. The project will create a safe space in which children from diverse backgrounds in the Bosnian city can develop relationships to overcome dangerous ethnic divisions.
The center honored Shirley Ort, director of the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid, and Fred Clark, academic coordinator for the Carolina Covenant Scholars Program, with the Ned Brooks Award for Public Service. Named for Brooks, a faculty member and administrator at Carolina since 1972, the award recognizes a faculty or staff member who has built a sustained record of community service through individual efforts and has promoted the involvement and guidance of others. In their work for Carolina Covenant, a landmark program that provides debt-free education to youth from low-income families, Ort and Clark have helped improve the lives of thousands of Covenant Scholars.
Three campus units received Office of the Provost Engaged Scholarship Awards: Carolina Navigators, a service-learning program which provides North Carolina teachers with cultural resources from Carolina students with international expertise; Steve Knotek, associate professor of education, for his work with Madres para Niños, a program for Latina mothers and their young children that addresses cultural gaps in the classroom; and the Community-Based Participatory Research Core of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, for the project Community Engagement Consulting Models: Taking Them to Scale.
The Robert E. Bryan Public Service Award recognizes individual students and faculty for exemplary public service efforts. This year’s Bryan awards went to three individuals and one organization:
- Norman, a senior from Charlotte, for her work with Students Working for Environmental Action and Transformation (SWEAT), a Campus Y group committed to defending social justice through environmental initiatives.
- Jeanne Cross, a masters student in the School of Social Work, for her work raising awareness and fighting human trafficking, providing anti-trafficking community education through her speaking and fundraising efforts in the state and developing an international field placement in India to serve women and children rescued from human trafficking and sex trade.
- Nicole Hurd, executive director and founder of the National College Advising Corps, for her work with the corps, a program housed at UNC that places recent college graduates as college advisors in high schools in high-need areas.
- Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at the Gillings School of Global Public Health for its Breastfeeding-Friendly Healthcare Project and Carolina BEBES (Birth and Breastfeeding: Evidence Based Education and Support). The Breastfeeding-Friendly Healthcare Project supports N.C. hospitals’ efforts to implement the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding program. Carolina BEBES is the institute’s student organization arm, which provides an opportunity for students to learn more about breastfeeding and advocates for supportive breastfeeding practices on campus, locally, nationally and globally.
The following organizations received Community Engagement Graduate Student Fellowships:
- Growing Safer Gardens,
- Latino Men in North Carolina and Their Participation in Reproductive Health Promotion Programs,
- Supporting North Carolina Families Affected by Cancer and
- Toward Successful Integration: Partnering with Local Schools to Assist Refugee Students.
The following organizations received Robert E. Bryan Social Innovation Fellowships:
- El Fondo de Apoyo Comunitario Internacional,
- Healthy Girls Save the World,
- HOPE Cooks and
- Technology Education in Chapel Hill.
