The end of an academic year brings inherent reflection and celebration, and this year’s achievements of our faculty and students are truly impressive feats that warrant recognition.
While graduation season is mostly about our students, I want to mention the incredible achievement of two Carolina faculty members who were recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences, bringing our total number of inductees to 19. Congratulations to Distinguished Professor of Sociology Arne Kalleberg and Dr. Stanley Lemon, a medical professor in infectious diseases and microbiology and immunology in the UNC School of Medicine, on this impressive honor and distinguishment. Election is a testament to their distinguished achievements and their high regard within their respective fields.
For the more than 6,000 graduating students, including 4,265 undergraduates, 1,530 master’s candidates, and 884 doctoral candidates, this is a momentous occasion. It is a culmination of years of dedication and perseverance.
For the vast majority, research played a critical role in their educational experiences both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. Of those students, 446 wrote honors theses, 407 submitted dissertations (302 in May and 105 in December), and 127 submitted master’s theses (92 in May and 35 in December). I look forward to seeing what these students accomplish in the years to come.
At this year’s graduation ceremony, we will honor our commencement speaker Zena Cardman, an outstanding example of a Carolina graduate. Zena is a double Tar Heel alum with a bachelor’s in biology and master’s in marine sciences. While at Carolina, she conducted research as part of her studies, which took her to the Antarctic and Arctic to study microbial systems in subsurface environments, like caves and deep-sea sediments.
Now, as a NASA astronaut, she is scheduled to serve as commander of NASA’s Crew-9 Mission later this year. During the mission, she will lead a four-person crew to the International Space Station where they will conduct research for months aboard the orbiting laboratory.
So many of our students show this type of transformative potential. I am inspired by the unwavering commitment to research and academic pursuits I see in them daily. The knowledge they’ve acquired and the research contributions they’ve made through countless hours spent in labs, libraries, and classrooms will undoubtedly propel their own success and yield benefits to the citizens of our state and beyond.
I’d like to particularly recognize just a few of our undergraduate students who recently received prestigious and nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships:
- Senior Lizabeth Bamgboye and alumna Maria Silva were awarded the Schwarzman Scholarship, which provides a fully funded master’s program in global affairs at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
- Rising senior Nicholas Boyer was selected to receive a 2024 Barry Goldwater Scholarship, to pursue his research career. The scholarship is awarded annually to only 450 students.
- Courtney Halverson ’21 has been selected as a 2024 fellow for the Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Graduate Fellowship Program. Funded by the U.S. Department of State, the Rangel Fellowship identifies and develops outstanding young professionals to enhance the excellence and diversity of the U.S. Foreign Service.
- Sophomores Clara DiVincenzo, Lucy Henthorn, and Isabel Leonard were recently awarded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship, a highly competitive scholarship that provides an academic stipend and a paid summer internship at a NOAA facility.
This academic year, 12 graduate students won Impact Awards honoring their contributions to improving the future for the people of North Carolina. That is in addition to the 279 graduate students, representing 42 academic programs, who received prestigious external fellowships.
More than 300 graduate students received external funding awards to fuel their research and creative scholarship. Of those awards, 81 students received National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships, 59 received National Institutes of Health (NIH) F30 or F31 grants, and 2 received NIH supplements. These students will make incredible contributions and impacts as they complete their degrees at Carolina.
These significant accomplishments of our students speak to the quality of our research enterprise and our academic programs. The federal funding they’ve attracted provides critical support for their training and increases their competitive advantage when they compete for jobs after graduation.
And the breadth of student research at Carolina continues to grow. I am thrilled that the Office of Undergraduate Research will be supporting a record-breaking 85 students with Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships this summer, and they will welcome their first cohort of Amgen Scholars, providing even more hands-on research opportunities enabling us to continue training and launching critical thinkers and world-changers.
We also recently announced a $1.5 million gift to the UNC Center for Galapagos Studies from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust to create the Kenan Galapagos Fellows Program, which will support three graduate students per year and one post-doctoral fellow per year as they conduct science in the Galápagos Islands. The work that they do will further our understanding of this fragile ecosystem in ways that will translate back to North Carolina and our own coastal barrier islands.
Now is a time to celebrate the hard work, innovation, and unwavering pursuit of discovery and knowledge that defines our research community. By the start of the next academic year, work will be well under way towards achieving the goals we set forth in our new Strategic Research Roadmap. This work will transform the support, infrastructure, and impact of the research enterprise, and I will be thrilled to share our progress with you in the fall.
As we look ahead, I am filled with immense excitement about the groundbreaking discoveries yet to come. Together, through our collective passion and intellectual curiosity, we will continue to push the boundaries of human knowledge.
Once again, congratulations to all our wonderful graduates, students, and faculty! Wishing you a restful and rejuvenating break.