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Carolina Alumni Awards Gala

An Evening Honoring Excellence

We celebrated excellence at the inaugural Carolina Alumni Awards Gala April 19 at the George Watts Hill Alumni Center, hosted by our Board of Directors. We walked the Carolina blue carpet, enjoyed an evening filled with music, hors d’oeuvres, cocktails and dinner. We honored outstanding individuals with the Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Young Alumni Award and Faculty Service Award.

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2024 Carolina Alumni Award Recipients

Charles G. Duckett '82 

Distinguished Service Medal

Charles “Chuck” Duckett ’82 served as a member of the UNC Board of Trustees from 2013 to 2021. Duckett is a partner at Battle & Associates and GRINS Enterprises, both in Winston-Salem.

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Peter Hans '91 

Distinguished Service Medal

Peter Hans ’91 has been president of the 16-member UNC System since August 2020. During his tenure, he has enacted policy reforms designed to broaden student access, boost affordability and expand student mental health services. Hans is a former president of the North Carolina Community Colleges System, and the State Board of Community Colleges and the UNC Board of Governors. He’s also served as senior policy advisor to three U.S. senators.

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Janet Southerland '82 ('84 BSDH, '89 DDS, '94 MPH, '05 PHD) 

Distinguished Service Medal

Janet Southerland ’82, (’84 BSDH, ’89 DDS, ’94 MPH, ’08 PhD) is the interim dean of LSU Health New Orleans School of Dentistry. She joined LSU Health New Orleans in 2022 as vice chancellor for academic affairs. Previously, she was a professor and dean of MeHarry School of Dentistry, and at UNC’s School of Dentistry, she was the chair of Hospital Dentistry, chief of Oral Medicine and director of the Hospital Dental Clinic.

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Michael Bury '17 (MSN) 

Distinguished Young Alumni Award

Michael Bury ’17 is a clinical assistant professor in UNC’s School of Nursing. His areas of clinical expertise include trauma, critical and outpatient lung transplant care. Bury is the faculty adviser for the UNC Association of Nursing Students and Aspiring Critical Care Nurses student interest group. An officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve Nurse Corps, he was deployed to a New York City hospital in the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in early April 2020.

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Eric Garcia '14 

Distinguished Young Alumni Award

Eric Garcia ’14 is a journalist based in Washington, D.C., who has served as an assistant editor for The Washington Post’s Outlook section and as an associate editor at The Hill. He has been a correspondent for National Journal, MarketWatch and Roll Call and has written for The Daily Beast, The New Republic and Salon.com. He hopes his latest book, “We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation,” will dispel misconceptions about people with autism.

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Angela Kashuba 

Faculty Service Award

Angela Kashuba is the dean of the Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She was named the John and Deborah McNeill Jr. Distinguished Professor in 2013 and also served as chair of the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics from 2015 to 2019, when she became dean. Kashuba is also director the UNC Center for AIDS Research Clinical Pharmacology and Analytical Chemistry Core.

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Gary Koch '68 (PhD) 

Faculty Service Award

Gary Koch ’68 has served on UNC’s faculty since 1968 and is a professor of biostatistics and Director of the Biometric Consulting Laboratory. His principal research interest is the development of statistical methodology for the analysis of categorical data and its corresponding applications to a wide range of settings in the health sciences. He is a member of the editorial boards for Statistics in Medicine and The Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics.

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Previous Carolina Alumni Award Recipients 

Each year Carolina Alumni awards the Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Young Alumni Award and the Faculty Service Award to those who have gone above and beyond in their service to the University. View past winners: