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Board of Trustees Has Five New Members

Terms of the new trustees run through June 30, 2023. (UNC photo/Jon Gardiner ’98)

The new Board of Trustees is complete with the appointments of Ralph W. Meekins Sr. ’83 and John P. Preyer ’90. Meekins was appointed by the N.C. House of Representatives and Preyer by the Senate.

Richard Y. Stevens ’70 was elected chair of the board. Stevens, who was a trustee from 1995 to 2003 and chaired the board from 1997 to 1999, returned to the board for a new four-year term in 2017. He is the only person ever to be chair twice with an absence from the board in between, according to University records. Stevens also has a master’s in public administration and a law degree from Carolina, both earned in 1974, and he is a former chair of the GAA Board of Directors. He lives in Cary.

Meekins is a lawyer with Teddy, Meekins & Talbert in Shelby. At Carolina, he was a manager for the Carolina men’s basketball team that won the national championship in 1982, and he was head manager for the 1983 Tar Heels. He has been a member of the N.C. Bar Association’s board of governors and of UNC’s Board of Visitors; a councilor for the N.C. State Bar; and chair of the Cleveland County YMCA, the Dover Foundation YMCA and the Cleveland County Community Foundation.

Preyer is co-founder and president of Restoration Systems, an environmental company specializing in wetland, stream, nutrient and habitat mitigation. He lives in Chapel Hill. He has been a member of UNC’s Institute of the Environment board of visitors since 2011 and was on UNC’s Board of Visitors from 2012 to 2016. Preyer worked in the U.S. Senate on environmental and defense issues as legislative director for N.C. Sen. Lauch Faircloth and is a past member of the board of directors of the N.C. Coastal Federation.

Three other new members were chosen by the UNC System Board of Governors, and one current member was reappointed to a new term. The appointments of David L. Boliek Jr. ’90, R. Gene Davis Jr. ’90 (’97 JD) and Teresa Artis Neal ’83 were announced in June, and they will be sworn in Aug. 1 along with Allie Ray McCullen ’67, who was reappointed, and Meekins and Preyer.

Boliek, of Fayetteville, is a lawyer with Williford, Crenshaw, Boliek & Frangakis. He previously worked as a journalist, political consultant and public relations professional, as CEO of a government contracting firm and as a prosecutor in Cumberland County. He has been a member of the Board of Visitors.

Davis, of Raleigh, is a lawyer at Gene Davis Law. While in law school, he was a founder and executive editor of the N.C. Banking Institute Journal and was an editor for the North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation.

Neal, of Cary, is a media lawyer at Trans World Radio and an adjunct professor at Campbell Law School. Previously, she was vice president of business affairs at a Turner Broadcasting subsidiary in Atlanta and general counsel of Capitol Broadcasting Co. in Raleigh. She has served on UNC’s Board of Visitors and the GAA Board of Directors, as chair of the Alumni Committee for Racial and Ethnic Diversity and as a board member for UNC-TV.

Lowry Caudill ’79, having served two consecutive four-year terms, no longer was eligible to serve. Board members Julia Grumbles ’75, William Keyes IV ’75 (’18 PhD), Ed McMahan ’66 and Hari Nath were not re-elected to second terms.

Terms of the new trustees run through June 30, 2023.

Student body President Ashton Martin joined the board on May 30 for a one-year term as an ex officio member.


 

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