Jack Evans Honored With Jefferson Award

Posted on Oct. 12, 2010

The peers of longtime UNC faculty member and administrator Jack Evans have honored him with the prestigious 2010 Thomas Jefferson Award.

Evans, executive director of Carolina North and the Phillip Hettleman Professor of business administration in the Kenan-Flagler Business School, has been at Carolina since 1970. Within four years of his arrival, he was selected by the late Chancellor Ferebee Taylor ’42 to be assistant to the chancellor, a post he held for three years.

Whether shaping the master’s of business administration curriculum, leading Kenan-Flagler as dean from 1979 to 1987, serving for 15 years as faculty athletics representative to the Atlantic Coast Conference and NCAA, or spearheading the planning for Carolina North, Evans has amassed an impressive record of leadership in the past four decades.

The annual Jefferson Award was created in 1961 by the Robert Earl McConnell Foundation to recognize a Carolina faculty member who, through personal influence and performance of duty in teaching, writing and scholarship, has best exemplified the ideals and objectives of Thomas Jefferson. UNC faculty members nominate candidates for the honor, which carries a cash prize, and a faculty committee chooses the recipient.

“For 40 years, Jack Evans has been an unselfish and dedicated servant of this University in a wide variety of roles — invariably emerging as leader and counselor noted for unfailing good judgment and wisdom,” said George Lensing, Mann Family Distinguished Professor of English and comparative literature and last year’s Jefferson recipient.

Evans served as president of the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business and chaired a two-year project to redesign its accreditation process for business schools. During the early 1990s, he worked with corporate and academic leaders to create a new research program, partially funded by corporate contributions, within the National Science Foundation to support research on the principles of continuous improvement.

He was the 2005 recipient of the GAA’s Faculty Service Award.

Evans was Carolina’s faculty athletics representative to the NCAA and ACC from 1995 to 2010. He served on the NCAA Management Council from 2001 to 2007. Since 2002, he has been a contributor to the NCAA’s academic reform efforts and has served on the Committee on Academic Performance since 2004.

That same commitment to excellence, combined with tenacity and patience, led then-Chancellor James Moeser in 2006 to appoint Evans to head the development of Carolina North, the University’s planned research and mixed-use academic campus.

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