2020-2021 Impact Report

The Carolina Fund = Resilience

The Carolina Fund ensures we have the resources to provide flexible funding to meet critical campus needs and seize emerging opportunities that will enrich student experience and faculty research and scholarship.

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SUPPORT THE CAROLINA FUND

Meeting the Need and Making an Impact

The Carolina Fund gives us the ability to use your gift to make the biggest impact possible and weather the ebb and flow of state funding, tuition income and federal grants. Gifts to the Carolina Fund can be put to use right away and provide unrestricted dollars to give us maximum flexibility to make strategic decisions.

This flexibility is particularly vital when meeting unforeseen challenges such as the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on our campus and around the world.

Carolina Fund Quick Facts

Almost $2 million raised in 2020-21
More than 5,000 donors contributed to The Carolina Fund

Alumni Distinguished Professorships

In 2020-21, gifts to The Carolina Fund supported the current cohort of five Alumni Distinguished Professors. Established in 1961, these are the oldest professorships at Carolina funded entirely by private donations from alumni. The professorships supplement the salaries of professors whose outstanding teaching and research activities boost the stature of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Alumni Distinguished Professorships

Environment

Where the Water Will Rise

Alumni Distinguished Professor Rick Luettich is shedding light on past hurricanes while providing the tools to predict which areas will be most vulnerable to flooding in the future.

Robert Babcock, Classics

Since he was appointed Professor of Classics at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2008, Babcock constantly seeks ways to improve his courses, despite his consistent positive feedback from students. Babcock specializes in Medieval Latin, Latin paleography and the reception of Latin authors. His primary research focuses on Latin manuscripts and Medieval Latin literature.

Joseph G. Ibrahim, Biostatistics

Appointed Professor in the Department of Biostatistics in 2002, Ibrahim’s areas of research include Bayesian inference, missing data problems, medical imaging analysis and genomics. He is principal investigator of two National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants for developing statistical methodology related to cancer and genomics research. Dr. Ibrahim is also the director of the Biostatistics Core at UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Richard A. Luettich, Coastal Resilience

Joining marine sciences at Carolina in 1987, Luettich is a coastal physical oceanographer whose research deals with modeling and measurement of circulation and transport in coastal waters. He is a co-developer of the ADCIRC coastal circulation and storm surge model — widely used for coastal flooding studies by academia, the private sector and multiple federal agencies. Dr. Luettich is the principal investigator of the Department of Homeland Security’s Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence.

Barbara K. Rimer, Global Public Health

The former dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health is also the author of more than 270 peer-reviewed articles. Rimer is the first woman and behavioral scientist to chair the National Cancer Institute’s National Cancer Advisory Board. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2008 and was appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Cancer Panel, which she chaired from 2011 to 2019. In 2013, she was awarded the American Cancer Society’s Medal of Honor for her cancer control research.

Helen Tibbo, Information and Library Sciences

Tibbo teaches in the areas of archives and records management; digital preservation and access, appraisal, trustworthy repositories, and data curation. She is director of the Professional Science Master’s Degree in Digital Curation at the UNC School of Information and Library Sciences (SILS), where she developed the archives and records management concentration. She was principal investigator on several projects that have helped define digital curation best practices.

Scholarships

Since the 1980s, The Carolina Fund has provided support to the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid through The Carolina Fund Scholarships, ensuring that qualified students have the opportunity to study at Carolina regardless of their ability to pay. This year, private gifts from alumni to The Carolina Fund supported 14 scholarship students, and in the past five years, almost 60 students have received The Carolina Fund Scholarships.

More than $88.8 million in scholarships and grants was awarded to more than 11,000 students with financial aid at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2019-20.*

*Audited 2020-21 numbers are not yet available

The Carolina Collective

The Carolina Fund provided support for the Carolina Collective — an inclusive group of students, faculty, staff and alumni who believe voices can make a difference. The collective launched a grassroots crowdsourcing campaign — ideas from “the bottom up” — to engage the University and local communities in creating a safer, more equitable Carolina.

In fall 2021, the Carolina Collective received 82 submissions from 110 people in the Carolina community. Visit carolinacollective.web.unc.edu to view some of the collective’s fantastic finalist and runner-up submissions.

Join Our Society

A gift of $10,000 to The Carolina Fund qualifies you for membership in The Carolina Fund Society. In addition to knowing you are making a strategic investment in Carolina that will address the University’s priorities, members of the society receive:

Updates and progress on the Campaign for Carolina, the University’s $4.25 billion comprehensive campaign
Special invitations to campus and regional events
Access to a University liaison to answer your questions about Carolina
Invitations to Carolina Fund events

Thank you for your generosity and support

Your gift to The Carolina Fund makes an impact on every aspect of Carolina, from the student experience to teaching excellence.

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