Carolina is home to some of the world’s most adept and curious minds for a reason: Enabling the best and brightest to shine is vital to our public mission and the nation’s future. 

We know talented students want to study, work and learn alongside other talented students. No matter their background, they all join together to make Carolina stronger and better. And when they flourish here, they graduate to lead in the world. The Carolina Covenant and the Morehead-Cain Scholarship epitomize the many ways we empower outstanding students.

The Carolina Covenant is a promise to highly accomplished, low-income students from all across the nation. Not just that they can graduate debt-free, but that they will not be distracted by financial burdens. Therefore, we make the commitment that if they work hard, we’ll work even harder to ensure their success.

The Morehead-Cain Scholarship was the first merit scholarship in the nation and one of the most lauded for student achievement. Besides being awarded a full, four-year scholarship, Morehead- Cain Scholars are immersed in a community of leaders, dreamers, doers and adventurers, and are offered experiential learning opportunities that often take them around the world.

Both scholarships represent the range of accomplishment we value. These programs have grown into powerful sources of innovation and impact for our state. Many of the scholars have made and will continue to make significant impacts across North Carolina, proving that breakthroughs sometimes begin by opening a door.

For the first time in history, Carolina has two recipients of the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship in the same year: Larry Han, a Morehead-Cain Scholar, and Matthew Leming, a Covenant Scholar. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gates Scholarship provides full support for graduate study at the University of Cambridge in England. Han has already made contributions in the treatment of HIV in China and one day hopes to work with hospital systems to reduce mortality rates in acute-care settings. Leming, a computer science major who was the lead developer of a mobile app about Carolina, plans to get a doctorate in psychiatry and find better ways of predicting mental illness and neurological disorders in children.

“Larry and Matt are those rare students who quietly and without fanfare change the landscape of their professions,” Chancellor Carol L. Folt said. “They are humanitarians whose strengths lie in their ability to connect on a human level. I am excited to see what they do with their bright futures.”