Impact Stories

Carolina scientists earn prestigious Keck Award
UNC-Chapel Hill scientists Charles Carter, Qi Zhang, and Abigail Knight were awarded $1 million from the W.M. Keck Foundation to answer the age-old question: How did life on Earth begin?

New speaker series will promote constructive discourse
$8 million gift to fund Abbey Speaker Series in the UNC Program for Public Discourse.

New initiative will study technology and the adolescent brain
When Jim Winston Jr. (’B.A. history ’81, Ph.D. psychology ’92) walks his kids into school, he passes through throngs of older students — heads down, glued to their cell phones. Winston said the obliviousness bothered him. After doing some research about how technology affects developing brains, his feelings about the rampant phone use shifted from annoyance to alarm. “Neurobiologically, kids … Continued

Summer Bridge helped a pediatrician get a solid start at Carolina
Leon Livingston ’91, a pediatrician in Memphis, Tennessee, credits a UNC program called Summer Bridge with helping him jumpstart his academic career. After growing up in Durham and attending the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Livingston learned about Summer Bridge, a six-week intensive program designed to help incoming first-year students from underrepresented communities adjust to college life away … Continued

Bringing sociology to the business world — and beyond
Lindsay Guzowski (M.A. sociology ’04) credits her time and experiences at UNC-Chapel Hill with setting her on the path to where she is today. She recalled a colloquium where a professor discussed his research on twins. She was inspired by the amount of insight that can be gleaned from a dataset. “That has actually shaped where I have gone in … Continued

Sharing Jewish life and culture across the state
Barry and Jan Schochet grew up in Asheville in the 1950s and ’60s, the children of Jewish parents who owned several downtown stores that sold clothing and dancewear. Back then, Asheville had a thriving Jewish community, two synagogues and many prominent Jewish business owners. The Schochets found a befitting way to honor the memory of their parents, Sidney and Mary, … Continued

A renewed commitment to study the science of moral understanding
Through the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, UNC-Chapel Hill scholars are undertaking critical and timely research to understand what drives intolerance and how to address it.