The applied mathematics professor in the College of Arts and Sciences stressed the importance of community in accepting the honor Dec. 13.

Winner Patricia Parker accepted in honor of a woman Thomas Jefferson enslaved and Ella Baker, a civil rights leader. Parker is director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences.

The Thomas Jefferson Award winner’s “Geoffervescence” is “a tremendous asset to philosophy as an academic field.”

McGowan put off faculty’s highest honor one more semester — until the eve of his retirement from the University — because in the fall, when it is usually awarded, he was busy leading the Honors Semester in London as the fall 2019 faculty director.