Since 1997, the Tar Heel Bus Tour has given the University’s newest faculty members a firsthand look at the people and places of North Carolina. Participants say the experience helps make them better teachers and public servants for North Carolina. The privately funded tour has rolled every year except 2002, when it was cancelled in light of deep state budget cuts. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of this classroom on wheels, take a look at the slideshow (below) that features some of the many stops along the way of this annual 1,100-mile trek from the coast to the mountains.

A special video has been produced to mark the anniversary. To watch the video, go to www.unc.edu/bustour/2007/video07-04.html.

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A Look Back: the Tar Heel Bus Tour

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  1. At the Coharie Tribal Center in Clinton, 2007 tour participants learn about the tribe’s heritage and the HOPE Works Project, a preventative care program coordinated by the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.
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  2. Chancellor Michael Hooker (right) admires the work of artisan Carlson Tuttle as he makes brooms at the Southern Highland Craft Guild Folk Art Center in Asheville on the 1997 tour.
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  3. Mike Smith, now dean of the School of Government and vice chancellor for engagement, chats with Hillcrest Elementary School first-grader Michelle Jarquin during a 1999 stop in Morganton.
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  4. Carol Pardun, from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, spreads her arms and legs to slow down as she slides to the end of her parachute-training jump at Fort Bragg in 1998.
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  5. After a visit in 2006 to the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City to learn how hurricanes affected water quality in the state, faculty members took a boat trip to Shackleford Banks. There, they watched some of the wild ponies that roam portions of North Carolina’s coast
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  6. Bus tour participants pose with the official pace car at the North Carolina Motor Speedway on a 1999 stop in Rockingham.
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  7. Institute of Marine Sciences faculty discuss water-quality testing and some of their research in the area with this year’s tour participants.
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  8. During a 1998 visit, Dorothy Redford (right), director of Somerset Place near Creswell, chats with faculty members about the lives of enslaved blacks who lived at the plantation, now a North Carolina historic site.
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  9. Haibo Zhou, from the Department of Biostatistics, and Hal Kohn, from Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, pick strawberries at Vollmer Farms in Bunn on the 1999 tour.
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  10. Chancellor James Moeser plays with some young children at the Chatham Family Resource Center, a day-care center in Siler City, in 2001.
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  11. Bus tour participants listen to John Vollmer on a 2003 stop in Bunn. The Vollmers have a diversified farm with tobacco, strawberries, spring and fall vegetables and pumpkins.

1. At the Coharie Tribal Center in Clinton, 2007 tour participants learn about the tribe’s heritage and the HOPE Works Project, a preventative care program coordinated by the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.