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Photo note: To download a photo of Leloudis, see end of release.

Leloudis to address graduates at mid-year commencement ceremony

By LANITA WITHERS
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Dr. James Leloudis, director of the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will speak at the university’s commencement ceremony Dec. 20.

The mid-year ceremony, to be held at 2 p.m. in the Dean E. Smith Center, recognizes students who completed degrees in the summer or December. Parking will be available at the Smith Center and in nearby lots, and parking monitors will provide assistance to those attending the ceremony.

A reception on the concourse will immediately follow the ceremony. To comply with the current Dean E. Smith Center entry policy, officials suggest that families not bring any graduation gifts to the Smith Center. For a full list of items that will not be permitted in the Smith Center, click on www.unc.edu/commencement.

"This is a particular honor for me because I was an undergraduate at Carolina and graduated 25 years ago," said Leloudis. "Having this perspective, I want to reflect with them on what it means to be a Carolina undergraduate – in particular, what it means to go forth as a graduate from a public university."

Leloudis, the associate dean for honors and an associate professor of history, is a native of Rocky Mount and a UNC alumnus. He received his bachelor’s degree in history with highest honors from the university in 1977 and earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University in 1979. He completed his doctorate at UNC in 1989 and joined the faculty of the history department.

Leloudis’ chief interest is the history of the modern South, with emphasis on women, labor, education, race and reform. His published works include "Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World" (1987) and "Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920" (1996).

He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Undergraduate Students Teaching Award, the Ruth and Philip Hettleman Award for Outstanding Scholarly Accomplishment by Young Faculty, the Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association and the Philip Taft Labor History Award from Cornell University.

Currently, Leloudis has two new research projects under way. The first is a study of race, politics and leadership in the "War on Poverty" in the South. This work focuses on the North Carolina Fund, which many have categorized as one of the most innovative state-level anti-poverty programs of the 1960s.

The second is an oral history documentary project on the experience of school desegregation in North Carolina.

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(Withers is a senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication from Reidsville.)

Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/faculty/leloudis_james.jpg
News Services contacts: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415, print; and Karen Moon, (919) 962-8595, broadcast