NEWS

Graduate school to kick off 100-year anniversary by honoring students’ contributions to North Carolina

By BRIAN MACPHERSON
News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- For 100 years, students in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Graduate School have conducted research that has benefited North Carolina in countless ways. Thousands of graduate students working across the state — and across the world — have studied issues that affect the lives of Tar Heel residents.

In the first event of a year-long celebration of graduate education at Carolina, five Centennial Awards will be presented to students for outstanding research that helps the state. Twelve other students will be recognized with Dean's Awards for their work.

All eight Centennial Award winners will speak briefly and present their research at the Graduate School's Centennial kickoff celebration, "A Celebration of Graduate Students and Their Contributions to the State of North Carolina," which be held Thursday (March 6) beginning at 3 p.m. in the Carolina Club of the George Watts Hill Alumni Center. The event will include displays by the award-winning students and a brief history of graduate education at Carolina.

"Focusing on the benefits that graduate research provides for our state is a logical way to being the celebration of the centennial year, given Carolina's long history of success in this area," said Dr. Linda Dykstra, dean of the Graduate School.

Besides Dykstra, speakers at Thursday’s event will include Graduate and Professional Student Federation President Branson Page, Graduate and Professional Student Federation President-Elect Dan Herman, graduate student and author Laura Micheletti Puaca, and Associate Deans Michael Poock and Sandra Hoeflich.

One of the student award winners, Mahyar Mofidi, analyzed disproportionate access to dental health care for children in North Carolina from the point of view of parents. He divided a cross-section of poor North Carolinian families into 11 focus groups by race, but the message of every group was the same.

"They said, `We are experiencing a lot of barriers accessing dental care for our children,'" Mofidi said.

Families described their difficulties in finding dentists who would treat families on Medicaid. Once they found a dentist, they had difficulties making appointments, finding transportation to the office and finding treatment once at the office — some reported waits of up to four hours.

They said that dentists held their financial status against them due to the low rates paid by Medicaid for dental health care.

Mofidi plans to use his findings to educate health-care providers, policy-makers as well as the families who encountered the barriers.

Katie Otis, along with partners Angela Hornsby and Joe Mosnier, won a Centennial Award for work with "Listening for a Change: North Carolina Communities in Transition" as part of the Southern Oral History Program. Otis' component documented how flooding from Hurricane Floyd affected the lives of victims, especially the elderly.

"I was really impressed by their courage and how they were able to repair and recover their lives," she said.

Otis told a story of one man she met — who was about 80 years old — who lived independently but was hooked up to an oxygen machine during the interview because of breathing problems he suffered after the flood. Another elderly couple, during the height of the flooding, had to swim from their backyard to their front yard and cling to a tree for four hours until their rescue. The husband admitted in a later counseling session that he had even considered suicide, so deep was the depression into which he had fallen after the traumatic experience.

"Even for folks who were financially OK," Otis said, "just the experience of going through something like that can really shake you up."

Otis plans to host a seminar in June in eastern North Carolina to "celebrate the tenacity and strength of the flood survivors." The program tentatively includes a multimedia presentation and a question-and-answer session with flood victims and state disaster relief officials.

Award winners were chosen after submitting an application detailing research methods, results and relevance to the state along with a faculty recommendation. A panel of 10 faculty members from a variety of disciplines reviewed the applications and selected the winners.

The quality of applications was so high, said Graduate School Associate Dean Michael Poock, that the Dean's Award was created in order to recognize more students.

"There was some really good research," Poock said. "The committee felt like, 'We have to recognize these somehow,' and that's how the Dean's Awards came about."

For information about the Graduate School's entire Centennial Celebration, see http://www.gradschool.unc.edu/centennial/index.html.

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News Services contact: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593