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4 employees honored with Massey awards for outstanding service

By SCOTT RAGLAND
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- A scientist with a flair for collaborative research. A lawyer with an eye on the big picture. A mechanic with a helpful hand at any hour. An administrator with a commitment to fairness.

These were the four outstanding University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill employees recently presented with the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award, one of the most prestigious honors a Carolina employee can receive.

The late C. Knox Massey of Durham created the awards in 1980 to recognize "unusual, meritorious or superior contributions" by university employees. The award is supported by the Massey-Weatherspoon Fund, created by three generations of Massey and Weatherspoon families.

Chancellor James Moeser chose this year’s winners based on nominations submitted by the campus community, and each honoree received an award citation and a $5,000 stipend.

Winners were:

Dr. Thomas B. Clegg, V. Lee Bounds professor in the department of physics and astronomy, of Chapel Hill;

Patricia C. Crawford, associate vice chancellor and associate university counsel in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, of Chapel Hill;

William L. Howard Jr., maintenance mechanic for the Spencer Triad, of Pittsboro; and

Rutledge "Rut" Tufts Jr., director of auxiliary services, of Durham.

Clegg, chair of the department of physics and astronomy from 1989 to 1999, has shown his ability to lead others collaboratively while he and his students have worked at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory.

For two decades, nearly half of the experiments conducted in nuclear physics at the facility have used an ion source built by Clegg and his students. And in the last five years, Clegg's development of a new particle source has increased the effectiveness of the facility's beam-intensity by 20 times.

As chair of his department, Clegg led his faculty colleagues to the cutting edge of their field. He became chair when the department faced the near-term retirement of nearly half its faculty, and Clegg and his colleagues managed to bring in needed new faculty members.

Clegg helped lead the effort that launched the Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research (SOAR), a computer-controlled telescope being built by a consortium that includes UNC atop Cerro Pachon, a Chilean mountain. He was key in developing plans for the multi-phase science complex that will be built as part of UNC’s master plan and was among projects in last fall’s bond referendum.

"Absolutely key to all he has done is his leadership style — respectful of all those with whom he works, open-minded to ideas and scrupulous to examine them for their intrinsic worth, applying his own keen intellect to persuade but not to overbear, working hard to assess problems and to develop likely solutions, striving to achieve a result that all may see as a shared achievement," Clegg's award citation said.

A university is a complex place, so a lawyer who represents one needs a broad range of skills. Such is the case with Crawford.

She is knowledgeable in environmental law, federal and state banking statutes, wireless communication regulations, industry-sponsored research and clinical trial agreements, technology- transfer issues, intellectual property matters and planned-giving law. Her work has included drafting a complex agreement under which Carolina and the UNC Health Care System operate the University Child Care Center.

The nature of her work often demands that she balance the common and competing needs of the parties involved, keeping in mind that any policies should further UNC's overriding mission of transmitting knowledge.

"To a lawyer charged with protection of vital university standards and interests and counseling eager contenders for university favor, rigorous thinking and a gentle tongue are valuable assets," Crawford's awards citation said. "Match these to impeccable advance preparation, a desire to facilitate worthwhile projects, a flexible attitude toward valid choices, and a firm adherence to university requirements and the principles underlying them, and you perceive some of what characterizes two decades of greatly valued performance in a variety of legal assignments by this associate university counsel."

A petition supporting Howard's nomination for a Massey award included 134 names of students he serves as a maintenance mechanic for the residence halls that make up the Spencer Triad.

And no wonder. Examples abound of how Howard has gone the extra mile to make the students' homes-away-from-home as comfortable as possible.

When the big snow of January 2000 over-burdened the heating system for Kenan and McIver residence halls, Howard not only worked to get the heat back on but remained on duty — sleeping in Kenan's basement — in case the heat went out again.

Concerned about students' comfort in Kenan while air-conditioning units were being replaced, he worked over a weekend and from 6 a.m. to dark for several days until the project was completed.

A housekeeper had him open a jammed bathroom window to ventilate the smell from the cleaning chemicals she used, and as he worked Howard wondered why the chemical odor was so strong. He investigated and discovered that the exhaust fan failed to work. Worse, he found that no exhaust fan in the building was working. So he fixed them all.

‘Cheerfulness, a capacity for spontaneous humor, and undoubted devotion to the 485-student community he serves so well, make him an example of outstanding good citizenship and caring participation in the university community, in which each of us depends on all of us for the well-being of the university in which we share our lives for a time," Howard's award citation said.

As director of auxiliary services, Tufts has been at the forefront of efforts to grapple with one of Carolina's most complex issues — labor practices in overseas plants licensed to manufacture goods bearing the Carolina logo.

Tufts, co-chair of UNC’s Licensing Labor Code Advisory Committee, understands the value of using licensing revenue for such needs as academic scholarships. But he has also worked to shed light on labor practices that UNC cannot support.

On the advisory committee, he has absorbed the views of administrators, faculty and students and worked with members to arrive at recommendations that would earn a consensus of support. Most of these recommendations have been adopted and implemented by university chancellors, making Carolina a national and international leader on this issue.

Tufts continues working with national organizations devoted to fair labor conditions including the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium -- UNC is a member of both -- as well as Collegiate Licensing Corp., which represents Carolina and other campuses nationwide.

"The issues remain and will require time and committed hard work to resolve, but the steady and honorable approach, seeking workable solutions, in which the director has played a pivotal role promises progress," Tufts' award citation reads.

The Massey awards are named in honor of Massey, a former advertising executive. He served two decades as a UNC trustee and worked without pay to promote the statewide Good Health Campaign that led to the creation of a four-year medical school and teaching hospital at Carolina. He then worked as a "dollar-a-year" special assistant to the chancellor, adding in the development of scholarships, professorships and other awards.

Massey chaired the class of 1925 gift endowment campaign that raised the first 50th-year reunion gift of more than $50,000. He was inducted into the N.C. Advertising Hall of Fame, based at Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in 1990.

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