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

University Day to recognize Graduate School centennial, alumni; U-M president to give address

By STEPHANIE GUNTER
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, an alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be the featured keynote speaker at UNC’s annual University Day ceremony on Oct. 12.

The public is invited to the convocation, to begin at 2 p.m. at Hill Hall auditorium.

Coleman’s address, titled "Carolina on My Mind," will focus on the role that universities play in addressing issues of national significance. Coleman will use the affirmative action case involving U-M and the summer reading program at UNC as examples.

University Day was created by the UNC Board of Trustees to commemorate the laying of the cornerstone of Old East, the nation’s first state university building, on Oct. 12, 1793.

Coleman will receive the university’s Distinguished Alumna and Alumnus Award at this year’s ceremony, as will Dr. Katherine A. High of Merion Station, Pa., and Dr. Shirley Weiss of Chapel Hill.

Coleman became U-M’s president in August 2002. She also is a biological chemistry professor in the U-M Medical School and a chemistry professor in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts.

A graduate of Grinnell College with a degree in chemistry, Coleman earned her doctorate in biochemistry from UNC in 1969. As a biochemist, Coleman has researched the immune system and malignancies, writing numerous articles on her findings and directing funded research projects supported by a variety of federal agencies.

In 1990, after her 19-year career as a member of the biochemistry faculty and as a cancer center administrator at the University of Kentucky, she returned to UNC as associate provost and dean of research, then vice chancellor for graduate studies and research. In 1993, she became provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of New Mexico. She became president of the University of Iowa in 1995, serving the university for seven years before being appointed U-M president.

Coleman has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

University Day also will include recognition of The Graduate School’s centennial. The school was officially created in 1903, but graduate education has been present at UNC since the first half of the 19^th century. The first earned master’s degree was awarded in 1856 to Needham Cobb.

University Day became a campus holiday in 1877 and an all-day celebration in 1900. In 1906, Edwin A. Alderman, former university president, received an honorary degree, the first given on University Day. That practice evolved into the Distinguished Alumna and Alumnus Awards, first presented in 1971 to "alumni who had distinguished themselves in a manner that brought credit to the university."

High, a 1978 graduate of the School of Medicine, is institute investigator and director of research in the division of hematology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She also is an attending hematologist and William H. Bennett professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

After attending Harvard and UNC’s School of Medicine, High completed her residency at N.C. Memorial Hospital in internal medicine. She then attended Yale University School of Medicine with a fellowship in hematology. High is former director of UNC Hospitals’ Clinical Coagulation Laboratory.

While at UNC, she was associate research director of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and acting director of the women’s studies program. She is well-known for her research on New Town development. In 1992, Weiss and her husband, Dr. Charles Weiss, established UNC’s Urban Livability Program, providing support for graduate fellowships, a resident scholar, essay competitions and a special collection in the Chapin Planning Library.

- 30 -

(Gunter, of Raleigh, is a senior majoring in journalism and mass communication.)

Photo note: To download a photo of Coleman, click on http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/alum/coleman_mary_sue.jpg

News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu