Every C-STEP of the way, she guides transfers to success
“It’s been my greatest joy,” Massey Award winner Becky Egbert says of leading the Carolina Student Transfer Excellence Program for 20 years.
The numbers are impressive. Launched in 2006 with three community college partners and six students, the Carolina Student Transfer Excellence Program now enrolls more than 400 students at Carolina and its 14 community college partners. C-STEP has served over 2,100 students, with alumni working across the state as doctors, lawyers, professors and in other fields.
And Becky Egbert, associate director of admissions and C-STEP’s sole director for the past 20 years, has met most of them.
“Because of Becky’s leadership, countless students who once viewed a four-year degree as out of reach have found a clear, supported pathway to success at Carolina,” wrote one of the colleagues who nominated Egbert for a 2026 C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award.
Community college students across North Carolina — high school graduates with full-time jobs, empty nesters entering the workforce, veterans switching to civilian careers — can enter UNC-Chapel Hill as juniors if they keep up their grades and earn an associate’s degree. Of the original seven universities to receive $1 million seed grants from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Carolina was the only one to guarantee admission, Egbert said.
“I feel like we owe that to them. They don’t have to worry about where they’re going,” she said. “And we feel comfortable because we worked with them for two years. I think that’s what sets us apart. We get to know our students, and we are invested in them.”
Entering as juniors puts C-STEP students on a fast track; they have more choices but less time to explore. C-STEP offers 1:1 counseling and help with resources through graduation.
Personal and institutional impact
“It’s been my greatest joy,” Egbert said of leading C-STEP and seeing it change the University’s reputation statewide. “The community colleges know we’re now accessible.”
A former colleague who nominated her for the Massey Award credited Egbert for that: “She and her caring and high-performing team didn’t just transform the lives of the students who were directly involved in the program; they transformed UNC.”
Egbert works with community colleges across the state and shares best practices with other UNC System schools. “She’s such a trailblazer in her work that many colleges and universities across the state have adopted and or created programs similar to C-STEP,” another nominator wrote. “Her impact is not just university-wide, but statewide.”
Ironically, this recipient of Carolina’s highest employee honor has spent the last 30 years recruiting students to attend a university she didn’t. “When I first started here, I was the only one who didn’t graduate from Carolina,” said the East Carolina University graduate.
But the Pirate soon found a new home and friends among the Tar Heels in admissions. “We believe in what we do, and we get along with one another,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s usual, but it certainly happens here.”
Importance of home
While work is important to Egbert, so is family and the 100 acres of inherited land 35 miles south of Chapel Hill that she calls home. She’s renovating the house where she lives with her husband and two teenage daughters. One daughter’s an equestrian and the other competes in soccer and cross-country. “I have never told them no,” she said. “They have things going on, and I’m there, and that’s what’s important.”
Egbert enjoys exploring new places on family trips. But she also likes communing with nature on long walks and the twice-daily 50-minute commute that takes her over Jordan Lake. “I do feel like nature provides a movie to us every single day,” she said. Just recently she saw three bald eagles in one day. “That has never happened in my 30 years.”
