Browning, Salmon elected to prestigious academy
Covington named AVC for Campus Health Services
Boyette selected new Morehead director
Campus Awards

Browning, Salmon elected to prestigious academy

Two University professors have been elected 2006 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for preeminent contributions to their fields and to society.

New faculty fellows from UNC are Edward D. “Ted” Salmon, the James Larkin and Iona Mae Ballou distinguished professor of cell biology, and Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham distinguished professor of history. Salmon also is a member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Salmon and Browning are among the 175 new fellows and 20 new foreign honorary members elected to the academy through a highly competitive process.

They join a distinguished list of new fellows which includes former Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, actor and director Martin Scorsese, choreographer Meredith Monk and New York Stock Exchange chairman Marshall Carter, along with leading scientists, scholars, artists and civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders nationwide.

This brings the total number of UNC faculty members who have been elected to academy membership to 30. The new fellows will be inducted on Oct. 7 at a ceremony at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

“Throughout its history, the academy has convened the leading thinkers of the day from diverse perspectives to participate in projects and studies that advance the public good,” said Leslie Berlowitz, the academy’s chief executive officer.

Salmon

Salmon, who has been at UNC since 1976, is an internationally recognized cell biologist who has had a long-standing interest in microtubules of the cell cytoskeleton and the mitotic spindle. Microtubules are protein fibers that act as scaffolding inside the cell.

Salmon’s particular interests include the mechanisms by which microtubules generate forces for chromosome separation during mitosis (cell division) and for cell motility.

He also studies how microtubules act to ensure accurate segregation of a cell’s chromosomes to create duplicate daughter cells. Failure of this process can have such serious consequences as cancer or developmental defects.

Throughout his career, Salmon and his laboratory members have developed new video and digital imaging microscopy methods for visualizing and analyzing dynamic processes in living cells and in vitro.

For many years, he has taught the undergraduate required biology course for majors, cell and developmental biology, and he has organized and taught courses on analytical and quantitative light microscopy.

Browning

Browning, who has been at UNC since 1999, specializes in the history of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. He has published seven books in the field of Holocaust studies, including two that have been awarded the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category: “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” (1992) and “The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942” (2004).

Browning regularly teaches a large lecture course on the history of the Holocaust. In 1996, and again in 2002-03, he was a senior visiting scholar at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He will be a fellow at the National Humanities Center next year.

His current research project is to write a history of the Nazi factory slave labor camps for Jewish workers in Starachowice, a small industrial town in central Poland.

The primary source for this project is a collection of 244 survivor testimonies that have been given during the past 60 years, from the summer of 1945 to interviews conducted in 2004.

Founded in 1780, the academy has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members the most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Ben Franklin, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill.

Covington named AVC for Campus Health Services

Covington

Mary Covington was recently named assistant vice chancellor for Campus Health Services (CHS) with the Division of Student Affairs.

As assistant vice chancellor, Covington will ensure the seamless delivery of high quality, compassionate and cost-effective health care delivery for students, an e-mail announcement from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs noted.

Covington will serve as a member of the Office of the Vice Chancellor Executive Committee, and is the Student Affairs liaison to the School of Medicine, UNC Hospitals, Department of Exercise and Sport Science, and Athletics.

Covington received a doctor of medicine degree with honors at Southwestern Medical School at the University of Texas.  She currently serves as the director of clinical services for CHS at UNC and has 19 years of clinical experience in a variety of health care settings. 

She is a member of the American College Health Association, the American College of Physicians, and led the effort resulting in the reaccreditation of CHS by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations earlier this year.

Her professional interests include women’s health issues and asthma care.

Covington’s appointment as assistant vice chancellor will begin July 1.

Boyette selected new Morehead director

Boyette

Todd R. Boyette, president and chief executive officer of The Health Adventure in Asheville, has been named director of the University’s Morehead Planetarium and Science Center.

His appointment is effective July 10.

Boyette is an accomplished science center director with a wealth of experience in informal science education (education taking place outside the classroom).

“Boyette’s wide range of experience in science education — as a chemist, as an educator at the high school and university levels and as a leader of successful informal science education centers — will be crucial in building on the strong traditions of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center and its recent efforts to expand into a model for science education outreach,” said Robert Shelton, executive vice chancellor and provost.

The search committee also noted Boyette’s leadership in the state’s science museum community. He has been vice president and president of the N.C. Grassroots Science Museums Collaborative, is a member of the N.C. Museums Council, a past member of its board of directors and belongs to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Born in Raleigh and raised in Garner, Boyette graduated from N.C. State University in 1988 with a bachelor of arts degree in science education and a bachelor of science degree in chemistry.

He earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in science education from N.C. State.

He has education experience at many levels, having recently taught chemistry to undergraduates at UNC-Asheville as an adjunct assistant professor and, earlier in his career, having taught chemistry and physical science at Cary High School.

As director of the Morehead Center, Boyette will serve as a leader in informal science education statewide.

“I look forward to the opportunity to lead an institution that has meant so much to North Carolina,” Boyette said. “The Morehead Planetarium and Science Center is poised to enter another exciting stage in its history, and I am fortunate to be a part of the team during this exciting time.”

David Grimes
Clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology and a fellow of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, Grimes is this year’s recipient of the John Atkinson Ferrell Lectureship and Award for outstanding contributions in preventive medicine and public health.

The lectureship is sponsored by the Preventive Medicine Residency Program in the School of Medicine’s department of social medicine and honors an outstanding physician with ties to the University or the state.

The program was established with a bequest from John Atkinson Ferrell to UNC to further the field of preventive medicine.

Grimes was scheduled to deliver his lecture at 4 p.m. on May 10 in the Ibrahim Seminar Room,1301 McGavran-Greenberg Hall.