The C. Felix Harvey Award to Advance Institutional Priorities
Update: 2011
In 2008, Professor Robert C. Allen received the inaugural C. Felix Harvey Award to Advance Institutional Priorities at UNC. Endowed by the Harvey Family of Kinston, N.C., the Harvey Award provided Allen $75,000 to kick off a digital history project entitled "Main Street, Carolina."
"Main Street, Carolina" is a flexible, web-based platform that allows local organizations, such as libraries or preservation groups, to build densely layered historical maps of their hometowns. They can add local data: historical and contemporary photos, architectural drawings, family papers, etc. and layer that information on top of the North Carolina Collection’s unparalleled holdings of historic city maps.
Three years after the Harvey Award, “Main Street, Carolina” has brought in a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, spun off undergraduate classes, graduate seminars, at least two master’s theses. (Read about that impact in detail here.)
"One of the things that 'Main Street, Carolina' does is that it really breaks through those walls' between data and users, Allen said. 'This is just something that immediately goes out of the University, into the community, across the state. It just keeps going on."
Recently, Allen and his collaborators at the UNC Libraries received the Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History, given by the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Allen credits the Harvey Award with providing the critical early funding for a project whose impact is only beginning to be felt across North Carolina.
"The Harvey Award was absolutely determinative in getting us to do this project at all. It’s hard to explain as a faculty member in the humanities this kind of support. It came without strings; it came in such a way that we could get other external support," he said. "As soon as we got it back in the spring of 2009, we used it to leverage a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. And I’m absolutely sure that our ability to show that we had additional cash support really put us over the top in applying for that grant."
About the Award
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| C. Felix Harvey |
The C. Felix Harvey Award to Advance Institutional Priorities recognizes exemplary faculty scholarship that reflects one of the University’s top priorities. The annual Harvey Award, endowed by a $2 million commitment from the Harvey family of Kinston, N.C., provides $75,000 to fund the winning project. The first competition was held in 2008.
The award's namesake, C. Felix Harvey, is chairman of Harvey Enterprises & Affiliates and founder of the Little Bank Inc., both in Kinston. He graduated from UNC with a degree in commerce in 1943 and went to the Navy midshipman school, then served on a PT boat in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II. Now as chairman of Harvey Enterprises & Affiliates, he heads privately-held, family-owned interests ranging from farming and agricultural production supplies to real estate, financial institutions and insurance.
Past Winners
2010: No award given
2009: Creating a Multi-System Partnership to Promote Mental Health in Schools
2008: Main Street, Carolina — making N.C. history come alive on the web
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