UNC’s School of Dentistry opened the doors to a new education and research facility and honored a generous alumnus and friend, Burlington, N.C., businessman Maurice J. Koury, on April 27 at the dedication ceremony of the Koury Oral Health Sciences Building. The Koury Building, which adds 216,500 square feet of space, adjoins the school's existing structures—Tarrson Hall, Brauer Hall and Old Dental Building—at the corner of Manning Drive and South Columbia Street.

Dr. Hugh A. “Chip” McAllister Jr. of Houston has made a $10 million commitment to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that will include a collection of nearly 50 works of art for the Ackland Art Museum and expand an endowment dedicated to heart disease research at the School of Medicine.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing has been awarded $3 million over five years from the Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation to design and implement the Hillman Scholars Program in Nursing Innovation.

The program is designed to produce the next generation of nurse innovators who have the knowledge and research skills to solve complex health problems and improve patient care.

The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received a $2.5 million gift from alumnus Fred Eshelman to expand the school’s research programs and help transform the classroom experience for pharmacy students. The gift brings Eshelman’s total support for the school to more than $35 million.

“In every respect, the school is just going up, up, up,” Eshelman said. “I'm very fortunate to be a part of this, but it has precious little to do with me. I just put the gas in the car. The school is driving it.”

A Chapel Hill couple has given the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health the means to retain or recruit a professor who is a global leader in research and policies for improving the world’s access to clean water and sanitation.

The Don and Jennifer Holzworth Distinguished Professorship Fund has been established with a $666,000 gift from the Holzworths, who already are among the Gillings School of Global Public Health’s most ardent supporters. The gift will be supplemented with matching funds through the state’s Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund to create a $1 million distinguished professorship.

Two University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty members received mentoring awards from the Carolina Women’s Leadership Council today (March 1) at a ceremony at the Blue Zone inside Kenan Stadium.

Jean DeSaix (pronounced De Say), a senior lecturer in the biology department in the College of Arts and Sciences, received the faculty-to-student mentoring award. The faculty-to-faculty mentoring award went to Peggye Dilworth-Anderson, a professor of health policy and management in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. The awards include a $5,000 stipend.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received approximately $200,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to examine different types of local public health agencies in North Carolina.

The goal of the research, which began in December 2011 and will continue through May 2013, is to determine whether the way a local public health agency is organized affects public health service delivery or health outcomes in communities.

Students of Persian language and culture at UNC will benefit from expanded library collections, thanks to a new endowment established by Dr. Ali Jarrahi of Winston-Salem, N.C.

The Jarrahi Family Library Fund for Persian Studies will provide sustained library support for one of the most rapidly growing programs at the University.

Private equity education at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School got a boost with a $100,000 grant from Z Capital Partners LLC and James J. Zenni, Jr., its president and chief executive officer.

The three-year grant will support programs for undergraduate and master of business administration students seeking careers in the private equity industry.

Individuals with schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses have a high rate of chronic medical diseases and die 25 years sooner than the average person. More than 60 percent of the excess deaths are due to chronic medical conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and infections.

A large bronze sculpture suggesting the protective pose of a parent with a child now stands outside the entrances to the North Carolina Women’s and Children’s hospitals at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The artwork, “Next Generation II” by the late American Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser, weighs 1,500 pounds and measures just over 5 feet high, 7 feet wide and 6 feet deep. Installed at the hospitals Oct. 28, it was given recently to UNC’s Ackland Art Museum by Dr. Hugh A. McAllister Jr. of Houston in honor of his father. Both earned medical degrees at Carolina. The work is an important addition to the museum’s modern American art collection, said Emily Bowles of the Ackland.

LIMITED TIME REMAINS!

On Dec. 17, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. The IRA Charitable Rollover provision, initially enacted in 2006, was extended through 2011.

Times are tough, and budgets are tight. Just ask academic department chairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where faculty are teaching more students with fewer resources as departments absorb major state budget cuts.

But, thanks to the generosity of Nelson Schwab III, successful business executive and former chair of UNC’s Board of Trustees, those chairs will be able to “say yes” to requests from their faculty and fill vital gaps in their budgets.

Three universities have launched a Triangle Center for Japanese Studies that will support fellowships, research, seminars, travel, guest speakers and library development.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State and Duke universities will partner in the center, founded by a $270,000 grant from the Japan Foundation in Tokyo. The center, described at http://trianglejapan.org/, will continue to seek funding for collaborative endeavors in research, community outreach and education.

Babette and Jay Tanenbaum have established a new distinguished professorship in Jewish Studies, providing an endowment that will support a tenure track faculty member who specializes in Jewish history and culture.