Carolina's corporate partners

Support from private foundations and corporations is vital to the Carolina First Campaign's success. In fact, Carolina plans to raise 39 percent—$700 million—of our $1.8 billion goal through funding from corporations and foundations. This fiscal year, Carolina has already received several prestigious grants and gifts.

Here's a look at three from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Progress Energy Foundation and the Charles H. Revson Foundation.

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Carolina was one of eight universities nationwide selected by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo., to receive funding over the next five years to establish entrepreneurship education across campus. UNC, which will receive $3.5 million, must match the grant at least 2-to-1 with internal and external funds.

The University will use the grant to create the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI), a campus-wide program which will bring entrepreneurship to all students—undergraduate and graduate—and faculty. Jack Kasarda, director of the Kenan Institute and Kenan distinguished professor of management and sociology, will lead the initiative.

One of CEI's goals is to make sure students learn the business skills needed to succeed. For example, a student with excellent writing skills may want to start her own magazine. But without any entrepreneurship training, she may not have the know-how to get the magazine off the ground.

“The idea is to make entrepreneurship part of the weave and fabric of the Carolina experience,” Chancellor James Moeser said.

The Kauffman Foundation, established in the mid-1960s by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman, works to advance entrepreneurship in America and improve the education of children.

Progress Energy Foundation

The Progress Energy Foundation awarded $215,000 to be divided among the Carolina Environmental Program, LEARN NC and Kenan-Flagler Business School.

The Carolina Environmental Program (CEP)—a University-wide initiative dedicated to understanding the environment and building an environmentally sustainable society—will receive $150,000 to support two projects. The first is a Web-based information tool used to identify areas of land and water most in need of conservation in North Carolina. The other is a research and outreach program—the Watershed Processes and Management Program—which focuses on various types of development in watersheds such as North Carolina's Neuse River Basin.

LEARN NC, a Web-based network of North Carolina educators administered by the School of Education, will receive $30,000 to create a computer-aided math and science training program for middle school teachers and students in southeastern North Carolina.

Kenan-Flagler Business School will receive $10,000 to help fund its Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) Program—a three-week summer training program for African American, Hispanic and Native American high school seniors who are interested in pursuing business careers. The business school's Kenan Institute will receive $25,000 to explore a partnership with the Progress Energy Leadership Institute to provide a leadership program for school superintendents and principals in economically disadvantaged communities.


Charles H. Revson Foundation

The Charles H. Revson Foundation's $250,000 gift to the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies honors the foundation's president emeritus and Carolina graduate Eli N. Evans. The grant will establish a program in Evans' name that supports outreach activities on campus and in communities across North Carolina.

Among the program's features will be an annual scholar-in-residence to present a public lecture and meet with students, faculty and the community. The program will also send faculty to urban and rural North Carolina communities to speak about subjects ranging from the origins of the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Holocaust and the history of Jews in the American South.

Evans, a Durham native who graduated from Carolina in 1958 with a degree in English, and from Yale Law School in 1963, chairs the advisory board for the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, which was established in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2003. Evans was a speechwriter on the staff of President Lyndon B. Johnson and directed former N.C. Gov. Terry Sanford's “Study of American States.” Evans joined the Carnegie Corp., a national education foundation, in 1968. In 1978, he became the first president of the Revson Foundation. He oversaw grants totaling more than $147 million to Jewish causes, urban affairs, education and biomedical research. He retired in 2003 after 25 years at the foundation.

“Often called the poet laureate of Southern Jews, Eli has had an enormous influence on all of us who are engaged in Jewish Studies,” said Jonathan M. Hess, director of the center and professor of Germanic languages. “Eli has been involved with the center since its inception, sharing his time, his vision and his deep love for Carolina. It is a great honor for us that the Revson Foundation has made this gift in recognition of Eli.”

Catherine House

For more information on the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, visit www.unc.edu/ccjs.