The RFA Executive Committee is pleased to announce the selection of four outstanding recipients of the 2023 RFA Leadership Award. Originally established to recognize those who provided leadership to the Retired Faculty Association, eligibility was expanded in 2013 to include additional individuals whom the RFA wished to honor for their distinguished service to the university (Bill Friday in 2013, Tom Ross in 2015, Shirley Ort in 2018). The award is given in alternate years.
This year’s recipients are Professor Emeritus William Andrews (English); Professor Emeritus Tom Clegg (Physics and Astronomy); Professor Emeritus Jack Evans (Kenan-Flagler Business School); and Professor Emerita Jan Yopp (Hussman School of Media and Journalism). All four were recognized and were presented the award at the RFA general membership meeting on April 20 at the Friday Center.
Tom Clegg is the V. Lee Bounds Distinguished Professor of Physics Emeritus. He joined the UNC faculty in 1968 and began 50+ years of research with students and faculty at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory located at Duke. There he led multiple teams in designing and building devices used for accelerator-related research into forces that bind atomic nuclei and fuel stellar nucleosynthesis.
Beginning while Tom was chair of UNC’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, he led teams of UNC faculty from 1994 until 2010 through early campus land-use planning, and later during several phases of design and construction of UNC’s new Science Complex. He served as chair of the Provost’s Appointments, Promotion and Tenure Committee, Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and later Interim Senior Associate Dean of Science and Mathematics.
After retiring in 2016, Tom collaborated with the Retired Faculty Association and over 30 faculty retirees, most importantly Barbara Wasik and Marila Cordeiro-Stone, to produce a new UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty Retirement Planning Guide. At The Cedars retirement community where he now lives, he currently leads residents’ planning to understand and mitigate future campus impacts of global warming.
Excerpt from: https://uncrfa.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5536/2023/03/RFA-March-2023-newsletter.pdf