2023 Davie Awards honor six for service

The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees presented six individuals with their highest honor, the William Richardson Davie Award that celebrates individuals who have given extraordinary service to the University or society.

The 2023 recipients are Terrence V. Burroughs, William W. “Bill” Cobey Jr., Edith A. Hubbard, Charles E. “Chuck” Lovelace Jr., Genna Rae McNeil and Dwight D. Stone.

Board of Trustees Chair John P. Preyer presented the awards Nov. 8.

Davie was a Revolutionary War hero who introduced and won passage of a 1789 bill in the General Assembly to charter the University of North Carolina and is considered the University’s father. The awards were first given in 1984.

•Burroughs earned a Bachelor of Science in pharmacy from Carolina in 1982 and a Master of Business Administration in marketing and finance from Wake Forest University in 1984. He is CEO and president of Burroughs Management Group, which consults with health care organizations on managing health care costs. He and his wife, Terri Brown Burroughs ’83, are the first African Americans to endow a scholarship in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy. He has served as president of the National Pharmaceutical Association Foundation and the University’s Board of Visitors, and he is an active member of several boards.

•Cobey came to Carolina in 1968 as the academic adviser for Coach Bill Dooley’s football team. He quickly took on new roles as assistant business manager, assistant athletic director, Title IX officer, becoming athletic director in late 1975 to 1980. Cobey’s role at Carolina was key in the expansion of athletic opportunities for women, offering 13 men’s sports and 13 women’s sports by 1979. In 1984, he was elected to represent North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, and served as Chair of the North Carolina State Board of Education from 2013-2018.

•Hubbard, the second Black woman to graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill, came to Carolina in 1964 as a junior from Bennett College. After earning a bachelor’s degree, she completed a master’s degree in college teaching in 1969. Hubbard built a career in education and public service. In the early 1990s, she returned to the University as associate director of research services and built a portfolio that totaled hundreds of millions of dollars a year. She also led the way in implementing electronic research administration software that revolutionized the field.

•Lovelace attended Carolina as a Morehead Scholar and earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1977 and an MBA in 1979. He retired in 2021 as executive director of the Morehead-Cain Foundation. He joined the foundation that oversees the merit-based scholarship program in 1984 as treasurer and assistant director, rising to director in 1987. In 2007, the Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation contributed $100 million to the endowment, later renamed Morehead-Cain, doubling the number of scholarships to about 70 with each incoming class.

•McNeil, retired professor emerita of history and scholar of African American and U.S. Constitutional history, won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for “Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights.” The book is recognized as the definitive biography of Houston, Thurgood Marshall’s forerunner, law school dean and mentor. As historian of record, she submitted with Howard Law faculty to the Supreme Court of the United States two amicus curiae briefs in the landmark case of the Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke.

•Stone is president and chair of D. Stone Builders Inc. in Greensboro. Stone received a Bachelor of Arts degree from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1973. He served on the UNC System’s Board of Governors and the University’s Board of Trustees (2013-19), including a term as trustees’ chair (2015-17). He is a member of the Rams Club executive board of directors and has served as its chair.