Carson remembered with Morehead scholarship

The foundation that brought Eve Marie Carson to UNC now has plans to help carry on her legacy.

The Chapel Hill-based Morehead-Cain Foundation has endowed a merit scholarship with $400,000 to honor the former student body president, who was killed in March 2008.

The Eve Marie Carson Carolina Way Scholarship will accept one student every four years. It will cover the full cost of tuition, fees, room and board. Its first recipient is expected as early as the 2011-12 school year.

“Eve Carson embodied everything that phrase (Carolina Way) represents,” said Megan Mazzocchi, associate director of the Morehead-Cain Foundation.

“In simple terms, the Carolina Way is ‘excellence with a heart.’ That is what Eve was all about.”

Carson was a Morehead-Cain Scholar from Athens, Ga. She studied abroad in Cuba and spent her college summers in Wyoming, Ecuador and Egypt on trips funded through Morehead-Cain summer enrichment programs.

The scholarship will give preference to out-of-state applicants.

It will also provide the recipient with special programming, including research grants, summer enrichment opportunities and study abroad.

This is the second UNC scholarship to honor Carson. The first, the Eve Marie Carson Memorial Junior-Year Merit Scholarship, funds a summer experience for students after their junior year and financial aid for their senior year.

Current UNC students believe that the scholarship is an appropriate way to honor Carson’s memory.

“It’s something that a lot of people care a lot about,” junior Paige Smith said. “And I think it’s great to incorporate the issue with helping students.”

Some students see it as a good way to promote education.

“I think that’s great,” junior Melissa Auton said. “The more people that can have the ability to attend UNC, the better.”

  Those involved with the foundation hope that eventually the Carolina Way scholarship will be able to accept more scholars into the program.

“As the Eve Marie Carson Carolina Way Scholarship Endowment Fund grows, the number of scholars will also be able to grow,” Mazzocchi said.

“The fund is set up so that others can make donations if they would like to help us honor Eve by bringing some of the nation’s best students to the Carolina campus.”

The Carolina Way Scholarship will center its selection basis on having a well-rounded individual. It will select its recipient based on similar ideals as the Morehead-Cain Scholarship does.

“Recipients will be chosen for academic excellence, observable optimism and enthusiasm, and a proclivity to connect and engage diverse people,” Scott Ragland, UNC director of development communications, stated in an e-mail.

Mazzocchi hopes to use the scholarship as a vehicle to share Carson’s character and the “Carolina Way” with incoming and future students.

“There will never be another Eve Carson,” Mazzocchi said. “However, with the Eve Marie Carson Carolina Way Scholarship, we are hoping the University will be able to attract students who share Eve’s remarkable intelligence, enthusiasm and optimism.”

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.