The school gave its highest honor, the Peabody Award, to Tom Lambeth, former executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.
“The School of Education is proud to honor these accomplished individuals,” said Bill McDiarmid, dean of the School of Education. “They each have established a record of accomplishment that has contributed to the field of education. We are indebted to them for their service and for their leadership.”
After 17 years working in state politics – during which he helped establish the state’s community college system and the North Carolina School of the Arts – Lambeth in 1978 was named executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a position he held for 23 years. Lambeth led efforts to refashion the foundation into a change agent, helping launch and fund organizations such as the Public School Forum and the N.C. Teaching Fellows Program.
Lambeth, of Winston-Salem, has long been a supporter of the UNC system and its member universities. He recommended and often conceived 381 grants exceeding $27 million to UNC campuses. He also helped lead the 2000 public campaign for a $3.1 billion bond package for the UNC and community college systems.
Lambeth serves on the board of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education Foundation.
Alumni who received awards:
- Ron Haskins of Rockville, Md., senior fellow and co-director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on Children and Families, received an Alumni Achievement Award. Haskins, recently named by Brookings to the Cabot Family Chair in Economic Studies, has worked as an educational policy scholar and policymaker, widely published author and college professor. He worked at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute from 1973 to 1985, leaving for Washington to serve as Congressional Science Fellow for U.S. Sen. Paul Simon. He earned three degrees from Carolina, including a master’s in teaching and a doctorate in developmental psychology.
- Amy Rickard of Chapel Hill, principal at Morris Grove Elementary School in Orange County, was given an Alumni Achievement Award. Rickard, who received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the School of Education, was named earlier this year as North Carolina’s National Distinguished Principal by the North Carolina Principals and Assistant Principals Association. In 2007-08 and 2013-14, she was Orange County’s Principal of the Year and earlier this year was named the Piedmont-Triad/Central Region Principal of the Year.
- Carol Malloy, who retired from the faculty at the School of Education in 2009 after teaching at Carolina for 15 years, received a Distinguished Leadership Award. Malloy taught mathematics methods courses and mentored graduate students and pursued scholarly and professional activities focused on promoting equity in education. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 for Distinguished Service to Mathematics Education from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. She was the 2009 recipient of the University’s Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement. She earned her Ph.D. from the School in 1994. She lives in Wilmington with her husband, Bill Malloy, also a retired member of the School of Education faculty.
- Cindy Parlow Cone of Chapel Hill, a four-time All-American in Carolina women’s soccer and member of three NCAA championship teams, received an Outstanding Young Alumna Award. Cone won the Hermann Trophy as outstanding female collegiate soccer player twice – in 1997 and 1998 – and was named one of the top 50 ACC athletes of all time. In 1999 she became the youngest player to win both a World Cup championship and an Olympic gold medal. She played professionally, has worked as a coach, and as a sports envoy for the U.S. State Department. Since 2008 she has worked with the Sports Legacy Institute to raise awareness of the dangers of heading soccer balls, seeking to delay the practice until players are in high school. She graduated with distinction with a bachelor’s degree in middle grades education in 2007.
- Elaine Townsend of Chapel Hill, who has led mentoring programs for Latino and Korean students during and after her years as a Carolina undergraduate, was given an Outstanding Young Alumna Award. Townsend served as co-director of the Scholars Latino Initiative, which pairs Carolina students with Latino students from low-resource high schools. She spent two years on a Fulbright grant teaching in Korea where she helped launch the Korean Adolescent Mentoring Program, which matches at-risk Korean high school students with English-speaking foreigners serving as mentors. She also trained 160 Fulbright English teaching assistants for their grant years in South Korea. At Carolina, she was a Gates Millennium Scholar, a Carolina Covenant Scholar and winner of several university-wide leadership and public service awards. She graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in middle grades education.
School of Education contact: Michael Hobbs, (919) 962-8687, michael_hobbs@unc.edu