ECU celebrates centennial

The East Carolina spirit arrived at Wright Auditorium March 27 in song, speech and award. In honor of the campus’s centennial celebration, more than 100 faculty, staff, and students were recognized for their service to campus and to the region it serves.

Leading the daylong festivities was Robert J. Greczyn, Jr., chair of the ECU Board of Trustees, and a 1973 alumnus, who noted that, even with the growth of campus and the development of the medical school, dental school and engineering programs that the spirit ECU remains as he remembered it when he entered the freshman class 39 years ago.

“We make such an incredible difference in the lives of people in Eastern North Carolina, across the state, and across the country,” he said. “We have been driven by the spirit or Robert Wright, and driven by the spirit of Leo Jenkins, and now we are being driven by the very real spirit of Dr. Ballard and his team.”

Those who embody the university’s spirit were also honored at the convocation.
There were 57 faculty and staff members inducted into the Servire Society – which recognizes those who have performed 100 or more hours of volunteer service. The university’s Centennial Awards for Excellence received more than 100 nominations, with winners in four categories: leadership, service, spirit and ambition.

This year’s recipients are as follows:

• Service: Dr. Kathy Kolasa (Brody School of Medicine); Joanne Kollar (University Publications); Dr. Don Ensley (College of Allied Health Sciences).
• Leadership: Dr. W. Randolph Chitwood (Brody School of Medicine and East Carolina Heart Institute); Martin Jackson (Information Technology and Computing Services); Dr. Margie Gallagher (College of Human Ecology).
• Ambition: Members of Gardeners for Hope, the Joan Balch Breast Cancer Fund. Members are Debra Crotts (University Marketing), Ed Crotts (College of Health and Human Performance), Anita Proctor (Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center), Carolyn Willis and Anna Dougherty (Joyner Library).
• Spirit: Ricky Hill (Facilities Services); Dr. Jim Westmoreland (College of Business).

The convocation closed with the singing of the alma mater, led by the ECU Chorale under the direction of Jeffrey Ward.

The day of celebration continued with the unveiling of the Greenville Quilters Guild’s
“A Page of History” quilt, which they have donated to J.Y. Joyner Library to mark the university’s centennial.

More than two years and thousands of “woman hours” went into creating the quilt, said Barbara Murphy, president of the guild. The 22 members of the guild involved in the project began with the idea of representing several campus buildings and then began recreating the landmarks in fabric. In the end, they used a scrapbook page representation to highlight 21 buildings plus the stone entryways facing Fifth Street.

The university also held a ribbon-cutting for the reopening of the Carol G. Belk Building on Charles Boulevard, the new home for the College of Health and Human Performance. The $9 million project added 50,000 square feet of classroom, research, and service space to the building, and will help to further the college’s work in medical innovations, recreational therapy, and sports science.

“With its research, and its service projects, this is the epitome of a college doing all it can to make a difference in eastern North Carolina,” Ballard said.