ECU celebrates Founders Day March 26

GREENVILLE, N.C. —   The dedication of the Trustees Fountain and the awarding of the Jarvis Medal, the university’s highest service honor, will highlight East Carolina University’s Centennial Founders Day celebration March 26. 

The day starts at 7:30 a.m. with a Community Leaders Breakfast at Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church. 

At 10 a.m., the Trustees Fountain in Wright Circle will be dedicated, followed by the Centennial Convocation in Wright Auditorium at 10:30 a.m. 

At the convocation, the Jarvis Medal will be presented to Janice Hardison Faulkner, a distinguished public servant and former university faculty member and administrator. The medal, which is awarded occasionally by the university’s Board of Trustees, recognizes extraordinary service to the university or society.

Previous recipients of the medal are Governor Thomas Jordan Jarvis, who is considered the father of ECU; Robert Wright, the university’s first president, former Chancellor Leo Jenkins; former U.S. Sen. Robert Morgan; and Dr. Andrew Best, a Greenville pediatrician who also served on the university’s faculty.

Faulkner, a former North Carolina secretary of revenue, secretary of state and commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles, earned her bachelor’s degree at ECU and received an honorary doctorate from the university. She was the first chair of the university’s Board of Visitors, a member of the Board of the ECU Foundation, and a recipient of the Distinguished Alumna award. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Pitt County Memorial Hospital and a native of Martin County. 

ECU will also recognize winners of the 2009 Centennial Awards for Excellence and inductees to the Servire Society, which honors faculty, staff and students who contributed 100 or more hours of volunteer service to the community in the previous year.

At 5:30 p.m., an opening reception and gallery talk will be held for an art exhibition on display through June 2009. “A Perception of Events” features paintings and drawings by Michael A. Dorsey, ECU artist, professor and former administrator. The exhibit is on display in the exhibition space on Joyner Library’s Second Floor. 

And at 7 p.m., ECU’s Centennial Task Force and Joyner Library will sponsor a public program showcasing interviews with ECU alumni who were the first members of their families to earn four-year degrees between 1930 and 2005. 

The event will take place in the Teaching Resources Center on Joyner Library’s Second Floor. First-generation college graduates are invited to attend and participate in the discussion.

All Centennial Founders Day events are free and open to the public. 

The first Founders Day was held on March 5, 1932 to recognize the bill passed in the state legislature on March 8, 1907 that established East Carolina. 

-Austin Bunch