Morehead-Cain President Chris Bradford speaking at the 2022 Alumni Forum. (Photo by Leon Godwin)
Happy New Year! Morehead-Cain President Chris Bradford sat down with scholar host Stella Smolowitz ’26 to share what we’ve learned since launching the Sophomore Selection process and Morehead-Cain’s Community Standards, and what he hopes scholars take away from their time in the Program.
Morehead-Cain launched Sophomore Selection in fall 2023 to identify sophomores at UNC–Chapel Hill who have demonstrated exceptional scholarship, leadership, and character, and invite them to join the Morehead-Cain Program. Meet the sophomores in the class of 2027.
Music credits
The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.
How to listen
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Episode transcription
(Stella)
Welcome, Chris. Thank you so much for being with us today.
(Chris)
Thank you for having me, Stella. It’s great to be with you.
(Stella)
It has been more than three years since you joined Morehead-Cain. Looking back, what has been your favorite moment from your time with the Foundation?
(Chris)
Honestly, Stella, my favorite moments at the Foundation are the little day-to-day interactions that happen as I go about my life here in Chapel Hill and my work here in the building. As an example, last Friday, I saw Larry and Dershie McDevitt. Larry’s in the class of 1964. He’s the former mayor of Asheville, and he was here on campus. So, we had the opportunity to catch up and talk about some of the challenges facing his city and just see the positive energy that someone like Larry brings to the challenges of this time every single day.
And also, last weekend, one of your classmates, Diamond Moore from the class of 2027, was texting me from South Africa, where I used to live, from an art auction and sharing with me that she had met one of my favorite artists, Blessing Golbeni. So those types of things just make me happy and inspired every single day. This is an amazing community to be a part of.
(Stella)
Awesome, and I love that you touched on community, which I think is such an important value we have here at the Foundation and in Morehead-Cain in general. How have you observed Scholars and alumni coming together over the past year?
(Chris)
Well, I’d probably be remiss, Stella, not to start with the support we received from all quarters of our community after the passing of Brook Cheuvront in the class of 2026. It was a tragic loss for all of us, and for your class in particular, and the way in which alumni from all over the world reached out to lend a hand and a note of support, really inspired me and seemed like a uniquely Morehead-Cain experience. Also at that time, for example, we were in London. Megan was there with David Greer, and they were celebrating the 55th anniversary of the British Programme. We had alumni tour in London, and they invited a number of your classmates along to join that experience so that those classmates who had lost a friend could be enveloped in Morehead-Cain love over the course of that time, which I thought was wonderful. Each day here, I’m reminded of the very, very inspiring, influential community that we’ve gathered around Morehead-Cain, but also the ways in which the shared values of that community extend across generations.
One of the most inspiring weekends of 2024 for me was the 50th anniversary of Harvey Kennedy’s graduation. It was a Black alumni-organized celebration of 50 years of Black alumni at Morehead-Cain. We got to hear amazing stories from the likes of Harvey in the class of 1974, Karen Stevenson from the class of 1979, and others about their experiences at Carolina. And it was this uplifting experience that not only helped me understand the amazing journey that this community and this University have been through over the past 50 years, but also the depth of bonds and the shared experience that exists, whether you were among the first scholars to do summer programs, as Karen was, or if you’re walking this campus as a first-year college student in the class of 2028.
(Stella)
Amazing. It’s so beautiful to hear more about those methods of community. And I think one of my favorite events of the year and the way that I really see community here at the Morehead-Cain Foundation is when we have Fall Banquet, and we’re recording this episode one week after Fall Banquet this year. And as is Morehead-Cain tradition, we were introduced to the class of incoming Scholars, which included the class of 2028 and the new sophomores in the class of 2027.
Morehead-Cain launched the Sophomore Selection in fall of 2023. Can you describe the reactions you received post-launch and how you might have incorporated that feedback into this past year’s selection process?
(Chris)
Well, I want to start by welcoming the new sophomores in the class of 2027 to the Foundation. They are a remarkable group, and I look forward to you and your classmates getting to spend time with them in the same way that you’ve had the opportunity to get to know your classmates in the class of 2026, who I think have added immeasurably to our community and culture here.
When we started this initiative, we said that we wanted to create, not a second chance to apply for Morehead-Cain, but a second opportunity for Morehead-Cain to identify and invest in extraordinary talent that would go on to shape thriving communities here at this university and across our nation and around the world. And what we’ve seen is that that has borne out in ways that I think we didn’t fully imagine. We ask faculty and staff at the University to nominate outstanding first-year students that they worked with, and then we have the opportunity to meet those students and get to know a subset of them at a Finalist Weekend—that that looks just like your Finalist Weekend. It takes place at the Carolina Inn, interview with a selection committee, a group exercise, and the like.
80 percent of the candidates that are nominated to Morehead-Cain by our faculty and staff, and this year, we got to know over 190 of them. 80 percent of them were people we’ve never met before. They are truly a new pipeline into our Program, and that’s really exciting.
I think the most unexpected element of this has been the response from those faculty and staff to the initiative. We have received so many delightful notes from UNC professors and UNC staff members who have admired Morehead-Cain and Morehead-Cain Scholars for many years and are so grateful for the opportunity to celebrate one of their students who really inspired them by nominating them for Morehead-Cain. And I think this deepens our relationships across the University in a way that benefits every scholar who’s part of the Program. So, as you get to know the new scholars in the class of 2027, I know you’ll discover amazing things about them, just as you discovered amazing things about your classmates. And I know that they’ll take every opportunity to invest in the Morehead-Cain experience. They will go on an Outdoor Leadership experience over spring break. Many of them will opt into doing Civic Collaboration with their first-year classmates, and they will have the professional experiences, global experiences, and access to Lovelace Fund that have really been hallmarks of this Program for years.
(Stella)
Yeah. It has been so beautiful to see the sophomores that have integrated into my class; to see those sophomores go in the Civic Collab and that has been really cool to see that community. And then, I met the the finalists as per tradition at Sutton’s. And it was so cool to get to meet a new cohort of students that I’m really excited will be joining the class under me. Looking into the future, how do you hope this Program evolves?
(Chris)
Well, I think what the Program has demonstrated to us is that there is extraordinary talent at UNC, which we knew, and that it’s worth investing in. So, the trustees have made a commitment to continue this Program another year after your classmates in the sophomore selection from the class of 2026 graduate. We’ll do a comprehensive review of the Program, and then we’ll determine what we think is the appropriate size over the long term. But having this process creates an opportunity for immediate investments that support our first year process as well. So, for example, when we meet sophomores who attended nominating schools that chose not to nominate anyone, that is an opening for us to go to that school and say, “We’ve just met this extraordinary candidate. And we are so inspired by the way in which they are leading at Carolina. And we’d like to see you nominate young people like this for Morehead-Cain.” It’s an opportunity for us to go to schools across North Carolina and talk to them about the candidates that we’re meeting and help them understand who we think will actually thrive at Carolina and as a Morehead-Cain Scholar at Carolina. And so, I hope what we’ll see in the Sophomore Selection process is not only a pipeline of amazing talent into Carolina, but a continuous stream of innovation that affects our selection of first years. For the last two years, we’ve tried some new selection tools at the sophomore process. We’ll roll out those selection tools for first-year candidates for the first time when we return to in-person Final Selection on the first weekend of March in 2025 for the class of 2029.
(Stella)
That’s amazing. And you really led perfectly into my next question about new innovations. In the first year of the Sophomore Selection process, I was totally amazed when I looked at the stage of Fall Banquet of the diversity of this new class. It has 73 scholars that represent 24 North Carolina counties, 17 U.S. states and territories, and eight countries. As you know, alumni are always curious about how scholars are selected. Other than the tools that you’re using from the Sophomore Selection and implementing into the first-year selection, are there any new innovations, in the past few years, that you’ve implemented that have added to what has always been kind of a complex process in selections?
(Chris)
Thank you for asking. I think that always at Morehead-Cain there are two key innovations that set us apart from the rest of the college admissions ecosystem. The first is the use of time. We have candidates who write an application on October 1st. Typically, that two-dimensional application is reviewed by a college admissions office and a decision is made. We’re able to follow up with that candidate over the course of time. We’re able to ask them in March, ‘“What have you done with this thing that you’re interested in?” We’re able to ask them “This thing, this impact that you host hoped to have, how have you continued to pursue that?” “How have you had that impact over the course of your senior year in high school?” And that’s intensely powerful in identifying the type of leadership and character that we are looking for. And we’re able to layer on top of that a number of readers and perspectives on each candidate. We can get diverse perspectives on each candidate by the use of our alumni in the selection process. So, our semifinalist interviews, as an example, ensure that every one of our candidates is seen by tens of alumni and evaluated relative to other candidates that they are observing. And overall, over the course of the process, every one of our candidates will have over 20 sets of eyeballs, evaluating them, and that ensures that we eliminate bias. It ensures that we’re able to capture perspective. And I think that’s an innovation that we can never lose here at Morehead-Cain.
The other important innovation that we’re focused on is about building the top of the funnel, and we need to continue, as I’ve talked about on this podcast in the past, we need to continue to invest in rural applicants and rural nominators, and we need to continue to build affiliate partners who will nominate extraordinary candidates into our funnel. I look at our relationship with the Boys and Girls Clubs, for example, and see the quality of candidates that they nominate into our process as people who have pattern recognition from working with large numbers of young people and who’ve invested in understanding Morehead-Cain. And I think, how do we find 10, 20, 30, 40 more organizations like that locally, nationally, internationally, that can help identify the most promising young leaders and pull them into our pipeline so that we can invest in getting to know them with large numbers of eyeballs and over an extended period of time in their final year of high school.
(Stella)
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing about that, and I love that approach of widening the funnel. I think that’s, really amazing to continue to identify more scholars in areas that maybe we’re not reaching right now. I’m wondering more about your decision to have the Finalist Weekend in person this year.
(Chris)
Well, it’s clear from interactions with our alumni just how special that Final Selection experience in person was for generations, and with COVID having receded into the rear view, travel restrictions having been lifted, we feel that we can carry out an equitable Final Selection process that everyone who desires to attend will be able to attend when they’re selected as a finalist. And that’s essential for us. We don’t want to have to run a parallel process. I’ve been looking forward to running an in-person Final Selection experience for a long time. I’ve loved the energy of Discovery Weekend. I’m really excited to see what it will feel like to have 180 or 190 candidates for the Scholarship on campus together and going through that process. But I’m also looking forward to the sense of fellowship that will happen when the Central Selection Committee gathers and debriefs on what they’re seeing and shares some feedback back with our team in a way that can help us construct an ever-better process in the future. I think that type of conversation is harder to have in the virtual space, even though there are lots of benefits to the virtual space. And I think that a virtual semifinalist process reflects the way in which your generation and their generation will be interviewing for things throughout their lives. Right? You will always have virtual interviews. This is the technologically-enabled world that we live in. But that the in-person Final Selection experience is a core part of our DNA that will be fun to have back.
(Stella)
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I do think that I have not done an in-person interview in a long time, so I think this will be great to see with the incoming finalists and how they approach this. And I’m excited to see how it looks in March.
Kind of moving on a different note, I’m often studying at the Foundation and was excited to see a lot of new faces this year, including a vice president of community and a director of global affairs, among others. Can you share about these roles and how you see them fitting into Morehead-Cain’s vision?
(Chris)
Oh, thanks for asking and I’m really excited about the ways in which the team continues to grow and evolve. And I’d like to celebrate that each of the roles you just named is filled by an alumnus. So, in Jesse Soloff from the class of 2008 coming back to Morehead-Cain as vice president of community or Ben Ousley Naseman from the class of 1996 joining as our first director of global affairs. We are weaving back into the organization really powerful experience outside UNC and Morehead-Cain, but also a deep understanding of the DNA of this organization. We know that one of the things that differentiates Morehead-Cain is the sense of powerful intergenerational community that has been cultivated here through shared experiences. This year, we celebrated 50 years of the Morehead-Cain Summer Enrichment Program. It is something that you, Stella, share with those who came through this Program 50 years before you did. And it’s weaved a really unique shared experience that I think we continue to leverage in ways that foster mentorship and support for future generations of scholars. And Jesse’s attention to community, I think, builds upon efforts that Megan has led for so many years and allows us to institutionalize an investment in some of the things that we can do together in the years to come. We ran our first symposium this past year in the Bay Area. Jesse intends to continue that with a Symposium in 2025 in Georgia. We will have an amazing Forum in fall of 2025, and I hope all the alumni who listen to this mark their calendars. And we will continue to weave mentorship opportunities, travel opportunities, and the like in the years to come.
On the global affairs front, I would note that global leadership has been part of the DNA of this Foundation since its founding. John Motley Morehead III was the ambassador to Sweden, and we are really proud of the way in which we built a British Programme and a Canadian Program and then went international about 15 years ago. And we have seen scholars study abroad as part of that summer experience for many years in their global research. We also see increasing numbers of scholars studying abroad during term time. It’s important for us to have a structured approach both to the attraction of the world’s best talent to Morehead-Cain and to the facilitation of global experiences for our current scholars on this campus. And so, over the next year, I look forward to Ben both really focusing on how we might attract some of the most promising young leaders in the world into this Program, but also, how we can inspire more scholars like you to take a leap to a very powerful stretch experience abroad. I think that too often study abroad is spent with other UNC students as tourists in a location. As we build strong networks and have alumni working all over the world, I think we can create the really powerful experience of someone like you, Stella, living and working alongside promising young leaders like yourself who grew up in a totally different cultural context. And that, to me, looks like the facilitation of the type of global leadership experience that we want to enable here at Morehead-Cain.
(Stella)
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing about that. In 2024, I had the pleasure, because of Morehead-Cain, to spend about eight months abroad in both Spain and New Zealand, living with host families and working alongside the indigenous people in New Zealand, and I could not be more grateful for that experience. So, I’m excited to see Ben’s job and what that kind of transforms into. So, thank you so much.
(Chris)
I am too, and I hope you’ll watch this space because I think 2025 will be full of new learning and new investment in our global programing.
(Stella)
Amazing. Kind of shifting gears a little bit. We’re recording just two days from what we hope will be another record-breaking Day of Giving on November 22nd. Of course, there are many ways alumni can give back. Can you share any upcoming opportunities that alumni can get involved in 2025? I know you shared about the Alumni Forum already, which I’m very excited about, but any other ways maybe that alumni can get involved in the next year?
(Chris)
Stella, one of the things I love about Morehead-Cain is that there are always ways for alumni to get involved. And we, as a staff, need to continue to expand those opportunities because I think when alumni interact with scholars, that’s when the real magic happens. There are developmental opportunities in those conversations and interactions that are really different than the ones that that occur in your interactions with staff. So, some things to look forward to. On the selection front, we will have over 300 alumni invested in semifinalist interviews and reviewing semifinalists before this podcast is released in January. After this podcast is released in January, we’ll be reaching out to alumni to ask if they would like to take one of our finalists out for coffee before they come for Final Selection Experience. We piloted that last year and every single one of our finalists was able to have a conversation with an alum in the month of January that I think reduced their nerves and deepened their interest and enthusiasm for what was about to take place in the Morehead-Cain selection process. We want to have that happen again this year. That means that we’re igniting these conversations and relationships before scholars even arrive on campus.
Outside of the selection process, we will have the opportunity for alumni to travel together. They will go to Santa Fe. There’s an alumni journey to Santa Fe in May. We’ll have alumni having the opportunity to learn together in our Symposium in March, which will be in Atlanta. We’ll have the opportunity also for alumni to invest in scholars with the next round of what we’re calling our progress conversations. I think we need a better name for it. But these are coaching conversations that alumni have in pairs with a scholar, in lieu of the renewal letter that you have written each year. What we saw last year when we piloted that was that our scholars valued the reflective process of engaging with alumni about their experience on campus and their goals for the year to come. And that our alumni valued the opportunity to engage directly with our scholars. So, we want to grow that and create an opportunity for that for every scholar who’d like it over time, and that will require alumni who would like to engage in that work of coaching. Coming back for a weekend and sharing in that weekend with you and your classmates.
(Stella)
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all about that. Makes me excited to be an alumna, but also all those scholar initiatives sound super exciting, and I’m excited to see kind of how they shape out. Kind of going back this year to when we gathered in the fall, some of our seniors shared a new document called the Community Standards. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
(Chris)
Sure. This is one of the things that I’m most excited about actually this school year, and something that I hope will live for a really long time. For background, the alumni in this Program and you over your first two years at Carolina previously would sign a contract that was, in essence, a set of rules. And those rules would change over time. And those were the conditions of the Scholarship. What we saw was the opportunity to not focus on that you not carry a fake ID, although I would certainly prefer that you don’t carry a fake ID [Laughs], but the principles that undergird them. And in conversations with staff, with alumni, and with a scholar advisory board of juniors and seniors, we built a set a one-page document called the Morehead-Cain Community Standards, and it provides four organizing principles for the way in which scholars should engage in their life at Carolina and beyond. The first is leadership as a lifelong journey. The second is conscious character building. The third is engaged scholarship. And the fourth is commitment to community. And I would encourage every alum to go on to the MCN and go into the Scholars tab, and you can read the Morehead-Cain Community Standards right there on the Morehead-Cain Network.
And I hope that over time as we implement the language from those standards into our day-to-day conversations with you and with your classmates that it will become a shared language for our journey of growth and learning together in this Program. And I also think that it should be a language that you use in giving feedback to me, right? And how I can do my job better as a leader of the Foundation.
(Stella)
I really love hearing about the language. I think that’s something that we would talk about a lot in communication of how we are really conveying our mission. And I love that that is something that has become a priority, and kind of switching away from the rules and going more into how we can be better leaders as a whole. So, I really appreciate that and enjoy that. Speaking of that, in January, we’ll announce this year’s impact educators. Is there anything you’d like to share about this initiative?
(Chris)
Well, I think the first thing I’d like to say is that every single one of us was shaped by the investment of teachers. And it is a small but important signal to very important community leaders for us to give every Morehead-Cain semifinalist the opportunity to share with us the identity of a teacher who has transformed their life and their leadership journey. And over the past few years, we’ve been able to send hundreds of letters of commendation to these teachers with their principles in copy and certificates and stickers that we know are hanging on classrooms across North Carolina, in fact, throughout the world. Morehead-Cain means something, and there’s nothing more powerful to a teacher than knowing the impact that they’ve had on a young person. And for us to create that vehicle for the scholars in our community has been really powerful.
But this year, we were able to do something through Impact Educators that I found deeply inspiring, which is when Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina, we as a Foundation were able to reach out to these community leaders who are deeply invested in their communities as teachers in all the affected counties. And we were able to offer them one-time grants that they could use to support those in need in their community. And we were able to, within a week and a half of the hurricane, have cash in the hands of community leaders to invest in the healing of their communities. And this was something that I never would have imagined when we started this Program, but the letters of gratitude that we have received from schools and teachers across the state for Morehead-Cain’s support of their community in this time of need, which was enabled by the Impact Educator Program, has been a really inspiring part of my fall in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy.
(Stella)
Do you have any examples that you’d like to share with listeners maybe about one of those stories that someone shared in the letter of gratitude of what they did with that funding that they received from impact educators?
(Chris)
The most important thing is that every educator uses it differently in response to the needs in their community. So, we have educators who have taken that money and invested in the things that their local resource bank did not have. So, for example, in one community, the local resource bank was overwhelmed with food and diapers but did not have blankets and jackets, which were something that were really needed because the weather was changing. And so they went and used the money, bought a bunch of blankets and jackets and brought those over to their community center. Others are much more deeply personal stories. There is there was a teacher who wrote to us about how one family in their school had lost their home in the hurricane, and they were going to use those resources to invest in the care and nurturing of that family and the two students from the school that had been rendered homeless as a result of Helene. And the ability to target the resources in ways that are needed is one of the things that these amazing community leaders provided us.
(Stella)
That’s beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing those stories, and it’s inspiring to see what that funding can do in our community, not just at UNC.
Megan will retire after 40 years at the Foundation. What would you like to share about her tenure and your time working with her?
(Chris)
Stella, I’m not sure that there will be anyone who will work at the Morehead-Cain Foundation for 40 years ever again. And Megan did her four decades of service at a time of immense transformation of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but also of this Program. And her grace and wisdom and joy have shaped so many elements seen and unseen about not just what Morehead-Cain offers but who Morehead-Cain is. At Fall Banquet, you’ll recall that I created an impromptu celebration of Megan in which I noted that the community standards that we wrote are actually a reflection of Megan as a leader. Megan started as a temp at the front desk and became the Vice President of this organization. She saw leadership not as reflected in titles held but as reflected in the impact that one could have and the work that one could do. And that’s something that inspires me every day. And I hope that after Megan leaves, we will all continue to radiate her positivity and her grace in our interactions with everyone, not only in the Morehead-Cain community, but everyone in the broader UNC community and everyone who we interact with further afield.
(Stella)
I loved hearing that story at the Fall Banquet about how she worked her way up, but it was never about a title. It was just about growing, and I really love that. Looking in the future, what about her do you hope to embody as the leader of this Foundation?
(Chris)
I hope that I will always carry Megan’s intense faith in a brighter tomorrow. One of the things that I think makes Megan such a powerful institution at a place like this one is that there are always small crises. There are always terrible events that are taking place that are affecting an ever-evolving community around an educational institution. Megan’s fundamental demeanor is one that always projects confidence and faith in a brighter tomorrow. And I believe that as leaders, we have a responsibility not only to project that optimism and faith, but also to make small steps every day to create that brighter tomorrow, and Megan does that too. And so, I hope that, as people come back to the Foundation that they’ll see that we’ve never lost that, and I hope that I will continue to project that positivity and optimism and faith also.
(Stella)
Thank you for sharing. And hopefully, maybe we can get Megan on the podcast to share some more of her stories.
(Chris)
I hope so. I have been encouraging her to do a podcast, and I hope you will encourage her also.
(Stella)
Yes. To conclude, I am sadly approaching my last year of college. If it’s possible to distill to one thing, what do you hope we take away from our time as Morehead-Cain Scholars?
(Chris)
Stella, anything is possible for you, and what I hope every scholar remembers is that the possibilities in front of them are endless and that their capability to imagine and create the future is unending as well. And one of the benefits of the Morehead-Cain Program is that you learn through stretch and discomfort. You do things that you didn’t know that you could do over the course of your four years in college. And I hope that that prepares you to continue to do that throughout your time beyond college. I observe that many students in college, as Julia DeVoe says, imagine working from the end. They think that they build their college experience around the job they’re going to have, right? And then they design every term in college around trying to get that job at graduation. I think Morehead-Cain Scholars have the opportunity to recognize that many of the jobs that you will hold in your life simply do not exist today. And that the way in which you are prepared as a scholar to imagine the possible and to lean into that discomfort in learning actually prepares you to lead in an uncertain but exciting and promising future.
(Stella)
Thank you so much for sharing that, and I’m sure that scholars will definitely take that away with them into the real world as we like to call it. Chris, thank you so much for being with us today, and we really appreciate your time.
(Chris)
Thank you, Stella. It’s great to be with you.
