Catherine Burnett, program officer for the Chapel Hill-based William R. Kenan, Jr. Funds and The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, was President Leo M. Lambert’s guest at SURF Day Tuesday, April 24. Visiting the campus for the first time since she joined the philanthropy’s staff in fall 2006, Burnett met with current and former Kenan Scholars, as well as Dr. Mary Jo Festle, professor of history and director of the Elon Honors Program, and Dr. Peter Felten, director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.
Generous gifts from the Kenan Charitable Trust in 2002 and 2003 established an endowment in the philanthropy’s name to support the scholarship of one honors student in each class year at Elon. The first recipient of the Kenan Scholarship was Tori Strange ’07 of Berwyn, Pa. The subsequent recipients have been Kaitlyn Day ’08 of East Grand Rapids, Mich., Alyse Knorr ’09 of Forsyth, Ga., James Gorsuch ’10 of Hendersonville, NC, and Abbey Lepley ’07 of Fort Myers, Fla. The William R. Kenan, Jr. Pavilion in the Academic Village is named in memory of the foundation’s namesake and founder, William R. Kenan, Jr. (1872-1965).
Burnett attended the SURF presentation of Andrew High ’07, who worked with faculty mentor Jeffrey Pugh on his presentation, “The Internet as a Greater Manifestation of Human Consciousness: Teilhard de Chardin’s Noosphere.”
Pictured in the photo from left to right are Abbey Lepley ‘07, James Gorsuch ’10, Catherine Burnett, Kaitlyn Day ’08, Alyse Knorr ’09, and Mary Jo Festle.