2020-Present

Joe C. Brumit, II

Joe C. Brumit, II, is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who has shown a deep commitment to the people of Asheville, Buncombe County, and the Western North Carolina Region as the founder and owner of Brumit Restaurant Group.

With a background in the restaurant business, which began when he was a junior in high school working in quick service restaurants, Mr. Brumit launched his company composed of 13 quick service restaurants in 1988. His visionary leadership of the Brumit Restaurant Group has guided tremendous growth, now employing over 1400 of our friends and neighbors at restaurants across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, all while contributing to the growth and development of those employees.

Mr. Brumit has contributed time and resources to countless charitable, civic and educational organizations in the region, including United Way, the YMCA, Mission Hospital, Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Western North Carolina Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, Special Olympics, and several institutions in the University of North Carolina System, including UNC Asheville. The Van Winkle Law Firm recognized his lifelong service and exceptional leadership skills by awarding him their Excellence in Public Service Award.

Mr. Brumit has served on numerous boards to support and better the local community, including Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, United Way, Eblen Children’s Charities, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Western North Carolina. Along with his wife Janice, he established an endowment at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College for the Joe and Janice Brumit Endowed Scholarship and to support the Brumit Center for Culinary Arts and Hospitality, which trains students for the region’s hospitality industry. Mr. Brumit also established the Janice & Joe Brumit Endowed Women’s Athletics Scholarship at UNC Asheville, which positively impacts women student-athletes inside the classroom, in the athletic arenas, and in life. The Janice W. Brumit Pisgah House at UNC Asheville was named to honor the dedicated service that he and Janice have provided to this great University.

Eva M. Clayton

Eva M. Clayton was the first African American woman elected to represent North Carolina in the United States Congress. Clayton’s historic appointment to the United States House of Representatives made her the state’s first Black representing member since 1901 and the second woman to hold this position.

Prior to serving in Congress, Clayton served on the Warren County Board of Commissioners and was Assistant Secretary of the NC Department of Natural Resources and Community Development.  She was Director of the Soul City Foundation and was the Director of NC Health Manpower, UNC School of Medicine (now Access to Health Care).  Also, she is a member of Cotton Memorial Presbyterian Church where she serves as an Elder.

In Congress, she was a recognized leader; elected the president of her Democratic freshman class; served on the Agriculture Committee; and was the Ranking Member of the Sub-Committee – Nutrition and Operations.  Eva M. Clayton fought for Black farmers’ equality.

She was influential in writing, and the passage of the 2002 Farm Bill, which provided additional assistance to Small Farmers; increased resources for SNAP (Food Stamps), and expanded the school lunch programs across the country.  She also served as co-chairman of the bipartisan Rural Caucus.  Congresswoman Clayton helped secure federal resources for various communities in her District.

Upon leaving Congress, Clayton accepted a three-year assignment as Assistant Director-General with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (2003-2006) in Rome, Italy.  She headed up the International Alliance Against Hunger (IAAH), composed of the four UN agencies related to agriculture and food.  While at FAO, she and her team organized Partnership/Alliances to fight against hunger and malnutrition. in 24 different countries, including the United States.

Her husband, Attorney Theaoseus T. Clayton, Sr. (“TT”), a distinguished lawyer in Eastern North Carolina for more than fifty years, died in 2019.  She has four adult children and six grandchildren.

In retirement, Former Congresswoman Eva M. Clayton remains committed to ending hunger and malnutrition.  She advocates for rural communities, encourages young persons to be engaged, and serves on boards dedicated to those missions.

Jeffery Heck, M.D.

Jeffery Heck, M.D., led the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) for nine and a half years and serves as an expert physician and health care partner in Western North Carolina.

Dr. Heck earned degrees from Vanderbilt University, Medical College of Ohio, and completed a Family Practice Residency Program at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Dayton. He then spent 20 years as faculty at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. As an advocate for global health, he founded the nonprofit Shoulder to Shoulder in 1990 to provide much needed health care services in poor, rural Honduras communities and served as its Executive Director for more than twenty years.

Dr. Heck first joined MAHEC in 2004 to chair the Department of Family Medicine and support the establishment of a campus of the UNC School of Medicine, which has grown since 2009 from four to 35 third-year medical students and an increasing number of fourth-year students. He also served as a professor of family medicine with UNC-Chapel Hill and associate dean for the Asheville Campus of the UNC School of Medicine.

As MAHEC’s president and CEO from 2012 through 2021, Dr. Heck led the organization through a threefold expansion, increasing the nonprofit’s annual operating budget from $30 to $100 million and the number of employees from 300 to more than 900. He guided the expansion of MAHEC’s graduate medical education programs to include surgery, psychiatry, rural medicine, addiction medicine, and internal medicine residency and fellowship programs in addition to family medicine, ob/gyn, dentistry, and pharmacotherapy programs. During his tenure, MAHEC trained  hundreds of residents and fellows  in partnership with WNC hospital systems.

Working with North Carolina’s General Assembly and university leadership, Dr. Heck oversaw the establishment of UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC, an academic health center with programs affiliated with UNC’s top-ranked schools of public health, dentistry, pharmacy, and medicine. These partnerships led to the most recent announcement of a first-of-its-kind joint MPH degree, awarded by the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and UNC Asheville with a concentration in place-based health offered exclusively in Asheville on MAHEC’s campus.

After stepping down from his leadership role, Dr. Heck continues to see geriatric patients at Deerfield Retirement Community, coming full circle in his career as he began it: caring for patients.

John Lewis

Representative John R. Lewis, civil rights activist, politician and statesman, will receive posthumously the Honorary Doctorate in Laws.

John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940–July 17, 2020) was a revered leader in the civil rights movement whose wisdom, courage and moral clarity earned him the nickname “the conscience of the Congress” during his 17 terms as a representative of Georgia’s fifth congressional district. Advocating nonviolence “not just as a technique, but as a way of life,” Lewis endured repeated beatings and arrests while leading civil rights protests during the 1960s and 1970s. A founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) when he was just 19, Lewis took the lead in organizing the freedom rides, sit-ins, marches, and other demonstrations that were part of the SNCC’s drive to end racial segregation and secure voting rights for millions of disenfranchised African Americans.

Linda Earley Chastang serves in the role of Chief Executive Officer for the John and Lillian Miles Lewis Foundation, Inc. and will receive the honorary degree on behalf of Representative Lewis’ family and colleagues.

Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2019–Present, and member of the Academy of Arts and Letters 2021, will receive the Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters. In 2018 she spoke at UNC Asheville as a visiting writer.

The author of nine books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise, several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior: A Call for Love and Justice, her many honors include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and holds a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Mel Chin

Conceptual visual artist and author and member of the Academy of Arts and Letters 2021 Mel Chin will receive the Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts. Chin’s art, which is both analytical and poetic, evades easy classification. He is known for the broad range of approaches in his art, including works that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork and works that conjoin cross-cultural aesthetics with complex ideas. Chin has received numerous awards and grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, Art Matters, Creative Capital, and the Penny McCall, Pollock/Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Rockefeller and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundations, among others.

In 2018, Chin’s Wake sculptural installation, designed, engineered, sculpted and fabricated in UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio, was unveiled in New York City Times Square, after nearly a year of collaborative work. He is a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

King Prather

Former North Carolina Blue Cross Blue Shield General Counsel, UNC Asheville Board of Trustees Member Emeritus, and parent of three UNC Asheville graduates King Prather will receive the Honorary Doctorate in Law and Public Policy.

King Prather is retired Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Blue Cross Blue Shield of N.C. and a board member at Higher Ed Works. He is currently a member of Gov. Roy Cooper’s DRIVE Task Force, working to increase underrepresented individuals in teaching for the state of N.C. He is a fierce advocate for public education and racial equity. In 2017, Prather was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the most prestigious honor conferred by the Governor of North Carolina awarded to persons for exemplary service to the State of North Carolina and their communities that is above and beyond the call of duty and which has made a significant impact and strengthened North Carolina.

Patrice Harris, M.D.

Dr. Patrice Harris, a renowned child and adolescent psychiatrist from Atlanta, is immediate past president of the American Medical Association. A private practicing physician, public health administrator and widely recognized patient advocate, Dr. Harris has been an active leader in organized medicine for her entire career. The first African American woman to hold the position of AMA president, Dr. Harris is a trailblazer and a widely respected national voice about issues pertaining to public health, health equity and mental health.

Luther E. Barnhardt, M.D.

Dr. Luther E. Barnhardt is a retired radiologist and physician, founder of Western Carolina Radiology, who has supported UNC Asheville through philanthropy and volunteer board leadership including serving on the Board of Trustees. Dr. Barnhardt is a past recipient of UNC Asheville’s Chancellor’s Medallion.

Lou Bissette

Lou Bissette is an attorney, president at McGuire, Wood & Bissette, P.A., who has served Asheville as its mayor, and has served the UNC as chair of the Board of Governors and as a trustee at Western Carolina University and Wake Forest University.

William H. Turner

Dr. William H. Turner is a distinguished American sociologist, public intellectual, and a pioneer in research, documentation, and writing about the history of Africans Americans in Appalachia. He is the co-editor of the book, Blacks in Appalachia, and is a leader who has served UNC Asheville with public lectures on campus and in Asheville during the annual African Americans in Western North Carolina and Southern Appalachia scholarly conference and community gatherings in the last several years.