The Graduate School has named Janay Franklin and Kendall Winter as the 2024 recipients of the Boka W. Hadzija Award for Distinguished University Service, one of the Chancellor’s Awards at UNC-Chapel Hill. The award recognizes graduate or professional students with outstanding character, scholarship, leadership, and service to the University.
Winter, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Music, and Franklin, a Ph.D. candidate studying neuroscience in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program (BBSP), were both lauded for focusing on service to others in addition to their academic excellence.
Kendall Winter’s student government advocacy has also been an important part of her Carolina experience, as noted by David Garcia, professor in the Department of Music, in his written nomination of Winter for the award: “Kendall has been a fearless advocate for graduate and professional students’ welfare to both campus and system administrators, and she has striven to ensure parity between graduate and professional students and undergraduates. She has worked hard to make the Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG) a more transparent and effective force for positive change on our campus by championing Senator training, Senator-constituent communication, and interbranch reporting.”
Winter said her work in student government is a necessary component of her scholarship. Winter studies songs and performance in the American women’s suffrage movement from the mid-19th century to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
Her ties to music are inextricably linked to advocacy. “It was about delivering a political message and fundraising for a political cause, and trying to do it in a way that would be accessible and popular,” she said.
Winter even included student government service as a necessary outgrowth of her studies in her proposal to her advisor and faculty.
“For me, service is inseparable from my scholarship,” Winter said. “I’m doing research on people who were advocates for creating space for more people to be a part of their democratic government. So as a scholar of suffrage, activism and music, it feels like being a part of my student government is a way for me to walk the walk and talk the talk. … This is core to my scholarly identity as someone who studies this type of political music making and political activism.”
Winter’s long list of student government work — including stints as an elected representative going back to 2018 and two terms as President Pro Tempore of the Senate for the GPSG — was what prompted Andrea Bohlman, associate Professor in the Department of Music and director of graduate studies, to nominate her for the award. Bohlman cited Winter’s “extraordinary commitment to advocacy for graduate students in their whole being (through mentoring, governance, procedure, and by just listening and amplifying) across all divisions of the University and through various student organizations here and in national and regional music societies.”
Among the pieces of legislation Winter worked on included a resolution calling on Carolina administrators to enact a slate of policies during COVID-19 designed to promote graduate and professional student wellness and academic success, and advocacy on behalf of including the voice of graduate and professional students in university-wide decisions.
“Sometimes advocacy is slogging and asking and not getting anywhere for a long time,” she said. “In some cases, we’ve gotten really thoughtful responses back from the University, which I was really pleased with. We had our voices heard. We felt seen not only by our campus, but also by the entire system office, which was a really validating experience.”
The late Boka Hadzija, a former professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, established this award in 2000 in honor of her students.
View the full story and learn about co-recipient Janay Franklin on The Graduate School’s website.