Carolina was not the first school in the country to open its doors, but it was the first university in our history to be opened by a state government. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia were all in the business of education, but we were not organized by a covey of religious leaders; we had no charter from a king.
We were created by the people of North Carolina to fill a need that no one else had met.
Even in 1789, our founders were wise enough to recognize that education is the great equalizer. They were people who knew revolution, and they were unafraid to espouse revolutionary principles. Slowly, North Carolinians realized that an educated body of citizens would fulfill the Revolution's promise of freedom. The first mission of the University was born - to educate the people of the state.
One hundred and eleven years later, a professor of chemistry named Francis Preston Venable was named president of the University, and he reformed the structure of the place, changing everything.
President Venable had received his professional education in Europe - earning a masters and a doctorate from the University of G
