Three UNC Hussman students recognized for exceptional academic achievement

by Barbara Wiedemann

UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media students Alice Bennett ’22, Kayley Carpenter ’21 and Maddie Ellis ’22 — three of the 19,117 undergraduate students enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill this academic year — will be inducted into the Carolina chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society in a virtual ceremony at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 16. The three join 181 additional Carolina students (and ten alumni) being recognized by the nation’s oldest honor society for exceptional academic achievement in the arts and sciences. 

Alice Bennett, a Greensboro native, interned at the East London Out Project last semester in London, and was a senior writer at The Daily Tar Heel. Kayley Carpenter is majoring in media and journalism (Ad/PR) and drama. Carpenter virtually interned at NYC’s famed Apollo Theater this summer and studied Shakespeare abroad in London and Oxford last year. Maddie Ellis, a dual major in media and journalism and English language and literature, is University Desk Editor at The Daily Tar Heel and writes for The Charlotte Observer’s city guide CharlotteFive, where she interned this summer.

The Phi Beta Kappa honor society selects the top ten percent of students from only ten percent of U.S. college and universities that have a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, making membership a prestigious honor.

Founded in 1776 by five College of William & Mary students, PBK members include journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and actor/activist Kerry Washington, and 17 U.S. presidents, 38 U.S. Supreme Court justices and more than 130 Nobel laureates.

The ceremony will be live-streamed for inductees and their family members only, and shared later this month with the public in the chapter’s website.