UNC honors three young alumni

Two recent graduates of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were honored Friday at the 2009 Distinguished Young Alumni Awards.

Eric Montross, a member of the 1993 NCAA championship Tar Heels team, graduated in 1994 with a degree in speech. As a college athlete, Montross visited patients at the N.C. Children's Hospital. He continues to support and raise money for the hospital.

Emily Williamson, vice president of student development at Western Piedmont Community College, was student body vice president at UNC and graduated in 1999 with a degree in political science. She works with economic development and community service organizations and is the 2009 Burke County Woman of the Year.

The General Alumni Association made a posthumous award for the first time, to former student body president Eve Carson.

Carson, a senior from Athens, Ga., was shot and killed in the early morning hours of March 5, 2008. Before her death, she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar and political science and biology major, who tutored in local schools and spent summers volunteering in Ecuador, Egypt and Ghana as part of the Morehead-Cain Summer Enrichment program.

Carson's legacy at UNC includes the Eve Marie Carson Carolina Scholarship for an outstanding out-of-state student and the Eve Marie Carson Memorial Junior-Year Merit Scholarship.