Chronology

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1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

2. 1930–1936
   Chapel Hill Herman G. Baity serves as dean of UNC's School of Engineering

   Baity, head of sanitary engineering since 1928, was dean of the School of Engineering from 1930 until 1936, when the sanitary engineering department moved to the School of Public Health. He chaired it there until 1955.

3. 1940–1950
   Orange County UNC School of Public Health runs a Rockefeller-funded syphilis study in Orange and neighboring counties

   The School of Public Health's first research project, a field epidemiological study of syphilis funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, ran from 1940 to 1950 with the state venereal disease control program in Orange, Chatham, Person and Durham counties. Project staff held clinics, lectured and traced contacts in the health departments.

4. 1940
   Founding or opening · Chapel Hill UNC establishes a School of Public Health

   UNC's Division of Public Health, created within the School of Medicine in 1936 under Dr. Milton Rosenau, separated from the medical school in 1940 and became the School of Public Health, with Rosenau as its first dean. The school is now the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

5. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

6. March 31, 1949
   Health or relief action · Orange County District health department takes UNC public health students for field training

   Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin announced that the district health department would serve as a field training center for eight UNC public health students, four in health education and four in public health nursing, working for ten weeks across Orange, Person, Chatham and Lee counties.

7. 1955–1973
   Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Daniel Okun chairs UNC's Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering

   Okun, who joined the UNC public health faculty in 1952, headed the department from 1955 to 1973, and it grew from three to 25 faculty members.

8. Recent decades · 1976–2026

9. 1990
   Chapel Hill UNC dedicates the Herman G. Baity Environmental Laboratory

   The School of Public Health dedicated McGavran-Greenberg Hall and the Herman G. Baity Environmental Laboratory, with Chancellor Paul Hardin giving the dedication.

10. May 7, 2002
    Publication, speech or performance · Fairview, Hillsborough UNC public health students complete a community study of Fairview

    After interviewing residents in 2001 and 2002, students in the UNC Department of Health Behavior and Health Education issued an action-oriented community diagnosis of Fairview. It is one of the few written histories of Hillsborough's northern Black neighborhoods.

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 1, 2026.