2 Honored With Holladay Medal

The Board of Trustees will award the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence to two faculty members in recognition of their outstanding careers at NC State. The Holladay Medal is the highest honor bestowed on a faculty member by the trustees and the university.

This year’s honorees are Virginia Marie Aldigé, Distinguished Professor of Sociology in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Edward Breitschwerdt, professor of medicine and infectious diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

The Holladay Medal is named for Col. Alexander Quarles Holladay, the university’s first president. It recognizes the contributions of faculty members in teaching, research and service. Winners receive a medal and a framed certificate, and their names are inscribed on a plaque in the NC State Faculty Senate chambers.

Aldigé joined NC State’s faculty in 1973. She has also served as a research fellow of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC Chapel Hill since 1974. Her professional work has targeted several areas of academic and public concern, including civil commitment of the mentally ill, criminalization of mental illness-caused behaviors, development of mental-health courts for managing those suffering from mental illnesses, outpatient civil commitment for the mentally ill, and violence and mental illness. Aldigé received the NC State Alumni Distinguished Research Award in 2004, serves on the boards of the top journals in her field, and has consulted with national and international legislative bodies on mental-health law.

Breitschwerdt has been a faculty member at NC State for the past 30 years. He is an adjunct professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, directs the Intracellular Pathogens Research Laboratory in the Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research, and has served on “One Health” task forces for the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM), the Institute of Medicine, and the North Carolina One Health Collaborative. His career has been dedicated to improving human and animal health through a better understanding of diseases that humans and animals share. Breitschwerdt has received the ACVIM Robert W. Kirk Award for Professional Excellence, as well as the Norden Distinguished Teacher Award and Clinician of the Year Award from the College of Veterinary Medicine. He has also been awarded NC State’s Outstanding Extension Service Award and the Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award.