The Morehead Scholarship was created in 1951 by the Morehead Foundation, when John Motley Morehead III, bequeathed to the University of North Carolina $130 million, commissioned the University's planetarium, and funded the John Motley Morehead Foundation. The Foundation and scholarship was renamed the Morehead-Cain in 2007 after the Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation contributed $100 million to the program.
Summer Enrichment Program
The Summer Enrichment Program was established in 1974. It fully funds activities for students in four areas which occur in the summers before their respective class year.
Outdoor Leadership
The summer before students enter the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they participate in an NOLS or an Outward Bound course throughout the country in order to push themselves physically and mentally through a number of individual and group challenges.
Civic Collaboration
A relatively recent addition to the program is the development of the Civic Collaboration summer, in which teams of rising sophomores are placed in mid-sized US cities to partner with a governmental or community organization to help develop solutions to local and regional challenges. Previous placements have taken place in Albuquerque, New Mexico; St. Louis, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Global Perspective
Before the student's Junior year they have an opportunity to design a summer that will bring them into contact with a global perspective or work environment. While many students travel abroad for this summer, other elect to remain in the United States to pursue global-minded work domestically. Students may pursue study abroad programs, traditional internships, purposeful travel, or other avenues for this summer
Professional Experience
The final summer program encourages students to work in a professional capacity. Projects have ranged from policy work with the World Health Organization to investment banking and industry research with Goldman Sachs. This may be swapped with the Global Perspective option in the sequence of a student's summers in accordance with their individual four-year plan.
Selection process
The selection process for the Morehead-Cain is extremely rigorous, with only three percent of each year's nominees selected as Morehead-Cain Scholars. High school seniors demonstrating exceptional impact and academic achievement from North Carolina and from select schools across the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and various other countries are eligible for the prestigious scholarship. Criteria for selection are:
