The Director of the University of North Carolina Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity is scheduled to speak at the Rowan County Democratic Party’s Thursday meeting.

UNC Law Professor Gene Nichol is scheduled to speak at 6:30 p.m. in the commissioners room of the Rowan County administrative building — 130 West Innes Street — during the Rowan County Democratic Party’s regularly scheduled meeting. Nichol was the director of UNC’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, which the UNC Board of Governors voted to close earlier this year.

Before coming to UNC, Nichol was the president of the College of William and Mary from 2005 to 2008. He was also the dean of UNC’s law school from 1999 to 2005 and dean of the University of Colorado’s law school from 1988 to 1995.

In 2003, Nichol received the ABA’s Edward Finch Award for delivering the nation’s best Law Day address. In 2004, he was named Carolina’s pro bono professor of the year. The next year, Nichol was inducted into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, North Carolina’s highest civilian honor; and Equal Justice Works named him prop bono law dean of the year.

In 2008, he received Oklahoma State University’s Distinguished Alumnus Award; the “Courage To Do Justice Award” from the National Employment Lawyers Association; and the Thomas Jefferson Award, for courage in the defense of religious liberty, from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

In 2013, the N.C. Council of Churches gave Nichol its Faith Active in Public Life Award; the N.C.-ACLU named him its W.W. Finlator Award winner; and the University of North Carolina gave him its Thomas Jefferson Award – the university’s highest faculty honor. In 2014, he received the McCall Teaching Award from the UNC Law School.

Nichol attended Oklahoma State University, receiving a degree in philosophy in 1973. He obtained his law degree from the University of Texas in 1976.