Wake Medical Center names VP for faith and health. Gary R. Gunderson will become vice president of faith and health ministries at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., effective July 1. Currently Gunderson, a graduate of Wake Forest University, is senior vice president for faith and health at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis, Tenn., and director of its Center of Excellence in Faith and Health. In his new role, Gunderson will oversee the four departments of the division of faith and health ministries: CareNet Counseling, the department of chaplaincy and pastoral education, the Center for Congregational Health and the department of church and community.
Writer to receive Chowan prize. Author Silas House will receive Chowan University’s Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters on April 2. House is a novelist, playwright and poet, many of whose works are set in the Appalachian Mountains and explore themes of nature, kinship, spirituality and tradition. The Hobson Prize is named for a journalist and poet who was the first woman to receive the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award in journalism from the University of North Carolina. The prize will be awarded during an April 2 dinner, to be followed by the annual Hobson Lecture and a booksigning. For more information, contact Nancy Cox at coxn@chowan.edu.