Chief District Court Judge Joseph Buckner received the John Bagget Award at the National Alliance on Mental Illness North Carolina conference on Odc. 31. NAMI Orange County nominated Buckner the annual award, which recognizes extraordinary community efforts on behalf of people and families living with mental illness.

Buckner was instrumental in working with Judicial District 15B (which includes Orange and Chatham counties) and the Orange-Person-Chatham Area Mental Health program to implement the Community Resource Court, the first mental health court in North Carolina.

Kerry Sherrill was named School Social Worker of the year for 2008-2009 by the North Carolina School Social Work Association at the Fall Conference in Atlantic Beach. She is a school social worker with Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools at Carrboro Elementary School.

Sherrill was nominated by her principal, Emily Bivins. She coordinates all family outreach activities. She organizes and plans RISE (an African American parents group) and Hispanic parents nights, which meet quarterly and monthly. She has facilitated conversations to support African American families in networking and has worked with the local Burmese community in introducing children and families to American schools.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees presented five alumni with the William Richardson Davie Award, the board's highest honor.

Chancellor Holden Thorp and the trustees honored the following recipients at a Carolina Inn dinner: Vaughn and Nancy Bryson of Vero Beach, FL; Peter Thacher Grauer of Greenwich, CT; C. Knox Massey, Jr. of Atlanta, GA; and James (Jim) Horner Winston of Jacksonville, FL.

Rachel Leeman-Munk, an Earlham College first-year and daughter of Jennifer Leeman and Tom Munk of Carrboro, performed during Earlham's Family Weekend Concert on Nov. 1 in Goddard Auditorium.

Leeman-Munk is a member of Earlham's Gospel Revelations.

Earlham is a selective liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. The College offers 40 majors in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. More than 75 percent of Earlham's graduates pursue postgraduate study; many will go on to earn doctoral degrees.

Emma Sherman Kitson, daughter of Paula Sherman and Terry Kitson of Chapel Hill and a 2004 graduate of Chapel Hill High School, recently presented "The Bedrooms of My Friends," an exhibition of 20 black-and-white photographs, at UNC Asheville's Owen Hall Second Floor Gallery.

The show is a culmination of Kitson's work toward a bachelor of arts degree at UNC Asheville.

Anna Scheyett of UNC will be a facilitator for a national webinar on prisoner reentry into the community after incarceration.

The webinar, sponsored by the National Association of Social Workers, will focus on the role social workers can play in helping prison releasees reintegrate successfully into the community.

Scheyett is president of the Board for the North Carolina chapter of the National Association of Social Workers and associate dean for Academic Affairs at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work.

Send announcements and photos for the notable column to Sheri Farmer at sfarmer@nando.com.