On Dec. 11, 1789, the University of North Carolina (UNC) was founded. The UNC was the first public university in the U.S. and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century.

In 1931, the General Assembly redefined UNC to include three state-supported institutions: The campus at Chapel Hill (now the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University at Raleigh), and Woman’s College (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro).