UNCG alumna Margaret Arbuckle’s life’s work – centered around tirelessly building bridges and creating greater social justice – was recognized last weekend when she received the Lifetime Community Service Award from the International Civil Rights Center & Museum.

Arbuckle, ’74 MEd, ’84 PhD, has served as a dedicated community leader and volunteer in Greensboro for decades, working on numerous boards and commissions. She was a Guilford County Commissioner from 1992 to 1996 and supported preservation of downtown Greensboro’s Woolworth Building – site of the 1960 sit-ins – and advocated for what became the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

This honor complements earlier awards she has received. In 2022, for example, she received UNCG’s most prestigious award for exemplary service to the community, the Holderness/Weaver Award. In 2015, she received UNCG’s Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award.

Policy development is where she has made a tremendous impact on the lives of many.

“I have particularly enjoyed being a part of the policies that impact the lives of children and their families. That means early care and education. It means child welfare. It means juvenile justice issues. It means health care for children. And related to that are the issues around discrimination and racism that are a part of our world,” Arbuckle says. “How do we create equity for everybody? That relates directly back to policies in education and early access to quality care.”

Arbuckle is former director of the Guilford Initiative for Training & Treatment Services (GIFTTS) project at UNCG and was associate director at the UNCG Center for Youth, Family and Community Partnerships. On the state level, she was president of the NC Child Advocacy Institute.

Throughout her distinguished career, Arbuckle has been a staunch supporter of public schools in Guilford County. From 2005 until her retirement in 2013, she led the Guilford Education Alliance, which galvanizes the community in support of a high-caliber education for all children in Guilford County Schools. It was a pioneering effort in the wake of several school districts consolidating into one. Through bridge-building and fostering equity, she helped lift up children in each part of the county.

“In my early experience of being a teacher of little children, I quickly learned that what I really was interested in was the policy that impacted the quality of the programming. That’s really what took me to becoming an advocate for children,” she explains. And that includes every child.

“My three passions have been education and young children, the environment, and race relations or human relations – and therefore that’s where I have focused my energy and time and commitment.

By Mike Harris ’92 MA, University Advancement Communications