Rameses goes to grad school
Once Carolina’s beloved mascot, Alex Henson ’25 is also an agroclimatology researcher.
Alex Henson was already working as a barista at Meantime Coffee Co. when another campus job piqued his interest.
“You could be me,” read the poster with a picture of Carolina mascot Rameses that he saw in Craige Residence Hall.
Four years later, Henson ’25 now knows all about being Rameses and what it entails: hyping up thousands of Tar Heel supporters at big games, roles in commercials, bus rides with the men’s basketball team and countless interactions with children enamored by a big, friendly ram.
The mascot role “does so much good,” said Henson, who’s remaining at Carolina to pursue a doctorate in geography. “It’s been a fantastic time.”
Putting on the ram’s head was Henson’s most visible campus contribution during his undergraduate career (even if we couldn’t see him inside). But he also stuck with Meantime and became its CEO for a year, studied coral reef ecology in the U.S. Virgin Islands and discovered a career path in agroclimatology through his work at the University-housed Southeastern Regional Climate Center.
The longtime incognito face of school spirit, Henson felt compelled to stay in Chapel Hill for graduate school.
“I found such a great community here that I couldn’t even consider elsewhere,” he said.
Henson performing as Rameses at the 2023 NCAA women’s basketball tournament at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. (GoHeels)
Becoming Rameses
Henson grew up in High Point, North Carolina, but wasn’t a Tar Heel fanatic and had no mascot pursuits coming to Chapel Hill.
When he told his girlfriend and her friends about the Rameses poster in his dorm, they told him to go for it.
Before auditioning, Henson attended an interest meeting where he learned about the legacy of Jason Ray, the Rameses mascot and organ donor who died after being hit by an SUV in 2007, and the impact Rameses makes in the community. He quickly realized the role was “so much more than goofing around or wearing the suit.”
“That’s when it hit: OK, this is really amazing,” Henson said.
Meet a new Tar Heel
As the school year approaches, meet some of the new faces starting their journeys in Chapel Hill.
Henson relished game days, crowd-surfing the student section at the Smith Center and traveling to ACC and NCAA tournament games. He’s become great friends with the handful of other students who work as Rameses and Rameses Jr. and has met many fellow mascots.
He even flew down to Atlanta on short notice and appeared on TNT’s “Inside the NBA,” congratulating Tar Heel first-year men’s basketball player Caleb Wilson when he committed to Carolina live on TV.
While the “high-profile” events were exciting, the most meaningful experiences for Henson were meeting with children, from birthday parties to hangouts with youngsters battling serious illnesses and in need of a smile.
“I didn’t really grasp the impact that mascots have on kids until I started doing this,” he said. “It’s Mickey Mouse to them.”
Excelling academically
Henson’s career as Rameses coincided with his climate research on how farmers can avoid bad apples.
That’s one application of agroclimatology, a field of study about climate patterns affecting agriculture. Henson, fascinated by weather as a kid, gravitated toward the discipline as he majored in environmental sciences and minored in geography.
He took courses with geography professor Chip Konrad, the director of the SERCC, who brought Henson there as an undergraduate and will advise him as a doctoral student.
Henson is creating a risk index and toolbox farmers can use to know if their crops are at risk for certain diseases depending on climate and when to take action. The work involves coding, using climate models and performing data analysis.
“You could talk to farmers and be like, ‘Hey, this is when you should spray your crops because there’s a risk for heavy infection right now,’” he said. “Ideally, taking it farther, you could expand from just apples to most crops.”
His future collaborators may be surprised to learn of his mascot past, as was the case when he revealed his secret identity to some of his classmates last spring.
“I had some group members on projects who were like, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize I was working with a celebrity,’” he said. “It’s like Spider-Man or something.”
“I didn’t really grasp the impact that mascots have on kids until I started doing this,” Henson said. (Submitted photo)
