College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences

CLAS students and their family and friends – along with UNC Charlotte faculty, staff and dignitaries – celebrated the students’ successes at the May 2018 Commencement ceremonies.

Kevin Chauncey, a master’s student in English, received the UNC Charlotte Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, presented by the Graduate School. The award honors students nominated by faculty supervisors for their work as teaching assistants, recognizing outstanding and innovative teaching techniques.

Andrea Pitts, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at UNC Charlotte, has received a six-month Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. With the fellowship, Pitts will work on a book project in fall 2018, analyzing structural racism and linguistic communication.

John Reeves, Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies, and Annette Yoshiko Reed of New York University have published a work they hope will provide historians of religion with a new tool to explore the intertextual relationships between different religious corpora and the intertwined histories of the major religious communities of the ancient and medieval Near East.

South Point High School English teacher Bobbie Cavnar describes teaching as 25 percent preparation and 75 percent pure theater.  Lately, the UNC Charlotte alumnus has taken his place on the national stage, sharing his views of teaching, the humanities, the arts and issues confronting the nation’s schools.

Three UNC Charlotte alumni with majors or minors in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences were among the alumni, faculty and university friends that the UNC Charlotte Alumni Association recognized at the 2018 Alumni Awards celebration at the Hilton Charlotte Center City on April 20, 2018.

For her transformational impact on international education at UNC Charlotte, Anabel Aliaga-Buchenau, associate professor of German, is the 2018 recipient of the International Education Faculty Award. Notable contributions include a keen focus on expanding opportunities for students to study, work and intern abroad, with a parallel focus on growing community partnerships to support students. She also has grown academic offerings and community outreach.

A classroom approach in which students seek solutions to problems rooted in real meteorological data; non-traditional teaching techniques to help students grasp organic chemistry; and a focus on students choosing research projects geared to their interests are just some of the innovative, hands-on approaches this year’s CLAS Excellence in Teaching Awards recipients use to challenge students.

UNC Charlotte alumna Tracy Dodson recently was named assistant city manager for economic development by City Manager Marcus Jones. Dodson earned bachelor’s degrees in architecture and psychology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She also holds a Master of Design Studies degree in Real Estate and Urban Development from Harvard University.

A Call to China, a book written by UNC Charlotte retired religious studies professor Jeffrey Meyer, is a silver winner in the historical fiction category of the Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Awards™. A professor at UNC Charlotte for 35 years, Meyer taught Asian religions in the Religious Studies department, with a focus on Buddhism and Daoism.