Community Engagement

UNC Charlotte has received a $76,521 grant to establish a watershed observatory that will document the impact of land use and invasive plant species on Catawba Watershed water quality and quantity, to guide the development of best conservation practices for uplands here and elsewhere. Dr. Martha Cary Eppes and Dr. David Vinson of the Department of Geography & Earth Sciences will oversee the watershed work, in partnership with North Carolina Plant Conservation Program and the Catawba Lands Conservancy.

When the Charlotte literary festival Novello ended in 2010 after a successful 15-year streak, a huge gap emerged in Charlotte’s creative market. This considerable loss has inspired Mark West, children’s literature professor and chair of the English Department at UNC Charlotte, to create a new literary festival to be held on May 6, 2017 at UNC Charlotte Center City.

A Confucius Institute will open at UNC Charlotte in summer 2017 to broaden the University’s outreach and support for language instruction and cultural opportunities in the Charlotte community. UNC Charlotte will establish the Confucius Institute within the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies.

The days and weeks following the September 20, 2016 police shooting of African-American Charlottean Keith Lamont Scott saw peaceful protests on campus and research- and scholarship-driven responses by faculty, alumni and students at UNC Charlotte. Among those responses, UNC Charlotte researchers Cherie Maestas and Sara Levens are exploring how the emotions of members of the community translated to action following news of the shooting.

The sounds that fill hospital rooms can take on a discordant tone, as life-sustaining equipment beeps, hisses and blares. Chapel Hill non-profit DooR to DooR breaks through the noise, bringing to health care settings the sounds of a different healing sort, as documented in the new film “The Acoustics of Care.”

More than 25 people will showcase their art in the “Artistic Protest: Representations of Race, Violence, Injustice and Inequality” event on Tuesday, Nov. 29 at 6 p.m., in Cone University Center, McKnight Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Girls Rock Charlotte, a July summer camp that aims to amplify confidence and boost self-esteem through the power of rock music and leadership lessons, is giving young girls a positive voice. While the initiative is not a formal UNC Charlotte program, it draws many of its leaders and volunteers from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the university.

The UNC Charlotte Gerontology Program celebrated its 25th anniversary this spring, while helping state leaders roll out North Carolina’s first plan to comprehensively address dementia. The community conversation drew students, scholars, practitioners and community activists from the gerontology field to UNC Charlotte Center City.

UNC Charlotte writing students’ digital stories are part of the ¡NUEVOlution! Latinos and the New South exhibit at the Levine Museum of the New South, in the video series hosted on the Levine Museum’s YouTube channel. These digital stories created by UNC Charlotte students, along with others in the exhibit, bring the voices and stories of people to the forefront.

The 40th annual conference of the National Council for Black Studies marks a historic occasion, with a theme of “Forty Years of Black Studies in the Local, National and Global Spaces: Past Accomplishments and New Directions.”