News

In the still early-morning hours of Monday, September 11, 2017, UNC Charlotte Air Force ROTC cadets took up their posts at UNC Charlotte’s 9/11 Memorial. Starting at midnight, the students took turns over a 24-hour period standing as silent sentinels in memory of those who had lost their lives in the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, commonly called 9/11.

On a journey through the restaurants and kitchens of the South, the linkage between food and identity came clear to Ashli Quesinberry Stokes, a communication studies associate professor and director of the Center for the Study of the New South. She and her colleague, Wendy Atkins-Sayre, faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi, have co-authored a compelling book that details their findings.

Michèle Bissière, professor of French, is the golden jubilee recipient of the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence. Presented annually since 1968, the award is one of UNC Charlotte’s most prestigious accolades, recognizing a talented faculty member. Bissière’s outreach has been so diverse and extensive that she is considered the face of French at UNC Charlotte.

We lost a member of our UNC Charlotte community this weekend. Jeannine Skinner, assistant professor of gerontology/psychology in the Department of Psychological Science, passed away at age 35. Nancy Gutierrez, dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and Nancy Fey-Yensan, dean of the College of Health and Human Services, have extended their condolences.

Professor Richard Tedeschi and fellow researcher Lawrence Calhoun, UNC Charlotte emeritus professor in psychology, years ago coined the phrase “posttraumatic growth” to describe what they have witnessed – that some people will grow and change in new ways after they undergo trauma. Their work has continued to grow and evolve, as they find new avenues of research, gain new collaborators, mentor new students and influence authors of popular press books and researchers.

Call him an earth sleuth. Wenwu Tang, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, scoops up information from a targeted locale and analyzes it for clues to address any number of societal problems with a spatial component. With his research, Tang looks at land use, land cover change, how traffic patterns may influence transportation, how pedestrians or animals may move in an area or even how disease may spread.

Faculty members who demonstrate significant impact within and beyond their classrooms can be recognized with one of UNC Charlotte’s top honors – the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence. Finalists for this award include four College of Liberal Arts & Sciences faculty. They are Michèle Bissière, Scott Fitzgerald, Kirk Melnikoff and Coral Wayland.

UNC Charlotte Model United Nations students in spring 2017 competed internationally at the Harvard World United Nations in Montreal, Canada, where they vied against 2,000 university students from more than 115 countries. Delegates brought home highest honors for individual participants, with two awards for verbal communications.

For her commitment to teaching at the beginning of her academic career, Jennifer Webb, associate professor in the Department of Psychological Science, is this year’s recipient of the Bonnie E. Cone Early-Career Professorship in Teaching. Provost Joan Lorden announced the honor at University Convocation, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017.

Historian Steven Sabol’s new book is a happy coincidence of fly-fishing and history. During a 2006 fishing trip to trout-filled Nez Perce Creek in Yellowstone National Park, Sabol spied a sign with tantalizing details about the flight of the Nez Perce through the park in the 19th century. The sign set Sabol on a comparative history journey exploring the treatment of nomadic people by two empires – the U.S. and Russia.