College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Senior Associate Dean Shawn Long has received the Lyman T. Johnson Torch of Excellence Award from the University of Kentucky Lyman T. Johnson African American alumni group, honoring his impact on other people’s lives.

Akin Ogundiran, professor and chair of the Africana Studies Department, was inducted as a Visiting Fellow of Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. This honor recognizes his preeminent status as a researcher and scholar of emergent societies and social complexity in Yorubaland, Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora during the past 700 years.

Gregory Mixon, professor of history, recently received the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of Archives. He was honored for the book, “Show Thyself a Man: Georgia State Troops, Colored, 1865-1905.”

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 6. It’s a “blue moon” election, which means that every so often we have a midterm or off-year election with no statewide candidate for office at the top of the ticket. Typically, fewer people vote in midterm elections. Every election is important and this one is no different.

UNC Charlotte’s young alumni are making marks in their fields and in the community, as evidenced by the inaugural 10 Under Ten Award winners, including two alumni from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. These alumni epitomize what it means to give back and pay it forward, and they credit UNC Charlotte with providing the foundation to do so.

Bioarchaeologists like UNC Charlotte researcher Sara L. Juengst are part archaeologist, part biological anthropologist. They study human skeletal remains to learn about and tell the stories of past communities and cultures. While archaeologists more often study settlement patterns and artifacts like ceramics or stone tools from historical excavations, bioarchaeologists study burial sites, items found at burial sites, and bones.

Members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community have a new way to share their opinions on a variety of issues with the launch of YourVoiceCLT. Charlotte’s Community Survey Panel was founded by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, the Ph.D. in Public Policy Program, the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, and the Policy Opinion, Learning and Sentiment Lab.

The LYNX Blue Line Extension’s first trip in March 2018 signaled dramatic change for UNC Charlotte and the Charlotte community. For researchers Isabelle Nilsson and Elizabeth Delmelle, the new line and the neighborhoods it passes through between Uptown Charlotte and the main campus represent a living laboratory for research exploring how transit investments affect neighborhood change and the implications for residential mobility and income segregation.

UNC Charlotte historian Aaron Shapiro thinks deeply about the impact of society’s resting places and the importance of protecting and understanding them. In his co-teaching of a history class called “Preserving Memory in the Digital Age,” Shapiro strives to help students broaden their perspectives on cemeteries and their surrounding communities, through in-depth research and class work.

As part of the effort to advance experiential learning for students, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences faculty and staff learned best practices during a two-day workshop in June with Worcester Polytechnic Institute facilitators. The primary goal of the workshop was to explore how to integrate project-based learning throughout CLAS.