College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences

Mark West is a self-effacing scholar who can deftly turn attention from himself to the students, faculty and staff in UNC Charlotte’s Department of English and to colleagues in the field of children’s literature. Despite his reticence to stand in the spotlight, others are shining a beam on his service and have chosen him to receive the 2016 Anne Devereaux Jordan Award.

Longtime UNC Charlotte colleague and Professor Emeritus Alfred (Al) Wright Stuart passed away on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015 after a brief illness. He was a retired member of the faculty of the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences.

Film is a lens through which people can see and share the world, colored with excitement, energy and purpose. This is the lesson UNC Charlotte film studies faculty member Rodney Stringfellow imparts to his students.

Four talks, sponsored by the History Department and the Dowd Foundation, comprise the series “Food Production, Marketing and Consumption in the United States – Colonial Era to Present.”

Sixty UNC Charlotte students who are enrolled in Spanish language classes caught a glimpse of what it means to live in poverty in a foreign country, struggling to survive with limited language skills through a simulation organized by Spanish lecturer Susana Cisneros.

UNC Charlotte’s Jeanette M. Bennett has been named one of the 10 Must Take Psychology Professors in Charlotte by the online site Careers in Psychology. “Educating the next generation of leaders and scientists has always been one of my primary goals,” Bennett says. “My classroom provides an environment that is open to questions and a safe place to process new student ideas.”

When the threat of disease looms, analyzing its geographic and spatial dynamics might not spring to mind as a priority. However, a new book co-edited by UNC Charlotte researcher Eric Delmelle suggests that such analysis should move up the list of significant issues to consider.

Atrocities can start with seemingly insignificant acts. UNC Charlotte students have learned this painful, yet powerful lesson through their in-depth study of the Holocaust. As scholars in the course “Bearing Witness to the Past: A Journey to Auschwitz,” they have traveled to the death camps of Auschwitz and Krakow. They have studied the photographs of the dead and read their names. They have seen the mute mountains of surrendered belongings – the shoes, the battered suitcases, the eyeglasses.

Allegations of brutal torture and abuse of suspected terrorists by the CIA and the U.S. military have heightened the debate about the effectiveness, morality and frequency of torture in the face of terrorist threats. Research centered at UNC Charlotte offers important insight into the agencies that engage in torture and the conditions under which they do.

For its broad-ranging “convocation to commencement” approach to advising, the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology has earned the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Academic Advising. The department helps students reach their full academic potential, Provost Joan Lorden said.