Community Engagement

In fall 2024, the city of Charlotte will continue America’s tradition of embracing the adaptable, celebrated fairy tale The Wonderful Wizard of Oz through a community-oriented Oz festival, organized by two UNC Charlotte experts and supported by seed money from North Carolina Humanities. CharlOz will be centered around the book L. Frank Baum wrote in 1900, but which has been interpreted and adapted in ways that continue to reflect America, its values and its diversity.

UNC Charlotte researchers and the Gaston County Department of Health and Human Services have created the Gaston Water Map, a website with tools that map known groundwater quality in the county. The site also provides resources on best practices households can use to understand their well water quality. The researchers have mailed more than 8,000 postcards to residents, encouraging them to locate their addresses on the interactive maps on the website.

Professor Kimberly Buch has been a leader in the transformation of UNC Charlotte’s culture of service over the past two decades, while directly inspiring 500 UNC Charlotte students to devote 25,000 hours to hands-on service learning. In recognition of her work, Buch has received Campus Compact’s Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award, a national honor that celebrates faculty’s exemplary engaged scholarship accomplished through their teaching and research.

A significant proportion of Gaston County residents get their drinking water from private wells and other unregulated sources, particularly in the county’s northern and western rural communities. Yet, only a small fraction of residents test their water regularly. A UNC Charlotte team will work with residents and county health officials to boost the number of people doing tests regularly and improve the sharing of data, with new state funding to broaden the work.

When Nancy Gutierrez retires as dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS) at the end of the 2021-22 academic year, she leaves a legacy defined by a commitment to helping students develop a curiosity about the world and the knowledge and skills to pursue lives of purpose, and a dedication to facilitating faculty research and scholarship for what it discovers about the world around us.

The Personally Speaking published experts series in its 11th season looked at drones, cats, and Africa. Three UNC Charlotte scholars/researchers in 2020-2021 talks discussed books they have written and how they came to write them during the annual series.

Former FEMA Administrator Brock Long will headline UNC Charlotte’s third annual “Talking Policy in the Queen City” symposium on Feb. 24, hosted by the Public Policy Ph.D. and MPA programs with UNC Charlotte Urban Institute.

In “Africa’s International Relations: Balancing Domestic and Global Interests,” Beth Elise Whitaker and co-author John Clark argue that the external relations of African countries are shaped mainly by domestic political imperatives. Whitaker’s research and the book will be the focus of the second talk of the 2020-2021 season in the Personally Speaking published experts series, on Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 7 p.m.

This year’s UNC Charlotte Constitution Day event features a talk by Tammy A. Sarver of Benedictine University, discussing women in America’s long struggle to gain the right to vote as a Constitutional right. While that quest culminated in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment, issues of inequality remained and continue to linger today.

The use of combat drones stands out as one of the most critical developments in 21st century military actions. Learn more about this important topic from UNC Charlotte expert James Igoe Walsh, during his Personally Speaking virtual talk on Wednesday, Sept. 30 at 7 p.m.