Community Engagement

As an outstanding leader at UNC Charlotte and in the broader community, Janaka Bowman Lewis has claimed a slot in the Charlotte Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 Awards for 2020. Lewis is director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, an associate professor in English, and an affiliate faculty member in Africana studies.

As pandemic restrictions begin to lift and cities start to bustle, we take a closer look at UNC Charlotte research into urban intensification and its impact on forest birds. This study by UNC Charlotte landscape ecologist Sara Gagné with two alumni and a colleague suggests ways to help forest birds in cities.

UNC Charlotte poets are thinking and writing about the impact of challenging times on the human spirit. Some of their poems address COVID-19 directly, and all of the poetry considers people’s responses to times of trouble and change.

Mark West, who has devoted his 35-year career at UNC Charlotte to advancing children’s literacy and children’s literature, is a recipient of the Governor James E. Holshouser Jr. Award for Excellence in Public Service.

When the Jamil Niner Student Pantry opened on campus in 2014, professor Nicole Peterson decided to focus a research project on campus, working to determine the depths of the food insecurity problem on the UNC Charlotte campus.

An outdoor, living exhibit is on its way to the UNC Charlotte campus to tell the story of North Carolina through plants and crops crucial to the state’s development. A team composed of the university’s Center for the Study of the New South, Botanical Gardens, and Urban Institute received a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council for the project, “Walking Through Carolina: An Outdoor Living Exhibit.”

The U.S. Constitution may seem like a dusty, dry document with no relevance to people’s lives today. Now, members of the UNC Charlotte community have a chance to regain the knowledge that was lost after that test – and to gain a better understanding of the Constitution’s impact on our lives, at the University’s annual Constitution Day event.

Being an informed citizen in a democracy necessitates understanding the people who make, and will be affected by, community decisions. The Civic Eats project seeks to help create a better informed Charlotte citizenry through a focus on the connective potential of foodways – or why we eat, what we eat, and what it means.

A core team of UNC Charlotte faculty members, graduate students and alumni affiliated with the Community Psychology Research Lab are critical to community efforts affecting economic and social mobility in the Charlotte region. With each community collaboration, team members focus on capacity building and sustainability. They concentrate particularly on the issues of early childhood education, mental health, public housing, child welfare and integrated primary and behavioral health care.

Public sector managers face specific challenges that differ from those of people working in the for-profit arena. To address these challenges, UNC Charlotte’s Gerald G. Fox Master of Public Administration Program and the University’s Continuing Education Office offer the MPA Public Management Academy Professional Development Certificate program.