Research

Undergraduate students from around the nation who may have thought graduate school was out of their reach found out in a one-week summer institute at UNC Charlotte that it is within their grasp. UNC Charlotte’s Organizational Science Summer Institute. The institute seeks to diversify the field of organizational science through professional development, specifically targeting historically underrepresented undergraduate students.

More than 100 undergraduate students competed in the 2017 Summer Research Symposium, with three College of Liberal Arts & Sciences students named the winners. “These are the agile minds that will advance understanding in many areas that affect our lives,” distinguished researcher Pinku Mukherjee said of the participants in the university’s research programs.

For a film that illustrates how the arts can promote healing in healthcare settings, UNC Charlotte researcher Margaret M. Quinlan and colleagues Lynn Harter and Evan Shaw have earned a regional Emmy® nomination from the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

UNC Charlotte has received a $76,521 grant to establish a watershed observatory that will document the impact of land use and invasive plant species on Catawba Watershed water quality and quantity, to guide the development of best conservation practices for uplands here and elsewhere. Dr. Martha Cary Eppes and Dr. David Vinson of the Department of Geography & Earth Sciences will oversee the watershed work, in partnership with North Carolina Plant Conservation Program and the Catawba Lands Conservancy.

With his Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, Africana Studies faculty member Honoré Missihoun will research and teach texts from Francophone countries in Africa, as he explores how the exploitation of women, land and natural resources relates to patriarchal and male-dominated societies. Missihoun will conduct research at the University of Jos, Nigeria, focused on eco-feminism and eco-criticism in the environmental literature of Francophone Africa and the African Diaspora.

UNC Charlotte researchers have examined over one million tweets sent during the protests of the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte in September 2016. This research holds implications for understanding the role of cluster tweets and other public relations strategies in relation to online activism.

As temperatures spike each spring, mosquitos start to swarm. They bring with them an increased risk of mosquito-borne diseases and a need to understand how to guard against these pesky – and at times dangerous – insects. Researchers at UNC Charlotte and the Mecklenburg County Health Department are collaborating on a study to determine which factors in the environment lead to hotspots of mosquito activity, in a project led by doctoral student Ari Whiteman.

Drug use is the main motivation for women who burglarize, while money ranks as the top motivation for male burglars, new UNC Charlotte research has found. The study, published in the January 2017 Journal of Drug Issues, was led by Criminal Justice and Criminology Professor Joseph B. Kuhns and is one of the few that interprets data from both male and female burglars.

Navigating the world’s oceans of data can prove daunting. It is not enough to simply amass and access vast quantities of data; researchers have learned the importance of understanding and using data in purposeful ways. To make the most of these opportunities, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences earlier this year joined the UNC Charlotte Data Science Initiative.

The ancient texts that tell their secrets to UNC Charlotte researcher John C. Reeves inhabit the twilight realms of cosmic arcana, apocalyptic fervor, and religious dualism of Late Antiquity and the Medieval Era. “It’s really the thrill of solving mysteries that keeps me going,” says Reeves, UNC Charlotte Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies.