Student Stories

In the still early-morning hours of Monday, September 11, 2017, UNC Charlotte Air Force ROTC cadets took up their posts at UNC Charlotte’s 9/11 Memorial. Starting at midnight, the students took turns over a 24-hour period standing as silent sentinels in memory of those who had lost their lives in the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, commonly called 9/11.

UNC Charlotte Model United Nations students in spring 2017 competed internationally at the Harvard World United Nations in Montreal, Canada, where they vied against 2,000 university students from more than 115 countries. Delegates brought home highest honors for individual participants, with two awards for verbal communications.

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.

With her selection as UNC Charlotte’s first-ever Ertegun Graduate Scholar, UNC Charlotte’s Eileen Jakeway is headed to England’s University of Oxford, for what she anticipates will be one of the most intellectually rich and invigorating experiences of her life. Each year, only about 20 full-time graduate students in the Humanities are chosen from throughout the world to receive the scholarships.

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.

When streetlights burn out in the Enderly Park neighborhood, the darkness closes in, causing residents to worry about safety. UNC Charlotte geography undergraduate students Jamal Covington and Devin Martin have created a way for residents to use mobile devices to easily report issues such as burned-out lights.

Two on-campus entities have conducted research to improve student experiences and outcomes related to career readiness, with the added benefit of providing Communications Studies students hands-on research experience.

More than 25 people will showcase their art in the “Artistic Protest: Representations of Race, Violence, Injustice and Inequality” event on Tuesday, Nov. 29 at 6 p.m., in Cone University Center, McKnight Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Students in the literature class “War and Genocide in Children’s Literature” are raising money to benefit Operation Refugee Child, a nonprofit organization that provides living supplies to children residing in refugee camps. The class goal is to raise $2,000 for this Promoting Peace project. This will enable the students to provide 130 backpacks filled with supplies to child refugees fleeing Syria.