College News

UNC Charlotte’s speech team won third place at the Novice National Championship Forensics Tournament in early March at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. The award recognizes the top novice competitors from across the country in competitive public speaking, debate, and interpretation of literature.

UNC Charlotte Professor of English and American Studies Program Director Jeffrey Leak and colleagues have received a new American Association of University Administrators (AAUA) award for a special issue of the Journal of Higher Education Management that focuses on the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial justice and equity.

UNC Charlotte Professor of English and American Studies Program Director Jeffrey Leak and colleagues have received a new American Association of University Administrators (AAUA) award for a special issue of the Journal of Higher Education Management that focuses on the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial justice and equity.

UNC Charlotte Knight Distinguished Professor of Public Policy Jean-Claude Thill is named an AAG Fellow by the American Association of Geographers for his immense contributions to geography through research, teaching and mentoring of students and other researchers. The data-driven, spatial and interdisciplinary approaches Thill takes help people better understand how social, environmental, economic, policymaking, and other processes are organized and related.

For his translation of Hiroko Oyamada’s novella The Hole, UNC Charlotte Assistant Professor of Japanese David Boyd has won the coveted Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, presented by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.

Betsabe Rojas Gonzalez is one of the first UNC Charlotte students or alumni ever chosen for the highly competitive Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Program graduate fellowship. Fellows receive up to $84,000 for two years of graduate studies, internships, and other professional development opportunities and have the opportunity to work as a U.S. Foreign Service officer.

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.

A team including UNC Charlotte urban planning researcher Katherine Idziorek has received a nearly $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to advance research on how urban social and spatial systems can be organized to be more resilient and efficient.

UNC Charlotte health psychology doctoral student Jan Mooney is expanding her research in maternal health, with support from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Training Award. The fellowship from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development will allow Mooney to work closely with NIH scientists.

UNC Charlotte Communication Studies Professor Dean A. Kruckeberg has earned the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Gold Anvil Award, the society’s highest honor for lifetime achievement in public relations. “This is certainly the greatest professional honor I have ever received during my career,” Kruckeberg said. “It’s particularly meaningful because it is awarded by a professional association that is comprised primarily of practitioners as well as of educators.”

Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society, has approved a chapter for UNC Charlotte. The University joins an elite group of just 10% of U.S. colleges and universities approved to shelter a chapter.

As a student attending rural North Carolina grade schools and a Raleigh high school that is majority white, Candace Silver saw just a few other Black faces in her classes, if any. Lessons and books paid little attention to telling Black people’s stories, she recalls. Now, as the inaugural recipient of the new Gregory Mixon-Sonya Ramsey Black Lives Matter Scholarship, Silver continues to grow her understanding and appreciation for a broader view that includes the contributions and struggles of Black people throughout history.