Q3, 2008 - UNC Charlotte magazine

The magazine of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte for Alumni and Friends • v15 n4 q4 • 2008

UNC Charlotte

Closer to Kickoff49ers move toward gridiron debut

As loyal 49ers, you know that the question of whether UNC Charlotte will start an intercollegiate football program has been under discussion for some time. In fact, some would say it has been under discussion since we abandoned our one and only football team in 1948!

More recently, though, I convened a Football Feasibility Committee in early 2007 to study the “F question” and, in February of 2008, that group unanimously recommended that we move forward with developing a football program.

After having completed my own independent process of “due diligence” with respect to the committee’s recommendation, I concluded that the timing is right to build a UNC Charlotte football program. On Nov. 13, the Board of Trustees strongly endorsed the plan I had presented at its September board meeting (see www.uncc.edu and click on “Chancellor’s Outbox”).

UNC Charlotte already has a successful athletic program supported by thousands of 49er alumni, friends, and students. We anticipate that many new fans will be happy with the outcome of our deliberations since the prospect of warm Saturday afternoons, the gathering of friends at tailgate parties, and the celebration of football victories are things to which we can all look forward with great anticipation. And I certainly believe that football will enrich the student experience, enliven school spirit among alumni, and serve as one more bond of engagement between the students, our alumni, and their university.

On the other hand, I’ve never viewed this simply as a decision affecting athletics, student life, or alumni relations. Football is not just about football. Rather, the question of football has as much to do with what kind of institution we want to be 20 or 30 years from now. And so a question of this magnitude has required us to attempt to look into the future with its many unknowns and uncertainties. Our best guess tells us to expect that we will be a very different institution, measured against an entirely different set of institutional peers and much higher community expectations.

Twenty years from now we will be a leading urban research university with an enrollment of approximately 35,000 students. Such institutions typically have a comprehensive array of undergraduate, graduate, and professional academic programs, leading cultural arts programs, and comprehensive and competitive intercollegiate athletic programs. In fact, 91 percent of the institutions that currently have enrollments in excess of 35,000 students play football at the Division I level. If you are judged by the company you keep, football must be one component of our future programmatic mix as a major urban research university.

Football is important for another key reason. Whether one likes it or not, athletics is a galvanizing force in American society. People pay attention to their local college football team, even if it is not their alma mater. They take pride in that school when the football team does well and success opens doors that were not open before. We’ve borrowed a phrase coined by UNC President Erskine Bowles to use in this context — that football can help the Charlotte region to “own” its only public four-year university and, in the process, to help the University reap the secondary benefits that come with such ownership — political and financial support, research and technology transfer partnerships, and employment and internship opportunities for our students.

Stay tuned for more information about UNC Charlotte football, scheduled to kick off in the fall of 2013. I’ll be there to flip the coin (and I’m betting I know who wins the toss!). In the meantime, basketball season has arrived and both our men’s and women’s basketball teams promise exciting seasons. Join us in Halton Arena at any time.

Go Niners!

Philip L. DuboisChancellor

UNC CHARLOTTE magazine www.UNCC.edu

UNC CHARLOTTE | chance l lor ’s letter

I convened a

Football Feasibility

Committee in early

2007 to study

the “F question”

and, in February

of 2008, that

group unanimously

recommended that

we move forward

with developing a

football program.

Football and the Future

Chancellor Phil Dubois took questions from the media after making his recommendation to trustees on Sept. 18.

www.UNCC.edu 4Q08 | UNC CHARLOTTE magazine 1

contents | UNC CHARLOTTE

On the cover:On Nov. 13 the UNC Charlotte Board of Trustees endorsed Chancellor Dubois’ recommendation of starting an intercollegiate football program in 2013. Photo illustration by SPARK Publications.

features

12 49er Football Almost a RealityMajor fi nancial objectives lie in the way

19 microbiologist Battles the Coming of the “Superbug”

25 Choir for the UnsungHumanitarian Award recipients do good at home and abroad

32 UnC Charlotte at a Crossroads

34 trying Research on for Size

36 one Giant Leap:Creating Healthy Communities and NC-CATCH

32

3

6

E.K. Fretwell Celebrates 85th Birthday

contents | UNC CHARLOTTE

49er Football Almost a RealityMajor fi nancial objectives lie in the way

microbiologist Battles the Coming

E.K. Fretwell Celebrates 85th Birthday

25

19

departments

4, 17 News Briefs

10 49ers Notebook

17 Giving Report

40 Alumni Notes

alumni profi les

21 Kent Ellington

22 Robyn Massey

30 Glenn Hutchinson

36 Melissa Gayan

2 UNC CHARLOTTE magazine | 4Q08 www.UNCC.edu

John D. Bland, EditorDirector of Public Relations

UNC CHARLOTTE | ed i tor ’s desk

A Great University’s People

In editing the articles that appear in this edition, one of the basic truths about UNC Charlotte revealed itself like a revelation wrapped in a campaign slogan: “It’s the people, stupid.”

Let me explain. Sometimes an editor thinks of stories by their topics — “Super-germ Research,” the “Student Humanitarian Award,” and “Alumni Profiles,” all of which appear in these pages. But, perhaps more significantly than the topics, what you have before you is a digest of stories about amazing people who enrich our community.

Start with the facing page. E. K. Fretwell, UNC Charlotte’s second chancellor, led UNC Charlotte in serving the world of research and scholarship while also providing public service to the greater Charlotte region. He also helped lead the University to greater national recognition.

Flip to the “Super-germ” article on page 19 and you’ll meet Michael Hudson, a brilliant and dedicated researcher who is passionate about saving lives. The sidebar on his protégé Kent Ellington gives you some insight into how a promising physician was inspired and driven to do good.

Peer into the “Student Humanitarian Award” article and you will be dazzled by the exploits of more exceptional human beings — current and former 49ers who have worked selflessly to teach and learn and to improve the human condition for people at home and abroad. Talk about ambassadors for UNC Charlotte!

Then troll through the alumni profiles on pages 20, 30, and 36. You’ll read how Robyn Massey is bringing an exciting new vision to the Alumni Association, how the plays of Glenn Hutchinson tackle complex social issues while delighting audiences, and you’ll read how Melissa Gayan got an education of a lifetime amid the recent warfare in the Republic of Georgia.

A lot of amazing people populate the UNC Charlotte family. It’s our pleasure to introduce you to a few of them.

Regards,

Volume 15, Number 3

Philip L. DuboisChancellor

Ruth ShawChair of the Board of Trustees

Vice Chancellor for University Relations and Community Affairs

David Dunn

EditorDirector of Public Relations

John D. Bland

Creative DirectorFabi Preslar

Contributing WritersRhiannon BowmanJames Hathaway

Lisa LambertAllison Reid

Katie Conn Suggs

Class NotesKatie Conn Suggs

PhotographerWade Bruton

Circulation ManagerCathy Brown

Design & ProductionSPARK Publications

UNC Charlotte is published four times a year by The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd.,

Charlotte, NC 28223-0001ISSN 10771913

Editorial offices: Reese Building, 2nd floor

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

9201 University City Blvd.Charlotte, NC 28223

704.687.5822; Fax: 704.687.6379

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is open to people of all races and

is committed to equality of educational opportunity and does not discriminate

against applicants, students or employees based on race, color, national origin, religion,

sex, sexual orientation, age or disability.


What you have before you is a

digest of stories about amazing

people who enrich our community.

Printed on recycled paper17,000 copies of this publication were printed

at a cost of $.70 per piece, for a total cost of $11,968.35.


Chancellor Emeritus Celebrates 85th Birthday

Friends of the university, faculty and staff gathered Oct. 24 at Bissell House to celebrate the 85th birthday of UNC Charlotte’s second chancellor, E.K. Fretwell.

When Fretwell took the reins of UNC Charlotte in 1978, he inherited from Bonnie Cone and Dean Colvard a regionally accredited university with many nationally accredited programs, more than 10,000 alumni, nearly 9,000 students and a competitive athletics program.

In his remarks at the birthday reception, Chancellor Philip Dubois cited Fretwell’s accomplishments and hailed him as the right man at the right time to position UNC Charlotte for future opportunities and challenges.

During his tenure as chancellor at UNC Charlotte, bilateral institution exchange agreements were forged between the University and prestigious universities in England, France, Germany and Taiwan.

During a period when diversity did not have the same academic priority as it does today, Fretwell set the stage for UNC Charlotte to become a truly diverse, open and multicultural public university. He encouraged qualified women and minorities to attend college and appointed individuals from diverse backgrounds to key administrative posts while extending the University’s reach into the community through new partnerships.

After his retirement from UNC Charlotte, Fretwell served as chair of the North Carolina Standards and Accountability Commission, a group convened by the Legislature to identify what North Carolina high school students

should know and how that knowledge should be assessed. He later served terms as interim president of the University of Massachusetts System and the University of North Florida.

Fretwell’s life has been devoted to education, and he has taught at virtually every level in a distinguished career that spans more than four decades.

He earned a master of arts degree in teaching from Harvard University, and later a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and has taught public school in Massachusetts, as well as at high school and community college in Illinois.

Prior to accepting the post at UNC Charlotte, Fretwell served as president of the State University of New York College at Buffalo. Throughout his distinguished career, he earned a national and international reputation in higher education administration. Among the many organizations to which he provided leadership are the American Association for Higher Education, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the American Council on Education Commission on Plans and Objectives for Higher Education.

The connections Fretwell made through these influential organizations served UNC Charlotte well, and contributed to a seismic shift in the University’s image — under his leadership, UNC Charlotte became known as one of the top universities in the state system.

E.K. Fretwell as chancellor, talking with students on campus and flanked by Chancellor Philip L. Dubois and Fretwell’s successor, Chancellor Emeritus Jim Woodward.

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UNC CHARLOTTE | news br iefs

news briefs

4 UNC CHARLOTTE magazine www.UNCC.edu

Coastal County Gets Fine-tuned for Hurricane Weather

August 28 and 29, UNC Charlotte meteorologist Matthew Eastin and his students turned North Carolina’s coastal Brunswick Co. into one of the country’s most densely and carefully monitored weather sites.

The team installed five new complete weather stations in the communities of Calabash, Ash, Leland (which will get two), and Boiling Springs Lakes, supplementing the detailed data already being provided by nine existing coastal weather-monitoring sites in the 855-square-mile county. The new stations are being funded by a faculty research grant from UNC Charlotte.

The aim of the researchers is to get an uniquely detailed, landscape-wide record of severe weather as it occurs — especially in the event that a hurricane passes nearby.

“Our goal is to try to improve the forecast of severe weather — as opposed to the daily forecast of weather that might disrupt a softball game but it’s not really going to tear your house down,” he said.

In particular, Eastin hopes to find further proof for a new theory that he and other researchers have developed that challenges the conventional view of tornado formation during hurricanes.

With a more detailed analysis, the researchers hope to develop monitoring and forecasting methods that might lead to earlier warning for the tornados that commonly occur in a hurricane’s outer rain bands. Hard to forecast accurately, hurricane-spawned tornadoes develop rapidly across broad areas and generally cause about 10 percent of a hurricane’s total damage.

Eastin points out that hurricane-generated tornadoes can be a big problem especially because they are so unpredictable. “You are watching the hurricane move towards the coast and you think, ‘Oh, it’s making landfall down by Savannah, Georgia, and I live in Myrtle Beach, so I’m clear,’ and then, bam, you get hit by a tornado,” he said.

“They happen a lot, and people are caught unaware. Across the Carolinas in 2004 and 2005 alone there were over 130 tornadoes in association with just seven tropical cyclones — none of which actually made landfall on the North Carolina coast — it was just the remnants moving through. It’s a fairly important forecast issue for our area.”

According to Eastin, part of the problem in forecasting hurricane associated tornados

has been that meteorologists have always assumed that the parent storms that spawn the tornadoes do not develop until the hurricane rain bands move onshore.

“The traditional conceptual model is that the individual storms that comprise the hurricane rain bands are ‘ordinary’ over the ocean, and the increase in surface friction over land creates the miniature supercells,” Eastin said. “Supercells frequently produce tornadoes.

“What we have been finding is that you can actually have these miniature supercells form out over the ocean, and then produce tornadoes on or very near the beach,” he said.

The observations that Eastin is interested in collecting will come from his stations, five others maintained by the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) in Chapel Hill and from four RENCI flood sensors. Eastin hopes to collect data detecting sudden wind shifts and abrupt temperature shifts that are tell-tale signs of strong down-drafts and gust fronts, often the pre-cursors to tornado formation. The information will, in turn, allow him to more accurately identify the specific over-water storms that preceded the dangerous land storms.

“We are trying to provide proof-of-concept through high-density observations,” Eastin said. “Ultimately, if we can understand what causes the supercell out over the open ocean, then we can help forecasters to detect them earlier with radar and give everyone a little more forewarning.”

“Our goal is to try to

improve the forecast of

severe weather — as opposed

to the daily forecast

of weather that might

disrupt a softball game

but it’s not really going to

tear your house down.”


news br iefs | UNC CHARLOTTE

UnivERSity HoStinG ACE FELLoW

During the 2008-09 academic year, UNC Charlotte is hosting UNC Pembroke’s Alfred Bryant as part of the American Council of Education (ACE) Fellows program.

Bryant, a faculty member in the UNC Pembroke School of Education, was one of 36 fellows named from a national competition. UNC Charlotte was his top

choice to spend the next academic year.“As fellows, we are supposed to select

campuses that would provide us an excellent learning opportunity regarding campus administration,” said Bryant. “Chancellor Dubois, his staff and UNC Charlotte have an excellent reputation, not only across North Carolina, but the nation. I am elated the University agreed to host me this year.”

A Pembroke native, Bryant began

his career in education as a high school counselor. He later earned a doctorate in counselor education from NC State University.

Founded in 1965, the ACE Fellows program’s goal is to strengthen leadership in higher education by identifying promising senior faculty and administrators and preparing them for key positions in university administration.

Fall enrollment includes 3,000 new freshmen, 2,000 new grad students and 2,000 transfers

UNC Charlotte welcomed back students this fall, including the largest freshman class in the university’s history. This year’s approximately 23,300 student enrollment includes more than 3,000 new freshmen.

The University also has welcomed nearly 2,000 new graduate students and approximately the same number (2,010) of new undergraduate students who are transferring from other schools.

The influx of new students raises the targeted number of undergraduate students at UNC Charlotte to nearly 18,000 and the projected number of graduate students to nearly 5,200.

As the fall semester kicked off, UNC Charlotte came in at No. 9 in the new category of “Up-and-Coming Schools” in the latest ranking of America’s colleges and universities by U.S. News & World Report.

UNC Charlotte draws students from 46 U.S. states and 89 foreign countries. More than 5,000 students live on campus and nearly as many live in housing adjacent to the 1,000-acre campus, which is located less than 10 miles from downtown Charlotte.

The university currently offers 18 doctoral programs, 62 master’s degree programs and 90 bachelor’s degrees. More than 900 full-time faculty comprise the university’s academic

departments, along with more than 2,000 staff employees. Students new and old were greeted by some major

improvements to the campus, including Dickson Gate, the new front entrance. Nine 20-foot tall brick pylons have been installed along Highway 49 marking the arrival to UNC Charlotte.

Work also is progressing on the new $65 million Student Union, which will include dining hall services, the bookstore, a movie theatre, a multi-purpose room, and other amenities. The Student Union will open in the summer of 2009.

Plans also call for a 400-bed residence hall adjacent to Laurel and Lynch Halls along Cameron Blvd. near the Student Union. The hall is scheduled to be open for fall semester of 2011. A 1,000-car parking deck will open at the same time the new residence hall is occupied.

And a new $35 million Bioinformatics Building on the Charlotte Research Institute (CRI) campus is expected to be completed in the summer of 2009.

These current construction projects, plus others in design, will enable the University to serve the growing population of students. UNC Charlotte is projected to have an enrollment of 35,000 students by the year 2020.


English Professor Receives Top Teaching Award


news briefs

Margaret (Meg) Morgan was selected as the 2008 recipient of the highest teaching honor bestowed by UNC Charlotte — the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence. Morgan, an associate professor of English, was chosen from a prestigious list of finalists for the honor, which was first awarded in 1968.

tHE otHER nominEES FoR tHE AWARD WERE: Louis Amato, professor of economics. Banita Brown, associate professor of chemistry. Michael Hudson, professor of biology. Zbigniew W. Ras, professor of computer science.

Morgan began her UNC Charlotte tenure as a lecturer in 1987 after completing a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition from Purdue University. She was promoted to assistant professor in 1989 and associate professor in 1995. Her bachelor’s and

master’s degrees in English are from Kean University and the University of Maryland, respectively.

Throughout her career, Morgan has worked to facilitate student learning. She championed efforts to improve the curriculum and teaching of freshman composition courses and implemented new placement procedures for students for whom English is a second language. She organized North Carolina and South Carolina writing administrators who now hold biannual meetings. Internationally, she collaborated with colleagues from Germany and Thailand to share information on writing instruction and student support and taught a writing workshop for elementary school teachers in a South African village.

“Dr. Morgan is knowledgeable about the subject she is teaching, and she makes sure that all her students understand what is expected of them,” one of her former students wrote. “On days that her students

follow easily, she moves quickly; on days that her students are having trouble understanding, she slows down. The thing that I like best about Dr. Morgan is the fact that she knows each one of her students by name and treats us all as individuals.”

A non-traditional student wrote Morgan was “quick to encourage and not afraid to tell it like it is. Her encouragement and guidance helped me to believe in myself, causing me to work harder at accomplishing my goals. I am uncertain if she realizes how much I appreciated her help. I’m also sure I’m not a special case. She appears to treat every student with the same respect and attention that I received from her.”

Morgan describes her work at UNC Charlotte succinctly, the same way she teaches her students how to write.

“I teach writing, not how to write stories, or poems or novels, but how to write technical proposals, instructions, arguments about whatever,” said Morgan. “I teach theories of technical communication and argumentation, ultimately, because I believe in my heart that language is our soul and we cannot survive at any level (physically, emotionally, spiritually) without it.”

Meg Morgan conducts class

“I teach theories

of technical

communication

and argumentation.

Ultimately, because

I believe in my heart

that language is

our soul and we

cannot survive at

any level (physically,

emotionally, spiritually)

without it.”


www.UNCC.edu UNC CHARLOTTE magazine 7

KiLmER nAmED ConE PRoFESSoR At ConvoCAtion

Ryan Kilmer, associate professor of psychology, received the Bonnie E. Cone Early-Career Professorship in Teaching at the University’s annual convocation.

Established to recognize a faculty member who exhibits excellent teaching early in his or her career, the Cone Early-Career Professorship in Teaching is a three-year appointment, which includes an additional salary stipend and faculty development funding. In addition, the recipient’s name is inscribed on a special permanent plaque.

In nominating Kilmer, Bruce Cutler, chair of the Psychology Department, wrote, “Since the time Dr. Kilmer was hired as an assistant professor, he has demonstrated an unusual level of commitment to and a natural talent for teaching.”

Kilmer earned a doctorate in psychology with specializations in clinical and community psychology from the University of Rochester in 1999. He joined UNC Charlotte that fall as an assistant professor. He obtained tenure at the end of the 2004-05 academic year and was promoted to associate professor.

In his philosophy of teaching, Kilmer wrote, “My classes are for my students; I strive to promote their learning, training and professional development in all of my courses… I have high expectations for my students, and I have even higher expectations for myself. I view the enhancement of my teaching as a career-long goal and am always working to improve my teaching and effectiveness.”

Cutler noted Kilmer’s efforts in his nomination letter, stating that Kilmer sought out peer-observations from nine faculty members, many of whom were recognized for the quality of their teaching.

Ryan KilmerChancellor Philip L. Dubois

congratulated all the Bank of America Award finalists. “While each of our finalists has a unique teaching style, all embrace the dynamic nature of the teacher-student interaction,” he said. “They foster dialogue in their classrooms, encourage their students to question, and expect to learn as much from their students as their students learn from them. They are leaders who know when to follow their student’s lead. Margaret was selected from a group of her colleagues who are truly some of our best and brightest faculty members.”

The five nominees were honored during the evening ceremony and gala attended by hundreds of UNC Charlotte faculty members and their guests, Friday, Sept. 19, at Founder’s Hall in the Bank of America Corporate Center. All the honorees drew strong praise from their students and peers at UNC Charlotte.

Meg Morgan (center) is surrounded by, from left, Robert Qutub, chief financial officer for global corporate and investment banking, Bank of America Corp.; Provost Joan Lorden; selection committee chair and former award recipient James McGavran and Chancellor Philip L. Dubois.

Nursing faculty receive $706,000 workforce diversity grant

Nursing faculty Lienne Edwards and Tama Morris received a $706,000 grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This Nursing Workforce Diversity grant will fund a three-year effort to increase nursing education opportunities for educationally disadvantaged and minority students.

According to a widely cited Sullivan Commission report published in 2004, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans comprise 25 percent of the United States population but only 9 percent of the nation’s nurses. Research underscores the need for a health care workforce that reflects the diversity of the patients it serves.

The grant “Crossing Borders: Empowering Nursing Students for Academic Success” will result in the addition of 30 students to the UNC Charlotte program during its three years.



news briefs

UnC Charlotte Among Select institutions to Host Saudi Arabian Students

Twenty new first-year students have arrived at UNC Charlotte from Saudi Arabia. Some of the highest-achieving students in their country, they were selected for full sponsorship of all their educational expenses by the Aramco Services Company (ASC). ASC is part of Saudi Arabian American Oil Co. (ARAMCO) headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It is the largest oil company in the world.

Through ARAMCO’s Education Sponsorship Program, more than 150 Saudi Arabian students have completed their bachelor’s degree programs at UNC Charlotte during the past 15 years. ARAMCO invests in the education of future employees, giving students the opportunity to attend the best academic institutions in the world.

While UNC Charlotte’s collaboration with ASC/ARAMCO is a longstanding one, this marks the first year that women have been sponsored. Eleven of the 20 students are women.

UNC Charlotte is one of 14 universities in the United States welcoming ARAMCO-sponsored women this fall.

After completing secondary school in

Saudi Arabia, the selected students completed one year of pre-university orientation that helped prepare them for the academic culture in the United States and to master the English language.

The students are studying accounting, business administration, computer science, engineering and management information systems. Upon graduating, they will fill critical company positions at ARAMCO subsidiaries throughout the world.

The Office of International Admissions and the International Student/Scholar Office helped facilitate the arrival of the Saudi students. Director of International Student/Scholar Office, Marian Beane traveled to ASC headquarters in Houston, Texas earlier this month to accompany them to Charlotte.

“The Saudi women are excited about

the opportunity to study in the United States and be pioneers for their country. Their presence on the UNC Charlotte campus also provides rich opportunities for expanding and deepening cultural understanding,” said Beane.

Undergraduate international students represent more that 25 countries this semester. They are part of the nearly 1,000 international undergraduate and graduate students from more than 80 countries.

Anwaar Zawad, Fatimah Lajami

UnivERSity PARtnERS to StREnGtHEn tEACHinG; initiAtivE DiRECtoR nAmED

UNC Charlotte, through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is joining efforts to strengthen teaching and learning in local schools. This effort, the Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI), is a partnership between the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Davidson College and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools.

To head this initiative, Molly Shaw recently joined UNC Charlotte as CTI’s planning director.

“The goal of CTI is to foster professional and personal development in the teachers,” said Shaw. “We want to instruct the teachers in subjects that they are passionate about so they

can then carry that passion into the classroom.”CTI will help public school teachers

by offering semester-long seminars taught by faculty from UNC Charlotte and Davidson on subjects public school teachers themselves request. Teachers will play a leading role in determining how CTI and each seminar it offers can be of assistance to them, according to Shaw.

Teachers accepted into the program will be called fellows, and they will be considered members of the University community with all the benefits of enrolled students. While participating in seminars, fellows will prepare curriculum units that draw on the content of the seminar to teach in their classroom the following school year. No tuition or fees will be charged for the

participants. UNC Charlotte, Davidson and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public School System will contribute financial support for CTI.

The first class of fellows will start in the 2009-10 academic year. Until then, Shaw will work closely with teachers, faculty and administrators to plan for the launch.

“This initiative is one that has already received a lot of attention and work on the part of teachers and university leaders,” Shaw said.

CTI is part of a national project led by the Yale National Initiative. It will be the fifth such institute created as part of the project. Only four other U.S. cities (New Haven, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Houston) have launched similar institutes, and there are six other cities considering the program.


ozimEK onE oF ninE FinALiStS FoR nCAA WomAn oF tHE yEAR

Former Charlotte 49ers women’s soccer star Lindsey Ozimek (2004-07) is one of nine finalists for the 2008 NCAA Woman of the Year award. This honor recognizes outstanding female student-athletes who have excelled academically and athletically in addition to demonstrating strong community service and leadership.

One of 130 female student athletes nominated, Ozimek is the only Division I soccer player among the nine finalists. The NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics chose the winner, who was announced at a banquet in Indianapolis, Ind., October 19.

Ozimek, the 2007 Atlantic-10 (A-10) Midfielder of the Year, dished out a league-leading 13 assists last season as a senior while garnering first-team All-Conference honors for the third consecutive year. The

Charlotte, N.C., native led the 49ers to the 2007 A-10 regular and post-season titles and was named to the All-Championship team for the third time. She ended her career with 43 assists, tops in program annals.

Off the field, Ozimek was named the A-10 Female Student-Athlete of the Year this past June. She was tabbed a first-team “ESPN The Magazine” Academic All-American for the second straight season. This was the third time Ozimek was honored by the magazine; she earned third-team honors as a sophomore. She was also three-time Academic All-Atlantic 10 selection. The 2007 A-10 Women’s Soccer Student-Athlete of the Year was named to the National Soccer Coaches Association of America Scholar All-America second-team this past year while boasting a 4.0 grade point average majoring in special education. Lindsey Ozimek as a 49er

University Collaboration Seeks to Enhance Cancer vaccine

UNC Charlotte and ImmuneRegen BioSciences, Inc., announced a collaborative relationship to evaluate ImmuneRegen’s Viprovex as a possible cancer-vaccine adjuvant. Adjuvants are agents that stimulate and, subsequently, augment the immune system’s response to a foreign antigen.

The studies will be under the direction of Pinku Mukherjee, Ph.D., an accomplished cellular immunologist focused on developing novel immunotherapies against solid adenocarcinomas, especially pancreatic and breast cancers. She is the Irwin Belk Distinguished Scholar in Cancer Research.

This collaboration, part of a material transfer agreement with the university, will evaluate the potential adjuvant activity of Viprovex on cancer vaccines currently being developed by Dr. Mukherjee.

The aim of cancer vaccines are to treat existing cancers or prevent the development of cancer, termed therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines, respectively. While therapeutic vaccines stimulate the immune system to attack cancerous cells, prophylactic vaccines are administered to attack viruses that cause cancer. There are currently only two cancer vaccines licensed by the United States Food and Drug Administration. These vaccines are intended to prevent hepatitis B virus and human papillomavirus, viruses known to cause liver and cervical cancer, respectively.

“As tumor immunologists, we are constantly seeking new immune modulating adjuvants that may function either directly on the innate immune effector cells such as the natural killer cells, or indirectly, by enhancing the antigen presenting capability of

dendritic cells to present tumor antigens effectively to T cells,” stated Dr. Mukherjee. “Either or both mechanisms are critical in generating a robust anti-tumor cellular immune response. We are therefore excited about the opportunity to test Viprovex as a potential adjuvant to our cancer vaccines and further the understanding of its possible immune-modulating functions.”

Studies have demonstrated Viprovex’s adjuvant activity when administered with model antigens, such as chicken ovalbumin. Further, when administered with vaccines targeted against avian influenza, Viprovex not only increased antibody responses but also demonstrated cross-reactivity, which confirms that Viprovex may also broaden the immune response. Additionally, Viprovex treatment resulted in enhanced survival of small animals upon challenge with H5N1 avian flu virus. For these reasons, combined with the potential to increase antigen presenting cells and/or natural killer cell activity, ImmuneRegen believes Viprovex may be an ideal candidate for use as a cancer-vaccine adjuvant.


Pinku Mukherjee


UNC CHARLOTTE | 49ers notebook

Niners Lend Hearts and Hands to Race Playce

The Charlotte 49ers entire athletic department used the final days of September and the first days of October to assist the Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation Department’s Hearts and Hands Playground Build at Nevin Park. The 49ers student-athletes joined volunteers from throughout the community to build a NASCAR-themed playground paradise, coined Race Playce.

“This was a big project that our entire Department could participate in that really makes a difference,” said 49ers Director of Athletics Judy Rose. “A playground helps highlight fitness and wellness and is a means to keep children active.”

And so, with power saws buzzing, hammers pounding and the groaning of hard labor, Race Playce became a mini-motor speedway for the area youth, landing a spacious playground in the Nevin Community Park.

“I feel that schools need to do more things like this to let the communities know that we care,” commented Associate Head Track and Field Coach Timothy Vaught.

A portion of the 49ers track team that knows a lot about strength and power moved not just pounds, but tons of gravel through the park with a wheelbarrow train

that made rush hour look like a pleasant drive up Highway 29 on a Sunday morning.

“The throwers moved five dump truck loads of gravel into the playground by wheel barrel which took most of the five hours of their volunteer time,” said Assistant Track and Field coach Kevin Fitzpatrick, who noted that sprinters, hurdlers and distance runners also joined the work crew in moving gravel.

Later in the day, the 49er softball, golf and tennis players joined the gravel brigade, while both basketball teams helped sand and varnish fences. Soccer and tennis used their time cutting and drilling the many features of the park, which includes tool chests, trophy cases and replica race cars.

Charlotte’s defending A-10 champion baseball team took a break from hammering the ball over the fence to hammer nails throughout the day.

Race Playce opened to the children of the greater Charlotte area on October 29 with a special observance of the event slated for 5:30 p.m. that evening.

49er softball players cart gravel during a community service work day at Nevin Park’s Race Playce.

49er Notes:

mEn’S BASKEtBALL notESThe Charlotte 49ers men’s basketball

team returns four starters from last year’s squad that won 20 games, reached the Atlantic 10 semifinals and advanced to the NIT. At the heart of that success was an intensity and enthusiasm that recharged the team and fans alike. Senior forwards Lamont Mack and Charlie Coley are the program’s centerpieces while junior point guard DiJuan Harris and sophomore wing An’Juan Wilderness energize a lineup that

Lamont Mack

boasts athleticism, depth and a fast-pace style. Head coach Bobby Lutz, who became the program’s all-time winningest coach, leads a unit that publications are picking to battle for the A-10 crown and an NCAA Tournament berth.

The schedule includes 17 games against 2008 post-season teams, including nine such games at Halton Arena. The non-conference season opens with home games against UNC Greensboro, Old Dominion and Clemson while the A-10 slate will bring UMass, Dayton, Rhode Island and Xavier to Halton Arena. Check out charlotte49ers.com for complete schedule listings.


49ers notebook | UNC CHARLOTTE

WomEn’S BASKEtBALL notESThe Charlotte 49ers women’s basketball

team has enjoyed a school-record string of six straight post-season appearances. And the fans are turning out in droves, including three crowds of over 3,000 last season. Second-year head coach Karen Aston’s team has the makings to deliver a seventh straight post-season bid while thrilling the Halton Arena crowd.

With a lineup that includes a strong frontcourt in Danielle Burgin and Erin Floyd, an athletic transition game led by senior point guard and three-point specialist Traci Ray and sophomore wing Shannon McCallum. With eyes set on the Atlantic 10 Women’s Basketball Championship, which will be played at Halton Arena, Mar. 6-9, the 49ers hope to turn the home-court advantage into an A-10 title and NCAA Tournament berth.

The 49ers will host the Atlantic 10 Women’s Basketball Championship, Mar. 6-9, 2009. Ticket packages are available for the event through the 49ers athletic ticket office. Five A-10 women’s programs advanced to post-season play, last year, including the host 49ers and NCAA qualifiers George Washington (Sweet 16), Temple and Xavier.

Charlotte owns a .833 winning percentage all-time at Halton Arena, and this year, the 49ers have a slew of top opponents coming to town. Nationally-televised games against NCAA Tournament foes Notre Dame (ESPNU) and Xavier

(ESPN2) highlight a home slate that includes NCAA Sweet 16 finalist George Washington, NCAA participant Temple and WNIT qualifiers Dayton and North Carolina A&T.

CHARLottE 49ERS ALL ACCESS viDEo

Fans can catch live video of nearly all 49ers home contests through the 49ers “Niner Network All-Access” program at www.charlotte49ers.com. In addition to live game broadcasts of men’s and women’s basketball games, baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, cross country, and track and field, Niner Network All-Access features player and coach interviews, exclusive behind-the-scenes video, “Classic” game broadcasts, highlights and additional original programming. Some free content is available without a subscription, but an All-Access pass delivers an abundance of video content straight to your computer.

The Niner Network All-Access will provide live video coverage of nine of the 49ers men’s and women’s sports with highlight and feature content from all 16 sports.

Fans can purchase a monthly subscription for $9.95, an Annual package for $79.95 or the CBS College Sports Network XXL Annual package for $119.95.

The Annual package includes all the great audio and video content from the Monthly package as well as streaming video of select CBS College Sports broadcasts of Charlotte 49ers athletic events. Monthly subscribers can only receive those games on a pay-per-view basis. The XXL Annual package includes all of the 49ers audio and video content plus every pay-per-view game (49ers and otherwise) that the CBS College Sports Network offers.

To subscribe to Niner Network All-Access, log on to Charlotte49ers.com.

tHE 49ERS inSiDER tv SHoW, AvAiLABLE on-LinE

Did you know that there is a television show dedicated to Charlotte 49ers Athletics? “The 49ers Insider” airs every Thursday-Saturday at 12:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Time Warner Cable’s Channel 22 in Mecklenburg, Iredell and parts of Union County. The show, hosted by 49ers student-athletes and produced by Mark Nunn of the university’s Broadcast Communications Department, includes highlights, coaches’ interviews and player features. For those outside of broadcast area, an on-line version of the show can be accessed at Charlotte49ers.com.

Tracy Ray

men’s and Women’s Basketball Set for national tv

Following a year in which eight men’s and five women’s basketball teams advanced to postseason play, the Atlantic 10 will again have a major presence on national television.

Charlotte’s six nationally-televised games include a trio of games at the 76 Classic in Anaheim, Calif.; the 49ers A-10 game at Saint Joseph’s (Jan. 18) on CBS College Sports; the 49ers A-10 contest at Temple (Jan. 24) on ESPNU and the 49ers home game vs. Xavier (Feb. 19) on either ESPN or ESPN2.

Two 49ers women’s home games will be broadcast nationally: Charlotte vs. Xavier, Jan. 11 (ESPN2) and Charlotte vs. Notre Dame, Dec. 28 (ESPNU).



feature | UNC CHARLOTTE

49er Football Almost a Realitymajor fi nancial objectives lie in the wayBy John D. Bland

Dubois’ September recommendation came after 21 months of deliberation and research by the Football Feasibility Committee, Dubois and others at the University. In his September presentation Dubois said he felt the time was right for football at UNC Charlotte because it helps foster a full university experience that many students crave in their undergraduate careers. The University is expected to enroll 35,000 students by 2020.

“No question has not been asked; no stone has been left unturned,” Dubois said in his report to trustees. “Our diligence has been done, and we hope you are satisfied with that effort.”

That “due diligence” has included the preparation of what Dubois called “the devil’s advocate brief ”—a series of hard questions that, in essence, took apart the report of the Football Feasibility Committee line by line to question its assumptions and analysis so that Dubois was satisfied with the conclusions in the report.

Athletics Director Judy Rose and her staff assisted Dubois with his research, learning for example the addition of football and new women’s sports will more than double the number of full-time Athletics employees.

“It is often believed that having a successful football program increases student enrollment, stimulates alumni fund raising, and the like. As it turns out, conventional wisdom cannot often be confirmed by rigorous empirical research,” Dubois said.

“If, as my mother used to say, you are judged by the company you keep, then our long-term aspiration must be to have a comprehensive array of undergraduate, graduate, and professional

“It is often believed that having a successful football program increases student enrollment,

stimulates alumni fund raising, and the like. As it turns out,

conventional wisdom cannot often be confi rmed by rigorous

empirical research.”

During the last two years, three historic

decisions have moved UNC Charlotte closer

to fi elding an NCAA football program, but

the deal is not yet done.

First, a football feasibility committee

recommended in favor of football after

studying the issue for several months.

Then, after several more months of

due diligence, Chancellor Philip L.

Dubois in September recommended

to the Board of Trustees that the

University start a program in 2013

— if specifi c fi nancial challenges

are met. In November, the trustees

affi rmed Dubois’ recommendation.

So where do we stand now? For starters,

UNC Charlotte and the community at large need

to surmount two hurdles:

The Athletics Department must secure commitments

for 5,000 seat licenses at $1,000 per. At press

time (in mid November), more than 3,800

licenses had been pledged.

The Athletics Foundation and the Division of

Development and Alumni Affairs must secure

up to $45 million to fund capital investments.


UNC CHARLOTTE | feature

academic programs, leading cultural arts programs, and comprehensive and competitive intercollegiate athletic programs,” Dubois said in his recommendation to trustees.

“So, for me, this is not just a question about whether we will play football in 2013,” Dubois said. “For me, and I believe as Trustees for you, this should be a question of where UNC Charlotte wants to be 20 years after 2013.”

He called it a question of institutional strategy. For example, can football contribute to strengthening the reputation of UNC Charlotte, first regionally and then nationally? And can football contribute to strengthening the “ownership” of the Charlotte community of this institution over the long-term?

“Being situated in the most vibrant city in North Carolina, UNC Charlotte is growing into a complete university that offers a full array of experiences to its students, alumni, supporters and friends,” he said. “Football contributes greatly to that full array.”

After Dubois made his report, the board deferred a final vote and took the recommendation under advisement.

The 49ers began taking reservations for FSLs (49ers Seat Licenses) immediately following the Sept. 18 announcement by Dubois and in the first month after the announcement had surpassed 67 percent of the initial goal of 5,000 FSLs.

“The early reservations illustrate the ability to attack two given goals: greater connectivity and ownership with the community and greater ties to alumni,” Rose said. “Of the initial FSL reservations, 69 percent have come from individuals who were not existing 49er Club members and 70 percent have come from alumni.”

In June, Dubois delivered a comprehensive report on football to the full board. Since then, he continued to study the topic, focusing

on key issues on both sides of the question.Most of the costs of a football program would be borne by

students and private donors because state law prohibits the use of public money for building athletic facilities.

In February, the University’s Football Feasibility Committee, chaired by former Board of Trustees Chairman Mac Everett and appointed by Dubois, recommended the university should begin playing football in 2012 on the Division I-AA level before moving up to Division 1-A in 2016.

Dubois recommended that 2013 be the first year of play and he recommended there should be no specific timetable to move up from the lower-tier level to Division 1-A.

Dubois’ recommendation called for a more moderate scale than was proposed by the feasibility committee, with students paying an additional $25 fee each semester beginning in the fall of 2010 for the football program. That would rise to $50 per semester in 2011

“So, for me, this is not just a question

about whether we will play football in

2013,” Dubois said. “For me, and I believe

as Trustees for you, this should

be a question of where UNC Charlotte

wants to be 20 years after 2013.”

In September hundreds of UNC Charlotte students and supporters rallied in favor of football.



A look at the past and possible futureBy James maneva, University Times Sports Editor(This article is reprinted with permission from UNC Charlotte’s University Times student newspaper.)

Just as the University is embattled over the addition of football to the school’s athletic program today, this same tug-of-war between students and administrators has been happening since Charlotte College became UNC Charlotte in 1964.

A recent search of the University archives shows over 30 different occasions that college football at Charlotte has been the topic of choice. Whether football was mentioned in the modern day equivalent of “You don’t say” student voices in the paper, or one of the many opinion pieces written about the need for “big time athletics” on campus, college football has remained a hot topic.

One of the chief urban myths circling the campus for many years has been the role

of Bonnie Cone, the school’s founder, in keeping college football from becoming a reality once again at Charlotte.

As the legend goes, a child of one of the University’s founding leaders suffered a serious injury in a football accident and Cone abolished the idea of football for her university. The University Times actually ran an editorial piece about Cone literally blocking a football program in the fall of 1991. Only three years later did the University Times come to the truth of the issue, when reporter David Stringer interviewed Cone on the issue in 1994.

“That’s not true! That’s the biggest story I’ve ever heard! I love all sports … and unless I had a son out of wedlock, which I don’t know about, I don’t have any children. You

[the students] are my children,” Cone said.Looking back over records from the

infant years of the University, it’s clear that Bonnie Cone was actually a strong supporter of the CC UNC (Charlotte Center of the University of North Carolina, as UNC Charlotte was known) football team and all of the Charlotte Center’s other athletic programs.

Records show that in 1947, Cone wrote the management of the Southern Railway System asking permission to hang a sign promoting CC UNC’s football team on the underpass of East Trade Street. Cone was granted permission to hang signs for the Owls’ home games against Davidson and Appalachian State Teachers College.

A 1948 quote from the CC UNC News shows Cone’s continuing support of the school’s football program. “Miss Bonnie Cone, director of the Charlotte Center, has promised full cooperation in arranging schedules and excusing cuts for the players.”

During the 1970s, the University’s student newspaper conducted an interview with the 49ers’ first full-time athletic director, Dr. Harvey Murphy. When asked about the revival of football, Murphy responded, “I would like to see [football] ignored for a couple of years because it’s too energy-absorbing, but that’s an unrealistic view. We will probably be faced with it and we must consider it.”

Four years later, The Carolina Journal conducted a similar interview with the

and 2012, and $100 per semester in the first year of competitive play, 2013. Those costs don’t include the costs of building training and practice facilities and either

renovating the university’s track and field complex or building a new stadium. The latest estimate for football-related facilities was $45.3 million.

Dubois estimated that fundraising efforts by the 49er Athletic Foundation could raise between $10 million and $15 million and another $5 million could come from the sale of Forty-Niner Seat Licenses to alumni and other season-ticket holders at a cost of $1,000 apiece.

“Even if we are successful in raising $20 million dollars from these two approaches, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that we are well short of our $45 million requirement,” he said. “My hope is that community awareness of this problem will spark some creative thinking about some possible creative solutions.”

The 49ers are utilizing the Luquire George Andrews marketing firm to create, promote and market the 49ers football program.

John D. Bland is UNC Charlotte’s director of public relations.Athletics Director Judy Rose and Board of Trustees Chair Ruth Shaw addressed the media at a press conference in September.



assistant athletics director at the time, Dr. Larry C. Bostan. Bostan is quoted as saying, “Football will probably be the last sport we ever get here … for economic reasons … it’s not that we don’t want it — we just don’t have the money.”

Which comes to another major topic that has trailed every football debate and discussion throughout the years — money.

With every mention of adding football to the University’s athletic department comes another educated (or in many cases uneducated) guess as to the price tag that such an operation would cost the school.

Students, faculty and school administrators alike have all given their two cents on what they thought football would cost. Whether $300 thousand to $10 million, $18 million, or $100 million, the bottom line was always more than people wanted to swallow. Even the University Times entered the bidding war. During the Times’ April Fools edition in 2004, the paper reported that alumni and singer Clay Aiken had donated $25 million toward a football stadium.

Money also played a role in ending the short career of UNC Charlotte’s club football team back in the mid 1970s.

With no collegiate football program in sight, members of the student body began

their own club football program in the fall of 1973. With little support and few resources, the students funded their own team and played several other college club teams through the region.

The team grew in numbers and support in the spring and fall of 1974. So did the team’s budget, which quickly surged in excess of $7,000. While student government allocated money to help cover the University-sponsored club sport, most of the team’s revenue came from fundraising.

The Niners club football team appeared to be becoming a mainstay on the campus of UNC Charlotte, but in the fall of 1975, The Carolina Journal ran an article showing that the team was nearly $6,000 in debt. Members of the team tried to defray some of the debt and asked student government to help pay off the remaining costs. A few weeks later the football club’s charter was revoked, leaving Charlotte once again without a football team.

Athletic Director Judy Rose whose career at Charlotte began as the University’s first women’s basketball coach, said that football only began to simmer in the minds of the administration in the late 1990s.

With the permission of then-Chancellor Jim Woodward, Rose and several members from the Athletic Foundation formed a

committee to look into the possibility of fielding a football team at UNC Charlotte in 2000.

In a January 2000 interview with the Charlotte Observer, Chancellor Woodward acknowledged the fact that football may one day come to UNC Charlotte, saying, “I think football is in the future of this institution. To be honest, you don’t see many comparable universities that don’t have a program. But I’d hate to put a timeframe on it.”

The committee completed its report and presented it to Chancellor Woodward in 2001, and Rose then pushed for a “marketing analysis” of the Charlotte region to see if businesses and the public would be willing to support the startup of a football program at UNC Charlotte.

As Rose and the committee were preparing their market analysis, the terror attacks of Sept. 11 occurred, realigning the priorities of not only the nation, but also of the University. The idea of a football program was once again shelved, but the issue would not remain dormant for long.

This article first appeared in UTimes, on Sept. 15, 2008, and is available online at www.nineronline.com

49er footballers of the 1970s


BELK CoLLEGE oF BUSinESSGifts have been committed for the Center for Real Estate

from each of the following: American Asset Corporation; K&L Gates LLP; Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP; Wells Fargo; Merrifield Partners; Myers & Chapman, Inc.; NAIOP Charlotte Chapter; Beacon Properties; Chandler Concrete Co., Inc.; Faison Enterprises; Richard and Shirley Buttimer; Cambridge Properties, Inc.; Bailey W. Patrick; Frank Warren; Bill Wilson; SunTrust Carolinas Group Foundation, Inc.; and Ron Hinson.

The Real Estate Alumni Association (REAA) has established a scholarship to provide financial assistance to a student studying real estate in the Belk College of Business. Gifts have been committed to the REAA Scholarship from the following: Ben Collins ’07; Holly Stump ’05; Travis Stowers ’05; John ’07 and Jennifer Schwaller; Brent Royall ’07; Dr. Steve Ott; Dr. Dustin Read; Heritage House Realty, Inc. All alumni are invited to support this fund.

tHE GRADUAtE SCHooLThe Wayland H. Cato Jr. Foundation completed their final

pledge payment creating The Wayland H. Cato Jr. Fellowship, an endowment for the purposes of providing fellowship funds for doctoral students. The UNC Charlotte Graduate School awarded two annual fellowships in the amount of $18,000 each for the first time.

The Graduate School’s appetite for external funding to support graduate students is significant. These are the students who fuel research and establish the Charlotte Research Institute’s initiatives. This past year the UNC Charlotte Foundation awarded a total of $250,000 for graduate student fellowships from both endowed and non-endowed funds.

CoLLEGE oF LiBERAL ARtS AnD SCiEnCES

Development Dimensions International made a contribution to the Organizational Science Summer Institute. The institute is designed to give African American and Latino students representation in the Organizational Sciences. Qualified undergraduates will have the unique opportunity to learn more about graduate studies and advanced research in organizational science.

The Japanese Foundation made a contribution to provide a visiting lecturer in Japanese Studies for the 2008-09 academic year.

Joe Marcucci ’85 has established the Dr. Judith Suther Scholarship. This scholarship honors Dr. Judith Suther, former French Professor, who had a long lasting impact on the lives of many UNC Charlotte students who studied in the French program. This award will be given to a student in the Language and Cultural Studies French program to assist the student in a semester or summer study abroad program.

G I V I N G

Campus Safety and Security Committee delivers report and recommendations

After spending several months studying ways to make the UNC Charlotte campus a safer and more secure environment, the University’s Campus Safety and Security Committee recently submitted its findings to Chancellor Philip L. Dubois.

The 17-member committee, led by Associate Vice Chancellor David Spano, presented a 44-page report to Dubois, who will review the findings with top members of his administration before deciding how to implement recommendations. The General Assembly has appropriated funding for campus safety and security measures; UNC President Erskine Bowles will disburse the allocations.

Formed by the chancellor last January, the committee had as its charge to deliver a blueprint to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to ensure the physical

safety and security of UNC Charlotte’s main campus.

Key elements of the committee’s action plan included: Development of a comprehensive campus safety education program for students, staff and faculty. In addition, safety information for parents to include a description of safety initiatives present or near campus and an emergency/safety plan for parents in response to a campus event. The report recommended similar safety education materials for camp and conference guests. Completion and maintenance of an Involuntary Protective Withdrawal Policy, which would allow the University to have an assessment performed for those students who may pose a significant and

immediate threat to themselves or others. Addition of a case manager to the University’s Counseling Center staff to maintain and establish a streamlined process for follow-up of students referred to on- or off-campus resources. Plans to conduct annual exercises within colleges, departments and administrative units to practice and evaluate emergency plans and continuation of emergency exercises for the University’s crisis management team. Increased levels of visible police or security personnel presence based on campus schedule, specifically after night classes, and more foot and bicycle patrols.



Michael Hudson studies the evolution of deadly “super bugs.”



Microbiologist Battles the Coming of the “Superbug” By James Hathaway

University of North Carolina at Charlotte professor Michael Hudson sees a human catastrophe looming and he is warning everyone he can about it.

When people hear what he has to say, they are scared, too. A recent appearance by Hudson on WFAE FM’s “Charlotte Talks” call-in show broke the show’s record for the amount of listener response it received, and the station promptly scheduled Hudson for a second appearance.

What has Hudson so alarmed is not international terrorism, global warming, global financial meltdown, the rising cost of energy, or any of the other front page issues that vie for our attention and concern. What worries the UNC Charlotte microbiologist is something that has been going on silently and invisibly for decades: the growing resistance of disease-causing bacteria to antibiotic treatments — the evolution of deadly superbugs.

Though you may barely have heard of them, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a very serious issue — one superbug alone, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, (aka MRSA) killed 18,000 people in the United States last year — even more than AIDS. The crisis is maybe even more serious than that statistic implies, but what most concerns Hudson is the fact that the situation has also been largely of our own making.

“Antibiotics have been used for a long time, on a grand scale and they select for resistant bacteria,” said Hudson. “Antibiotics don’t create resistant bacteria, but they select for the oddball that is resistant. The oddball then grows and then becomes the dominant population. We are directing evolution in a very dangerous way.”

Hudson is not shy about emphasizing how serious the issue is: “This is perhaps the worst problem currently facing humans on the planet,” he said quietly. “Pretty soon we are going to be back in the 1930’s, where the only treatment for infection was amputation.”

For the last 73 years, antibiotics have given humanity real protection against our worst enemies, pathogenic bacteria that infect wounds and also cause many deadly diseases ranging from scarlet fever and pneumonia to typhus, cholera and bubonic plague.

“The list is so long it is beyond belief, there were so many diseases that were untreatable without antibiotics,” Hudson noted.

Now, bacteria are evolving and are becoming immune to antibiotic medicines. Several kinds of bacteria have already developed resistance to most of our stock of currently available antibiotics, making the infections and diseases the microbes cause nearly untreatable once again.

If bacteria evolve to become completely resistant to all the antibiotics available, we will be returning to the condition humanity lived in before they existed — where small cuts and scrapes could result in unstoppable, fatal infections, where childbirth and routine operations were exceedingly dangerous, where common colds could turn into pneumonia and other deadly diseases, and where general human life expectancy was much, much shorter than it is now.

Hudson points out that the main mistake we make with antibiotics is unnecessary over-use: In order to increase profits in the livestock industry, we add drugs to animal feed to make livestock grow faster. We demand that our doctors prescribe unneeded and ineffective antibiotics in

the hopes of shortening harmless colds (which are caused by viruses, not bacteria).We wash our counters and hands with soaps containing antibacterial agents like triclosan, when ordinary soap would be just as effective.

From Hudson’s point-of view, because antibiotics lose effectiveness when bacterial populations are over-exposed, they should only be used as a weapon of last resort. Antibiotics, in fact, can be counter-productive in treating some infections because they also eliminate other bacteria — harmless bacteria that compete with disease-causing bacteria and help keep them in check. In this way, antibiotics actually improve the environment for drug-resistant superbugs to cause disease.

The end result is that we eliminate most of the bacterial “flora” (think of your body as a giant garden with trillions of microscopic plants and weeds growing in it) except for those that are tough enough to resist the effects of antibiotic agents (think of drugs as weed-killer). Through modern chemistry, we have unwittingly created a kind of bacterial training-camp that eliminates the weak and friendly (the petunias and the pansies) and creates a deadly army of hostile superbugs (special-forces-tough crabgrass).

We got into this mess because modern biochemistry gave us antibiotics as weapons against our most ancient and feared enemies. The drugs were so effective and the enemies so bad that we went on a war of extermination, not realizing that we were actually starting an unwinnable arms race. The news from this war front has been bad for a while, but many people are just beginning to hear about it now.



Hudson has been on the front lines and he thinks the general public really needs to know that we are in danger of losing. However, he also wants to tell people that the battle is not over. Science and modern chemistry are inventive and may hold some answers. Much of Hudson’s own research follows that avenue.

Dr. Hudson’s nano-battle against the multi-talented S. aureus

Perhaps the first organism to be near overcoming our defenses completely is the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium, formerly one of humanity’s worst and most familiar foes. It has been long familiar in medical science as one of the most common causes of tissue infections. Before antibiotics, S. aureus was terrifying — once started, S. aureus infections were hard to stop and often turned even minor cuts and wounds into death or disfigurement. The microbe is also one that Hudson knows well as one of the world’s leading authorities on its biology.

Recent discoveries by Hudson and others have also shown that drug resistance is only part of the problem with S. aureus. The bacterium has been shown to have a stealth ability that increases its danger: S. aureus enters many human cells, giving it a refuge from the immune system and also, critically, from the few antibiotics that are still able to kill it. Hudson uncovered this problem when he was the first researcher to demonstrate that S. aureus enters and lives within cells that make bone (osteoblasts).

What Hudson discovered helped explain both why S. aureus had been such a dangerous pathogen before it had evolved multiple-drug resistance, and why it was emerging now as one of the first and most worrisome superbugs.

“S. aureus can kill human cells as an extracellular bacterium because it has an array of toxins, but it also invades our cells and in that environment it is protected from

the body’s immune response,” Hudson said.“That means that there is a reservoir of

bacterial cells in the tissues in a protected environment,” Hudson said. “Inside our cells, S. aureus can replicate and emerge again and as a result you can have a long-term chronic infection that is very difficult to treat effectively.”

Hudson notes that the bacterium’s intracellular habit now may be making serious infections by MRSA completely untreatable. This is not because MRSA has developed resistance to all known antibiotics, but rather because Vancomycin, the last remaining drug that is effective against some MRSA strains, cannot cross human cell membranes. Bacteria that have entered the intracellular environment are thus protected by the cells themselves against the remaining effective drug.

Hudson believes that the only solution may be to beat S. aureus at its own game and put the drugs inside the cells as well. Using nanotechnology to encapsulate the antibiotic in biodegradable, membrane-permeating nanoparticles, Hudson and UNC Charlotte chemist Craig Ogle are developing a system that can deliver antibiotics both outside and inside cells, reaching bacteria in all their hiding places.

The approach has the added benefit of being able to deliver doses of the antibiotic precisely to the places where S. aureus lurks. Particularly important for wound victims — such as soldiers and accident victims — the particles can be applied topically as a spray.

The nanoparticle drug delivery system that Hudson and Ogle are developing proposes using nanoscale spheres of a biocompatible polymer which biodegrades harmlessly in the presence of water, is already FDA-approved for medical use, and readily encapsulates significant quantities of antibiotic, making the drug-containing particles capable of killing intracellular bacteria.

The polymer provides chemical packaging with two key features: By controlling the size of the polymer nanoparticles, the drug can be specifically targeted for bacteria either inside or outside cells, since only particles below 150 nanometers in size can pass through cell membranes. And by

manipulating the structure of the polymer, the researchers are able to control the speed at which the particles are broken down by water, releasing the drug molecules. The time-release feature allows the drug to be delivered either quickly outside the cell, or later, after the cell membrane has been crossed, or for repeated dosages outside.

In lab tests using mouse cells, Hudson has shown that PLGA nanoparticles containing fluorescing quantum dots readily pass through cell membranes before degrading and releasing their contents. In further tests, the researchers have found compelling data demonstrating that when the PLGA particles are loaded with an antibiotic, they effectively eliminate entire populations of S. aureus established inside the cells, while a non-encapsulated antibiotic does not.

Hudson notes that one of the advantages of the PLGA antibiotic delivery system is that the polymer particles can be formulated to control the rate of release of the antibiotic in a direct, targeted application at a wound.

“We think this approach will be particularly useful as a first line treatment following injury,” Hudson said. “S. aureus is the bacterium that causes the most trouble in wounds,” Hudson noted. “When people get injured we propose that the most effective treatment might be to irrigate the wound and then spray it with this nanoparticle preparation so you have something that gets at the extracellular and intracellular bacteria immediately.”

Because it would be topically applied, rather than administered systemically through injection, Hudson’s nanotechnology delivery system also may be an important way to fight drug resistance.

“The system is unique because it targets both extracellular and intracellular bacterial pathogens. This would obviate the need for systemic drugs, which actually select for resistant bacteria,” Hudson explained. “Systemic Vancomycin doesn’t get into cells, so it doesn’t treat the chronic form of the infection and it encourages the development of further drug resistance.”

James Hathaway manages research communications for UNC Charlotte’s

Division of Academic Affairs.

Michael Hudson



Kent Ellington: From Bench to BedsideBy Allison Reid

UNC Charlotte alumnus Dr. Kent Ellington (B.S. ’98, MS ’00) remembers the day he first learned about the work of biology professor Michael Hudson. “Great story,” Ellington chuckles, betraying his fondness for the professor with whom he’s been collaborating on research for over a decade.

When Ellington was a junior biology major at UNC Charlotte, he decided that he wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. He began attending the biology department’s weekly research seminars, even though they were technically only meant for graduate students. Hudson gave a presentation about his work on bone infection and the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, and Ellington immediately knew Hudson’s research was a good fit with his interests.

“I asked if I could join his lab,” Ellington says, “and he said ‘No’!” At that point, Hudson did not have enough funding or lab space to bring in a student, but Ellington persisted. “So I basically bugged the man for a solid year,” Ellington says. “I would send him emails, leave him voicemails, slide notes under his door.” His perseverance paid off when Hudson took him in the next year — still lacking the lab space and the funding — and Ellington was able to do the research that would become his senior honors thesis. And it would also serve as the basis of a 10-year research collaboration that will mean big things for fighting, and preventing, infection.

Ellington stuck around Hudson’s lab and got his Master’s in

Biology, writing his thesis on the same subject as his undergraduate senior honors thesis: “Mechanisms of Staph aureus Invasion into Osteoblast.” What does that mean to the layperson? Basically, Ellington and Hudson have been studying how to treat surgical site Staph infections, particularly in bone, which are a multi-billion dollar a year medical complication that can double the healthcare costs of the patient and increase their mortality ten-fold. The two scientists are developing a product that could be applied directly to a wound and not only treat infection, but prevent it. Their work is of interest to the Department of Defense and several pharmaceutical companies, according to Ellington, and they currently are awaiting patent approval for their products.

Getting to this point for Ellington has meant a lot of sleepless nights and long hours in the lab. “My friends laugh at me and the hours I keep,” he says. “I don’t sleep too much — maybe three to four hours a night.” Ellington was able to continue his research with Hudson even while attending medical school at Wake Forest University. One of the chairmen of infectious disease at Wake Forest gave Ellington some bench space in his lab and let him use materials. To fund his research while in medical school, Ellington received grants from the NIH and from the Orthopedic Trauma Association.

Now a senior orthopedic resident at Carolinas Medical Center (CMC) in Charlotte, Ellington still finds time to pursue his work with Hudson. Having already received around $90,000 in research grants, he is writing one grant for $100,000, another one for $250,000 and a third for $1 million from the Department of Defense. That’s not counting the grants that Hudson is working on. “We’re trying to take it from the couple hundred thousand to the million dollar mark,” he says.

Ellington confides that one will not find a bigger UNC Charlotte supporter than him. His white lab coat is adorned with a green UNC Charlotte button, and he attends as many basketball games as his schedule allows. “I think UNC Charlotte is a great all around university with tremendous faculty,” Ellington says. “And they gave me all the resources and tools that I needed to succeed.”

Ellington, who graduated in the top 10 of his class at Wake Forest, has been told by medical school professors and CMC colleagues that his research portfolio — the published papers, the presentations at scientific and medical conferences and now the nearly patented products — is many years ahead of his cohort. He credits Hudson for that: “I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for his support, leadership and guidance.”

Next year, when Ellington has completed his internship at CMC, he will be doing a one-year fellowship in Baltimore at Mercy Medical Hospital in adult reconstructive foot and ankle surgery. He will then return to Charlotte and CMC to be an orthopedic foot and ankle trauma surgeon. “And I’ll keep doing research,” he says. For Ellington, that’s when all the sleepless nights in the lab will pay off. “They call it from bench to bedside,” Ellington says. “That’s when I’ll actually be able to apply the outcomes from my research to my trauma patients and help treat and prevent infection.”

Allison Reid is communications director for

the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.


UNC CHARLOTTE | a lumni prof i les

Robyn MasseyFinding New Ways to Engage Alumni

“It’s been quite a run,” admits Robyn Massey when asked about her many years of involvement with UNC Charlotte and the Alumni Association. Serving on the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors since 2003, she was recently elected as President of the Board. With this title, Massey joins only seven other women and is the first African-American in the role.

“I haven’t had time to really think about being president; I just know there is so much I want to accomplish,” says Massey.

Growing up in the Triangle area of North Carolina, Massey always thought she would attend NC State, but as time grew nearer to making a decision on where to attend college, she didn’t like the idea of attending a school that size.

“I started looking for schools in North Carolina with good technology programs and came across UNC Charlotte. At the time, UNC Charlotte was very small — only 10,000-12,000 students. Its reputation was fairly young, but the programs I saw around computer science and math were something I was immediately drawn to. UNC Charlotte was a good fit for me,” says Massey.

Graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1981, Massey went on to receive her master’s degree in business administration from Wake Forest University. “Education was always a priority,” says Massey.

In addition to working for IBM full-time, Massey and her husband, Greg, own the successful Avant Garde Shoes and Accessories in Concord, N.C. “My husband and I wanted to run a business around something that we both liked, and unfortunately that revolves around clothing!”

Shopping in New York City, Las Vegas, and Atlanta, Robyn and Greg wanted to find a way to bring one-of-a-kind things to Charlotte. “It’s nice being able to bring distinctive things to Charlotte,” says Massey.

Between working for IBM and owning Avant Garde, Massey still finds time to give back to her alma mater. Massey will serve as president of the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors for the next two years, and she already knows what she wants to accomplish.

“I would like to increase the ways that we engage alumni. What I mean by that is that we have some alumni programming, but I don’t know that we have a diversified base of alumni programming. For example, the way we draw alumni to campus is typically around athletics, but not everyone is necessarily interested in sporting events. I would like to utilize the University’s staff and faculty to develop alumni programs so we can expose alumni to the talent on this campus.”

One way to get alumni connected to the school and highlight individual college events will be through iModules, the Alumni Association’s online community.

“The iModules community is really fantastic, and I think it is going to help get the University’s message out to our alumni. With the online community, we can really feature what the individual colleges are doing and allow alumni to make informed decisions about what events they would like to attend. More importantly, through the community our alumni will be able

to find friends, classmates, or roommates with whom they may have lost contact. Hopefully, we can bring people together and engage them with UNC Charlotte,” says Massey.

In addition to seeing more programming and more involvement with the University, Massey would also like to see more diversity on the Board of Directors.

“We have done a great job soliciting folks to the Board who are passionate about

Massey will serve as president of the Alumni Association’s Board

of Directors for the next two years.

By Katie Conn Suggs


a lumni prof i les | UNC CHARLOTTE

UNC Charlotte. What we have not focused on, however, is ethnicity and age diversity. I would like to see our Board with more people of Latino and Asian descent. A lot of people on the Board are 70s, 80s and 90s grads, but we do not have any people who graduated from Charlotte College. I think we only have one person from the 2000s. I want to make the Board more representative of our alumni base,” concludes Massey.

There is no doubt that over the next two years, under Massey’s leadership, the Board and the Alumni Association will pursue these goals with enthusiasm.

“I want our alumni to be proud to be a part of this University. I want to see our 80,000 alumni give back to this University — not just financially but by being involved with this great University. In concert with the recent change to the UNC Charlotte mission statement that ‘UNC Charlotte is North Carolina’s urban research university,’ I would like to see the efforts of the Alumni Association and Board culminate in broad recognition of that statement.”

Katie Conn Suggs is director

of communications for UNC Charlotte’s Division of Development and Alumni Affairs.




A Choir for the UnsungBy Lisa A. Lambert

Sometimes ordinary people lead extraordinary lives, whether

by circumstance or choice. You don’t have to travel beyond

the UNC Charlotte campus to fi nd these people. Many of our

students are among their ranks, though their triumphs and trials

often go unrecognized.

But a vehicle to herald these unsung heroes and stand out

students does exist, thanks to the Nish Jamgotch Humanitarian

Student Award. Political science professor emeritus Nish

Jamgotch Jr., who taught at UNC Charlotte for nearly 30 years,

established the annual $10,000 cash award to honor students

whose creative achievements have improved the quality of life

and well-being of humankind.

The individuals profi led are the award recipients to date.

Their collective achievements include local, national and

global humanitarian work and address a range of issues from

poverty relief to disaster response. All carry on their work with

selfl essness and dedication, and share the insights they’ve

gained in the hopes of inspiring others. Perhaps you will be

inspired, too.

Askari wa amani, Guardians of the peace: Andrew Clark

Andrew Clark summarizes his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer: “It’s probably safe to say that the first year of service was the hardest and the second year the best year of my life.”

Clark, a UNC Charlotte alumnus and 2004 recipient of the Jamgotch Humanitarian Student Award, returned from Tanzania, Africa in November 2007 after serving as a math teacher at a remote boarding school for girls.

From his residence in Washington, D.C., where he began graduate studies in international science and technology policy this fall, Clark discussed his time at UNC Charlotte, the Peace Corps, and life after Africa.

While a double major in mechanical engineering and international relations at UNC Charlotte, Clark helped coordinate a program to bring leftover food from campus to a local soup kitchen and participated in volunteer projects at Lifespan, a program for children and adults with developmental disabilities.

As president of United Christian Fellowship, an ecumenical campus ministry, Clark volunteered locally at Crisis Assistance

LEFT: Brett Tempest, recipient of the 2007 Jamgotch Humanitarian Student Award, participated in relief efforts in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

RIGHT: Andrew pictured with Kongei student Maryam at a school function



Ministries and traveled to Haiti and the Bahamas during spring break to work on relief projects.

“The trip to Haiti was a real slap in the face — to see poverty first-hand, walk around Port au Prince and visit the slums was very eye-opening,” Clark said. “I developed a real passion for the third world and how our policies affect other countries, as well as a desire to keep an eye out for the people who go unnoticed in society.”

The Haiti trip coupled with additional volunteer activities at International House, an organization in Charlotte that promotes cross-cultural understanding through outreach, ignited Clark’s desire to see the world.

Upon arrival in the mountainous region of Tanzania that would be his temporary home, Clark was welcomed warmly by the people, many of whom lamented his departure nearly two years later.

Clark kept a blog from Africa whenever he had access to the Internet. In his writings, he expounds on his encounters with Pedro, a pesky rat and worthy adversary; a car chase in Dar es Salaam; life without electricity; the challenges his students faced; and the culture shock common among Peace Corps volunteers upon return to America.

During his assignment, Clark fulfilled his teaching duties while also acting as an ambassador of sorts for the United States.

“They were curious to talk to me and hear my perspective — there wasn’t any hostility even though they don’t like our policies,” Clark said. “They have an idea of America from what they see on television, and it was hard to get them to realize that wasn’t what America was.”

Clark recalled one encounter when a 13-year-old girl asked him why Americans hate Muslims. He did his best to alleviate her concern.

Conversely, Clark finds Americans harbor many misconceptions about Africa. “Now that I’m back, I try to explain to Americans that Africa is not as simple as they think,” he said.

The time Clark spent in what he describes as one of the most beautiful and unspoiled places in the world left him with deeper self-awareness and appreciation for human adaptability. “Being able to adjust and learn a completely new way of life makes you feel there’s really no situation you can’t handle,” he said.

Though few people have the kind of immersive volunteer experience provided by the Peace Corps, Clark notes that through

A History of Helping Others: Lakeisha Rainey

At age 15, when friends, movies and malls are usually priorities for teenagers, Lakeisha Rainey was volunteering at a local nursing home. As a biology major at UNC Charlotte, Rainey continued her work with the Autumn Care Nursing Home in her hometown of Raeford, while she balanced life as a student with other volunteer activities.

In 2005, Rainey was recognized with the Jamgotch Humanitarian Student Award.

Top Left: Students at the Kongei boarding school in Tanzania.

Top Right: Students Winnie and Bahati pose for the camera at the graduation ceremony.

Bottom Left: Grace, a student at Kongei, greeted Andrew every day with an enthusiastic handshake.

Bottom Right: Andrew Clark taught math as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania, Africa, after graduating from UNC Charlotte.

service volunteers gain a more in-depth understanding of the causes of social problems and their wide-spread effects. Clark’s collective experiences have led him to believe that such problems must be addressed through incremental change.

“Nothing happens overnight, and one person isn’t going to do anything alone, but with the right motivation you can get enough people behind you to get anything done,” he said. “I think problems facing the world and America can be dealt with the same way. If people are truly inspired and see the necessity of fixing these problems, they will be fixed.”


Under a Big Sky: Laura Mesec

Unemployment runs rampant on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana. The most impoverished Native Americans in the United States reside on a swath of land slightly larger than the state of Delaware.

Senior theatre and English education major Laura Mesec, 2008 recipient of the Jamgotch Humanitarian Student Award, spent the summer months in Heart Butte, a small village on the reservation.

Mesec, who coordinated the efforts of incoming volunteer groups as an intern with UNC Charlotte’s United Campus Fellowship (UCF) organization, lived in a church and enjoyed few amenities among fewer than 700 people.

“There is no gas station, no grocery store, no restaurants of any kind — all of those things are at least 30 minutes away,” she said. “I was kind of cut off from the world — cell phones don’t work there, and there was no Internet access at the church.”

Problems, including teen pregnancy and drug and alcohol abuse, permeate the social fabric of the community in Heart Butte and across the reservation. Mesec’s charge was to provide constructive activities for residents as well as a safe haven for individuals (adults and children) going through difficult circumstances.

From the outset, Mesec said she was welcomed into the community.

“People would call to see if I was okay and if I needed anything, or visit me at the church and bring dinner,” she said. “I struck up friendships with quite a few people.”

The relentless winters on the reservation often leave ample volunteer opportunities in their wake — visiting volunteer groups make repairs to homes and complete other construction related tasks.

However, Mesec’s favorite memory involves community building, not bricks and mortar.

A volunteer team from Minnesota that had previously traveled to the reservation came to rehabilitate the village’s only outdoor basketball court. The court was in no condition for competition; it was replete with cracks, overgrown by weeds, and lacking discernable boundary lines or hardware. The group of 30 young adults worked furiously for three days to refurbish the court. Then, they successfully hosted a three-day basketball tournament for the community.

“We had at least 350 people there every night. Kids, adults, elderly people were there — it was amazing,” Mesec said. The event was a milestone for Mesec — it marked the first time during her stay in Heart Butte when a sizable number of residents came together.

Throughout her life, Mesec has demonstrated a history of service and leadership. In addition to traveling twice to the Gulf Coast region in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to help with the reconstruction efforts, she founded the HomeWork Service Organization at UNC Charlotte. Two Saturdays each month Mesec organizes a community service activity in Charlotte — students, faculty and staff are welcomed to participate.

Currently, she is working with UCF pastor Steve Cheney to coordinate a UNC Charlotte Habitat Build through Habitat for Humanity of Charlotte.

“To do a build, you have to raise $60,000, so we’re working on that,” she said. A local family in need will benefit from the build, which will rely on volunteer labor from UNC Charlotte students and Habitat volunteers.

Mesec is preparing to begin student teaching in the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. She hopes to inspire her students to become active in their communities, but she doesn’t believe in mandating service.

“It’s not something you have to do every day or every week,” she said. “Any kind of contribution is enough.” But, she added, once you get the service bug, there’s no going back.


Laura Mesec, 2008 recipient of the Jamgotch Humanitarian Student Award, spent the summer coordinating volunteer efforts at the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.

Coast region in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to help with the reconstruction efforts, she founded the HomeWork Service Organization at UNC Charlotte. Two Saturdays each month Mesec organizes a community service activity in Charlotte — students, faculty and staff are welcomed to participate.

Steve Cheney to coordinate a UNC Charlotte Habitat Build through Habitat for Humanity of Charlotte.

we’re working on that,” she said. A local family in need will benefit from the build, which will rely on volunteer labor from UNC Charlotte students and Habitat volunteers.

in the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. She

Laura Mesec, 2008 recipient of the Jamgotch

At UNC Charlotte, Rainey co-chartered the American Medical Student Association, the first premedical organization at the university. As president, she helped plan events that better prepared students for graduate work. For three years, Rainey was a resident adviser on campus and volunteered at the Charlotte Rescue Mission; the H.E.L.P Store, which provides packages of food and clothes to needy families; and Meals on Wheels of Charlotte.

Additionally, Rainey lobbied to improve pharmaceutical

drug coverage for seniors and worked with the Breast Cancer Resource Center in Fayetteville to which she donated some of her award money.

Rainey spent the summer of 2004 in Costa Rica studying Spanish and teaching English as a second language to a small group of health care professionals. A chemistry and Spanish minor, she hopes to one day practice internal medicine and geriatrics.

This story appeared in the summer 2005 issue of UNC Charlotte magazine. Rainey was unavailable for comment.


In It Together: Brett Tempest

Brett Tempest believes in the power of individuals to collectively make a difference in the world. He believes in community service and volunteerism. The affable UNC Charlotte doctoral student will tell you that his volunteer experiences have impacted every aspect of his life, and in turn, the lives of countless others.

Tempest admits to being a restless student who was on a vocational path in high school but ultimately chose to pursue a college degree. Judging by his record, he made a sound choice: He earned a bachelor’s degree in international studies from UNC Chapel Hill in 2001; a bachelor’s in civil engineering (magna cum laude) from UNC Charlotte in 2004; and a master’s in civil engineering from UNC Charlotte in 2007.

By alternating between schooling and community ser vice work, he was able to employ his skills and talents in the service of those in need. In 1999, he joined AmeriCorps/National Civilian Community Corps, where he served as an assistant team leader, primarily working in the western United States; then in 2005 he served as a team leader, focusing on the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

“The experience of it [AmeriCorps] was so intense that at the end of it, you are off of whatever track you were on,” he said. “Being nothing but in service to your country for a year really alters your outlook on things.”

Tempest said AmeriCorps members are welcomed into the communities in which they serve. “The community takes an interest in you. You’re invited to their pageants, their basketball games, you play against their baseball league, and you get to know people in this different way. You’re in the community to help — that’s an awesome way to arrive somewhere.”

As an AmeriCorps member, Tempest lived in seven different states and traveled to countless communities working on projects to address environmental issues as well as unmet housing construction needs. During his deployment to the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he worked with volunteers to move people out of temporary shelters and into semi-permanent living arrangements, including onto cruise ships contracted by FEMA.

After his work in the Gulf Coast area relief effort, he served as a global assignee for a one-year period with Habitat for Humanity International. He was assigned to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami reconstruction effort and was stationed for 11 months in Pondicherry, India, working as a project manager supervising a seven-member engineering field staff and a large number of local contractors and construction personnel. In this capacity, he was able

to put his education and experiences in working with diverse com munities to good use, helping villages ravaged by the ocean rebuild themselves.

Tempest learned a great deal from the experience, including how to navigate cultural differences.

“When I would try to impose what I thought would be standards of a simple, decent house, often it wasn’t culturally appropriate,” he said. “We had to rely a lot on the community to help us design something that would be acceptable to them and comfortable for them to live in.”

For instance, Tempest advocated converting the veranda in the building plan into a storage area or small kitchen, but his suggestions were met with resistance.

“It turns out having the veranda is really culturally important — you entertain on the veranda; there are a lot of people you don’t want to come into your house but you’ll entertain them there. Americans do the same thing — you don’t just invite everybody into your house.”

Tempest explained the homes in the path of the tsunami were constructed of sticks and thatch, which melted to the ground as the giant wave overtook them, leaving thousands of Indians homeless. He said the Indian government embraced the disaster as a

chance to eradicate substandard housing in Pondicherry and elsewhere.

“We were building solid houses, of approximately 300-square-feet, that were designed to withstand a future tsunami or cyclone - within reason,” Tempest said.

Tempest said his experiences have illustrated how resilient, and resourceful, people can be in the face of difficulty. “When people decide they want to do something, they have the strength and capacity to make it happen,” he said.

In Pondicherry, one of the challenges the international relief team faced was a brick shortage because of the high demand for building materials in the region.

“A women’s group in the town decided to make the bricks, and problem solved,” he said. “The shortage turned into an opportunity to contribute to the livelihood of the village — they were out of work, already in a pretty impoverished condition, and we were able to give them

equipment they could keep there.” Tempest, who is passionate about environmental issues, remains

hopeful in the face of challenges such as global warming. His hope is a testament to the belief that people can overcome even daunting obstacles when they work together.

Tempest reinvested his Jamgotch award into education and is now a Ph.D. student in UNC Charlotte’s infrastructure and environmental systems program, where his research is focused on sustainable construction design.


approximately 300-square-feet, that were designed to withstand a future tsunami or cyclone - within reason,” Tempest said.

illustrated how resilient, and resourceful, people can be in the face of difficulty.



Professor Emeritus Pays It Forward

UNC Charlotte Professor Emeritus Nish Jamgotch Jr. knows firsthand the importance of the right amount of support at the right time in a student’s career. In the early 1960s, he won a competitively awarded federal grant to fund his doctoral studies. “I’ve said to myself all along would I have taken that jump to the Ph.D. at a fairly expensive private university like Claremont had I not had financial support. It would have been dicey. It would have been tough.”

One good turn deserves another. That break led Jamgotch to devote his professional career to inspiring young people. And just as he taught and mentored scores of UNC Charlotte students, the former leader of UNC Charlotte’s political science faculty is using his estate plans to ensure his inspiring legacy lives on for future generations at UNC Charlotte.

Through a charitable estate commitment, Jamgotch established the Nish Jamgotch Humanitarian Student Award, a prestigious annual competitive award honoring creativity and humanitarianism within the UNC Charlotte student body. The award was established in 2003 and was first bestowed at UNC Charlotte in the spring of 2004. The student winners receive a $10,000 cash prize, unprecedented in the history of the university, for creative pursuits of humanitarian issues.

“We have so much in our society that is divisive and conflict-laden,” Jamgotch says. “We need more vigorous efforts that will bring us together for joint, creative problem solving. This humanitarian award says to the students of UNC Charlotte and students elsewhere, ‘What can you do to make a difference in this enormously complicated and frequently fractionalized society in which we live?’ I would like this program to be a model for other institutions as well.”

Jamgotch is a distinguished political scientist whose academic focus includes Russia, international relations and U.S.-Soviet cooperative agreements. He is a past recipient of the North Carolina Bank Award, now known as the Bank of America Award for Excellence in Teaching. It is the University’s most prestigious teaching honor. He has been a Hoover Scholar at Stanford University and an associate of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University. He was honored by one of the first 10 research grants awarded by the U.S. Institute of Peace, founded by the U.S. Congress in 1984.

Watch www.uncc.edu for information about how to nominate a student for the award. Nominations will be sought in January 2009.

Transforming Society One Building at a Time: Chip Howell

Charles “Chip” Howell has been building things for most of his life. As a graduate student in architecture at UNC Charlotte, he was able to apply his knowledge, amassed after years of volunteering with Habitat for Humanity and enhanced as a student of historic preservation and community design at the College of Charleston, to help communities and organizations in need.

Howell, who earned his master’s degree from UNC Charlotte, resides in Los Angeles where he works for an architecture firm. I spoke to him early one morning by phone; despite the time zone difference (by the time we talked, I’d been awake three hours and had imbibed two cups of coffee), Howell spoke fluently and passionately about his commitment to using his skills for the betterment of communities in the United States and abroad.

“When I was an undergraduate in college I worked in a run-down neighborhood on a building that was going to be a community center -- that’s when I came to understand that I could use my architecture and building skills to do something positive in the community,” he said.

As a student at UNC Charlotte, the 2006 Jamgotch Humanitarian Student Award recipient worked with fellow architecture students in the design build studio and Charlotte housing services to build a house for an individual who had been on a waiting list for five years.

He then began volunteering with the Latin American Coalition. As a volunteer, Howell directed a campaign to create Charlotte’s first community-based Latin American Cultural and Service Center. A talented designer, Howell developed a strategy whereby art and architecture become a springboard for cross-cultural connections. In addition, he outlined strategies for low-income Latino youth to help develop programs for the center.

Though he works full time, Howell makes time to volunteer, whether it’s in northern California helping a non-profit organization install solar panels on low-income housing or traveling to Nicaragua to build a public bathroom facility.

“Exporting diplomacy works best when you’re sending human resources with skill sets to a place where few people have these skills sets,” Howell said. He viewed the trip to Nicaragua, financed in part by the Jamgotch award, as an opportunity to shift attitudes through cross cultural connections.

Howell has learned from his volunteer experiences that when others see your enthusiasm, in tandem with competence, it catches on like wild fire. “I’ve always been surprised by the scope of reactions you get from people. They become invested [in a project] in their own way, which shine’s a light on each individual’s talents.”

As an apprentice architect, Howell has had the opportunity to indulge his interest in green design and building. Currently, he is working on a child care facility for a large corporation that will be LEED Gold certified. The project will be a first for the company, and Howell hopes its success will inspire other corporations to incorporate green building principles into future construction.

Before heading off to work, Chip stressed that as potential volunteers and agents of change, university students have a lot to offer, both in the application of their skills in the community and in their capacity to teach others.

“University students are learning something that can be valuable to someone – you have skills others might not necessarily have,” he said. “You’ll be surprised to learn how much you know, and other people will be appreciative that you took the time to volunteer – and there’s the opportunity for them to learn from your skills.”




Glenn HutchinsonPlaywright helps others rethink immigration and educationBy Rhiannon Bowman

Inspired to write and become involved in theater by his professors at UNC Charlotte, Dr. Glenn Hutchinson is modest about his latest creative success, calling the process a collaboration. An associate professor at Johnson C. Smith University — and a former lecturer at UNC Charlotte — it was Hutchinson’s international students in his English Composition classes, however, who provided the initial inspiration for his award-winning play “Limbo.” “I started listening to their stories about why they came to the school to study,” he said. “We had a lot of interesting discussions about the American Dream, and what that might mean.”

Around the same time, as a volunteer for the Hispanic Cultural Center of Charlotte, a nonprofit organization whose mission

is to encourage Latino youths to attend college, he stumbled upon the story of Marie Gonzales. Soon after, they cultivated a long-distance friendship and “Limbo” was born. “So much of the play came from our first 30-minute interview,” says Hutchinson, who also began discussing immigration and education issues with other area students in similar situations.

Gonzales grew up in the United States. Her family immigrated to Missouri from Costa Rica when she was five years old, she graduated from an American high school and enrolled in college — her father even worked for the governor of Missouri. Nevertheless, because she and her parents are undocumented, Marie’s desire to graduate from an American college was threatened. Eventually, though her parents were deported, she was allowed to stay in the country to finish college. Since then she has become an advocate for the D.R.E.A.M. Act, which stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, and fine-tuned her scholastic goals — she now aspires to become an attorney.

The act would allow undocumented immigrants brought to America by their parents as minors to reside in the country until they complete either their degree or two years of military service. First introduced to Congress in 2001, the bill has stalled — even with solid congressional support on both sides of the isle.

“Limbo,” which reflects Marie’s story, ran for three weeks in Charlotte to sellout crowds. Local critics applauded

Hutchinson’s ability to portray both sides of the issue — the federal government’s and the students’ — convincingly. He did not set out to change people’s minds, however. “I think once people hear stories about people who have lived here nearly all of their lives, who are in this situation of limbo, that, at a minimum, they might connect or relate in some way in the sense that we’ve all had that feeling of being caught in-between something.”

He will not accept the label of immigration activist, however, saying, “I don’t want the play to be too preachy and force people to think things. I hope that it’s

“I started listening to their

stories about why they came

to the school to study. We had a

lot of interesting discussions about

the American Dream, and what

that might mean.” Hutchinson has authored the plays “Limbo,” “Brainwrap” and “The Dream Catcher.”



enjoyable and that people can connect with people in some way, but it is a political play that does sympathize with the students. Personally I have been disappointed in the community college system that has decided to ban undocumented students — even Washington, D.C., doesn’t say you have to do that.”

Not only is he an in-demand playwright, he also is in his first semester as an associate professor at Johnson C. Smith University—with 120 freshman English students—and he is an accomplished poet, too. In addition to reformatting “Limbo” for UNC Charlotte’s McKnight Hall stage, where the play will be performed Dec. 2, he is writing several short theatrical scenes for the Levine Museum of the New South’s upcoming exhibition on immigration.

As a 49er, he majored in history but it was retired English professor Sam Watson who ignited his love for writing. “He encouraged us to write. He brought a passionate excitement — like we were doing something important — to each class. He took a personal interest in us. That class probably made the most impact on me. Now I’m teaching a variation of that [class],” says Hutchinson who has continued

Hutchinson credits professor Sam Watson for igniting his love of writing.

Watson’s tradition of writing a letter to his students on the first day of class and then asking them to respond.

“That had a big impact on me,” says Hutchinson who also says he thinks of his composition classes as a conversation about writing. “We stay in touch,” he says about Watson, “He is a mentor to me—especially as a teacher.”

Also while a student at UNC Charlotte, Hutchinson wrote and directed two plays —“Brainwrap” and “The Dream Catcher,” acting in several others. “That was a very positive experience. There were some important moments and people at

“He encouraged us to write. He brought

a passionate excitement—like

we were doing something

important—to each class. He took a

personal interest in us. That class

probably made the most impact on me.”

UNC Charlotte who shaped me.”After “Limbo” wraps in December,

Hutchinson says he wants to focus on his students and his writing, revising “Limbo” and then moving on to different projects. “My main job is being a teacher, but the good thing is that these interests overlap,” he says.

To learn more about Dr. Hutchinson and view clips from “Limbo,” visit his Web site: http://web.mac.com/gchutchi.

Rhiannon Bowman is a freelance writer and

student at UNC Charlotte.

UNC CHARLOTTE | t i t le


Americans are “joiners.” We hold memberships in all kinds of organizations, and we use social networking sites such as Facebook and My Space to collect “friends” like so many shiny baubles. But do the organizations we belong to actually meet? Do we know our neighbors? Are we participating in the civic life of our communities by signing petitions or

going to city council meetings to harangue our representatives?

According to Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, levels of civic engagement have declined sharply in the last quarter century because of changes in our work, family structure, age, lifestyle, technology and other factors.

A survey of 40 communities, including

Charlotte, laid the groundwork for Putnam’s thesis. The results revealed that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community has high levels of faith-based involvement and philanthropy, but ranked 39th in levels of social and interracial trust.

In response to this data, the Foundation For the Carolinas convened a diverse group of community leaders to grapple

UNC Charlotte at a Crossroads

By Lisa A. Lambert



with the root causes of distrust, especially between people of different races and ethnicities.

The group determined that levels of trust in the community are direct outcomes of how residents find that institutions, systems and resources are inaccessible to them or accessible, exclusive or inclusive, equitable or unjust.

With a commitment to turn knowledge into action, the group developed the Crossroads Charlotte initiative. The initiative is all about choice, and intentionality.

First, four different stories — Fortress Charlotte, The Beat Goes On, Class Act, Eye to Eye — depicting plausible futures for the community in the year 2015 were developed and shared with organizations, individuals and business leaders in the region.

Area corporations, governmental entities, nonprofits and institutions were asked to design a response, or initiative, within their organizations’ program of work or mission that would help lead the community to the positive aspects of the Crossroads Charlotte scenarios and away from the negative aspects of these futures.

By reaching out to the community through artistic performances and dialogue, it is hoped the initiative will generate a demand for positive change thus propelling the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community toward a more positive scenario by 2015.

Much like the City of Charlotte, UNC Charlotte has experienced a tremendous increase in growth and diversity.

“I think universities take on characteristics of their communities,” said Susan Harden, Crossroads Charlotte coordinator, who recently joined the University to spearhead the development of a community engagement curriculum. “This emphasis on becoming a world-class major research institution mirrors the same push Charlotte went through.”

UNC Charlotte Provost Joan Lorden, who has played an integral role in the Crossroads Charlotte initiative, hired Harden to create new partnerships in the community and develop a Crossroads Charlotte program specifically for the

campus, to include a freshman seminar curriculum and visioning forums.

Approximately 79 percent of UNC Charlotte’s students hail from Mecklenburg and surrounding counties.

“We have 23,000 smart, thoughtful, students who want to contribute [to the community],” Harden said. “We want to make sure our students are out in the community being a part of the solution to some of our fundamental issues.”

Harden said students often don’t know much about the root causes of the social problems illustrated by the Putnam survey; the Crossroads curriculum exposes students to the social, political, economic and cultural forces in their community and explores strategies to create a positive future.

She hopes that the curriculum, which encourages students to probe in-depth the complex questions of the day, will give students the tools to approach social problems, such as poverty, with sophistication, rather than rely on generalities and easy solutions.

“We’re saying, ‘Here’s the issue, here’s what it looks like in our community, and here’s what you can do about it,’” Harden said.

In addition, Harden is working to develop a service learning component to the program. Through service learning opportunities, students get credit for working with organizations that provide for the needs of the community.

Currently, students have been placed in the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools to tutor and mentor K–12 students.

“There’s no shortage of work to be done,” Harden said. “We have a tremendous resource in our students, and they want to do it.”

Harden notes the scope of her charge encompasses more than the freshman experience. In addition to sending students into the community, she is developing ways to bring the community onto the university campus. She also serves as a liaison between UNC Charlotte’s research resources and the community, connecting researchers to opportunities to apply their work to community problems.

With grant funding from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Foundation, an affiliate of Foundation For the Carolinas, UNC Charlotte plans to hold visioning exercises on campus. Faculty, staff, students and alumni are invited to attend the Crossroads Campus Forums, slated for November and February.

“We’re going to create our own scenarios, talk about the things that are happening in our university community and what kind of university we want to be,” Harden said. “This visioning process will help our campus talk about our diversity and changing demographics.”

There is no cost to participate in the workshops, but participants are encouraged to register at http://www.crossroads.uncc.edu/signup.

“We have the opportunity to grow in a healthy way together. It’s all about intentionality — do you just want to end up somewhere or do you want to be intentional about where you end up?” Harden said. “It’s the question we ask our freshmen, but we’re not always asking ourselves the same question.”

“We have 23,000 smart, thoughtful,

students who want to contribute

[to the community].We want to make

sure our students are out in the

community being a part of the

solution to some of our fundamental

issues.”

UNC CHARLOTTE | t i t le


Trying Research on for Size

By Lisa A. Lambert

As the public research university in the Charlotte region, UNC Charlotte boasts 80 graduate degree programs, and the talented, enthusiastic faculty and students these programs attract. A nationally funded program helps bridge the gap between the potential graduate students of tomorrow and the sometimes daunting world of research.

The National Science Foundation-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program was created to expose students to research-related careers, as well as to inspire and excite women and minority students.

In the last three decades, women and minorities collectively have come to comprise the majority of the country’s

college student population, but they earn fewer advanced degrees in science fields.

As a host site for the REU program, UNC Charlotte offers undergraduate students who attend UNC Charlotte, as well as other institutions, opportunities to conduct hands-on research. Participants are chosen from a pool of applicants to work with graduate students and faculty



on projects in disciplines including engineering, computer science and psychology.

Dr. Paula Goolkasian, professor of psychology and director of cognitive science, said it is imperative for scientific research to represent the population. “We want to make sure the questions scientists are pursuing are culturally relevant,” she said.

This year, UNC Charlotte hosted 12 students, six of whom are UNC Charlotte undergraduates. While most REU experiences last for the duration of the summer months, UNC Charlotte’s Psychology Department takes a unique approach by providing a year-long program. All students present their work at a professional conference.

“Students have exhibited an overwhelming interest in our courses,” Goolkasian said, “but the lab experience gives them a realistic picture of the discipline.”

The program demystifies graduate student life by putting students in direct contact with faculty and graduate students, helps undergraduates identify their focal interests, gives them the confidence and skills necessary for success in graduate school, and perhaps most importantly, helps them make an informed decision about whether they truly want to pursue graduate studies.

Moreover, students with research experience often have an edge over those who do not when applying for graduate programs. The REU program sets students ahead of the curve; trends in graduate school admissions suggest it is not enough to have textbook knowledge of research methods and design.

Not only does the program benefit students, it also helps UNC Charlotte meet research needs and gives talented potential applicants a taste of the university’s graduate programs.

According to Karen Bean, program coordinator for the Diversity in Information Technology Institute, the program proves a valuable recruitment tool. “In computer science there’s a decline in enrollment, and one key purpose of this program is to encourage undergraduates to go into computer science at the graduate level,” she said.

Morris LeBlanc did just that. As an REU participant, LeBlanc was undecided about whether to pursue a degree in computer science or physics. Because of his work in UNC Charlotte’s Future Computing Lab and the relationship he forged with his faculty mentor, LeBlanc chose computer science. A first-year doctoral student, LeBlanc now works side-by-side with REU students in the laboratory.

Students and faculty agree: research experience is one of the most worthwhile ventures undergraduates can undertake to further their professional and personal goals. The REU program has proven a valuable link between students traditionally underrepresented in the science disciplines and the many quality research programs available through UNC Charlotte.

“It’s a win-win situation for everyone,” Goolkasian said.

Above: REU interns study the eye movements required for reading complex sentences.

Left: Courtney Ross, an REU intern with the Psychology Department, dons the device used to track and study eye movements associated with reading complex sentences under the supervision of Dr. Mary Michael.

Perception lab photo: Faculty mentor Dr. Paula Goolkasian advises student Courtney Woodberry in the Psychology Department Perception Lab. Woodberry studies the degree to which semantically related primes can influence object perception.

The REU program was created to expose students to research-related

careers, as well as to inspire and excite women and minority students.



Melissa GayanIn the Midst of ConflictBy Katie Conn Suggs (With a special thanks to Allison Reid)

As most of the world watched the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Russia had its eye on South Ossetia. On August 8 Russia moved tanks into the region; within a few days they moved tanks deeper into Georgia. UNC Charlotte alumna Melissa Gayan (’00, ’03) was in Tbilisi, Georgia studying the Georgian and Russian languages. Seemingly overnight she found herself in the midst of conflict.

Separated from North Ossetia in Russia, mountainous South Ossetia is in Georgia. While South Ossetia declared independence from Georgia in the early 1990s, this independence has not been recognized by the international community—which regards South Ossetia as part of Georgia. On August 7, South Ossetia and Georgia engaged in conflict. Within days Russia sent their troops to South Ossetia to remove the Georgian forces.

“It seems that over the last century, Georgia has been in a geographic location that has been very important to many people and to many countries. One thing that makes them so important is the oil pipeline that runs through Georgia into the Black Sea from Central Asia. It’s a valuable piece of real estate,” said Gayan.

Valuable indeed. Within days there were reports of

Russian forces within 34 miles of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. What began as a conflict on the outskirts soon became a battle within the heart of Georgia.

Melissa Gayan received her B.A. and M.A. in history from UNC Charlotte and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in history from Emory University, specializing in

Georgia-Russia relations and nationality issues. She arrived in Tbilisi, in mid-June and was scheduled to stay until mid-August.

Going to class five days a week, Melissa had the afternoons open to explore the city and even worked in the archives in Tbilisi. “The Georgian people were very welcoming; the stereotypical image of Georgian hospitality rang very true for me.”

All summer Melissa had consulted with the English and Russian language newspapers. “You would read from time to time of violence occurring in South Ossetia or in Abkhazia. I had not lived there long, and I didn’t know if that was normal.”

On August 8, a friend in class used the Internet, through his cell phone to read about the unfolding conflict. “We

Gayan studied language in Tbilisi, Georgia.

“It seems that over the last

century, Georgia has been in

a geographic location that

has been very important to many

people and to many countries. “



immediately jumped on the Internet to see what was going on.”

Scheduled to fly back to the United States on August 11, Melissa was disappointed to find out that her flight was cancelled, leading her to another adventure.

“We were supposed to fly out on Lufthansa from Tbilisi. I’m not sure why the flight was cancelled, but one of the bombing targets outside the city was at an airplane manufacturer adjacent to the airport. The American Embassy scheduled a series of busses for people that wanted to get out.”

Routed through Armenia, Melissa began an 11 hour journey home. “There were over 150 of us, so it did take a considerable amount of time.”

Finally home, Melissa admits that she never felt physical danger, but she does worry about the friends she left behind. “I left some good friends over there, and I don’t know what I left them to.”

Katie Conn Suggs is director of communications for UNC Charlotte’s Division of

Development and Alumni Affairs. Allison Reid is director of communications

for UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences The ancient church at Gelati.



One Giant Leap:Creating Healthy Communities and nC-CAtCH

The United States invests more resources than any other nation in the world for health, yet we are far from the healthiest country. In fact, the United States languishes in the lower half of industrialized nations for a range of indicators used to measure health status and even trails nations considered to be economically underdeveloped for selected health indicators.

“In the developed world, you would be hard-pressed to find a nation that pays less attention to population health than we do in the United States,” said Dr. James Studnicki, Irwin Belk Endowed Chair of Health Services Research and professor, College of Health and Human Services.

Several factors contribute to this disconnect between cost of care, quality of care, and the overall health of the population. Our reimbursement system is oriented to specialty and hospital care, rather than to preventive care; unlike other developed countries, executive pay is not linked to the health status of the population; and ultimately, no single organization is responsible for the health of the public.

“Health departments are charged with taking care of the most vulnerable among us, and hospitals take care of sick people,” Studnicki said. Most of us occupy the space between.

The challenges posed by the current health care system are daunting, but one thing is clear: You have to know where you’ve been to know where you’re going.

Assessment of a given population’s health requires access to a wide range of data sources. Bringing together data from multiple sources, linking and integrating

them, and continually updating and maintaining them for useful analysis is essential to effectively monitoring and assessing the public’s health, as well as for designing interventions and education campaigns to address health issues. For the typical local community organization, these tasks are often beyond their financial and technical capabilities — until now.

A new monitoring and assessment system, dubbed NC-CATCH (North Carolina Comprehensive Assessment for Tracking Community Health), has been developed by UNC Charlotte faculty in the College of Computing and Informatics and the College of Health and Human Services under a contract funded by the North Carolina Division of Public Health and the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. The Internet-based system will help health care workers and community leaders take a major step in the direction toward healthier communities.

While some states have recognized the potential of the Internet as a means to disseminate data for health assessment, in most cases, the state systems are limited to a static interface that provides pre-structured statistics, such as death

counts or rates organized into preformatted reports.

“What’s really remarkable about what we’ve created is it’s not just a matter of providing data. There’s a difference between simply providing data and having the ability to analyze it effectively,” Studnicki said. “NC-CATCH will be the first system in the nation with online analytic processing. Once people are trained, they can go in and use all of the power of the data sources in the data warehouse to manipulate event-level data so they can answer questions quickly.”

For example, with NC-CATCH you can actually look at data taken from individual death certificates to find out about rates of infant mortality, the cause of death, the race of the mother, and payment status of the mother. Never before has this level of detail been available, according to Studnicki. Currently, most state-level Internet systems will give you an infant mortality average for the county — not very helpful if you’re attempting to get at the root causes of infant mortality in your county.

NC-CATCH provides detailed “drill-down” access to data on births, deaths, pregnancies, hospital discharges, emergency room visits, and cancer cases along with user-specified reports. It also is unique in that it allows the user to portray many of the data for sub-county geographic areas, such as census tracts, zip codes, and user-defined communities.

Patient confidentiality is assured because all data in the portal is de-identified, meaning names, social security numbers and other identifiers are not entered into the system.

Colleen Bridger, director of the Gaston County Health Department and a doctoral candidate at UNC Charlotte, said the system will support better decision making.

“I’m in a big county, with a population of

By Lisa A. Lambert

James Studnicki

“Health departments are

charged with taking care of the

most vulnerable among us, and

hospitals take care of sick people.”



200,000. If the health department wanted to do something about teen pregnancy, all we could do [before NC-CATCH] was blanket the entire county with information that addressed the problem,” she said. But NC-CATCH will allow Bridger and her staff to figure out who is most at risk and target that population with information — good news for a health department with limited resources.

Key elements of NC-CATCH include multiple indicators organized into categories (i.e., infectious disease, maternal and child); comparisons with peer counties; state values; Healthy People 2010 values and other benchmarking standards; trend analysis for the most recent 3-5 year time period; an objectively derived rank ordered list of community health challenges; and a concise assessment of racial/ethnic health status disparities.

Gaston County Health Department served as a test site, using the system to help conduct a more targeted community health assessment. Bridger says the data has allowed the health department to be more responsive to the community.

“Using the technology we came up with 10 census tracks in Gaston with high

poverty and high chronic disease rates,” she said. “Now we’re going door to door and asking residents in those areas what they want from their health department. After all, the point of doing a community health assessment is to engage the community and then design programs that address the health issues affecting the community.”

North Carolina has been one of the most active states nationally in promoting community health status assessments, and counties are required to produce a formal report at least every four years.

NC-CATCH, born of the N.C. Division of Public Health’s desire to move beyond merely producing data to actually enhancing the capability to analyze the data more effectively, could become a national model. A number of state health agencies from across the United States, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have expressed interest in the system.

“Whenever we present this to health officers nationally who’ve tried through the years to pull together data, they’re astounded at the power of the system and always express the belief that it’s a national disgrace that every community in this country doesn’t have access to this kind of capability,” Studnicki said.

A series of County Health Profiles have been constructed as part of the first phase of the NC-CATCH data reporting system, available at www.schs.state.nc.us/SCHS. The drill-down portion will be released several months later.

“I believe we will have this kind of analytic capability in every community within a decade,” Studnicki said, “and I believe this technology will lead.”

“I believe we will have this kind

of analytic capability in every community within

a decade and I believe this

technology will lead.”

Studnicki and colleague John Fisher of the college of Health and Human Services.


UNC CHARLOTTE | a lumni notes

1970smary Jean Houlahan, ‘74, was named the 2005 Palm Beach County registered nurse of the Year.

Don Stewart, ‘73, graduated from the nine-day North Carolina Rural Economic Development Institute in May 2008 at the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center in Raleigh, N.C. Dr. Ken townsend, ‘73 & ‘75, Chair of the Department of History at Coastal Carolina University in Myrtle Beach, is publishing a university-level textbook on Native American History and is completing a book on the American home front during World War II. He was embedded with U.S. Army units in Kandahar and Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2006 where he interviewed American troops and Afghan military and political leaders.

Dr. nancy Street, ‘73, recently published a book entitled “American Businesses in China.” She is working on a new book on Chinese higher education. Dr. Street is employed as a professor at Bridgewater State College, teaching and writing on the Chinese educational system from modernization to globalization. Garry “Buddy” Wrenn, ‘72, retired from a career in manufacturing in 2001. He currently owns the consulting business Maintenance/Reliability Management Solutions, Inc.

1980s Carolyn Steele Agosta, ‘87, has her short story “Oral Tradition” being published by Cambridge University Press as part of an anthology to be studied by high school students throughout Great Britain. Carolyn has been writing since 1998. Her son, Daniel, is currently a UNC Charlotte student.

William “Bill” Bromer, ‘81, has been named Interim Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Ill., for the 2008-2009 academic year. He will return to teaching biology and studying the effects of siltation and water quality on macro invertebrates, crayfish and mussels. mike Carscaddon, ‘82, graduated with an MBA from the University of Michigan. Mike is executive vice president of Habitat for Humanity International in Atlanta.

Kimberly S. Ricketts, ‘89, has been appointed to lead New Jersey’s child welfare effort as Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families by Governor Jon S. Corzine. Darin Spease, ‘89, recently completed a term as President of the College Athletic Business Management Association (CABMA), a 600-plus member association of collegiate business officers. He was recently named Chair of the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Committee.

1990sKandas (Burnett) Branson, ‘98, married Jason W. Branson on April 26, 2008, in Cary, NC. The couple will reside in Raleigh, N.C. Jason is currently deployed to the Middle East with the U.S. Navy Reserve.

Amanda (Brooks) Graves, ‘96, was recently named Executive Sales Director for Thirty-One Gifts, a direct sales company.

David Jandrew, ‘96, is the Director of Basketball Operations for UNC Wilmington.

Aaron Locklear, ‘98, earned his master’s degree in School Counseling at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in December 2007. He is enjoying his tenth year as a seventh grade mathematics teacher. Aaron and his wife, Stephaine, are now proud parents of two sons, Avry Cole and Seth Cameron.

Amanda (Robinson) Long, ‘98, and her husband Michael welcomed their daughter, Alyssa Marina, in June 2008.

Christine zehender mosley, ‘95, and her husband Matt welcomed their first child, Benjamin Matthew, on July 1. Christine is a special event planner with the National Education Association in Washington, DC.

Stefani (Levan) Roma, ‘97, and Frank Roma welcomed their first child, a

daughter, Isabella Roma born January 5.

Laurel (Smith) Stocks, ‘95, has been promoted to Colonel in the USAFR NC. Laurel is stationed at the Air Force Surgeon General’s Office, Bolling AFB, Washingto D.C., as a reserve member of the AF Nurse Corps and was deployed to Bagram, Afghanistan in 2007. She is a member of the ASPAN Standards of Care Committee, AACN, Chesapeake Chapter AACN, and a reviewer for DCCM.

2000s Stephen Clayton, ‘08, is pursuing his master’s degree in Physical Education with a concentration in Interscholastic Athletic Administration at Winthrop University.

Stephanie Eige, ‘01, and her husband, Jamison, welcomed their second child, Marin Rose, on July 17, 2008. Marin joins big brother Emerson Jacob.

Sarah Fite, ‘01, married Craig White Kornegay on February 23, 2008. The couple resides in Fuquay Varina, N.C.

Jacqueline (Boger) Gafrarar, ‘06, and her husband, Chuck, welcomed their first child, Caleb Jon, on June 12, 2008. Jacqueline recently earned a Certified Special Event Professional (CSEP) designation from the International Special Events Society.

Lisa Shanklin, ‘05, recently graduated with a Doctorate in Psychology from International University for Graduate Studies in St. Kitts, West Indies. She currently works with developmentally delayed adults who have co-occurring mental health issues. Robert Shields, ‘00, and his wife Jessika welcomed their son, Brian Cameron, on March 5, 2008. Brian joins siblings Robert Jr. (5) and Jasmine (2). Shanna Wiley, ‘07, has been selected as a new staff member at The University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class for the 2008-2009 academic year.

It is time to share what you’ve been up to lately and let other Alumns help you toot your horn or spread the word on small or large achievements. We want to hear from you.

Visit Alumni Affairs Web site at www.unccharlottealumni.org and tell us what you’ve been doing.

Or write Alumni Affairs, UnC Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd. Charlotte, NC 28223-0001

What are you doing?

perspect ive | UNC CHARLOTTE

A Strong Commitment to valuesBy Joseph mazzola

I joined UNC Charlotte in July as the new dean of the Belk College of Business. As a candidate for the position, I was drawn to the idea of being part of an institution “on the move.” UNC Charlotte is uniquely positioned as North Carolina’s urban research university, and the Belk College is likewise uniquely positioned to capitalize on the talents of its faculty, staff and students and to engage in substantive, meaningful partnership with the Charlotte region’s rich and diverse business community — thus forming the basis for a new model for the 21st Century business school.

More importantly, however, I was drawn to the Belk College because of the values the college articulates as part of its mission statement: integrity; intellectual curiosity and innovation; excellence; globalization; and diversity and inclusion. Each of these values is important to me as an individual, as a teacher and as a leader. Knowing this strong commitment to values was already in place at the Belk College made my decision to come here an easy one.

Although I am a newcomer to Charlotte, I am acutely aware of the impact of the current economic downturn and the turmoil in the financial markets on this region and its citizens. I think of our alumni who find their careers in limbo at best, or derailed at worst; I think of families who are forced to reevaluate plans for their children’s college educations; and I think of civic, cultural and charitable organizations that find themselves struggling to fulfill their mission in the wake of a decrease in funding.

In each of these cases, the Belk College is prepared to respond by providing access to our expertise and assets. The College is partnering with the university’s Office of Alumni Affairs to sponsor an ongoing series of programs for alumni in career transition, and we are exploring ways to make more scholarship funds available for our current and prospective students who are in need. Additionally, we are eager to increase the involvement of our faculty members and student groups in the nonprofit community through consulting and community service projects.

Our hope is that through all of these efforts, we can secure and promote enduring growth in our region while reinforcing the college’s and university’s roles as active, dedicated partners and rich sources of human and intellectual capital.

For today’s students, the current economic turmoil may turn out to be the defining moment of their generation. For those of us who teach and mentor these students, these challenging times provide an opportunity to redouble our efforts to instill the Belk College’s values through our teaching — especially the value of integrity, whether it is personal, institutional or societal. By challenging students to focus on ethics, on the long-term and on people rather than the acquisition of power and wealth as ends in and of themselves, it is our hope that these future business leaders will become responsible and able stewards of our nation’s recovery and future expansion.

When I first arrived on campus, I was taken with the statue that resides in the quad behind Cato Hall. Titled “Self-Made Man,” the piece appeals to me because it embodies the spirit that built this nation, and built institutions of learning like UNC Charlotte. I am honored and humbled to be part of building the future of the Belk College of Business and the students who choose to learn here.

Additionally, we are eager to increase the involvement of our faculty members and student

groups in the nonprofi t community through consulting

and community service projects.

Although I am a newcomer to Charlotte, I am acutely aware of the impact of the current economic downturn and the turmoil in the financial markets on this region and its citizens. I think of our alumni who find their careers in limbo at best, or derailed at worst; I think of families who are forced to reevaluate plans for their children’s college educations; and I think of civic, cultural and charitable organizations that find themselves struggling to fulfill

In each of these cases, the Belk College is prepared to respond by providing access to our expertise and assets. The College is partnering with the university’s Office of Alumni Affairs to sponsor an ongoing series of programs for alumni in career transition, and we are exploring ways to make more scholarship funds available for our current and prospective students who are in need. Additionally, we are eager to increase the involvement of our faculty members and student groups in the nonprofit community through consulting and

Our hope is that through all of these efforts, we can secure and promote enduring growth in our region while reinforcing the college’s and university’s roles as active, dedicated partners

For today’s students, the current economic turmoil may turn out to be the defining moment of their generation. For those of us who teach and mentor these students, these challenging times provide an opportunity to redouble our efforts to instill the Belk College’s values through our teaching — especially the value of integrity, whether it is personal, institutional or societal. By challenging students to focus on ethics, on the long-term and on people rather than the acquisition of power and wealth as ends in and of themselves, it is our hope that these future business leaders will become responsible and able stewards of our nation’s recovery and future expansion.

When I first arrived on campus, I was taken with the statue that resides in the quad behind Cato Hall. Titled “Self-Made Man,” the piece appeals to me because it embodies the spirit that built this nation, and built institutions of learning like UNC Charlotte. I am honored and humbled to be part of building the future of the Belk College of Business and the

Additionally, we are eager to increase the involvement of our faculty members and student

www.UNCC.edu UNC CHARLOTTE magazine


9201 University Blvd.Charlotte, NC 28223-0001

Nonprofit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDCharlotte, NCPermit No. 949

DiCKSon GAtE WAS oFFiCiALLy DEDiCAtED nov. 18.

Q3, 2008 - UNC Charlotte magazine

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