Academic Affairs

A SOAR leader conducts a campus tour for incoming students and their parents. SOAR is the Student Orientation, Advising and Registration program that helps new students transition to UNC Charlotte and allows them to meet with an academic advisor and register for fall semester classes.

Outstanding instruction is a hallmark of the UNC Charlotte experience, and that extends to the large number of online offerings available through the University’s Distance Education Office.

Four faculty members recently completed online course redesigns to obtain certification of having met Quality Matters standards, a national, faculty-centered, peer-review process considered the gold standard for how distance education courses are structured. Quality Matters was started by MarylandOnline Inc., a consortium of colleges and universities.

Since learning about the University’s migration to Google Calendar and Gmail, Laura Williams, interim controller in financial services, has tapped into Google technology to encourage a collaborative working environment among her team members.

The City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County recently released the updated Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer, an interactive online tool that can be used to explore social, housing, economic, environmental and safety conditions in neighborhoods across Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

The ADVANCE Faculty Affairs and Diversity Office recently welcomed “The Op-Ed Project” to UNC Charlotte. The two-day workshop focused on enlarging the pool of women and underrepresented minority experts who are accessing opinion forums and discovering effective ways to “get their feet in the door of the idea marketplace.”

Fifteen young leaders from high schools across the United States, including 11 from North Carolina, have been named to the sixth class of UNC Charlotte’s Levine Scholars Program. They will join the University starting with the fall 2015 semester.

The Mecklenburg Soil and Water Conservation District has honored UNC Charlotte Urban Institute Associate Director Mary Newsom and the institute’s “KEEPING WATCH on WATER: City of Creeks” project with its Urban Conservation Award.

The Soil and Water Conservation District is a local organization that works with residents, agencies and business owners to plan and direct programs for the conservation and development of natural resources.

An outside organization, the Charlotte Medical Education Expansion Committee, has released the results of a feasibility study for a medical school in the Queen City. The group’s consulting agency Tripp Umbach concluded Charlotte needs a four-year medical school to meet the needs of the region.

Robin Gary Cummings, M.D., deputy secretary for health services and state Medicaid director for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, was elected chancellor of UNC Pembroke by the Board of Governors of the 17-campus University of North Carolina.

Franklin Gilliam Jr., dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been elected chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro by the Board of Governors of the 17-campus University of North Carolina.