Academic Affairs

The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute’s online publication PlanCharlotte.org has won a $12,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to boost a project that will look at Charlotte’s creeks.
The grant from Knight Foundation Fund at Foundation for the Carolinas will pay a researcher in local history to examine the role the creeks have played in Charlotte’s growth and development, including the city’s cultural and social history, with a special focus on neighborhoods in west and northwest Charlotte.

The University’s Energy Production and Infrastructure Center is a partner on a $620,000 federal grant to develop a molecule inverter that mounts on solar panels.
EPIC will work with clean-energy startup SineWatts, according to an article in the Charlotte Business Journal.
SineWatts will open an office in Charlotte. It is likely to be a tenant UNC Charlotte Portal Building when the facility opens in early 2014.

The Office of Academic Services offers free workshops to University advisors on a variety of topics. November’s offerings in the Academic Advisor Development Program include:

The Office of International Programs is hosting the “Immigration Today Film and Discussion Forum,” a weekly event at 5:30 p.m., Mondays, through Nov. 18. The discussions are based upon “Harvest of Empire: The Untold Stories of Latinos in America,” a documentary film that explores the history of U.S. connections and immigration relationships to seven countries in Latin America, North America and the Caribbean.

The J. Murrey Atkins Library will hold a symposium on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 4-5, to promote the tenets of the Open Access (OA) movement in the publishing of scientific and scholarly literature.

Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. The international OA movement aims to create a more open system of scholarly communication by reducing barriers to the access, sharing and use of scholarship.

Jody Pressley, project leader for the Transportation Information Management System (TIMS), is featured in the November issue of School Bus Fleet magazine as one of “14 Phenomenal Women in School Transportation.”

UNC Charlotte Center City has received a prestigious award from the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

Chancellor Philip L. Dubois was notified by the museum earlier this month that UNC Charlotte Center City won the International Architecture Award for 2013. The project was submitted by architectural firm KieranTimberlake.

The UNC Charlotte chapter of Phi Kappa Phi recently received a Chapter of Merit Award, given to chapters that excel in recognizing and promoting academic excellence in all fields of higher education and engaging the community of scholars in service to others.

Jerry Coughter, executive director of UNC Charlotte Center City, recently climbed Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds to help eradicate polio worldwide.
Coughter made the excursion with a group of Rotarians from Charlotte Rotary District 7680. Rotary International sponsors the End Polio Now campaign. According to Coughter, Rotary International and its partners have raised funding to provide polio vaccine worldwide since 1985.

International Open Access Week is Monday, Oct. 21, through Sunday, Oct. 27, and the J. Murrey Atkins Library will hold a number of public events to promote the open access movement in the publishing of scientific and scholarly literature.