College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

UNC Charlotte’s School of Data Science, North Carolina’s first undergraduate program in data science, is now enrolling undergraduate students for the fall semester.

Julia Jordan-Zachery, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the Africana Studies Department, and the author of the award-winning book “Black Women, Cultural Images and Social Policy” and “Shadow Bodies: Black Women, Ideology, Representation and Politics.” She also serves as president of the Association for Ethnic Studies.

A UNC Charlotte study posed a basic question: What characteristics of forest bird species make them more or less vulnerable to urbanization?

Edward Perzel, 81, professor emeritus in the Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS), passed away on June 16, 2020, in Bristol, Tennessee. Perzel served as chair of the Department of History, president of the faculty and associate dean of what was then called the College of Arts and Sciences.

For individuals whose goals include biomedical school or in a career focused on innovative technologies in the life sciences, UNC Charlotte has added two new graduate certificates to help.The Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has developed graduate certificates in biomedical sciences and in biotechnology, in response to student and societal needs.

As an integral component of efforts to advance students’ knowledge and ability to thrive in a diverse, global society, UNC Charlotte will transition the Chinese language and culture programs of its Confucius Institute to the Department of Languages and Culture Studies in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences on Dec. 31, 2020.

Michael Desjardins ’16 M.A. ’19 Ph.D. said the training he received in the geography program at UNC Charlotte led him to a dream position at Johns Hopkins University.“I wouldn’t want to get the training anywhere else,” said Desjardins, a postdoctoral fellow in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, of his studies at UNC Charlotte. “I’m extremely happy with my advisors, the friends I’ve made, the support from other professors, the classes I took. All of that led to me being at Johns Hopkins, which was a dream.”

It only took 8 minutes and 46 seconds to end George Floyd’s life. Long enough for Black people to remember Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Long enough to recall the numbers of African Americans who died in police custody over the last decade.

Colleen Hammelman, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, has received a prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant to study population change and gentrification in urban foodscapes.

Associate Professor of English Juan Meneses will spend four weeks this summer in residency at the National Humanities Center in the Research Triangle Park completing the third chapter of his second book, tentatively titled “Denizens! On Foreigners, Visitors and Other Outsiders.”Meneses will join a select group of about 40 scholars from across the nation who were chosen to do research in residency at the center, with the timing guided by the state’s protocol on COVID-19.