College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

Sarah Tracy, a professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, will present “Compassion in the Face of Terror” at 9 a.m., Tuesday, April 21, in the Student Union, Room 340 (A-E). This presentation is for the Communication Studies Week Spring Colloquium, sponsored by the Communication Studies Graduate Student Association and the Communication Studies Department’s graduate program.

On Friday and Saturday, April 17-18, plant lovers and gardeners can choose from a wide selection of native plants and exotic botanicals — wildflowers, trees and shrubs, perennials, carnivorous plants and tropical and indoor plants — at the largest sale of the year held by the Botanical Gardens.

Visitors looking for native plants will be able to take advantage of what should be an exceptional selection. The Botanical Gardens’ staff will be on hand to answer questions. Parking will be available near the McMillan Greenhouse (attendants will be on hand to direct).

The panel discussion “Gone ’Til November: Why the Judicial System Fails the Black American Male” will be at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, April 23, at UNC Charlotte Center City.

This event is the fifth program in the year-long series of public discussions “Real Talk: A Community Conversation – The Black American Male and Why He Still Matters in the 21st Century,” being presented by UNC Charlotte’s Center for the Study of the New South in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. The final installment “I am a Man! Black, Male and Gay” will be presented Thursday, May 21.

David Goldfield, the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History, will be a speaker for the Levine Museum of the New South program “150th Anniversary: End of the Civil War, Beginning of the New South.” This free event is set for 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 7, at the Levine Museum.

Goldfield will consider the vision of the New South in the 1860s and today in the talk “Looking Away: Re-remembering Southern History.”

Dena Shenk, professor of anthropology and graduate coordinator of the Gerontology Program, is the 2015 recipient of the Harshini V. de Silva Award; the honor is presented annually to a faculty member who best exemplifies de Silva’s commitment to graduate students.

Colleagues regard Shenk as an exceptional graduate mentor who has had an influential impact on the Gerontology Program.

In the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis (CF), the most severe symptoms are recurring episodes of lung inflammation and bacterial infection (known as “exacerbations”) that happen from one to three times a year and cause ever-increasing amounts of lung damage through the course of a CF patient’s life. While it is well understood that CF lung problems are ultimately due to bacterial infections encouraged by a CF patient’s abnormally thick mucus, medical science has been unable to define specific causes that trigger the periodic flare-ups.

A team of six UNC Charlotte students, led by faculty members Mona Azarbayjani from the School of Architecture and Michael Walter from the Department of Chemistry, will compete in the “People, Prosperity and Planet (P3) Student Design Competition for Sustainability” held by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Alexandria, Va., April 11-12.

Is it possible to define religion and enact laws regarding religious freedoms where there is no state-established religion? That question is the focus of UNC Charlotte’s 31st annual Loy Witherspoon Lecture in Religious Studies at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 2, in the Cone University Center, McKnight Hall.

Guest lecturer Winnifred Fallers Sullivan will present the free, public presentation “The Impossibility of Religious Freedom.”

Students from UNC Charlotte and other universities will present research on American, European and local history, along with digital history projects that complement student historical research, during the Graduate History Association’s 27th annual Graduate History Forum.

Graduate and undergraduate students will attend and present at the forum, which will be Friday and Saturday, March 27-28, in the Cone University Center.

The free community conversation featuring a medical professional and Serving in Mission (SIM) missionaries originally planned for February has been rescheduled for 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 7, at UNC Charlotte Center City.

“Fighting Ebola in West Africa: The Charlotte Connection” will feature Debbie Eisenhut, a SIM surgeon with the ELWA Hospital in Liberia; Nancy Writebol, a SIM missionary and Ebola survivor; and her husband David Writebol, also a SIM missionary.