College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

The UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens will offer “Bugs Beware! Carnivorous Plants of the Carolinas” Saturday, July 19.
Designed for children age 7 to 12, the workshop will focus on the what, why, where and how of carnivorous plants in the Carolinas. Prospective attendees can register for two options – a 90-minute session that includes a Venus fly-trap or the two-hour session that features hands-on construction of a 12-inch bog dish garden with Venus fly-trap, pitcher plant, sundew and bog moss.

Vivian Lord, a professor of criminal justice and criminology, will present “Suicide by Cop: Current Research and Implications for Law Enforcement Officers and Agencies” at 5 p.m., Tuesday, July 15, at the Belk Action Center at the Charlotte Chamber.
In this presentation, part of the UNC Charlotte Alumni Association Faculty Speaker Series, Lord will discuss real-world tactics that have been used successfully to resolve suicide-by-cop situations.

Wells Fargo has awarded a $50,000 grant to the Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI), an innovative partnership among Davidson College, UNC Charlotte, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). The purpose of this partnership is to empower classroom teachers through the cultivation of content knowledge, creativity, leadership and collaboration.

David Goldfield, the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History, will participate in the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s “Lunch at the Library” speaker series. His talk is scheduled for noon, Thursday, June 19, at the main library (310 N. Tryon St.).
Goldfield has written 16 books on the history of the American South, including “America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation.” Two of his works have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in history, and he serves as a consultant to museums and the U.S. Department of State on the social and political history of the South.

Oscar de la Torre, an assistant professor in the Department of Africana Studies, has received a 2015 fellowship from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University.

In May, David Goldfield, the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History, delivered lectures at three East China universities, drawing connections between 19th and 20th century economic and social developments and contemporary U.S. society. Goldfield is an academic specialist for the U.S. State Department; he leads seminars and workshops abroad on various aspects of American political culture.

The UNC Charlotte student chapter of an international city/county management will gather with government officials at a kick-off party 100 days before the association’s 100th annual conference in Charlotte.
“The kickoff party will give students an early opportunity to network and jump-start their careers in local government,” said Paarth Mehta, president of the student chapter of the International City/County Management Association. The chapter is affiliated with UNC Charlotte’s Gerald Fox Master of Public Administration program in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Oscar de la Torre, an assistant professor in the Department of Africana Studies, received a 2014 College Educators Research Fellowship from the UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
According to de la Torre, the fellowship will enable him to develop the course “Environment, State and Society in the Caribbean and Latin America.” He said the class will be transnational and comparative and will discuss issues “that are currently very controversial, such as the green revolution in agriculture or the impact of the drug traffic among Afro-descendants.”

Public Policy doctoral student Ada Uche recently received a 2014-15 American Educational Research Association (AREA) Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Educational Research. As part of the writing process, Uche utilized resources provided by UNC Charlotte’s Center for Graduate Life (CGL).

The Africana Studies Department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences will host its 12th annual symposium on Wednesday and Thursday, April 2-3.
This year’s symposium will focus on the topic of “Moral Economies.” According to Akin Ogundiran, chair of Africana studies, the goal of the two-day event is to diagnose and evaluate the rise in and ramifications of social inequality at the local and international levels despite increases in global wealth.