College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

Balaka Basu, a faculty member in the English Department, is co-editor of the recently published “Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers.” The book is the latest volume in Routledge’s Children’s Literature and Culture Series, and it includes a chapter by Basu titled “What Faction Are You In?  The Pleasure of Being Sorted in Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent.’”
Basu joined the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences faculty in 2013. She earned a doctorate in English from City University of New York; her bachelor’s degree is from Cornell University.  

Full understanding of how natural resources relate to rebel forces in the developing world is crucial to U.S. national security policy, and a Department of Defense-funded project at UNC Charlotte is expected to provide greater insights into the impact of those resources.
James Walsh and colleagues Beth Whitaker and Justin Conrad, all from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Department of Political Science and Public Administration, have received an $825,537 grant from the Department of Defense and its Minerva Initiative for the project “Natural Resources and Armed Conflict.”

The TweetChina project is designed to explore how China is discussed and represented on Twitter. China-related tweets were selected from several dozen billions of tweets archived by UNC Charlotte’s Charlotte Visualization Center and visually represented in map, picture, text and event modes.

Eric Heberlig, a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, will be a guest on WFAE’s “Charlotte Talks” on Thursday, July 18. The program, which airs live at 9 a.m. with a rebroadcast in the evening, will focus on the current North Carolina political scene.

Juan Vivero-Escoto, an assistant professor of chemistry, is the 2013 recipient of the Ralph Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associate Universities (ORAU), a 109-member university consortium affiliated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
Vivero-Escoto was among 30 winners in a pool of 147 applicants from consortium institutions. Only two faculty members per institution were permitted to apply; they underwent a highly competitive peer-review process organized by ORAU from among its members.

Many elementary students’ math performance improves when their teachers collaborate, work in professional learning communities or do both, yet most students don’t spend all of their elementary school years in these settings, according to a new study by UNC Charlotte researchers recently published in the journal Sociology of Education.

Cindy Crusto from the Yale University School of Medicine will speak on “The Impact of Trauma on Young Vulnerable Children: Implications for a Public Health Approach to Children’s Mental Health” at 11 a.m., Friday, May 24, in the Colvard Building, Room 3120, as part of the Health Psychology Speaker Series.

One way to understand what motivates and deters burglars is to ask them. UNC Charlotte researcher Joseph Kuhns from the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology did just that. He led a research team that gathered survey responses from more than 400 convicted offenders that resulted in an unprecedented look into the minds of burglars, providing insight into intruders’ motivations and methods.

Greg Wiggan, a faculty member in the College of Education, had the co-authored work “Following the Northern Star: Caribbean Identities and Education in North American Schools” released by Nova Publishers.

Jonathan Walz, assistant professor of anthropology at Rollins College, will speak on “Africa and the Indian Ocean: A Critical (Re)View and New Archaeological Perspective from Northeastern Tanzania” at 5 p.m., Monday, April 22, in the Denny Building, Room 200. This talk is part of the 2013 Spring Colloquium on African Civilization sponsored by the Africana Studies Department.
In an illustrated presentation, Walz will showcase historical research that is opening up insights on how Africans shaped ancient globalization in the Indian Ocean.