Community Engagement

How do Latinos and African Americans in Charlotte get along? They often live near each other and deal with similar issues, do they discuss them, or do the respective communities remain primarily to themselves?

The Southeastern United States is now the nation’s fastest-growing Latino region, with many historians calling this cultural shift the South’s biggest post-Civil Rights story. To better understand this powerful transformation, Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI), in conjunction with the Levine Museum of the New South, will explore the impacts of Latinos on the New South through its Exploding Canons interdisciplinary speakers program. This event is scheduled for 5:15 to 9 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 27, at the Levine Museum.

City Startup Labs (CSL) is establishing a Center of Excellence for Entrepreneurial Competency, Innovation and Leadership (CoE) at UNC Charlotte, in association with Ventureprise, a campus-based venture development organization.

The center will operate from Ventureprise offices in PORTAL. Ventureprise Inc. is a nonprofit corporation affiliated with UNC Charlotte that serves as a venture development organization for the University and the Charlotte region.

UNC Charlotte and Gaston County are working together on an effort to protect and monitor a key portion of the county’s water supply. Funded by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the “Healthy Wells” program will establish a public digital database of the county’s wells and promote the protection of private well water supplies.

UNC Charlotte and its Center for the Study of the New South, as part of a partnership with the Levine Museum of the New South, will host the Oct. 6 panel discussion “La Vida Latina: 21st Century Life in Charlotte.” The event will explore Charlotte’s Latina population and the opportunities and challenges Latinas encounter living in the Queen City and the Mid-South.

Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, will deliver a keynote address during the College of Computing and Informatics 16th annual Cyber Security Symposium on Wednesday, Oct. 14. A dedicated executive education program will be on Thursday, Oct. 15.

UNC Charlotte researcher Jürgen Buchenau explores the causes, dynamics, consequences and legacies of the Mexican Revolution in the work “Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution: Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century.”

 His most provocative conclusion is that the Mexican Revolution fundamentally reshaped global debates about human rights, in that the revolutionaries posited the existence of a series of social rights including the right to work, housing, food, medical care and education.

UNC Charlotte is joining University City Connect for its inaugural school supplies donation drive to benefit the schools that comprise Governor’s Village.

From Monday, Aug. 10, through Friday, Aug. 21, faculty, staff and students are encouraged to donate school items for students in the four Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that make up Governor’s Village: John M. Morehead STEM Academy, Nathaniel Alexander Elementary, James Martin Middle and Zebulon B. Vance High. These schools are located less than five miles from the University.

The College of Arts + Architecture will debut its Mobile Arts & Community Experience (MAX), a state-of-the-art mobile facility, on Friday, April 10, in a free, public celebration from 5 to 7 p.m. on Levine Avenue for the Arts. A “MAX Family Day” will follow on Saturday, April 11, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The college received a three-year, $350,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to support MAX’s design and construction.

A student volunteer venture to help veterans near Camp Lejeune this past fall recently earned the University the Outstanding Community Partner Award from the Southeast Rural Community Assistance Project (SERCAP).

This past fall, eight students from the University College/College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Learning Community participated in a SERCAP Volunteers for Communities Alternative Break Program. The volunteers, all freshmen, were Jessica Beavers, Selena Brown, Alyssa Finkelstein, Benjamin Iuliano, Hannah Javidi, Madison McKinnon, Edwin Ogachi and Sarah Payne.