Scholarship and Academic Life

The UNC Charlotte IDEAS Center will hold its third annual BioEnergy Symposium on Tuesday, April 9, in the Barnhardt Student Activity Center Salons.
This year, the symposium will focus on anaerobic technologies, considered a source of renewable energy as anaerobic digestion can produce a biogas. Mel Kurtz, president of quasar energy group, one of the nation’s industry leaders in creating affordable renewable energy by providing businesses with sustainable waste management strategies, will be the featured speaker during the opening session.

The J. Murrey Atkins Library will host its Undergraduate Research Conference on Friday, April 19. This conference is a University-wide showcase of research projects being completed by undergraduates from all levels and from all colleges/departments at UNC Charlotte. The deadline for undergraduates to enter the competition is Monday, April 1.

Scott Klemmer, an associate professor at Stanford University, will present “Teaching a Massive Open Online Class (MOOC) with Peer and Self Assessment” at 3:30 p.m., Thursday, March 28, in the College of Health and Human Services, Room 161.

The 13th annual Graduate Student Research Symposium will be Saturday, March 23, in Atkins Library.  Participants will vie for more than $7,000 in cash prizes with awards presented in multiple research categories that honor the work of University graduate students. 

People think of wind as an energy source with few limits, offering an unending power source with distinct capacity advantages over sources that deplete, such as fossil fuel.
Yet, new research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling by UNC Charlotte’s Amanda Adams and Harvard University’s David Keith, published Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the power capacity of large-scale wind farms may have been significantly overestimated.

Jeffrey Shears, director of the Social Work Research Consortium in the College of Health and Human Services Department of Social Work, recently participated in a national Web forum that examined the experience of black American families.
He was selected by the Urban Institute and Fathers Incorporated to participate in the forum, which was funded by the Open Society Foundation’s Campaign for Black Achievement. The event revisited the landmark 1965 analysis “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.”

Registration is open for the conference “Bridging the Gap Between Academic and Entrepreneurial Capital: Strategies for Success for Women and Under-represented Minorities,” scheduled for Tuesday, March 19, at UNC Charlotte Center City.
According to the UNC Charlotte ADVANCE Faculty Affairs and Diversity Office, which is co-hosting the conference, this event is designed to “educate female and minority faculty and students and interested community members about how they can translate their intellectual capital into entrepreneurial capital in innovative ways.”

The pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to self-regulate its direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising are “an industry-sponsored ruse,” intended to deflect criticism and collectively block new Federal regulation, according to a study in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

Carolina HealthCare System’s Levine Cancer Institute and UNC Charlotte will enter into a joint project to advance translational and clinical research in the field of pancreatic cancer, one of the most deadly forms of cancer.
The collaborative effort, called the Charlotte Pancreatic Cancer Project (CPCP), aims to foster more working relationships between physicians and scientists at both institutions by offering funding for innovative research ideas, submitted to and reviewed by a committee of their peers.

Incorporating Lean Six Sigma management methodology is relatively unknown in the legal world, but technology-driven Hunoval Law Firm in Charlotte is raising the bar.
Partnering with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Center for Lean Logistics and Engineered Systems, Hunoval Law is offering Lean Six Sigma training to its employees and has already incorporated its strategy into key business processes.