Scholarship and Academic Life

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.

Daniel Grano and Margaret Quinlan, faculty members in the Department of Communication Studies, along with graduate student Elliot Hamer, will present “Did Race and Money Matter? Discrimination in the N.C. Eugenics Program” at 8 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 29, at the YWCA Central Carolinas, 3420 Park Rd.

North Carolina will have its fourth year of slow but uninterrupted economic growth in 2013, UNC Charlotte economist John Connaughton reported in his quarterly forecast for the state.
However, Connaughton cautioned that economic uncertainty in Europe and the ongoing negotiations on tax increases and the “fiscal cliff” may have a negative impact on the state and national economies in the coming year.

UNC Charlotte’s Center for the Study of the New South on will host “Without Sanctuary: A Conference on Lynching and the American South” Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 11-13. This event is in conjunction with the Levine Museum of the New South and its exhibit of photographs, postcards and narrative that explores one of the most horrific chapters of history.

UNC Charlotte will host more than 200 scholars from around the world at the first International Pragmatics Conference of the Americas and the fifth International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics.
Pragmatics, generally speaking, is the investigation of human language and communication. This joint conference is promoting theoretical and applied research in pragmatics, and will bring together scholars who are interested in different subfields of pragmatics. These include the philosophical, linguistic, cognitive, social, intercultural and interlanguage subfields.

James Tabor, chair of the Department of Religious Studies, is a well-recognized blogger by peers in the field. His TaborBlog was highlighted as the second most popular blog by the Biblioblog Top 50, a website that publicizes, ranks, and archives the top biblical studies blogs each month. Rankings are based on website analytics as well as votes by Biblioblog users.