Student Life

The scrum machine belonging to the UNC Charlotte Men’s and Women’s Rugby clubs has seen its best days. In fact, it’s in such poor condition that the men’s team has not used it this semester, said senior finance major Nathan Zima, treasurer of the national champion Men’s Rugby Club.

“It’s almost becoming a safety hazard to use it,” Zima said.

Food insecurity affects students on U.S. college campuses at a rate that is often higher than twice that of the general population. UNC Charlotte is no exception; in fact, during the 2017 fall semester, 303 students visited the Jamil Niner Student Pantry.

UNC Charlotte’s 49er Democracy Experience once again took the lead to communicate with students about the importance of voting in advance of Nov. 6 elections.

The semester’s largest registration event, #JoyofVoting, created a festival-like atmosphere where students played games, enjoyed free food and talked about the political situation; 49er Democracy Experience also registered 230 students to vote.

Brittany Hunt, a member of the Lumbee tribe, will serve as the keynote speaker for UNC Charlotte’s observance of American Indian Heritage Month. She will deliver remarks at 5 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 13, in the Popp Martin Student Union Theater.

A team of ethical hackers from UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) was recognized for devising the “Best Social Good Hack” at HackNC, an event held in collaboration with competitions at eight locations around the globe and featuring as many as 10,000 student hackers.

CCI’s team tackled the human trafficking epidemic. As an urban area with the intersection of two major interstate highways within its limits, Charlotte is particularly vulnerable to illegal trafficking of all kinds, but the rise of human trafficking is particularly distressing.

The UNC Charlotte Sports Analytics Club is partnering with the Charlotte Hornets to raise money to buy GPS tracking devices for the club’s work with University athletic teams.

UNC Charlotte’s chapter of Global Medical Brigades is bringing medical and business help to some of the world’s neediest communities.

In May 2019, members of the chapter will travel to Panama to deliver medical supplies, assist in medical care and offer financial support to businesses there.

Keeping her native land of Bangladesh close to her heart, Farida Yasmin has come to UNC Charlotte to research the woes of the soybean, which, as a critical global resource, provides more than half of the world’s vegetable oils and proteins.

Graduate students at UNC Charlotte are learning how to boil down extensive and complex research or scholarship into a brief, compelling presentation that anyone can understand – especially the boss. In November each year, students take what they’ve learned to the stage in the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition.

Students in the course Energy Analytics have been competing very successfully in international energy forecasting competitions for a number of years. This fall, the course instructor decided the Lee College of Engineering would host a competition of its own, and 142 data scientists from 26 countries have formed 81 teams for the first UNC Charlotte BigDEAL Forecasting Competition 2018.