Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine fall 2018

ARTS SCIENCES CAROLINA

FALL

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Science, Spirituality and Synergy in Nepal T H E

U N I V E R S I T Y

O F

N O R T H

C A R O L I N A

A T

C H A P E L

H I L L

FROM THE DEAN

A convergence of synergies

This fall, Carolina Kristen Chavez

celebrates its 225th birthday. Milestone anniversaries are natural times to reflect on how far we have come and where we want to go.

It’s been 2½ years since I became dean and more than a year since we adopted our Synergy Unleashed tag line and launched our strategic plan, A Road Map to Boldness. Everywhere around me, I see evidence that our faculty, staff and students have taken the Synergy Unleashed message to heart. You will certainly experience it in the pages that follow.

Synergy Unleashed means forming research teams that bring diverse skills — and unique perspectives — to the project at hand. That’s how two mathematicians, a marine scientist and a religious studies scholar teamed up to work through unexpected challenges on a remote mountaintop in Nepal.

Synergy Unleashed means reimagining environmental studies to leverage our strengths not only in the natural sciences but also adding the social sciences and humanities to the equation. That’s how our curriculum in environment and ecology became E3P — an even more interdisciplinary program, designed to prepare our students for diverse careers in resources management and energy.

Synergy Unleashed means being an oral historian who jumps at the opportunity when a cardiologist calls to ask if your tools can improve the health of rural North Carolinians. Or implementing a pilot program that empowers global studies students to assist with community-based research programs worldwide.

Carolina has a long and storied history that we are justly proud of, but I am convinced that our greatest accomplishments lie ahead. And we have a bold road map to get there.

Best,

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES | FALL 2018 | magazine.college.unc.edu

Director of Communications: Geneva Collins Editor: Kim Weaver Spurr ’88, Associate Director of Communications Staff Multimedia Specialist: Kristen Chavez ’13 Editorial Assistant: Lauryn Rivers ’21 Designer: Linda Noble Carolina Arts & Sciences is published semi-annually by the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and made possible with the support of private funds.

Copyright 2018. | College of Arts & Sciences, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Campus Box 3100, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3100 | 919-962-1165 | college-news@unc.edu

College of Arts & Sciences • •

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Kevin Guskiewicz, Dean Chris Clemens, Senior Associate Dean, Natural Sciences Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, Senior Associate Dean, Social Sciences and Global Programs Abigail Panter, Senior Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education Robert J. Parker, Jr., Senior Associate Dean, Development, and Executive Director, Arts & Sciences Foundation Terry Rhodes, Senior Associate Dean, Fine Arts and Humanities Kate Henz, Senior Associate Dean, Administration and Business Strategy

Arts & Sciences Foundation Board of Directors, Fall 2018 • • • • • •

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Sunny H. Burrows ’84, Atlanta, GA, Chair M. Steven Langman ’83, London, UK, Vice Chair Kevin M. Guskiewicz, Chapel Hill, NC, President Terry Rhodes ’78, Chapel Hill, NC, Vice President James Klingler ’98, ’99, Chapel Hill, NC, Treasurer Robert J. Parker, Jr., Chapel Hill, NC, Executive Director and Secretary Eileen Pollart Brumback ’82, New York, NY Thomas C. Chubb III ’86, Atlanta, GA G. Munroe Cobey ’74, Chapel Hill, NC Ann Rankin Cowan ’75, Atlanta, GA William R. Cumpston ’83, Monte Sereno, CA Joseph W. Dorn ’70, Washington, DC Luke E. Fichthorn IV ’92, Brooklyn, NY Druscilla French ’71, ’78, Chapel Hill, NC J. Henry Froelich III ’81, MBA ’84, Charlotte, NC Cosby Wiley George ’83, Greenwich, CT John C. Glover ’85, Raleigh, NC Henry H. Hamilton III ’81, Katy, TX William T. Hobbs II ’85, Charlotte, NC Steven H. Kapp ’81, MBA ’90, Philadelphia, PA Leon O. Livingston ’91, Memphis, TN Alexander D. McLean ’92, Memphis, TN John T. Moore ’88, Saint James, NY Andrea Ponti ’85, London, UK John A. Powell ’77, New Orleans, LA R. Alexander Rankin ’77, Goshen, KY Ashley E. Reid ’93, Greenwich, CT David S. Routh ’82, Chapel Hill, NC Linda C. Sewell ’69, Raleigh, NC Tready Arthur Smith ’92 BSBA, Tampa, FL Benjamin J. Sullivan, Jr. ’75, Rye, NY Patricia Rumley Thompson ’66, Atlanta, GA Marree Shore Townsend ’77, Greenwich, CT James A. Wellons ’86, Philadelphia, PA Elijah White Jr. ’84, Houston, TX J. Spencer Whitman ’90, Charlotte, NC Cecil W. Wooten III ’68, ’72, Chapel Hill, NC Alexander Nuri Yong ’90, New York, NY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Courtesy of Diego Riveros-Iregui

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Science, Spirituality and Synergy in Nepal

Two mathematicians, a marine

scientist and a religious studies

scholar traveled to the Himalayas

to study the effects of climate

change on Buddhist holy lakes.

More features: Saving lives through stories 8

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Conserving sacred portals of the Yucatán

New name, new emphasis for environmental program 16

Kristen Chavez

Plus:

Avett Brothers’ Joe Kwon,

a new neuroscience major,

Scottish Gaelic studies,

record-breaking fundraising

and an artist's tribute to

Carolina’s 225th birthday

Departments 20-23

Student, Alumni and Faculty Up Close

Cover Photo

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The Scoop

Early morning clouds are

reflected in a blue pool on the

Ngozumba glacier in the Gokyo

Valley of Nepal, with the twin peaks

of Cholatse and Arakam Tse visible

in the background.

(Photo by Roberto Camassa)

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Carolina Quoted

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Chapter & Verse

inside back cover

Finale

Stay Connected to the College via web, social media Magazine: magazine.college.unc.edu News: college.unc.edu Social media: @unccollege Dean Guskiewicz on Twitter: @unccollegedean

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SCIENCE, SPIRITUALITY AND SYNERGY IN NEPAL

By Kim Weaver Spurr ‘88

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Photos by Rich McLaughlin and Roberto Camassa

In a three-week journey from Chapel Hill to the Himalayas to study the effects of climate change on Buddhist holy lakes, two mathematicians, a marine scientist and a religious studies scholar overcame multiple challenges and proved the value of an interdisciplinary team.

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“It is not the mountains that we conquer, but ourselves.”

— S I R E D M U N D H I L L A R Y, F I R S T C L I M B E R A L O N G W I T H S H E R PA T E N Z I N G N O R G AY TO R E AC H T H E S U M M I T O F M O U N T E V E R E S T

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athematics department chair Rich McLaughlin begins the interview this way: “Let me give you the 20,000-foot view of this trip — the highlights and the headaches.”

It is an appropriate analogy, given that he has just returned from a spring 2018 trip to the Gokyo Lakes in Nepal, the highest freshwater lakes in the world at an elevation of about 15,000 feet. They are in Sagarmatha National Park, a protected area in the Himalayas that is dominated by Mount Everest.

It was an expedition two years in the making, when McLaughlin first ran into Lauren Leve, an associate professor of religious studies and an anthropologist, at a Carrboro restaurant. McLaughlin and Kenan Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Roberto Camassa, experts in fluid dynamics, were interested in studying the effects of climate change on pristine, high-altitude lakes. How are melting glaciers modifying the physical and biological properties of these lakes, which are sacred to the Buddhist tradition?

Leve, an expert in Himalayan Buddhism, has spent 28 years conducting research in Nepal. They started talking • The village of Gokyo is visible from along the trail to Gokyo Ri, a mountain peak above lake 3, the holiest of the lakes. continued

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and agreed, “wouldn’t it be fun if we could work on a project together?”

They asked marine sciences professor Harvey Seim, whose fieldwork spans the North Carolina coast to the Galápagos, to join the team. They received financial support through the Fostering Interdisciplinary Research Explorations (FIRE) Grant. The awards program, funded by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, is now called the Arts and Humanities Research Grant.

“The airlines lost our instruments. We departed for the trek with only half of our scientific equipment. It was later found and delivered to us on the third day of the hike, but it was damaged,” McLaughlin said. “Then, to make things more interesting, even though we had acquired the scientific permits ahead of time, once we arrived there was a skirmish between the local municipality, the federal government and the national park. They could not agree about us taking a boat out on the lakes.”

McLaughlin was also battling knee problems, although cortisone shots, braces and hiking poles helped. In addition, he has a fear of heights yet had to cross six suspension bridges about 1,000 feet high to reach the group’s final destination.

(Fans of Indiana Jones’ bridge battle in the Temple of Doom may appreciate the mental picture this conjures.)

After the team returned to the United States, they had to wait two weeks for two bags — containing important scientific equipment and water samples — to clear customs.

A SCIENTIFIC AND SPIRITUAL EXPEDITION After leaving Raleigh-Durham International Airport, four flights, 40 hours and almost 8,000 miles later, the UNC team arrived at Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Lukla, by way of Kathmandu. The tiny airport in eastern Nepal is named for Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, who were the first to summit Mount Everest. It is the point where most people begin the climb to Mount Everest Base Camp, and it was the starting point for the team’s trek. Condé Nast Traveler called it one of the most dangerous airports in the world due to its short runway and steep dropoff, high elevation at nearly 9,500 feet, and unpredictable winds and weather.

Accompanied by a national park apprentice, Sherpas and guides, it took them six days (including one day of rest/ acclimation) to hike to the Gokyo Lakes, at a pace of about 10 miles per day. In addition to supplies and scientific equipment, they lugged a large inflatable raft they hoped to float on the lakes. There are six main lakes, and the UNC team planned to study three of them.

The Himalayas serve as the source of drinking water for 800 million people, and that statistic hit home for Seim. The

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• TOP: Yaks are a common means of carrying supplies to Gokyo Lakes. • BOTTOM: Guide Deep Rai (left) prepares lunch for the team at a lodge in Kyangjuma on the fourth day of the trek. • FACING PAGE, TOP: The snowy peaks of Thamserku and Kangtega were among the journey’s many breathtaking views. • FACING PAGE, BOTTOM: The Nepal research team pauses for a photo in Machherma.

Gokyo Lakes are also an internationally recognized Ramsar Site by UNESCO, meaning they are protected wetlands for waterfowl.

“The Gokyo Lakes lie next to Ngozumba glacier, the largest glacier in Nepal, yet it’s unclear whether they are fed by that glacier,” said Seim, who faced bouts of altitude sickness during the trip. “So one of the biggest questions we were

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trying to understand is the lakes’ water source.”

As the glaciers melt, they can create glacial lake outburst floods or GLOFs, one of the most hazardous impacts of climate change, and that can cause flooding of settlements downstream.

Understanding what’s happening in this one remote corner of the world can offer lessons for global warming in other places, Camassa said.

“It’s like a fast-forward movie of what’s happening with climate change everywhere,” he said.

The lakes are also extremely important to the Buddhist faith.

Leve laid the groundwork for interviewing local people about their understanding of the impacts of climate change. She also became a critical cultural translator when the group ran into major roadblocks days into the research expedition.

Negotiating with the competing parties involved in granting research permissions fell right in line with her research, which looks at religion as a window into understanding cultural change.

The Khumbu region, where the Gokyo Lakes lie, is the ancestral home of the Sherpa people, who are known for their Buddhist piety (as well as their skill as mountain guides). For Himalayan Buddhists, the physical environment is occupied by a variety of supernatural creatures who inhabit the natural landscape and protect the people. Their presence renders the earth itself sacred, and the particular sites where they live, like mountains and lakes, are carefully protected.

“Purity is very important there,” Leve said. “While putting a boat on the lake was not seen as actively immoral, it was certainly not traditional behavior. We were asking to do something that required bringing the secular and scientific into a very sacred domain.”

To add to the complexity of the issue, Nepal is also undergoing a political transformation to a more democratic form of government — and local people are being encouraged to exercise their indigenous rights.

“The fact that local people were actually demanding to be at the table and have their values respected was a good thing,” she said. “It’s a conversation that needs to be happening.”

After some intense discussions, the researchers were allowed to do research on lakes 2, 3 and 4, but they agreed not to take a boat on lake 3, the holiest of the lakes. Before they went out on two of the lakes, they performed a Buddhist ceremony (puja), where they asked the resident deities for forgiveness for infringing on the sacred space and promised that their intentions were good.

“It was a very scientific journey, but it became very spiritual, too,” McLaughlin said. “It was eye-opening and humbling.”

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MAKING MEASUREMENTS Seim is an experienced field scientist and oceanographer who is adept at problemsolving on the fly. Still, he conducts most of his research on a motorized boat, not an inflatable raft.

“We had been warned that the winds could get strong, and they did,” said Seim. During the trip, the group endured rain, snow, heavy fog and unpredictable weather. “At times, we had to have people paddling while we were trying to stay in place because the anchor wasn’t holding.”

The group used a variety of scientific tools to collect important data on the lakes, including: • An echosounder, to measure depth of the lakes • An acoustic Doppler current profiler, or ADCP, to measure water currents and internal waves • A special profiler, designed in the UNC Fluids Lab by the team, UNC undergraduate Matthew Hurley, lab manager Jim Mahaney and postdoctoral fellow Pierre-Yves Passaggia, to measure temperature, conductivity, pressure and turbidity • Thermistors, to measure lake temperature and pressure at different depths • A water sampler, to collect inflow/outflow samples.

One of the more dramatic immediate findings was from lake 4. Kathmandu University researcher Subodh Sharma had measured its depth at 62 meters in 2009. The UNC team measured it at 45 meters. Sharma, a professor in the department of environmental sciences and engineering, had visited UNC last April to share his research.

“This giant lake has drained substantially,” McLaughlin said.

After multiple attempts, including battling an anchor line that was tangled up with the instruments, a series of thermistors was deployed on lake 4. They will remain in place for about 15 months, taking measurements every 15 minutes.

THE VALUE OF THE INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAM In summing up the challenges that they ultimately overcame, Leve puts it simply: “It was kind of a disaster, but a beautiful disaster.”

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“None of us could have done this alone. It was far more valuable in the end, facing the challenges that we did,” Leve said. “What we encountered was an amazing case study in the ways that religion and politics and government and science are fundamentally interwoven. It allowed us to look at the ways people are actually making choices and creating meaning in their everyday lives around the issue of climate change.”

McLaughlin admitted that he would not have believed before their journey that what they had put in a grant proposal — the value of an interdisciplinary team — would have been so essential.

“We went halfway around the world, built all of these

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are interested in the convergence of natural and social sciences,” Seim said. “Despite the challenges it presented while we were there, I think it presents opportunities for moving forward.”

Camassa, who is from Milan, grew up hiking and climbing in the Alps. Seeing this part of the world was a dream come true for him. He praised the adaptability, flexibility and strength of the diverse UNC team.

“We got along so well, and Lauren was instrumental in getting our thoughts across in Nepali,” he said. “I think our interdisciplinary team really saved the expedition.”

On the trek back to Lukla, the researchers gave a presentation to the national park service and shared what they were able to accomplish. They also hosted a dinner party for local representatives and park officials.

CONTINUING THE JOURNEY

• TOP: From left, Harvey Seim, Roberto Camassa, Lauren Leve and Rich McLaughlin at a Buddhist shrine in Kathmandu. • BOTTOM: The colorful streets of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city. • FACING PAGE, TOP: The team takes a raft out on lake 4; its murky color contrasts starkly with the vivid blue of lake 3. • FACING PAGE, BOTTOM: One of the porters prepares the Buddhist ceremony that is required before the team can head out on the lake.

instruments, then found out there was a very good chance we might not be able to do the research,” he said. “It was absolutely the case where the team was greater than the sum of the individual parts.”

The political dynamics of interacting with the locals and the park service were familiar to Seim given his experiences on the North Carolina coast and in the Galápagos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“I think it’s a common issue, and I know various groups

Now that the UNC crew is back home, they are expanding their interdisciplinary team. Jaye Cable, professor and chair of the new Environment, Ecology and Energy Program (E³P) [see story on pages 16-18] will be working with Seim to analyze the collected samples to determine the lakes’ water source and to get a better picture of the interconnectivity of the water basins.

The team will return to the Himalayas in fall 2019 to retrieve the thermistors and learn how the water level of the lake varied in the 15 months since their initial visit. They hope that the instruments will survive two monsoon seasons and freezing temperatures. They will likely wait to publish the results until they gather the 2019 data and have a more complete picture.

Meanwhile, they are trying to raise money to support math and science education in a primary school founded by their Nepal trek senior guide, Deep Rai, in the rural village where he grew up.

And Leve will be working with community leaders and the national park service in Nepal to help them develop a set of best practices for future researchers.

“This will be our legacy, a gift that will affect all researchers going forward so that their work can be done in a more culturally respectful way,” she said.

The UNC team also asked the local people what they most cared about in terms of protecting the lakes, and water quality surfaced as a top issue. They will be reaching out to other experts at UNC to see if they can help with this. The approach of conducting research with rather than on communities is important to Leve, who previously helped develop an interdisciplinary UNC Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research.

“Our Nepal project became a meaningful collective inquiry,” she said. “As the University thinks about its mission of serving people in the world, this is a great example of what can be done.” ➤ See more photos @unccollege on Facebook.

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Cardiologist’s research sparks collaboration SOHP’s focus on health began with a phone call Seidman received in 2016 from UNC cardiologist Ross J. Simpson Jr., who leads SUDDEN, a research program investigating sudden unexpected death among adults ages 18-64 that occurs outside of a hospital.

“Our key finding was that sudden death is common. In Wake County, it accounts for 10 percent of all deaths under 65,” Simpson said. “We’ve been developing a data set trying to understand why people die suddenly and unexpectedly so that we can develop interventions.” continued

• 1: A summer boot camp trained students in oral history best practices. • 2: Harnett County was one of the locations where students conducted interviews. • 3: A table is set up for an interview at CommWell Health in Dunn. • 4: SOHP received a Humanities for the Public Good grant to fund work in rural North Carolina communities. • 5: From left, summer 2018 field researchers Anna Freeman, Chadwick Dunefsky, Joanna Ramirez, Emmanuel Lee, Nick Allen, Maddy Kameny and Caroline Efird. • 6: The Rev. William Kearney and geography Ph.D. candidate Darius Scott in Warrenton. • 7: Warrenton was where field researcher Anna Freeman, who is majoring in public policy, spent time. • 8: The Family Eye Center in Warrenton.

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Joanna Ramirez

The new research initiative aims to uncover how Southerners have experienced health care and interacted with the medical community throughout their lives. The stories will be used to inform research, practice and policy by helping health care providers develop more effective interventions, policymakers improve the health care system and patients experience better health.

“We dare to hope that we can use history to help save lives,” said SOHP Director Rachel F. Seidman.

addy Kameny had read research about the prejudice that AfricanAmerican women often face when expressing their health concerns. But she nonetheless found it harrowing to hear a Dunn patient’s personal account.

“She had extremely high pain levels, but her pain was not taken seriously,” recalled Kameny, a master’s candidate in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. “When she demanded that her situation be investigated more seriously, they found she had a bad gallbladder that had to be removed. It had been bad for a long time.”

The patient’s story is one of 40 captured by UNC-Chapel Hill graduate and undergraduate students last summer as part of a major new interdisciplinary research initiative of the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Since 1973, SOHP has brought history to life through more than 6,000 interviews with Southerners, from politicians to activists, business owners to millworkers, educators to artists.

Archived online and at Wilson Library’s Southern Historical Collection, the interviews offer a rare glimpse into the lived experiences of people and the South over nearly a century.

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The Southern Oral History Program launches a major research initiative — to collect oral histories in rural North Carolina communities that inform health care research, practice and policy.

Kristen Chavez

SAVING LIVES THROUGH STORIES

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Simpson and colleagues looked across campus for help, eventually discovering the SOHP. “Ross asked if oral history could help,” Seidman recalled. “I was so struck by the notion of a cardiologist asking me if we could help him. I said, ‘I don’t know but let’s find out.’”

The two looked first to SOHP’s archives. Simpson and then-SOHP Director Malinda Maynor Lowery received a 2017 UNC Fostering Interdisciplinary Research Explorations Grant to fund the effort. The research team identified nearly 200 SOHP interviews containing health-related narratives and mined a subset to learn more.

Several themes emerged that offered insights into why sudden death might occur. Interviewees described a lack of proactivity in seeking medical help, a sense of surrender to what they felt was inevitable illness and death, and oneway communication between doctor and patient.

While the research revealed interesting anecdotes, it pointed to a need for focused oral history research that dug deeply into questions previous researchers did not ask about people’s lives.

advocate for your loved ones,” she said.

“I realized how difficult it must be to advocate across cultural, racial and class boundaries.”

With credentials in history, not health or medicine, Seidman reached out across campus to faculty and graduate students from nursing, public health, social medicine, medical anthropology and other disciplines to serve on an advisory team that would inform the research project.

Seidman and colleagues received support for last summer’s research from the Critical Issues Project Fund of UNC’s Humanities for the Public Good, an initiative funded in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to catalyze publicly engaged humanities scholarship. The Center for the Study of the American South, of which SOHP is a part, provided some funding, and SOHP also tapped funds provided by program donors Robert Conrad and the Plambeck and Vogel families.

The project launched in May and recruited seven graduate and undergraduate students from a range of disciplines — literature, public health, public policy, history and geography — to interview and videotape residents and health care workers in Harnett, Orange, Stanly and Warren counties.

An oral history boot camp trained students in best practices, and students, community partners and advisers developed questions that would frame their interviews — about people’s lives, families and communities over time.

Community partners in the four counties then connected interns with people to interview.

SOHP graduate field scholars are transcribing and archiving the interviews this academic year to help Seidman’s team plan the next phase.

She hopes to secure funding for a threeto-five-year research project that will collect as many as 250 interviews.

“I’m hopeful that practitioners and medical care providers will be able to learn — just like Ross and his team — about their communities and what they need and want from the health care system,” Seidman said.

Personal experiences fuel the flame At the same time Seidman began collaborating with Simpson, events in her own life brought the issue of health care to the fore. Her daughter, a public policy major at UNC with a passion for rural health care, interned at CommWell Health. The community health clinic opened in 1977 to serve migrant workers but now provides comprehensive health and wellness services across southeastern North Carolina.

At her daughter’s urging, Seidman visited the clinic’s Dunn location. “I was so impressed by the work they were doing and their holistic approach to health care,” Seidman said.

Meanwhile, Seidman’s brotherin-law developed leukemia, battled it for more than a year and died. “While I was in the hospital with him, I was struck by that experience of having to

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Students, clinicians, academics benefit For Kameny, who conducted the interviews with employees and clients of CommWell Health, the experience has opened her eyes to the value of oral history and interdisciplinary collaboration.

“While big data can tell us a lot … understanding the richness of the individual experience before developing initiatives is vital,” Kameny said.

Public health Ph.D. student Caroline Efird, who conducted interviews of residents in Stanly County, was struck by stories shared by a 94-year-old woman who recalled working 12 hours a day in the fields of her parents’ tobacco farm and only recently stopped mowing her threeacre lawn and climbing a ladder to clean gutters.

“Connecting with communities on the face-to-face level is something that I hope to maintain throughout my career,” Efird said. “I hope that these stories will be shared with policymakers at the state level.”

Lisa McKeithan, director of HIV-related programs and services at CommWell Health, said the oral history project provides an opportunity to learn about the people she serves and, hopefully, to reach more people with greater impact.

“Knowing our patients, their attitudes, their beliefs and core values, and their hopes for the future will give us further insight into how we can provide better care for them,” McKeithan said.

For Simpson, the cardiologist who contacted Seidman, the experience has opened the door to a new approach for problem solving.

“We approach problems differently — we don’t even use the same language,” he said. ”It was really invigorating for me to see how we could work together.”

Seidman agreed.

“There are a lot of people at the University who are interested in the interdisciplinary work of bringing humanities to bear on questions of health and wellness,” she said. “Part of my hope for this project is that it can continue to be a place where we can learn from each other, share our work and build toward something even bigger.”

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• 1: Southern Oral History Program Director Rachel Seidman. • 2: Interview participants Ysaura Rodriguez and Claudia Garrett in Dunn.

• 3: The former Warrenton Community Center. • 4: Tools of the trade used to conduct interviews in Harnett, Orange, Stanly and Warren counties.

• 5: English and comparative literature master’s student Nick Allen participates in the boot camp. • 6: Master’s in public health student Joanna Ramirez visited Dunn for fieldwork. • 7: SOHP Director Rachel Seidman was inspired by the work at CommWell Health in Dunn. • 8: Public health Ph.D. student Caroline Efird conducted interviews in Stanly County.

Joanna Ramirez

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CENOT Conserving sacred portals An international team of scholars, students and educators, led by two anthropologists from UNC-Chapel Hill, are teaching schoolchildren in Mexico about preserving stunning underground formations known as cenotes.

By Patty Courtright (B.A. ’75, M.A. ’83)

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exico’s lush Yucatán peninsula is like an enormous sponge strewn with thousands of holes, all connected to a vast underground freshwater system.

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OTES of the Yucatán

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These sinkholes, or cenotes (si-no-tes), have formed as the porous limestone bedrock shelf has collapsed through the centuries, creating cavernous wells. Some are deep natural freshwater pools; others are filled with rich, dark soil that’s been fertilized by the aquifer below. All are part of the lifeblood of the area.

To the ancient Maya, cenotes were more than a vital source of water: They were sacred portals to the underworld.

These exquisite formations are still an important water source today, as well as popular tourist attractions.

Unfortunately, pollution, climate change and tourism are taking a toll that left unchecked could endanger this unique feature of the Yucatán landscape.

Because the cenotes — numbering an estimated 6,000 or more — are interconnected, whatever happens to one ultimately affects them all.

Carolina researchers hope to reverse this decline.

With funding from a National Geographic Bold Ideas grant, Patricia McAnany and Dylan Clark from the College of Arts & Sciences are steering a collaborative project geared toward educating Yucatec schoolchildren ages 11 to 14. The goal is to channel their enthusiasm and emerging social consciousness into advocacy for conserving the cenotes and the subterranean aquifer.

McAnany, Kenan Eminent Professor of Anthropology, has conducted field research and cultural heritage programs throughout the Maya region and is the Yucatec Cenotes project’s principal investigator. continued • Cenote Agua Dulce in Yucatán, Mexico.

These unique formations serve as water sources and tourist attractions.

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Khristin Landry-Montes

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designed to complement the schools’ existing instructional programs.

“Working directly with the teachers to translate the underwater exploration data provided by the National Geographic researchers into something middle school students can digest — and that connects to things they’re already doing — is incredibly exciting,” Clark said.

Turning a project proposal into multiple finished products in the course of a year is an ambitious undertaking.

The groundwork was laid last spring when Clark and Batun-Alpuche met with the corps of researchers to explore options for hands-on science activities, student-led oral histories and student exhibitions. The fieldwork began in earnest during the summer.

The UNO undergraduates serve as teaching assistants, regularly going into the communities to help the teachers use the new resources. The addition of the two undergraduates from Carolina was serendipitous.

The UNC students are part of the UNC curriculum in global studies’ pilot program of global investigators, in which students are deployed to assist with community-based research projects Leslie Morales

To cultivate these budding conservationists, the UNC-Chapel Hill researchers are tapping into broad expertise in the United States and Mexico.

Clark is a Mesoamerican archaeologist and the program director of InHerit: Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present (in-herit.org), which was founded by McAnany and emphasizes collaboration with indigenous people in archaeological research. He and Ivan Batun-Alpuche, of the Universidad de Oriente (UNO) in Valladolid, Yucatán, are the project’s co-coordinators.

They are working with National Geographic Society explorers from the Great Maya Aquifer Project who have conducted underwater surveys of cenotes, as well as secondary school teachers and directors in nine communities near cenotes. Two undergraduate students from Carolina and nine from UNO also are working with the local educators.

The goal is to create a hands-on educational program that is both comprehensive and relevant in three key areas: oral history and folklore, science and safety, and archaeology and heritage. When the bilingual (Spanish and Yucatec Mayan) curriculum modules are complete in early 2019, they will include detailed lesson plans, workbooks, student activities and online resources, all

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worldwide. The Yucatec Cenotes project was one of two projects selected this year.

“These students, both of whom are bilingual, have been fantastic,” Clark said.

Sofia McCarthy, a senior majoring in information science and geography, and Leslie Crisostomo-Morales, a sophomore global studies and public policy major who is of Maya descent, spent the better of June working with the teachers and students.

They conducted planning activities, organized and transcribed interviews and helped implement a key activity known as photo-voice.

Through photo-voice, students were supplied with digital cameras and given free rein to photograph whatever

they thought was important about the cenotes. As the students talked about their photos, they provided valuable insight for the researchers to design additional activities.

The Carolina global investigators are bringing the benefits of their field experience back home. CrisostomoMorales is applying the conservation principles she learned toward her current environmental science class, and McCarthy is putting the datagathering experience to use in her upcoming capstone project.

The UNO students seem most intrigued by the oral history aspect of the project — and the bonds it renews between young people and community elders. Because many young people are leaving the communities for more

• BOTTOM ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Middle school students working on a cenote activity in the community of Tixhualactún, Yucatán. • (From left): Dylan Clark, Biff Hollingsworth, Bryan Giemza and Khristin Landry-Montes at the ancient Maya site of Ek’ Balam. • (From left): Project co-coordinator Dylan Clark with UNC global investigators Sofia McCarthy and Leslie Crisostomo-Morales and principal investigator Patricia McAnany.

Courtesy of Patricia McAnany

Khristin Landry-Montes

Patricia McAnany

• TOP ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Cenote Yax Ek’ in Kaua, Yucatán. • Stalactites in Cenote X'kekén near Valladolid, Yucatán. • Middle school students from Kaua, Yucatán, participate in a photovoice exercise.

They are taking photos of Cenote Yax Ek’, which means “green star.”

Yucatec Cenotes project.

“I believe that archaeologists have a responsibility to make what we do both beneficial to communities and collaborative with them. Otherwise it can seem like a very colonial enterprise,” said McAnany, who believes that Carolina is a leader in this type of participatory research.

To have real-world application, she added, an endeavor should honor the past and have real implications for the future. That’s the ultimate goal of the Yucatec Cenotes project: to provide teachers with a suite of practical activities that reinforce the importance of cenotes and their role in sustaining the Yucatán’s fragile water supply.

Then it’s in the hands of the next generation.

lucrative vocations elsewhere, the connection between generations has become tenuous. The hope is that knowledge passed down through oral history can forge a shared understanding once again.

Staff members from University Libraries’ Southern Historical Collection have stepped in to help by creating community-based oral history kits through the “Archivist in a Backpack” project for the students.

Biff Hollingsworth and Bryan Giemza went to the Yucatán in July to train the teachers in conducting oral histories and integrating them into the classroom.

Connection and collaboration, two tenets of McAnany’s research philosophy, are at the heart of the

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Jintong Wu

NEW NAME, NEW EMPHASIS, FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAM

By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88

• ABOVE: Students traveled to the Galápagos last summer for fieldwork in tropical ecohydrology and environmental chemistry processes with UNC faculty members Diego Riveros-Iregui and Will Vizuete. • FACING PAGE, TOP: The UNC Clean Tech Summit provides a forum for students to network with clean-tech industry leaders. • FACING PAGE, BOTTOM: Noreen McDonald, chair of city and regional planning, teaches students how social scientists play an important role in environmental solutions.

A new interdisciplinary program in Environment, Ecology and Energy (E3P) will leverage the College’s strengths in natural sciences, social sciences and humanities to teach students how to best manage resources in an ever-changing world.

G

reg Gangi started the UNC Clean Tech Summit process to enhance and expand the pre-existing curriculum in five years ago to connect students with clean-tech environment and ecology. thought leaders in academia, government and industry.

“There is a huge clean-tech presence in the Research About 400 students attend the two-day, on-campus event each year, with students from 10 universities represented at last spring’s summit.

Gangi, who received his Ph.D. in ecology from UNCChapel Hill in 1999, joined the faculty in 2000. Today he serves dual roles as teaching associate professor in the Environment, Ecology and Energy Program (nicknamed E³P) and associate director for education at the UNC Institute for the Environment. He has led students on environmental field studies around the world.

Gangi is excited about the growing opportunities to connect students to careers in the clean-tech industry as part of E³P, which launched in July after a lengthy strategic planning

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Triangle Park area,” Gangi said. “Students should see RTP as a potential career destination — they no longer have to go to New York, D.C. or California.”

Carolina students are creative and passionate and want to save the world, said Jaye Cable, a marine scientist who chairs the new program, “and we want to help them do that.”

“We are teaching them how to think outside the box through multiple disciplines and to consider different perspectives and find new paths,” she said.

Student interest in environmental science at both the undergraduate and graduate levels has more than doubled in the past decade, Cable added. In the past environmental science majors might have wound up at a natural resources

C A ROL IN A ART S & SC IEN C ES

Jon Gardiner

A new EcoStudio incubator in Venable Hall is providing students, regardless of major, with on-campus experiential learning opportunities.

Undergraduate students are paired with faculty and graduate student advisers to work on environmentally focused projects.

Udo Reisinger

Tapping UNC’s strengths in social sciences and humanities

department, but today’s students are also working at energy startups and writing for Outside magazine.

“They’re going into graduate programs in analytics, biogeochemistry, journalism, public policy and more,” she said.

The new program will focus on interdisciplinary research challenges such as coastal and hazards resilience, natural resources, biodiversity and ecology, and environment and development. It will emphasize experiential education opportunities. Students can currently participate in field sites offered in partnership with the Institute for the Environment in the Triangle, Outer Banks, Morehead City and Highlands in North Carolina, as well as established programs abroad in Thailand and the Galápagos. International field studies have also been conducted in Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Siberia. Closer to home, students have undertaken research in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

E³P will develop stronger alliances with social sciences and humanities departments in the College as well as UNC’s professional schools. The program already offers dual bachelor’s/master’s degrees with the schools of Media and Journalism, Information and Library Science and Government — and provides a pathway to a master’s in the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

To understand the importance of social sciences to environmental solutions, think of a topic that sounds as simple as constructing bike lanes, said Noreen McDonald, chair of the department of city and regional planning.

There are technological and engineering aspects to consider, but adding bike lanes to roadways affects communities — and the issue can be controversial.

“We can’t change the future without understanding how best to implement new solutions,” McDonald said. “Social scientists ask questions about what communities want and how they’ve been included in the design and layout of the bike routes.”

E³P’s focus fits well with the research and teaching passions of Rachel Willis, a professor of American studies, who is helping port communities worldwide understand the impacts of climate change.

Her new APPLES service-learning course, “Rising Waters: Strategies for Resilience to the Challenges of Climate and the Built Environment,” is offered this fall. Another course, “Global Waters, American Impacts and Critical Connections,” was specifically designed to address cross-discipline issues, ranging from health effects to infrastructure planning.

“The impact of the environment on people and the planet demands that we include the humanities, especially the visual and performing arts, in communicating the challenges and choices ahead effectively to wider audiences,” Willis said.

An expanded focus on energy Teaching assistant professor Leda Van Doren, who was recently hired to teach courses in energy, comes from both an academic and an industry background.

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Kristen Chavez

Jon Gardiner

• TOP: Greg Gangi has led students on environmental field studies around the world. • BOTTOM: Jaye Cable, chair of E³P, says the new program is teaching students to think outside the box and pursue nontraditional career paths.

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Courtesy of E3P

Van Doren received master’s and Ph.D. degrees in environmental engineering and energy, respectively, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, and she had a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University.

She also worked for the U.S. Department of Energy, where she developed methods for designing sustainable algal biofuels production processes.

This fall she’s teaching a senior capstone course as part of the Chancellor’s Three Zeros Environmental Initiative, where students will work on updating the campus greenhouse gas inventory and developing guidelines to reduce emissions.

E³P will also be hiring five new faculty members to expand interdisciplinary programming in key areas including cities and critical infrastructure; energy and energy analytics; environment, development and economics; inequality and the environment; and water resources and hydrology.

“Energy is interdisciplinary by nature, so it’s a great fit,” Van Doren said. “We are trying to identify all of the collaborations we might explore at UNC.” ➤ Learn more at e3p.unc.edu.

• From left, Liza Schillo, Greg Gangi and Jaye Cable at the May 2018 graduation ceremony for the curriculum for environment and ecology.

Environmental grads find rewarding careers in sustainability, energy

BY K I M W E AV E R S P U R R ’ 8 8

Alumnae Liza Schillo ’07 and Morgan Zemaitis ’17 appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of their Carolina degrees, an aspect that has fueled their rewarding careers in sustainability and energy.

Schillo, who received a B.A. in environmental studies, is manager of product sustainability at Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco. Zemaitis, who received a B.S. in environmental science with a minor in mathematical decision sciences, is an analyst in Enterprise Energy Solutions with Insight Sourcing Group in Atlanta.

Both returned to campus last spring — Zemaitis to the UNC Clean Tech Summit and Schillo as the speaker for the environment and ecology curriculum’s graduation ceremony.

Zemaitis, who was a Morehead-Cain Scholar, had internships with a sustainable development NGO in Uganda and a utility company in San Francisco. She also worked on research in the UNC Energy Frontier Research Center.

“The benefit of consulting is I get to see how energy and sustainability impact all levels of a corporation,” she said.

Zemaitis said she is excited about the expanded focus on energy in the College of Arts & Sciences’ new Environment, Ecology and Energy Program (E3P).

“I think this will pave the way for more internship opportunities for students and keep the program on the forefront in the changing energy industry,” she said.

Schillo, who went on to receive a dual MBA/master’s in environmental management from Duke University, founded Epsilon Eta, the environmental honors fraternity, while at UNC. “I really valued how cross-cutting the UNC curriculum was.

I learned about geography, climate change and economic policy,” she said.

At the spring graduation ceremony, Schillo told students the world is in desperate need of their skills because they understand not only the science of climate change, but also what makes a good story.

“You can connect the dots, and you have the ability to translate across sectors,” she said. “You are graduating at a pivotal moment in history for the environmental movement. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that one person cannot change the world.”

C A ROL IN A ART S & SC IEN C ES

Every day, our people work together to invent a better future. We seek to identify and solve the world’s greatest challenges. We disrupt to drive positive change.

We are continuing to turn our talents into strengths, expand our culture of success, leverage innovation for experiential education, translate ideas into reality and sustain our capacity to lead.

We aspire to embody our mission statement: Think. Communicate. Collaborate. Create. ‌ For meaningful lives.

Will you join us?

C AROL IN A ART S & SC IEN C ES

college.unc.edu | 919.962.0108 | asf@unc.edu

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Alyssa LaFaro

STUDENT UP CLOSE

• Meredith Emery combines art and science in her work. “I want to plant a seed — an idea of change and awareness about our relationship to the environment.”

Emotional environment

When Meredith Emery accompanied geography researchers to photograph them conducting fieldwork, she couldn’t believe the amount of litter strewn along streambeds and forest lines. Now she’s sharing these images through a multimedia project blending art and science in an effort to change how the public relates to the local environment.

BY ALYSSA LAFARO

In the quaint 1,350-person town of Swepsonville, researchers knelt along the water’s edge of a small stream, collecting data from sensors they’d placed earlier in the year. Off to the side, Meredith Emery lifted her camera and clicked rapidly, focused on something else completely: a corded telephone tangled in the branches of a fallen tree.

between people and their environment.

Other images are displayed alongside it: a basketball at the water’s edge, a Styrofoam cup filled with trash, a plastic bag caught in a tree.

Emery captured these images this past spring while accompanying UNC geographer Diego Riveros-Iregui and his team as part of a research project for the state to uncover why algal blooms were forming in Jordan Lake. When Emery, a senior studio art major and geography minor, asked Riveros-Iregui if she could get involved, he said she could take pictures of the stream sites.

More than 800 photos later and with funding from a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the Office for Undergraduate Research, she has taken 15 of those images and affixed them to rectangular clay slabs. Before adding

“It was such a bizarre thing to see in a stream,” she said. “Why is that there?

Somebody’s memory and experience is integral to that moment. It provokes a lot of questions, and I like that aspect of it.”

She pointed to the juxtaposition within that image, which is now hanging in the UNC Art Lab, and how it signifies the sometimes tense relationship

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the images, she spent hours crafting each slab, meticulously packing the clay with sand, pebbles, twigs, grass and coffee for a more organic look. Using letterpress blocks, she then stamped each photograph’s location along the bottoms in red.

Natural cracks from the kiln firing also cover all 15 pieces, an effect that adds to the organic feel of the sculptures.

This part of the process, though, proved to be more difficult than she expected — a few of the tablets broke in the kiln. “The biggest lessons for me always lie in the failures of my artistic process,” she said.

“Patience and learning to quickly let go of the disappointments are necessary. If something fails, you just have to take it in stride and make it work.”

But with the frustration comes gratitude. This project has helped Emery figure out what kind of artist she wants to be. “I want to make art that’s educational,” she said. “I think the power of the image and the power of art, in general, moves people in a way that is crucial to helping promote science.”

Viewed together, these images point to the connectedness of all these water bodies and the reason researchers are studying streams and not Jordan Lake itself. To investigate the larger problem, they need to examine all the sources.

Emery hopes to showcase this project at the North Carolina Botanical Garden or another local public space.

But first she plans to add an audio component that includes soundbites from residents of the surrounding communities and natural sounds from the sites.

“In that way, you are transported to the space itself,” she said.

“I know it’s going to be hard to compel change in people. I want to plant a seed, though — an idea of change and awareness about our relationship to the environment.” ➤ Alyssa LaFaro is the editor of Endeavors magazine (endeavors. unc.edu). Watch a video at magazine. college.unc.edu.

ALUMNI UP CLOSE

Kristen Chavez

called mathematical sciences.

His passion for the cello began early, at age 9. “After that first lesson, I thought, ‘I want to play cello for a living.’ It fit in my hands, and the mechanics of it just made sense,” said Kwon, who went on to high school at Idyllwild Arts Academy in California. “It was interesting that it was so natural. … The thing I love now is that it has become an expression of my voice. To be able to express yourself outside the realm of words is very personal.”

While at Carolina, Kwon joined the climbing club, played in the symphony orchestra and a • Joe Kwon, pictured in his Raleigh home, enjoys tending to his band, and hung large garden when not on the road with the Avett Brothers. out in the Sitterson Hall lobby working on “algorithms and coding.” He fell in love with UNC, and continued a long-time tradition of about a dozen family members who have attended For Avett Brothers’ cellist the University. In the end, he decided to Joe Kwon, the music keeps focus his studies on computer science. calling him back.

After graduation, he took a job at IBM —

BY KIM WEAVER SPURR ’88 but the music kept calling him back. He quit his job a few years later.

Joe Kwon ’02 believes in He worked for Spanky’s restaurant the connection between art as a bartender while performing on the and science, calling them side.

It was there he met Emily Meineke “blood relatives.” Music is very (environmental science ’08), now his wife mathematical, and there is beauty “in and a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard the spacing on a cello, the vibrations on University. a string,” said the South Korea native, “I noticed that my weekend gigging who immigrated to the High Point area with my friends in the band was when I when he was a toddler. was actually happy, whether it was playing Kwon should know. He came to for 10 people or two. It was where my UNC-Chapel Hill on a music scholarship, heart was,” he said. but ended up majoring in what was then

‘It feels like a celebration’

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Kwon and fellow Carolina alumnus Leon Godwin were playing a gig with their band in 2006 in Winston-Salem when the Avett Brothers’ bass player Bob Crawford walked into the bar at the end of their set, around 1 a.m.

That’s when a new musical chapter began for Kwon.

“Bob was looking for some people to play on a side project he was working on.

I then ended up recording on the Avett Brothers’ album Emotionalism, and now that’s been 12 years ago,” Kwon said.

A 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article described the Avett Brothers’ music as “the heavy sadness of Townes Van Zandt, the light pop concision of Buddy Holly, the tuneful jangle of the Beatles, the raw energy of the Ramones …”

The critically acclaimed North Carolina folk-rock band, formed by brothers Scott and Seth Avett of Concord in 2001, has won numerous Americana Music Awards and been nominated for three Grammys. They are the focus of a recent HBO documentary, May it Last, and their song “Will You Return” opens the PBS award-winning show A Chef’s Life.

Kwon, who is also a foodie and peppers his Instagram posts with photos of vegetables and flowers from his Raleigh garden, believes the secret sauce to the band’s success is “We believe in what we do, and that makes it easy to do.”

“We are a closely knit family,” he said. “We live a truthful life on the road.”

A Charlotte Observer review of he Avett Brothers’ summer 2018 opener for Willie Nelson noted that Kwon’s highenergy performance caused him to lose his hat and glasses.

Kwon acknowledged that despite his affinity for hats, he has trouble with them flying off during a show “because the music is just too exciting.”

“Every night I step on stage, I can’t believe this is what I get to do,” he said.

“At the end of the day, when you’re up there performing, it doesn’t feel like work.

It feels like a celebration.”

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Johnny Andrews

FACULTY UP CLOSE

• Tamlin Pavelsky, associate professor of geological sciences, measures water levels at Botany Pond in Chapel Hill as part of an ongoing water-storage project.

Plotting a watery world map

through Earth’s systems with much more precision. With a new $1.5 million grant from NASA’s Earth Science Division, Pavelsky is combining satellite data with height measurements collected by citizen scientists to gain a more accurate picture of water storage in lakes in North Carolina and around the world.

“There are millions of lakes in the world that are important for water resources, for ecosystems and for our climate, but we only monitor a few thousand of them right now,” Pavelsky said. “We’re hoping to combine cuttingedge satellite data with measurements from citizens to learn more about how lakes work and to test that against a new NASA satellite mission that is specifically designed to measure lakes.”

Pavelsky partnered with the UNC Institute for the Environment to develop and implement an education and training program for citizen scientists to help collect data. The team also enlisted the help of Tennessee Tech University to build a web-based platform to collect data from citizen scientists via text message and share information on individual lakes, browse past data and interact with the project team. Scientists and volunteers

An early appreciation of rivers and lakes in his childhood home in Alaska fuels geologist Tamlin Pavelsky’s passion to understand water storage in lakes around the globe.

BY EMILY WILLIAMS

How much water is stored on Earth’s surface?

Tamlin Pavelsky, who is trying to answer that question, traces his love of looking at the Earth from above to his childhood in Alaska, where he spent his days hiking and boating remote rivers and lakes with his family.

“I still remember when I was 6, as a Valentine’s Day present my mom got me a world atlas,” he recalled.

Pavelsky, now an associate professor of geological sciences, spent hours studying the atlas and developed a passion for understanding the patterns of the physical and human landscape of Earth’s surface.

Today, he uses satellites to map and measure the world’s bodies of water to understand how water moves

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can follow along on a new website where they can find news and updates on the progress of the project, which will soon have an accompanying mobile app.

During the three-year implementation phase, the team will focus on several regions per year including New England, Wisconsin, Washington, Minnesota, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Pyrenees in southwest Europe. The sites in south Asia will be led by a partner at the University of Washington. The information collected by local collaborators and citizen scientists will be shared with scientists around the world as free, open data.

Pavelsky is also the lead hydrologist on a NASA mission called SWOT, which stands for Surface Water and Ocean Topography.

SWOT will use satellite radar signals to give scientists the first-ever comprehensive view of Earth’s surface water. The satellite will launch in 2021 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Pavelsky’s research will not only help scientists understand how water moves throughout the globe, it will also give clues about the movement of greenhouse gasses that are released into the atmosphere via these bodies of water.

A recent study by Pavelsky and George Allen, Pavelsky’s former graduate student who is now an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, was featured on the June cover of Science. They estimated the total global surface area of rivers and streams and found that these waters cover a larger portion of Earth’s surface than previously thought — as much as 45 percent higher than previously projected.

Pavelsky has managed to advance research in his field by bringing his passion for studying patterns on Earth’s surface to life. And it all started with a simple gift.

“I still have that atlas with a little inscription from my mom,” he said. ➤ To learn more about the Lake Level Monitoring Project, visit lakelevel.org.

For more on NASA earth science activities, visit www.nasa.gov/earth.

Emily Williams is director of community and university relations for the UNC Institute for the Environment.

FACULTY UP CLOSE

Donn Young

Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin and The Carolina Table: North Carolina Writers on Food.

Kenan has been working on a novel, set in North Carolina and New York in the 1970s through the 1990s, about what he called “the secret history of Chapel Hill.”

Secret histories — which he described as “stories, facts and figures that are known but not very well known” and “things that people allow to get forgotten” — have captured his imagination.

Helping Carolina creative writing students pen the stories that have captured their imagination energizes Kenan. “Teaching forces you to articulate what you actually think about the business of writing,” he said. “It's very gratifying to share that with younger folk • Randall Kenan said it is gratifying “to see the lights come on” in students’ faces. and to see the lights come on behind their eyes.”

Kenan, who primarily teaches nonfiction and fiction writing and a food-writing Creative writing professor Randall Kenan, recently inducted into course, is excited about the new creative the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, is proud to be part of the writing concentration for English majors ‘writingest state.’ starting this fall (the department has long

BY MICHELE LYNN had a minor). (See story, page 34.)

“The first goal in teaching writing — can't remember a time when reading and When Randall Kenan ’85 and I learned this from Doris Betts, whom writing weren't a part of my life,” said the learned that he would be I studied with when I was here as an creative writing professor. “Growing up in inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame rural North Carolina before television had undergraduate — is to teach people how to read like a writer,” he said. “We want to and recognized at a ceremony taken over our lives, people would sit on look at literature like builders, carpenters the porch and spin yarns.” in October, his first reaction and craftsmen: Why does this story work?

Those tales helped nurture Kenan's was, “You must be kidding.”

How did the writer evoke this character?” love of stories. “I love hanging out with He shouldn’t have been surprised.

He says that central to the teaching Kenan, a professor in the department of characters and trying to translate their of creative writing is “teaching good world into words,” he said. Most recently, English and comparative literature, has literature by contemporary writers.” those words have taken shape as two been recognized with multiple awards While UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus published short stories: “Resurrection throughout his distinguished career.

Thomas Wolfe famously wrote that you Hardware; Or, Lard & Promises,” in the “Considering that this is the can't go home again, that's not the case spring 2018 100th anniversary issue of ‘writingest state,’ (a term coined by for Kenan, who received a degree from Oxford American literary magazine; and the late Doris Betts, former Alumni the department in which he now teaches.

“Mamiwata,” in the summer 2018 issue of Distinguished Professor Emerita) in terms “Coming back here as a professor Ploughshares literary journal. of the number of writers and the impact Kenan's work also includes a novel, A was initially terrifying because a lot of they have made, being recognized as an people who had been my professors were Visitation of Spirits; two works of nonficinductee is gratifying,” said Kenan. and are still here,” said Kenan. “But they tion, Walking on Water: Black American Storytelling has been central to accepted me and I didn’t fall on my face, Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First CenKenan’s life since his childhood in the tury and The Fire This Time; and an award- so it became very gratifying.” small Duplin County town of Chinquapin, Kenan said he loves being back at winning collection of stories, Let the Dead where he was raised by a great-aunt who Bury Their Dead. In addition, he edited and Carolina. “It's an enchanted place. It feels taught kindergarten. “She taught me to good to be a part of it.” wrote the introductions for The Cross of read when I was about 4 years old, and I

Master storyteller

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THE SCOOP

Why They Serve

JOSEPH RITOK Chair, Carolina Public Humanities Advisory Board How does Carolina achieve its mission of extending the resources of the University to the citizens of North Carolina? Carolina Public Humanities connects faculty to the public through lectures, seminars and K-12 professional development. Joseph Ritok ’70 attended several of these programs and knew he had to be involved. Ritok, who retired from a prestigious law career in Michigan, and his wife, Jean, now call Chapel Hill home.

Q: Why do you serve on this advisory board?

A: When I first became involved, I was pleased to learn that the weekend programs were just one part of the board’s role. K-12 curriculum development and teacher training are offered at no charge to public school teachers in North Carolina, and Carolina Public Humanities sponsors programs that bring UNC faculty to state community colleges.

Q: What growth have you seen in the program?

A: Carolina Public Humanities has expanded its K-12 teacher workshops in various locations throughout the state and added a postdoctoral fellow

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Johnny Andrews

The College of Arts & Sciences is home to 13 advisory boards, in addition to the Arts & Sciences Foundation Board of Directors.

Volunteers to these boards play vital roles in guiding the mission of the department or program, encouraging fundraising and promoting that vision in the community. We recently talked to a few alumni about why they are passionate about these volunteer roles.

• The Learning and Writing Center offers a variety of services to students, including peer tutoring, counseling, coaching, writing workshops, study tips and career guidance.

to establish UNC faculty programs at community colleges. The E. Maynard Adams Symposium for the Humanities was established in 2017 and brings a nationally recognized scholar to engage the public about the humanities. We have also begun reading groups and foreign language lunches. The program could do even more with additional philanthropic support.

Q: What is most rewarding to you?

A: I have been introduced to the many ways Carolina Public Humanities contributes to the public discourse, including meeting accomplished faculty and staff who make the excellent programming possible. I have also established friendships with fellow board members and am pleased with how they share our goal of bringing UNC scholarship to public audiences.

Q: What are your favorite memories from your time as a student?

A: My most intense memories are of

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the intellectual doors that were opened for me by the great faculty and my fellow students. Whole worlds of ideas that I did not know existed were there for me to explore.

FRANCES MANGAN Chair, Learning and Writing Center Advisory Board The Learning and Writing Center offers a variety of services that students may need, from peer tutoring, counseling, coaching, writing workshops, study tips to prepare for graduate school and career guidance. Frances Mangan ’83, now retired from publishing, has been involved since the center’s beginning.

Q: Why do you serve on this advisory board?

A: I think it’s important to offer services and resources to students that enhance their educational experience, making it more straightforward and accessible.

It’s exciting for students to have the opportunity to be the best they can be.

THE SCOOP

Q: What growth have you seen in the program?

A: Not many students initially were able to take advantage of the services.

Few students even knew where the office was located. Moving to a permanent location in the Student and Academic Services Building was one of the highlights. The growth of the center has been due in large part to Director Kim Abels and her dedicated staff. Also, the growth of technology has contributed; the online services are now complemented by phone apps that students can download.

Q: What is most rewarding to you?

A: I love coming back to Chapel Hill, especially having two daughters here in

Q: What growth have you seen in the

interesting that one of my children was here for the championship in 2017.

program?

A: Thanks to the [$18 million] Shuford gift, we know the program will grow, and these resources allow us to think bigger and more strategically. The chancellor and the dean of the College have embraced the vision of this program, and because of that, the impact on the students has been tangible.

DAVID NEILL Chair, Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship Advisory Board New ventures. Innovation. Creativity.

Excellence. All are associated with the Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship.

Founded in 2005, the minor in entrepreneurship equips Carolina’s students with the skills and knowledge to create successful ventures — in science, public health, art, computer science, media, sports and more. David Neill ’83 understands firsthand the life of an entrepreneur — he has been a successful automobile dealer for 35 years.

Q: What is most rewarding to you?

A: Working with outstanding people has been the most rewarding — my fellow board members, the faculty, the entrepreneurs-in-residence and the administration. These incredible people make UNC the special university that it is.

Also, obviously the students. You

• LEFT TO RIGHT: Alumni Joseph Ritok, Frances Mangan and David Neill play vital roles as chairs of advisory boards in the College.

They help to guide the programs’ missions and visions and promote fundraising opportunities.

school for the past eight years. It is also rewarding to hear about the innovations developed by the hard-working staff and what they’re doing to make the Carolina experience better for students.

Q: What are your favorite memories from your time as a student?

A: I was here in 1982, when we won the [men’s basketball] national championship, so that was one of the best experiences of college! And it’s

Q: Why do you serve on this advisory

share experiences and concepts that you’ve learned over the years and watch the students embrace and run with them.

board?

A: I serve because I feel the mission and structure of the entrepreneurship program are so relevant in today’s world. I appreciate the founding concept that this program would allow students to pursue their passions and learn not only how to make a living doing what they love, but also change the world.

Q: What are your favorite memories from your time as a student?

A: My favorite memories are great times with fellow classmates, special professors and winning the 1982 NCAA championship!

— Interviews by Mary Moorefield

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Campaign builds on College’s strengths

Q: How are donors responding to the

Courtesy of Diego Riveros-Iregui

Last fall, UNC-Chapel Hill publicly launched For All Kind: the Campaign for Carolina, a $4.25 billion effort to inspire alumni and friends to support the bold vision of Carolina for generations to come. The College of Arts & Sciences’ ambitious goal within the campaign is to raise $750 million by Dec. 31, 2022. In this Q&A, Dean Kevin Guskiewicz discusses the College’s progress.

• Increasing private support for experiential learning opportunities, including study abroad, is a College campaign priority.

campaign in the year since the public launch?

A: We have much to celebrate. The College just completed a third straight year of record-breaking fundraising [for the fiscal year that ended in June 2018], with gifts totaling more than $120 million.

That is a remarkable 33 percent gain over last year, and it demonstrates that our benefactors believe in the strategic direction we are headed with our Road Map to Boldness and our Synergy Unleashed mindset. All told, we have raised more than $368 million — nearly halfway toward our goal.

awarded 57 new graduate fellowships this spring to help our students advance their scholarship and teaching. We are about to announce details of another $350,000 in graduate student support from two private gifts, and we expect to do more!

We have also made great strides with significant gifts to signature College programs such as the Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship; the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program; and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies.

addressed?

A: The College laid out five broad strategic priority campaign pillars: support for students, faculty, programs, capital projects and unrestricted giving — which allows us to respond quickly and nimbly to emerging opportunities.

Although we’ve made great progress in each area, I am particularly pleased at our success in increasing our support for our graduate students. I heard from faculty across all of our divisions what a pressing need this was; increasing our stipends helps us attract the most talented graduate students and retain our world-class faculty. Stellar graduate students help elevate our departments, and they become the thought leaders and Carolina ambassadors of the next generation. Thanks to private gifts, we

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Q: What are your goals for the

remainder of the campaign?

A: I want to continue to emphasize the importance of an interdisciplinary education and collaborative approach to solving the grand challenges of Q: What do you see as emerging areas our time. We will soon launch a new for donors to support?

General Education curriculum, and it A: One of the College’s key initiatives will emphasize the value of experiential is the new UNC Institute for Convergent education and integrated coursework to Science. Through collaborative research prepare students for whatever career path and our incentive-based innovation frame- they choose, including careers that don’t work, scientists from a range of disciplines even exist yet. By “experiential education,” will address topics from disease prevenI mean opportunities such as study tion and treatment to national defense to abroad, for-credit internships, hands-on environmental health and safety to energy research and service learning. generation. The possibilities of what can Private funding can help support all be accomplished through this approach of these initiatives. For example, 36 are limitless, and I see it as an opportunity percent of our students now study abroad; to speed the impact of profound new dis- I would love to raise that to 50 percent in coveries that will set Carolina apart from the next decade. its peers. [See page 29 for more on the I am pleased with our progress, but Institute for Convergent Science.] there is still much to be done. New opporWe will also leverage our strengths tunities will no doubt emerge in the next in key areas such as global education, few years, but our strategic plan provides including our award-winning area study a road map for us to carry out our mission: centers, and our nationally recognized Think. Communicate. Collaborate. Create.

Southern studies initiatives. Our … For meaningful lives. outstanding Honors Carolina program is — Interview by Erin Kelley ’13

Q: What strategic priorities have been

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poised to continue providing life-changing opportunities for our students. Beyond our student focus, we have many world-class faculty who are deserving of endowed distinguished professorships that support their research and teaching.

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THE SCOOP

# T h r o w b a c k 1 0 0 Y E A R S O F P L AY M A K I N G This photo, taken in October 1961, shows the Carolina Playmakers leaving for a road show of The Matchmaker. Theater at Carolina is marking some major milestones. The department of dramatic art is celebrating 100 years of playmaking at Carolina, hearkening back to when the Carolina Playmakers staged its first production. PlayMakers Repertory Company celebrated its 40th anniversary during the 2016-2017 season. Do you have fond memories of participating in theater at UNC? Email us your stories at college-news@unc.edu.

(Photo courtesy of UNC Photo Lab Collection, Wilson Library)

What will be your Carolina legacy?

“My parents were educators, and education was a huge value in my household. A planned gift to Carolina was the perfect fit for me to continue the foundation that my parents provided. God has blessed me, and it just made sense to pay it forward.”

Dr. Paula Newsome ’77 Charlotte, North Carolina

Contact us today to learn how planned gifts can help you meet your financial goals while supporting the College of Arts & Sciences in the long term.

Robert J. Parker

Senior Associate Dean and Executive Director The Arts & Sciences Foundation

919.962.0108 | asf@unc.edu | college.unc.edu/pg

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Interdisciplinary neuroscience major makes its debut The major is housed in the department of psychology and neuroscience but involves 10 academic departments. It builds on the success of the popular neuroscience minor.

BY KIM WEAVER SPURR ’88

Isabel Marrero ’18 led a team of

Donn Young

students who developed educational “escape rooms in a box” games as part of teaching assistant professor Marsha Penner’s popular spring 2018 APPLES service-learning course, “Neural Connections: Hands-on Neuroscience.”

The “escape room in a box” is • Students in Marsha Penner’s “Neural Connections” class participate in service-learning a briefcase-sized kit of puzzles and and makerspace activities. challenges designed to help middleschoolers solve a specific problem: An science, mathematics, physics and more than 500 members. The department outbreak of a fictional disease known as astronomy, psychology and neuroscience, will continue to offer the neuroscience “giggluenza” attacks the brain and leads and statistics and operations research. minor, which began in 2015; 535 students to uncontrollable laughter. As future “We know that there is great declared the minor last spring, according neuroscientists, they must use hypothesis to numbers provided by the registrar’s testing to solve the challenges and unlock demand for a neuroscience major, and we wanted to better position Carolina office. layers of clues that lead them to a cure. to prepare students for future careers in “We believe neuroscience studies will Penner’s students designed many of the brain science and brain health,” said Dean provide students with the fundamental components for the boxes in the BeAM Kevin Guskiewicz, who is a neuroscientist knowledge and exposure needed to makerspaces. pursue careers and postgraduate studies “The students in that class make very and nationally recognized expert on sport-related concussions. “Neuroscience in fields related to psychology, human strong connections with each other as will also be a component of our new development and aging, health and they work on in-depth projects together Institute for Convergent Science, as we disease, rehabilitation, biomedical research, and also help each other find out about human-machine interactions and other lab positions and internships,” Penner said. bring together researchers from multiple disciplines to solve grand challenges emerging disciplines,” Giovanello said.

Marrero, a Chancellor’s Science around disease detection and treatment.”

The psychology and neuroscience Scholar, graduated in May with majors Kelly Giovanello, professor and department has hired two new teaching in biology and psychology and a minor director of the neuroscience curricula, led assistant professors this fall to help meet in neuroscience. She was a Karen M. an executive advisory committee involving the demand. Rachel Penton will develop a Gil Intern at NeuroPlus, a Triangle faculty from the 10 academic departments class in neuropsychopharmacology (a field startup company that uses video-based and the School of Medicine’s UNC at the intersection of brain, behavior and concentration exercises to help children Neuroscience Center in planning the major. therapeutics). Sabrina Robertson will teach strengthen their attention skills.

“This began as a grassroots movement a new class in neurotechnology.

This fall, there are even more among the students,” she said.

“Our goal is to make the neuroscience opportunities for students like Marrero In 2009, Giovanello’s then-undergrad- major at Carolina the best in the country,” to explore their interests in neuroscience. uate student Amy Abramowitz (who Giovanello said. “We have about 115 faculty The College has launched a new has since graduated from Northwestern doing neuroscience work across campus. interdisciplinary major in neuroscience, University’s medical school), approached With the support of our colleagues, we’ll drawing on the strengths of 10 academic her about starting a neuroscience club. The continue to develop new courses to meet departments —biology, biomedical Carolina Neuroscience Club is going strong the ways in which this interdisciplinary field engineering, biostatistics, chemistry, nine years later and last spring included is growing.” computer science, exercise and sport

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Lord Aeck Sargent/William Rawn Associates

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Institute for Convergent Science will speed process from discovery to impact

BY GENEVA COLLINS

In fall 2017, UNC-Chapel Hill announced,

as part of the kickoff of the Campaign for Carolina, that it was creating the UNC Institute for Convergent Science.

With a feasibility plan completed and a collaborative innovation framework being developed and tested, the institute and the building that will house it are several steps closer to reality.

By embracing this emerging model for scientific research, Carolina aims to tackle the world’s biggest problems by fostering greater collaboration among researchers, students and entrepreneurs across disciplines to speed the application of new discoveries and the commercialization of technological breakthroughs. The institute will engage faculty and students across several schools at Carolina and draw upon the resources and expertise of the university’s Office of Technology Commercialization, Innovate Carolina and UNC Research.

“Convergent science is a problem-centered approach to research,” said Chris Clemens, senior associate dean for natural sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences. “You start by framing an interesting problem or challenge you want to solve — such as how to generate or store energy more effectively — and then you build the team you need to make the most impact.”

Convergent science is not a new concept for the University; this team-based approach to addressing complex problems dates back decades at Carolina, and several College departments have been convergence leaders, including chemistry, applied physical sciences, mathematics, psychology and neuroscience, physics and astronomy, and biomedical engineering. But the construction of a physical building, with state-of-the-art laboratories, makerspaces, a vivarium, incubators, active learning classrooms and collaborative work

• LEFT: An architect’s sketch of the interior. • BELOW: The convergent science building that will house the institute will sit at the corner of Columbia Street and South Road, within the area indicated by the blue box.

environments, will provide a hub for a UNC research and innovation corridor.

The new building will be a major addition to the Carolina Physical Science Complex, which was first begun in 2004 and includes Chapman Hall, Caudill Laboratories, Brooks Computer Science Building, (new) Venable Hall and Murray Hall.

But, as Clemens noted, the institute “is not just a building. It’s also the leadership, partnerships and talent that are necessary to do this. We want to support and enhance collaboration to speed up the translation of basic research into solutions that can change the world.”

Before there are shovels in the ground, the College plans to pilot an “innovation framework” in available space in the Genome Sciences Building beginning in 2019. This innovation framework is meant to guide teams of researchers through the process of proof of concept and translating their basic research into innovations with commercial or social impact.

For example, early steps in research and development are suitable for a shared Research Commons space, where faculty, students and postdoctoral researchers will brainstorm and build teams. These teams will compete to become NIMBLE projects — the acronym stands for New Invention: Make It Big or Leave Early.

NIMBLE projects will move to a more private lab space.

Researchers on these projects will follow a disciplined schedule to meet demonstrable milestones. When NIMBLE projects are ready to advance, the next step is development and commercialization. The institute will have access to incubator space leased to industry partners for product development.

“Carolina is already a national leader in basic research. The mission of the new institute is to capitalize on the prodigious commercial and societal potential of this research by launching it into application more quickly and effectively,” said Clemens.

“In the College of Arts & Sciences, this will enhance the training and experience we impart to the next generation of innovators.”

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Scottish Gaelic Studies will highlight N.C. ties

Visiting lecturer will share his love of an endangered language and traditions with Carolina students.

BY PAMELA BABCOCK

Folklorist, scholar and musician Tiber Falzett is

Skye E. Falzett

passionate about sharing the Scottish Gaelic culture and language and is excited about the opportunity to incorporate the rich legacy of North Carolina’s Scottish Gaelic heritage into his teaching this year.

He believes that knowing more about Gaelic can help break down barriers and bring people together, making learning an endangered minority group’s language and its traditions all the more important. He will share his expertise with UNC students this fall as the first Visiting Lecturer in Scottish Gaelic Studies in • Tiber Falzett says Scottish Highlanders immigrated to the Cape Fear region the department of English and comparative literature. of North Carolina in the 1730s. He’ll teach courses in Scottish Gaelic studies.

Beginning in the 1730s, Scottish Highlanders immigrated to the Cape Fear region of North social engagement as part of everyday life.

Carolina, founding the earliest multigenerational Scottish Falzett’s grandfather frequently shared memories of growing Gaelic-speaking community on the North American continent. up in a multilingual home and community in rural Manitoba, where Gaelic continued to be transmitted across the generations into Gaelic, Icelandic, Finnish and French were spoken alongside the early decades of the 20th century. Many North Carolinians indigenous languages like Cree and Ojibwe. share ancestral ties to this immigrant group, including wellFalzett’s interest was further piqued when he began playing known surnames like Blue, Cameron, Campbell, MacDonald, the Great Highland Bagpipes at age 11.

MacDowell, Macintosh and MacNeill.

“I loved the sound and noticed that a lot of the vocabulary Scottish Gaelic is a separate language from what Americans used when learning to play was Scottish Gaelic,” he said. commonly refer to as Irish Gaelic, which is more accurately His fall classes — “Introduction to Folklore” and “Fairy Tales” called “Modern Irish.” The two evolved from earlier linguistic — are full. The spring lineup includes courses on Celtic cultures, forms, Falzett said, noting that Scottish Gaelic and Modern Irish everyday stories and legends, and a first-year seminar on Scottish are about as similar as Romance languages are to one another.

Gaelic literature in North America. The seminar course will include “The hope is that we can raise awareness,” said Falzett, texts from North Carolina that provide the earliest extant Gaelic who has done extensive fieldwork in Cape Breton Island, poetic compositions and published texts in North America.

Nova Scotia, Canada, and the Outer Hebrides and West Falzett will also give a public talk on Oct. 26 on the UNC Highlands of Scotland. “By engaging with some of these campus. under-recognized forms of expression rooted in endangered Scottish Gaelic studies has “not enjoyed any previous language communities, we can better understand the human support in the American academy,” said Michael Newton, experience and, indeed, ourselves.” secretary of GaelicUSA, a nonprofit advocacy group that Falzett has a Ph.D. in Celtic and Scottish studies from coordinated the visiting lecturer position, which was funded by the University of Edinburgh. He has taught at the University Scottish Heritage USA. of Prince Edward Island and St. Francis Xavier University in Today just over 1 percent of Scotland’s population speaks Nova Scotia.

Both family ties and music were important factors to Falzett the language. In spite of its endangerment, globally an estimated 60,000 people speak Scottish Gaelic, Falzett noted. Currently, in learning the Scottish Gaelic language in his late teens and both the language and its cultural expression are undergoing a continuing to pursue studies in its cultural expression. renewal in Scotland and Canada’s Maritime Provinces.

His maternal great-grandmother was a Gaelic speaker These days, Falzett said he only wishes he could sit down from Southwestern Ontario, which, like North Carolina’s Cape with his own great-grandmother, hear her voice, and speak with Fear Valley, was once a hotbed for the language. In its diaspora, her in what was her first language and one that he has now Scottish Gaelic crossed ethnic boundaries, fostering a sense of carefully fostered as his second. community and serving an essential role in communication and

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Climate change threatens marine protected areas

• The graphic shows the projected warming per year (indicated by the color-coded bar on the right) of the world’s marine protected areas (indicated by the black dots).

The study also estimated the year in which marine protected areas in different ecoregions would cross critical thresholds beyond which most species wouldn’t be able to tolerate the change.

For many areas in the tropics, this will happen as soon as the mid-21st century.

“With warming of this magnitude, we expect to lose many, if not most, animal

species from marine protected areas by the turn of the century,” said John Bruno, lead author and biology professor. “We need to immediately adopt an emission reduction scenario in which emissions peak within the next two decades and then decrease very significantly, replacing fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources like solar and wind.”

Carolina ranks 30th in ranking of world universities

Donn Young

collaborators found that most marine life in marine protected areas will not be able to tolerate warming ocean temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Marine protected areas have been established as a haven to protect threatened marine life, like polar bears, penguins and coral reefs, from the effects of fishing and other activities like mineral and oil extraction. The study found that with continued “businessas-usual” emissions, the protections currently in place won’t matter, because by 2100, warming and reduced oxygen concentration will make marine protected areas uninhabitable by most species currently residing in those areas.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, concludes that such rapid and extreme warming would devastate the species and ecosystems currently located in marine protected areas. This could lead to extinctions of some of the world’s most unique animals, loss of biodiversity, and changes in ocean food-webs. It could also have considerable negative impacts on the productivity of fisheries and on tourism revenue.

Courtesy of John Bruno

Research from UNC-Chapel Hill and

UNC-Chapel Hill ranks 30th in the world and 22nd in the U.S. among global

Donn Young

universities, according to the 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) released by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, in conjunction with the Center for World Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This places UNC-Chapel Hill as 9th among U.S. public universities in the global ranking. UNC-Chapel Hill is tied in its rankings with Rockefeller University.

UNC was ranked 36th in 2017 and 35th in 2016. This year, Harvard University placed first, followed by Stanford University and the University of Cambridge, respectively.

Since 2003, ARWU has ranked more than 1,200 universities and now publishes the best 1,000 universities annually. Indicators used to rank universities include the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices and the per capita academic performance of an institution. ➤ For a full list of rankings, visit www.shanghairanking.com.

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What does God look like?

A team of UNC psychologists has

Courtesy of Kurt Gray

used a new technique to construct what a large sample of 511 American Christians think God looks like.

Participants in the study saw hundreds of randomly varying facepairs and selected which face from each pair appeared more like how they imagined God to appear. By combining all the selected faces, the researchers could assemble a composite “face of God” that reflected how each person imagined God to appear.

Their results were both surprising and revealing. From Michelangelo to Monty Python, illustrations of God have nearly always shown him as an old and white-bearded Caucasian man. But the researchers found that many Christians saw God as younger, more feminine, and less Caucasian than popular culture suggests.

In fact, people’s perceptions of God tended to rely partly on their political affiliation. Liberals tended to

• Aggregates of the images that young participants (left panel) and old participants (right panel) associated with how they viewed God.

Creativity Hubs announced

UNC’s new Creativity Hubs initiative has announced awards to campus research teams pursuing solutions to two of the world’s most pressing issues: the global clean water shortage and the obesity epidemic. College faculty play a key role on both teams.

The Creativity Hubs initiative was developed by the vice chancellor for research as a platform on which to assemble teams of researchers from

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see God as more feminine, younger, and more loving than conservatives.

Conservatives also saw God as more Caucasian and more powerful than liberals.

People’s perceptions also related to their own demographic characteristics.

Younger people believed in a youngerlooking God. People who reported being more physically attractive also believed in a more physically attractive God. And African-Americans believed in a God that looked more AfricanAmerican than did Caucasians.

“People often project their beliefs and traits onto others, and our study shows that God’s appearance is no different — people believe in a God who not only thinks like them, but also looks like them,” said Kurt Gray, the study’s senior author and a professor of psychology and neuroscience.

Interestingly, however, people did not show an egocentric bias on the basis of gender. Men and women believed in an equally masculine-looking God. The research was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

diverse disciplines to tackle major societal challenges and leverage additional support from external sponsors.

Addressing a need that affects over 1.8 billion people worldwide, the Sustainable Access to Safe Water Creativity Hub will pursue development of an innovative, affordable membranebased water purification tool that can safely remove a broad range of water contaminants.

“The Creativity Hubs initiative has allowed us to assemble a unique team of scientists and engineers with the background and expertise to tackle a major global problem,” said Theo Dingemans, principal investigator for the hub and a

professor of applied physical sciences.

The project team is composed of polymer chemists, computational modelers and engineers from the College’s applied physical sciences and mathematics departments and the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The Heterogeneity in Obesity Creativity Hub will take a novel approach to assess the underlying causes of obesity, tapping information that has not been traditionally studied to unlock new, targeted ways to treat the disease.

By developing an automated tool to rapidly analyze and integrate large data sets, the team will seek answers to why individuals with the same diet experience weight gain and loss differently.

The project will involve College faculty members from psychology and neuroscience, biology, sociology, public policy, statistics and economics.

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Courtesy of by Allie Day

Memorial fund created in honor of Jonathan Hess

Jonathan Hess, professor and chair of

the department of Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures, passed away suddenly on April 9. A memorial fund was created in his honor.

Hess had been department chair since 2016 and the Moses M. and Hannah L. Malkin Distinguished Professor of Jewish History and Culture since 2012. He had served as director for the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies for 10 years, building it into one of the premier Jewish studies programs in the country.

Hess was a renowned scholar on German cultural, intellectual and literary history from the 18th century on, with particular interests in both German-Jewish studies and the legacy of the Enlightenment. He was the author of four books and numerous peerreviewed articles on Jewish-German culture, politics and anti-Semitism.

Hess’ other service to the University included being a member of the Advisory Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and representing the College on the Appointments, Promotions and Tenure Committee.

He served on the Faculty Council from 2009 to 2013.

He had been a member of the Carolina faculty Jonathan since 1993.

Hess ➤ To honor Hess’s commitment to supporting junior scholars and cultivating future faculty leaders, memorial gifts may be made to the Jonathan M. Hess Career Development Term Assistant Professorship in the College. The fund will support a term professorship for a tenure-track assistant professor in the fine arts and humanities. Visit jewishstudies.unc.edu to make a gift.

• Carolina’s area study centers support students and faculty as they work in all regions of the world.

Five global studies centers awarded $8.6 million

Five global area studies centers were awarded approximately $8.6 million in

competitive federal Title VI funding over the next four years.

Through two programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education, UNC-Chapel Hill received approximately $4 million for National Resource Centers and $4.6 million for Foreign Language and Area Studies scholarships.

“The grants support Carolina faculty and students as they work in all regions of the world,” said Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, senior associate dean for social sciences and global programs in the College.

The African Studies Center, Carolina Asia Center, Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. Center for European Studies and Institute for the Study of the Americas have been designated National Resource Centers.

The African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for European Studies and the Institute for the Study of the Americas also received Foreign Language and Area Studies awards, which provide graduate and advanced undergraduate students with intensive summer language instruction and academic year support for language and area studies courses.

With the support of these grants, the centers provide support for programs and activities such as: • Languages Across the Curriculum: Integrates languages — from Arabic and French to Spanish and Korean — into courses offered outside language departments.

• Faculty Support: Supports language instruction, research, teaching and curriculum development.

• World View: A program that equips K-12 and community college educators with global knowledge, best practices and resources through seminars and symposia, international study visits abroad and online instruction.

• Opening Access to Global Opportunities: Opens opportunities for traditionally underrepresented students pursuing international education. ➤ For more, visit areastudies.unc.edu.

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Double up and pick an English concentration majoring in English and another field — and she is excited about the new concentrations that are being offered this fall.

Hurley said she has always resisted being put in “one box or another.” She’s majoring in English and chemistry because “I want to know so much about the world, and both majors push you toward analytical skills.”

Hurley is also interested in law and enjoyed the advanced legal writing class she took last spring with Jennifer Larson, English teaching associate professor and director of undergraduate studies.

Seven new concentrations will allow English majors the option to choose a concentration that matches their interests. Many of the concentrations are interdisciplinary.

They include: • Comparative and world literatures (also a minor) • Creative writing (also a minor) • British and American literature (also a minor)

Donn Young

Sophomore Carter Hurley is double-

• Daniel Wallace, the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English, teaches creative writing, which has long been a popular minor but is now an English major concentration.

• Film studies (also a minor) • Science, medicine and literature (also a minor) • Social justice and literature • Writing, editing and digital publishing (also a minor).

Mary Floyd-Wilson, Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor and chair of the English and comparative literature department, said

English majors learn how to translate powerful ideas across time, disciplines and cultures, and then make connections to the “here and now.”

“Knowing how to analyze the written word and use language persuasively is what enables English majors to thrive in diverse fields, including medicine, law, project management and nonprofit development,” she said.

McInerney named Gates Cambridge Scholar

Will McInerney ’11 has been awarded a prestigious Gates Cambridge

Scholarship, which provides full support for graduate study at the University of Cambridge in England.

The Gates Cambridge Scholarship supports scholars in a variety of fields with outstanding intellectual ability and the potential to be transformative leaders.

McInerney, from Chapel Hill, graduated from Carolina with a bachelor’s degree in peace, war and defense. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and Honors Carolina, McInerney researched arts and peace education and discovered the power of poetry in the classroom. He went on to work as a poet and educator, performing and teaching worldwide; a journalist and producer with WUNC-FM, focusing on peace and conflict stories; and executive director of a spoken word poetry and peace education nonprofit in Chapel Hill called Sacrificial Poets.

As McInerney began to focus on the problem of men’s violence against women, he returned to UNC as an employee to develop and help facilitate the UNC Men’s Project, a men’s violence prevention program for undergraduate and graduate students. In recognition of his work, he was awarded a Rotary Peace Fellowship to study conflict resolution from the University of Bradford in England, earning a master’s degree in 2018.

McInerney will pursue a Ph.D. in education at Queens’ College of Cambridge. He will continue to research the value of creative educational approaches, specifically spoken word poetry, in men’s violence prevention education.

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THE SCOOP

C A R O L I N A

Q U O T E D When national and international media need experts to comment on and analyze news and trends, they turn to Carolina faculty and alumni.

Of course, College of Arts & Sciences faculty members often make news of their own with groundbreaking research findings. Here are just a few examples; see more at college.unc.edu.

TIME

“ By better understanding the

U. S News & World Report

“Right now the Triangle is experiencing a housing crunch.

We have an affordability problem as it is.”

factors that lead us to become hangry, we can give people the tools to recognize when hunger is [negatively] impacting their feelings and behaviors.

— Jennifer MacCormack, Ph.D. candidate in psychology and neuroscience, on the psychological mechanisms that transform hunger into feeling “hangry”

— Mai Nguyen, associate professor of city and regional planning, on growing pains for North Carolina’s booming capital if Apple chooses Raleigh for a new U.S. campus

LeVar B u r ton Reads (podcast)

”

Science News

The observation of tornillos [low-frequency seismic events] in volcano infrasound recordings “ is a very cool thing. ”

Actor LeVar Burton reads Sea Girls, a short story about a stranded mermaid,

— Jonathan Lees, professor of geological sciences, on the sounds recorded in the 2015 eruption of Ecuador’s Cotopaxi volcano

The New Yor ke r

by DANIEL WALLACE, J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, featured in episode 26.

The New Republic

“ THEY’RE ONLY MEASURING FOR E. COLI TOTAL, NOT THE SPECIFIC TYPES OF E. COLI THAT CAN MAKE YOU SICK.

”

— Rachel Noble, professor of marine sciences, on the real problem with the effectiveness of most E. coli tests after an outbreak linked to romaine lettuce

“ New York is one of the most,

if not the most, diverse Muslim cities in the world. There is no such thing as a ‘Muslim world’ somewhere else.”

— Katie Merriman, Ph.D. candidate in religious studies, on the free walking tours she gives on New York’s Muslim history

Yahoo Finance

“ Respondents viewed stay-at-home parents as less reliable, less deserving of a job — and the biggest penalty — less committed to work, compared with unemployed applicants.

”

— Kate Weisshaar, assistant professor of sociology, on a study that found only 4.9 percent of stay-at-home mothers were contacted for job interviews after sending in resumes

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CHAPTER & VERSE

Kristen Chavez

immediate effects were more modest than the filmmakers themselves would have hoped.

Filmmaking wasn’t a priority to the movement, so resources were limited. I suspect that the main effect of the films was sustaining support for the Palestinian struggle among participants and allies of the revolution. Solidarity and engagement are not maintained in a vacuum; they require continual communication about what a movement is, who it is for, why it is important. They require emotional investment as well as political understanding.

• Nadia Yaqub, chair of Asian studies, showcases her research and interests in Arab visual culture and social justice in her latest book.

New book examines political filmmaking during the Palestinian revolution Nadia Yaqub’s Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution (University of Texas Press) traces Palestinian political filmmaking from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Yaqub’s new book showcases her research and interests in Arab visual culture and in social justice. We talked with Yaqub, associate professor in the Asian studies department, about her latest work.

Q: What were the types of films produced during this period?

A: Palestinians and others working in solidarity with the revolution made different types of films, although most were quite modest given the limited means filmmakers had at their disposal. Within the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization], only one feature film was completed: Kassem Hawal’s Return to Haifa, released in 1982, at the very end of the period.

Q: What were the effects of Palestinian cinema on the revolution?

A: Palestinian filmmaking of the 1970s certainly raised the profile of the Palestinian revolution in certain circles, but their

Q: You write about this

movement of independent films within a context of a national liberation movement for a stateless people. What makes these different from political films produced elsewhere?

A: While there had been some filmmaking prior to the revolutions in Cuba and Algeria, their film industries were established after the struggle within the context of statebuilding. North Vietnamese militant filmmaking occurred within the context of the Vietnam War, but it was not stateless.

Q: How are these early Palestinian films perceived today?

A: As one might expect, contemporary responses to these early works are quite varied. What they all share, however, is an interest in incorporating this early chapter in Palestinian filmmaking into a longer history of Palestinian cultural production, coming to grips with what it means for this revolutionary movement and its films to be a part of Palestinian history, and exploring what lessons can be learned from Palestinian revolutionary cinema.

Q: What are some key takeaways from your research?

A: I was surprised to discover how complex and transnationally interconnected Palestinian filmmaking was in the 1970s. While a relatively small number of individuals were involved in the movement, their works were directly affected not just by what was happening to Palestinians in Lebanon or within the PLO, but also to regional and global developments. Filmmaking and film circulation were shaped by the Cold War, for instance, and political and cultural developments in Western Europe.

— Interview by Kristen Chavez ’13 ➤ Find more books by College faculty and alumni at magazine.college.unc.edu.

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FINALE

Celebrating Carolina’s 225th Illustration by Will Black, who graduated from Carolina in 2011 with degrees in fine art and history. Since 2017,

Black has worked as an administrative support specialist in the College of Arts & Sciences’ Dean’s Office. He is an avid traveler and lover of history, art and architecture, drawing from these passions in his tribute to Carolina’s 225th birthday. To celebrate the occasion, Black created a collage of the University’s most iconic structures and landscape features. (Can you identify them all?)

NONPROFIT U.S. POSTAGE PAID UNC–CHAPEL HILL THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL CAMPUS BOX 3100 205 SOUTH BUILDING CHAPEL HILL, NC 27599-3100

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Gifts to the Annual Fund inspire collaboration and innovation among students and teacher-scholars, and are critical to the success of future generations of Tar Heels.

Make your gift today!

Give online at: giving.unc.edu/gift/asf. You can also make a gift or learn more about the Annual Fund ASF Annual Fund Ad 7.2018 v2.qxp_Layout 1 7/30/18 6:19 PM by Page 1 contacting Ashlee Bursch, Director of Annual Giving, at ashlee.bursch@unc.edu, or 919-843-9853.