General News

UNC Charlotte’s Master of Health Administration is ranked among the most affordable graduate degrees in health care administration by Healthcare Administration Degree Programs. 
Using the National Center for Education Statistics’ College Navigator database, more than 280 schools were identified as having qualifying degree programs. The 30 most affordable accredited programs were selected and ranked based on average annual cost, including tuition and fees. UNC Charlotte was ranked no. 17.

The Department of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences is the 2015 recipient of the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology received the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Academic Advising.  Also, José Gámez, associate professor of architecture, was presented the Provost’s Faculty Award for Community Engagement.

Plans are in the works to remove the Belk Tower, which UNC Charlotte personnel and outside consulting engineers have determined to have significant structural issues.

In an Oct. 17 statement to campus, Chancellor Philip L. Dubois wrote, “Although the tower is not an immediate risk to campus, it does pose a potential safety hazard, and it is prudent to take precautions. The deterioration of the tower is the natural result of age-related corrosion, water penetration and rust that have damaged the tower’s concrete, metal and electrical components.”

The InnovateHER Challenge national prize competition organized by the Small Business Administration (SBA), in partnership with Microsoft, is seeking products and services that impact and empower the lives of women and families.

Regional competitions are under way to identify 10 national finalists that will compete for $70,000 in cash prizes funded by Microsoft.

The Charlotte regional competition, hosted by Ventureprise and UNC Charlotte, invites applications; the deadline is Tuesday, Nov. 3.

For Halloween, the Campus Activities Board is bringing two mentalists and a ghost hunter to campus.

Jeff and Tessa Evason, mentalists who perform feats of ESP and second sight, will present a show on Wednesday, Oct. 28, and ghost hunter Chris Fleming will speak about supernatural phenomena and his personal experiences with ghosts on Saturday, Oct. 30. Both events are free and will be at 7 p.m. in the Cone University Center, McKnight Hall.

Participants in Leadership Charlotte were on campus Thursday, Oct. 15, as part of the program’s Education Day to explore the history, current landscape and outlook of education for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS).

The current Leadership Charlotte class will examine challenges related to the educational opportunities for all students and ponder possible solutions. The day also will include a tour of Charlotte Engineering Early College High School, a presentation by CMS Superintendent Ann Clark and an interactive panel with four CMS Board of Education members.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 500 students, faculty and business people, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) praised UNC Charlotte for providing the educational programs and research to advance cyber protection and combat cyber terrorism.

The senator said cyber terrorism is one of the primary threats to national security, and he noted that the “number one (cyber) security concern” are everyday ploys by cyber terrorists that trick people into opening bogus emails that allow access to confidential information.

The Center for Teaching and Learning has launched a new professional learning community for adjunct instructors at the University. Its goal is to build community among the participants and provide pedagogical support, which will benefit the faculty members as well as their students.

World religions take various approaches to answer the question “Is There Life after Death?” Representatives from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths will share their perspectives on the afterlife in a panel discussion at 6:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 19, in the Student Union Theater. The Office of Religious and Spiritual Life is sponsoring this event.

Speakers for the Oct. 19 discussion are:

Junjie Shan and Jinyue Xia, doctoral students in the College of Computing and Informatics, recently took second place in HackNC 2015 at UNC Chapel Hill. Their creation “CrowdFood” was the second-best overall application at the 24-hour hack-a-thon.

The application was designed to help individuals find food quickly by estimating wait times for restaurants. Xia developed the iOS app that supported collecting and showing real-time user reports, while Shan created the Web app to display the reports. UNC Chapel Hill student Hongkun Ge provided development support.