General News

Bill Anderson, former executive director of the public education advocacy group MeckEd, is joining the University’s College of Education as special assistant to the dean for community relations.

Anderson, a veteran teacher, administrator and educational policy leader, has nearly four decades of experience. He completed a master’s degree in education from the University in 1989 and a doctorate in 2001.

Bissell House is the official residence of UNC Charlotte’s chancellor, and its namesake, Sara Bissell, was devoted not only to her business and family but to the greater Charlotte community.

Dedicated on Nov. 18, 2004, Bissell House has been the venue for hundreds of campus and community events, with Chancellor Philip L. Dubois and his wife Lisa Lewis Dubois offering a gracious welcome to UNC Charlotte students, faculty, staff and visitors. Named the University’s fourth chancellor in early 2005, Dubois and his family became Bissell House’s first occupants.

Phillip Brown, internal communications manager in the University’s Public Relations Office, recently won a Gold Hermes Award for publication writing for the article “Trailblazers Turn the Tassel.” The feature was published in the second quarter 2014 edition of the UNC Charlotte magazine.

UNC Charlotte broke ground May 12 on a new residence hall dedicated to housing students of the Levine Scholars Program and the Honors College. The new facility will be known as Levine Hall, in honor of Sandra and Leon Levine. Through their foundation, the Levines have committed more than $18 million to the Levine Scholars Program, which began in 2009. Levine Hall is scheduled to open in summer 2016.

Through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the UNC Charlotte J. Murrey Atkins Library will investigate how best to license and acquire electronic resources for academic libraries. The $271,000 award is a two-year research and planning grant to produce recommendations for the licensing and acquisition of electronic resources, particularly eBooks. 

Starfish will replace Niner Advisor on 49er Express starting Sunday, June 28. This new system will allow instructors to notify their students systematically regarding their academic performance in their courses. Starfish is already integrated with Banner and Moodle for users.

Larry Mellichamp, director emeritus of the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens, will be the guest on the May 14 edition of “The Live Wire,” Inside UNC Charlotte’s streaming webcast. He will discuss the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens and the opening of a new display garden, the Mellichamp Native Terrace. A ribbon-cutting and self-guided tours of the new garden will be from 4 to 6 p.m., Sunday, May 31.

 “The Live Wire” can be viewed on desktop computers or mobile devices starting at 2 p.m.

At one time, news coverage centered on worries about video games’ negative influence on kids — but these days, they are making headlines because of the ways they are being used to help students learn.  An avalanche of research supporting video games’ ability to encourage academic development has driven momentum on this issue.

Declining civility among higher education faculty was cited as a concern this year by an Inside Higher Education survey of college/university chief academic officers. According to the results, 27 percent of provosts were “very concerned” and 44 percent were “somewhat concerned.”

The 2015 BioEnergy Symposium, scheduled for Thursday, May 14, will center on the topic of beneficial byproducts of bioenergy.

Patrick Serfass, executive director of American Biogas Council, will deliver the keynote address; he will provide insight on the “National Biogas Markets, Policies and Trends Influencing North Carolina.” The luncheon keynote will feature Mary Biddy, senior research engineer of the National Renewables Energy Laboratory, who will discuss “Maximizing Value from Biomass: Developing Pathways for the Production of Fuels and Products.”