UNC Charlotte Magazine, Q1 2012

UNC Charlotte The magazine of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte for Alumni and Friends • v19 q1 • 2012

Objects of

Immense Power Theatre project expands sense of hope

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c h a n c e l l o r ’s l e t te r

Regional Support Critical to Our Mission

We want to learn from our constituent communities what we can do better and bring that valuable information back to the University.

As North Carolina’s urban research university, the direct impacts we have on the communities we serve are varied, significant, and very exciting. This year I have begun a series of focused visits to each county in the Charlotte region as part of a plan to galvanize legislative and community support for the University in a more systematic way.

We hope to increase our reach and impact with elected officials at all levels of government, as well as to recruit the best students from our own region. We also want to increase the engagement of our alumni and friends, expand partnerships with employers, and generally to help the regional community address its most critical challenges.

Our first two regional visits were made to Gaston and Cleveland counties.

By the numbers, the reach of the University in these two counties can easily be appreciated: • 1,259 of our students come from these counties, including three of our Levine Scholars; • 4,859 alumni hail from Gaston and Cleveland counties, many of them in positions of prominence within their communities; • Gaston and Cleveland counties are home to 2,646 of our donors; • 694 of our alumni teach in their public schools; and • Nearly 100 UNC Charlotte employees live in these counties.

Through research, service, and educational partnerships, the University has established tangible, meaningful relationships in the region. For instance, all students enrolled in majors within the College of Health and Human Services are required to have at least one experiential learning course within the community. The College has 390 education affiliation agreements that extend through our region, the state, and around the nation.

However, it’s important to remember that this

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effort is about more than numbers; ultimately, it’s about our students. In this issue of the magazine you’ll find a story about alumna Ashley Lutz, ’11, a Cleveland County woman who realized her longstanding dream of becoming a nurse last spring. Ashley was diagnosed with liver cancer shortly before final exams and passed away just days after commencement. I had the pleasure of meeting her family during my visit to Cleveland County, and of learning more about Ashley, who was passionate about her studies and her chosen profession. Her fellow nursing students are raising money to create an endowed scholarship in her name, and the first Ashley Lutz Memorial Scholarship in Nursing will be awarded in May. Ashley’s fiancé, Christopher Emory, is completing his studies in civil engineering technology.

Altogether, the 12 counties in our region currently provide 15,233 of our students and are home to 55,049 of our alumni and nearly 36,000 UNC Charlotte donors. When we fully engage those students, those alumni, and those donors in the University’s future, we also expand this institution’s influence and reputation.

When we expand our influence and reputation, we enhance our ability to offer students an affordable, high-quality education.

Although one of my goals is to remind our constituents about their connection to UNC Charlotte, I also intend with these visits to create an open dialogue. We want to learn from our constituent communities what we can do better and bring that valuable information back to the University. I invite you to become a part of the conversation.

Cordially,

Philip L. Dubois Chancellor

www.UNCC.edu

contents

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Objects of Immense Power

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Posttraumatic Growth

Students create an original work of “interview theatre” inspired by the Violins of Hope, 18 instruments recovered from the Holocaust.

Researchers bring attention to the concept of positive change in the aftermath of traumatic experiences and develop tools to assess the phenomenon.

20 Data Security Guru

Revolutionary data security technology invented by UNC Charlotte professor becomes international standard.

24 Government in Your Backyard

A UNC Charlotte policy wonk examines how public opinion, interestgroup politics and other political considerations combine to influence the environmental policies that affect us all.

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Homeless Boomers The number of homeless adults is expected to increase as Baby Boomers age. A UNC Charlotte researcher embarks on a study of the vulnerabilities associated with homeless Boomers.

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departments 3 News Briefs 10

22 Center Stage 36 41

On the Cover: This violin is one among 18 recovered from the Holocaust and restored by master violinmaker Amnon Weinstein as part of the Violins of Hope project. The violins will make their North American debut in Charlotte in April; a number of performances and exhibits have been inspired by the project.

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Perspective

stake your claim profiles 8

Cameron Rowe: Legacy of Strength Great-grandson of a University founder overcomes immense obstacles to continue family tradition at UNC Charlotte.

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Paolo Batoni: No Man Is an Island Alumnus Paolo Batoni, ’05, ’09, found his place as lead researcher for Dot Metrics Technologies, a high-tech enterprise populated with University alums.

Criminologists find that one-in-three youths has been arrested before the age of 23.

Nursing faculty and students come together to create an endowed scholarship in memory of a UNC Charlotte alumna.

Giving

40 Building Blocks

28 Youth Arrests

34 Fitting Tribute

49ers Notebook

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| e d i to r ’s d e s k

Your University at Work UNC Charlotte is your university. Either you are directly invested in the University as an alumnus, parent, student, professor or staffer, or you are engaged as an involved “friend.”

In any case, UNC Charlotte is working on your behalf.

Educating students is an essential aspect of this University’s mission. Yet, the role of an urban research university such as ours extends well beyond the classroom. In these pages you will see stories of professors, alumni and students who create value for the University and the greater Charlotte community well beyond the basic nature of their roles at UNC Charlotte.

The Rowe family not only made such an early mark on the University that a building is named in its honor, but family members continue investing in the University, a dedication that now spans three generations of students and alumni.

Family and colleagues of the late alumna Ashley Lutz were so moved by her relationship with UNC Charlotte that they established a School of Nursing scholarship in her honor. Likewise, one of Charlotte’s foremost business and educational leaders, Ruth Shaw, and her husband, Colin Shaw, have established an endowment to support young faculty members teaching humanities.

Then consider the faculty members featured here. All of them are teachers, first. UNC Charlotte students get the direct benefit of interacting with these professors in the classroom. One has just received an award for exceptional mentoring of graduate students. Beyond that, they are making their mark through novel and practical research that impacts the community. That research involves subjects as diverse as theatre, posttraumatic growth, cyber security, pesticide regulation, youth arrests, water disinfection and poetry.

The stories herein are “people” stories — your fellow citizens directly and indirectly working to enrich our quality of life. They are contributing to a high value educational experience. They are strengthening the social, cultural and economic fabric of the community. That’s what UNC Charlotte — North Carolina’s urban research university — does.

Regards,

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte Volume 19, Number 1 Philip L. Dubois Chancellor Niles Sorensen Vice Chancellor for University Advancement Stephen Ward Executive Director of University Communication Editor Director of Public Relations John D. Bland Associate Editor Lisa A. Patterson Contributing Writers Phillip Brown Arthur Murray Melba Newsome Paul Nowell Meg Whalen Staff Photographer Wade Bruton Design & Production SPARK Publications

UNC Charlotte is published four times a year by The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC 28223-0001 ISSN 10771913 Editorial offices: 202 Foundation Building The University of North Carolina at Charlotte 9201 University City Blvd.

Charlotte, NC 28223 704.687.5825 The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is open to people of all races and is committed to equality of educational opportunity and does not discriminate against applicants, students or employees based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or disability.

John D. Bland, Editor Director of Public Relations

Printed on recycled paper 17,500 copies of this publication were printed at a cost of $.54 per piece, for a total cost of $9,375.

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Revelations from the Tomb Tabor’s latest finding dates Christianity

A world-renowned UNC Charlotte professor and historian has made another discovery that stirs controversy about the life and times of Jesus.

Tabor’s revelation grows out of the discovery of an intact first century tomb in Jerusalem.

The tomb revealed a set of limestone Jewish ossuaries, or “bone boxes,” that are engraved with a rare Greek inscription and a unique image that the scholars involved identify as distinctly Christian. The engraving shows what appears to be a large fish with a human stick figure.

The findings are detailed in a preliminary report by James D. Tabor, professor and chair of religious studies at UNC Charlotte that was published online in February. The announcement has garnered worldwide media coverage, from the New York Post to The Telegraph in the United Kingdom, O Globo in Brazil, La Tercera in Chile, Discovery News, and many others in Europe and South America.

The four-line Greek inscription on one ossuary refers to God “raising up” someone and a carved image found on an adjacent ossuary shows what appears to be a large fish with a human stick figure in its mouth, interpreted by the excavation team to be an image evoking the biblical story of Jonah.

In the earliest gospel materials the “sign of Jonah,” as mentioned by Jesus, has been interpreted as a symbol of his resurrection. Jonah images in later “early” Christian art, such as images found in the Roman catacombs, are the most common motif found on tombs as a symbol of Christian resurrection hope. In contrast, the story of Jonah is not depicted in any first century Jewish art and iconographic images on ossuaries are extremely rare, given the prohibition within Judaism of making images of people or animals.

The tomb in question is dated prior to 70 CE, when ossuary use in Jerusalem ceased due to the Roman destruction of the city. If the markings are Christian as the scholars involved believe, the engravings represent — by several centuries — the www.UNCC.edu

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“Our team was in a kind of ecstatic disbelief.”

James Tabor (front) and his colleague, Simcha Jacobovici, examine an iconographic image found in a Jerusalem tomb.

earliest archaeological record of Christians ever found. The engravings were most likely made by some of Jesus’ earliest followers, within decades of his death. Together, the inscription and the Jonah image testify to early Christian faith in resurrection, and predate the writing of the gospels.

“If anyone had claimed to find either a statement about resurrection or a Jonah image in a Jewish tomb of this period I would have said impossible — until now,” Tabor said.

“Our team was in a kind of ecstatic disbelief,

but the evidence was clearly before our eyes, causing us to revise our prior assumptions.”

The publication of the academic article is concurrent with the publication of a book

by Simon & Schuster entitled “The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity.”

The book is co-authored by Tabor and filmmaker/professor Simcha Jacobovici. A documentary on the discovery will be aired by the Discovery Channel in spring 2012.

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news briefs

Fueling Passion to Learn Claudia Flowers receives graduate mentoring award The College of Education’s Claudia Flowers has been called a professor who sets the standard for mentoring graduate students. For this distinction, she is the 2012 recipient of the Harshini V. de Silva Award.

During the award presentation, UNC Charlotte Provost Joan Lorden noted that mentors learn by trial and error, and they exercise creativity with each student encounter. She said Flowers has mastered the art of mentoring. “She is recognized by her colleagues for her approach to the student-mentor relationship, and she is lauded by her students — both present and former — for offering an unparalleled level of support and guidance.”

A professor of educational research, statistics and measurement, Flowers joined UNC Charlotte in 1995. During her academic and professional career, she has served on or chaired nearly 80 dissertation committees, and she has published extensively, co-authoring 26 peer-reviewed articles with students and alumni. In addition, Flowers has worked with more than 25 graduate students on externally funded grants; her work has secured or provided expertise on grants totaling nearly $7 million.

Nomination letters confirm Flowers to be a mentor who patiently encourages and supports students. In the words of one graduate, “Dr. Flowers understood my passion to learn and fueled it. I cannot imagine a better, more involved, more caring and more knowledgeable graduate advisor.”

Flowers earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of West Georgia and a Master of Exercise Science and doctorate degrees in educational research, measurement and statistics from Georgia State University. She is a reviewer for numerous publications, including Applied Psychological Measurement and the Journal of Educational Measurement.

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Harshini V. de Silva Award recipient Claudia Flowers (right) pauses with UNC Charlotte alumnus (’94, ’99, ‘03) and award-winning educator Debra Morris, a former mentee. The award for mentoring graduate students is one of the University’s highest faculty honors.

“I cannot imagine a better, more involved, more caring and more knowledgeable graduate advisor.”

She also provides expertise to a number of advisory panels and boards, such as the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. She is a member and past-president of the North Carolina Association for Research in Education.

The Harshini V. de Silva Award honors its namesake, an exceptional teacher, brilliant scholar and researcher and devoted servant of her profession and community until her death in October 2000. It is given annually to the faculty member whose commitment to students, research and scholarly inquiry most closely exemplifies the spirit of de Silva.

The Harshini V. de Silva Award event at UNC Charlotte Center City drew a large crowd of colleagues, friends and family to honor 2012 recipient Claudia Flowers.

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University to Compete Globally in 2013 Solar Decathlon UNC Charlotte will be among the competitors for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon in 2013. This worldwide contest will showcase efforts to build solar-powered, highly energy-efficient homes that combine affordability, consumer appeal and design excellence.

“The UNC Charlotte team is thrilled to be selected once again to compete in the Solar Decathlon,” said Chris Jarrett, director of the School of Architecture in the College of Arts + Architecture. He added that many lessons were learned from UNC Charlotte’s collaboration with the DOE in the first Solar Decathlon in 2002. “A decade later, we have new expertise, new technology and new partnerships. We’re looking forward to the challenge of rethinking the next generation of solar housing.”

The 20 selected teams represent colleges and universities across the United States and

from around the world. They will begin a two-year process to design, construct and test their homes before reassembling them at the Solar Decathlon 2013 competition site in Irvine, Calif. Like the Olympic Decathlon, Solar Decathlon teams compete in 10 different categories, such as architecture and engineering, energy production, affordability and market appeal.

UNC Charlotte’s effort features an interdisciplinary team with expertise from the Infrastructure, Design, Environment and Sustainability Center (IDEAS); the Center for Integrated Building Design Research (CIBDR); and UNC Charlotte’s new Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC), a multimillion dollar energy research center led by Johan Enslin, former chief technology officer at Petra Solar.

UNC Charlotte’s team notes its strong partnerships with the Charlotte metro region’s many energy industries will be valuable as it designs, builds and operates the solar house of the future.

Belk Grant Targets Undergrad Professional Development The Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte received a $250,000 grant from The Belk Foundation to support the creation of a comprehensive professional-development program for undergraduate business students.

The Belk Foundation gift, along with a $50,000 donation from Belk College alumnus Mark Doughton of WinstonSalem, N.C. and his wife Susan, will provide startup funding for the Student Center for Professional Development (SCPD).

to focus on increasing the number of students who achieve on grade level and graduate from high school on time, with an intentional path forward.

Students will have access to a network support team consisting of an academic advisor and a career advisor. They will participate in career planning activities, attend workshops on topics such as business etiquette and networking, and have access to special internship and study-abroad opportunities.

“After four years of solid preparation that complements the strong educational foundation our students receive in the classroom, they will be more knowledgeable, experienced and professional,” said Daryl Kerr, associate dean for undergraduate programs. “We expect the SCPD to have a positive impact on retention and graduation rates within the Belk College and to provide the Charlotte business community with hundreds of well-prepared, skilled and enthusiastic graduates each year.”

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“Employers are telling many business schools that while graduates have a solid understanding of business concepts, they often lack the practical professional knowledge and experiences they need to be successful in the workplace,” said Belk College Dean Steven Ott. “The SCPD will allow the Belk College to provide our students with a broad yet individualized series of career development programs that will give them an advantage in the job market and enhance their value to employers.”

The Belk Foundation, a private family foundation, refined its mission in 2010

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news briefs

Library Hosts French Film Festival With support from a grant secured by the J. Murrey Atkins Library, the Tournées French Film Festival visited UNC Charlotte March 19 - 24, offering students and faculty a rich experience of contemporary French films.

The Festival offered a wide array of genres and subjects, generational and geographic borders, and innovative style and storytelling methods. It also introduced first-time film

directors alongside respected and revered French cinema figures.

Free and open to the public, the film series took place on UNC Charlotte’s campus, UNC Charlotte Center City, and Pfeiffer University. Several post-viewing

The installation titled “Cash Crop” by artist Stephen Hayes invites viewers to confront the past, present and future.

“Cash Crop” Forums Examine Slavery, Labor, Freedom “Cash Crop,” an exhibition related to American slavery, will be displayed through June 30 at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture. As part of this event, core and affiliated faculty members from the Department of Africana Studies will participate in public presentations on slavery, labor and globalization.

Christopher Cameron and Gregory Mixon, history, and Erika Edwards, Africana studies, will discuss “Pioneers of Freedom: Slave Revolt, Rebellion and Revolution in the Atlantic World” on Thursday, March 22.

College of Education faculty members Charles Hutchison and Greg Wiggan will talk about “From Slavery to the Prison Industrial Complex: Race and the African-American Experience” on Thursday, April 19.

Eddy Souffrant, philosophy, will lead the panel “Capitalism, Globalization and Human Rights” on Thursday, May 24.

With the exception of the first event, forums will be at 6 p.m. in the Gantt Center, 551 South Tryon Street.

Comprised of 15 life-size relief sculptures, “Cash Crop” is a symbolic epresentation of Africans imported to the New World between 1540 to 1850.

Atkins Library Special Collections contributed additional images for the exhibit.

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discussions were led by UNC Charlotte faculty members and selected community leaders.

Atkins Library hosted the festival in collaboration with UNC Charlotte’s Languages and Culture Studies department and its Film Studies program, and Pfeiffer University. The Festival was made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture, which aims to bring contemporary French cinema to American college and university campuses.

“Personally Speaking” Topics Include Gender, Race, Death Cheryl Hicks, associate professor of history, discussed the voices and views of black working-class women, especially southern migrants, in early 20thcentury New York, as part of the Personally Speaking lecture series at UNC Charlotte Center City.

Hicks’ talk was based on her book “Talk With You Like a Woman: AfricanAmerican Women, Justice and Reform in New York, 1890-1935.” In her lecture, she explored the impact of racism and sexism on these Cheryl Hicks women and their families. Through their stories, Hicks sheds light on urban reform and criminal justice issues.

It was the third presentation in the 2011-12 Personally Speaking lecture series, sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the J. Murrey Atkins Library.

Currently in its second season, the Personally Speaking (P.S.) lecture series was developed to further connect the community with UNC Charlotte faculty and their work.

Four events are hosted each year where faculty members speak and answer audience questions on books they have recently written. The setting is casual, with a reception offered after the discussion. The final event for this year’s series is scheduled for March 20 at Atkins Library, when Christine Davis speaks about “Death: The Beginning of a Relationship.” www.UNCC.edu

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Professor Gets Prestigious Fellowship Ishwar Aggarwal, a research professor in the Department of Physics and Optical Science, has been named a 2012 Optical Society of America (OSA) Fellow, one of only 66 members chosen worldwide for recognition this year for work in optics and photonics.

Aggarwal’s research focuses on the development of fiber optics, novel optical wave-guide and fiber devices for passive and active mid-infrared applications and transparent ceramics such as spinel and laser gain ceramics. He joined UNC Charlotte in 2011 after retiring as head of the Optical Materials and Devices Branch at Naval Research Laboratory.

Optics and fiber technologies are critical to a wide array of applications in biomedical, telecommunications, defense security, sensing and automotive fields.

Throughout his career in government and industry, Aggarwal has transitioned four technologies to industry, published more than 300 papers, edited three books and co-authored more than 70 patents.

McCrory’s Mayoral Papers Now at Atkins Library The official documents, photos and personal papers of former Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory are now part of the J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections.

The McCrory collection can be viewed by the campus community and the greater public during Special Collections operating hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday) or by special appointment.

“The acquisition of the former mayor’s documents and other personal papers are timely given McCrory’s recent North Carolina gubernatorial campaign announcement and Charlotte’s selection as the 2012 Democratic National Convention host city,” said Shelly Theriault, communications and marketing manager for the library. Special Collections has been the city of Charlotte’s formal repository of mayoral papers since the 1960s, beginning with former mayor Stan Brookshire.

For questions or to make an appointment, email Special Collections at spec-coll@ uncc.edu or call 704-687-2449. www.UNCC.edu

Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre was welcomed to campus by Lisa Lewis Dubois and Chancellor Dubois.

Chiquita Officials Tour Campus Chiquita Brands International CEO Fernando Aguirre and members of the company’s executive team visited UNC Charlotte for a campus tour and meeting with University officials in February.

In November 2011, the company announced its intentions to move its world headquarters to the Queen City from Cincinnati. Chancellor Philip L. Dubois noted that Chiquita is “a socially and environmentally responsible company, one that has embraced improving world nutrition as central to its mission. That emphasis is certainly

consistent with UNC Charlotte’s strengths in health and human services, and our move toward the creation of a School of Public Health here in Charlotte.”

A Fortune 1,000 company, Chiquita expects to create more than 400 jobs in Charlotte with an average wage of more than $106,000. It has leased space in the NASCAR tower adjacent to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Widely known for bananas, Chiquita produces a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, snacks, juices, smoothies and pre-packaged salads. Its relocation also includes Salinas, Calif.-based Fresh Express, purchased by the company in 2005.

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s t a ke yo u r c l a i m

Legacy of

Strength

Cameron Rowe makes great-granddad, father, brother proud

By Arthur Murray

Mark, Cameron and Derrick Rowe

Every now and then you have an encounter with someone that puts your life in perspective and inspires you to accomplish every goal you’ve ever imagined. That’s what happened to me on a Wednesday afternoon in November when I met Cameron Rowe, his father Mark and his brother Derrick. What I assumed would be a routine interview turned out to be a life-changing reality check.

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Cameron Rowe, a junior at UNC Charlotte, had a seemingly normal two years when he entered as a freshman in the fall of 2005. He enjoyed racing dirt bikes, lifting weights, spending time with his friends and meeting new people.

What separated Cameron from other UNC Charlotte students, however, was his rich family legacy and history rooted in this University’s foundation.

Cameron and Derrick are the greatgrandsons of Oliver Rowe, one of the UNC Charlotte’s founders and pioneers.

Oliver Rowe was born in Newport, Tenn. and raised in Charlotte. He attended UNC Chapel Hill, earning a degree in electrical engineering. He returned to Charlotte and began working for an engineering firm, R.H. Bouligny Inc., of which he eventually became the president www.UNCC.edu

s t a ke yo u r c l a i m and changed the name to the Rowe Corp.

The elder Rowe first became involved in Charlotte’s educational system when he became an advocate for consolidating the city and county schools, making countless speeches to the PTA. He then made his mark on higher education by joining Bonnie Cone and others to create a state university in Charlotte.

He saw a tremendous need for an educational base in the rapidly growing region.

He went before the city council, county commission, state legislature and university system to campaign for university status. Rowe was instrumental in soliciting the largest single gift made to the UNC Charlotte Foundation as of that time, $1 million by the Celanese Corp. That gift inspired others, and eventually Charlotte College attained university status and became a branch of the UNC system.

‘INDEBTED’ TO ROWE Bonnie Cone, the founder of our University, thought highly of the Charlotte businessman. “Without the leadership of Oliver Rowe, the city of Charlotte and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte would not have risen to the prominence which they have attained…,” she said. “I am personally indebted to Oliver Rowe for the support and encouragement he gave me. Without his support, the building of a university of excellence would have been difficult indeed.”

Because of Oliver Rowe’s important relationship to the University, his greatgrandson Cameron decided to carry on the tradition and attend UNC Charlotte — as had a host of other relatives, including his father, grandfather and many cousins. While his grandmother urged him and other relatives to attend, Cameron assured me that coming to UNC Charlotte was solely his decision.

In the summer of 2007, Cameron, brother Derrick and their dad, Mark, went to a new local track to practice racing their dirt bikes. There was one part with three consecutive jumps; Cameron didn’t make it over the last jump. He flew over the handlebars and was subsequently crushed by a group of riders who didn’t see him.

The accident left him in a wheelchair.

Cameron had broken his C1, C2 and C4 vertebrae, dislocated a portion of his skull, suffered a brainstem injury, torn neck ligaments and www.UNCC.edu

muscles, and suffered a lacerated liver, a punctured lung and a broken arm.

He was flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital, where doctors gave him a 2 percent chance of surviving the first night. If he recovered, they predicted his only motor function would be blinking his eyes. Cameron surpassed their predictions, and on Father’s Day of that year, he moved his leg for the first time.

For the next five months, Cameron was hospitalized and endured rigorous rehabilitation at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. It was there he met with a mentor who was given a similar prognosis by his physicians — but that same man is now walking.

Cameron and his family took an aggressive stance on his rehabilitation and would even sneak back into the facility to do extra workouts. He eventually learned to speak, eat and drink on his own. Three years later,

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“There are still tough times, but at the end of the day you have a choice to move forward or go back. For me, going back is not an option.”

Continued on p. 35

The Oliver Reagan Rowe Arts Building honors one of UNC Charlotte’s founding fathers.

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49 e rs n o te b o o k

Milestone Moment

University signs first class of football players

Head coach Brad Lambert addresses a crowd of over 250 fans at the 49ers Signing Day Reception Feb. 2.

It’s 7:02 a.m. on Feb. 1, the first day of the college football signing period in 2012.

The fax machine rings. The National Letter of Intent for Hampstead, N.C.’s Will Thomas slides across. The 49ers have their first football signee.

There have been many milestones for the 49ers football program — from the Chancellor’s recommendation and the Board of Trustees vote to the hiring of head coach Brad Lambert and the groundbreaking of the on-campus stadium.

This milestone, however, may trump them all.

“The actual players — that’s what we do — the guys that are going to run out on the field,” Lambert said.

By the time the day was over, the 49ers had 24 players. A 25th, the 49ers first verbal commitment, Alan Barnwell, signed the next day.

A 26th recruit was signed later.

“It’s been so much anticipation — it’s finally becoming real — today we finally got the players — we’ve got a team,” Lambert continued. “There have been a lot of steps along the way. There’s 10 UNC CHARLOTTE magazine

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been a lot of work done and today we finally get some players in the program and we see the guys that are going to be the first 49ers — it’s a day we’ve been waiting on for a long time. It’s the first one — I’ve sold that since day one. The power of being first is really pretty cool and I think the guys bought into it.”

The coaching staff and administrators arrived early, eyeing the fax machine — waiting for the papers to come across. Just after 7a.m., the floodgates opened.

“The fax machine was burning up there for a little bit,” Lambert said. “This situation is so different just because it’s our first group.

Everybody was up early this morning. We were all in here early — waiting on faxes. In this situation, it was really eventful because we haven’t had players — we’ve been here for a year and haven’t had any players. Now we finally get some guys — get to coach ’em and teach ’em. I’m really excited about this first class — and the kids are excited to be

Assistant coach James Adams autographs a 49ers football poster at the Signing Day Reception.

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here. You heard their voices today when they’d call. It’s a really good day for us.”

The first recruiting class has a decidedly North Carolina flavor to it. Of the 25 signees, 20 are from North Carolina, two from South Carolina and three from Georgia. West Charlotte’s Greg Cunningham Jr. and Independence High’s Austin Duke are from Charlotte, and the 49ers added a pair from nearby Porter Ridge High School in Union County.

“North Carolina was a real point of emphasis for us,” Lambert said.

“We’re fortunate to get a good number of them. And we got a couple guys from Porter Ridge, Independence, West Charlotte — that’s important to us.”

“We wanted to shoot high,” Lambert added. “We expect to do well in all aspects.”

In addition to recruiting close to home, Lambert keyed on versatility in building his first class.

“We took a lot of guys in this class that can play a number of different positions. Actually, there are seven quarterbacks in this class — guys that can play different positions and have that versatility. That was our philosophy and I think we met that goal.”

The next day, the 49ers held a Signing Day edition of its Charlotte 49ers Football Chalk Talk series. Lambert and his staff took turns introducing videos of the signees and talking about their accomplishments to the over 250 fans packed into the Salons in the Barnhardt Student Activity Center.

Lambert opened the festivities with the first signee, Will Thomas: “That was a big deal — Will Thomas — he was first one to fax in his paper. And he wanted to be first. When I went down to visit, he said, ‘I want to be first, I want to be the first one,’ and he came through.”

Lambert would go on to talk about another first: Brandon Banks, who may epitomize Lambert’s plan in building the program — a plan that included versatility, home-grown products and aiming high.

“I’m really partial to this guy, Brandon Banks,” Lambert said.

“He was the first guy that I watched on video and I thought when I saw that tape back in April — if we can sign this guy we’ll really be doing something.”

Banks signed — and the 49ers are really doing something.

Continued on p. 38

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Meet the 49ers 1st Football Signees Below are the names, high schools, hometowns, heights and weights of UNC Charlotte’s initial 26 football signees.

Twenty-two of the players are from the Carolinas two from South Carolina and three from Georgia.

Brandon Banks, Southwest Guilford, High Point, N.C., 6’3”, 230 lb Alan Barnwell, Cummings, Burlington, N.C., 5’9”, 165 lb Jarred Barr, Sun Valley, Indian Trail, N.C., 6’3”, 285 lb Justin Bolus, James Island, Folly Beach, S.C., 6’2”, 205 lb Jaquil Capel, West Montgomery, Mt. Gilead, N.C., 5’11”, 175 lb Terry Caldwell, John T. Hoggard, Wilmington, N.C., 6’2”, 208 lb Jamal Covington, Lovejoy, Fayetteville, Ga., 6’3”, 270 lb Greg Cunningham Jr., West Charlotte, Charlotte, 6’1”, 175 lb Austin Duke, Independence, Charlotte, 5’8”, 155 lb Kariym Gent, Ayden-Grifton, Grifton, N.C., 5’11”, 185 lb Jalen Holt, South Stanly, Norwood, N.C., 6’4”, 225 lb Matt Johnson, Maiden, Newton, N.C., 6’2”, 215 lb Thomas La Bianca, Porter Ridge, Indian Trail, N.C., 6’3”, 280 lb Rick Legrant, Buford, Buford, Ga., 6’0”, 215 lb Prince Mayela, West Mecklenburg, Charlotte, 5’11”, 175 lb Lee McNeil, Porter Ridge, Indian Trail, N.C., 6’2”, 180 lb James Middleton, Timberland, Pineville, S.C., 6’4”, 240 lb Karsten Miller, North Davidson, Lexington, N.C., 6’3”, 195 lb Tank Norman, Richlands, Jacksonville, N.C., 5’11”, 180 lb Mark Pettit, Western Guilford, Greensboro, N.C., 6’6”, 239 lb Larry Ogunjobi, Ragsdale, Greensboro, N.C., 6’3”, 253 lb Kendal Parker, Lakeside, Lake Park, Ga., 6’1”, 215 lb Casey Perry, Hillside, Durham, N.C., 6’3”, 285 lb Jamel Ross, Panther Creek, Cary, N.C., 6’3”, 215lb

Assistant coach Napoleon Sykes (left) talks with fans at the 49ers Signing Day Reception.

www.UNCC.edu

Mason Sledge, Monroe, Monroe, N.C., 6’4”, 250 lb Will Thomas, Topsail Senior, Hampstead, N.C., 6’0”, 170 lb Q112

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By Meg Freeman Whalen

Objects of

Immense Power

Project/Hope explores new perspectives on art, history

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related to the Holocaust. Some were played in concentration camps; some belonged to the klezmer tradition — the Jewish folk music tradition that was nearly obliterated in the Holocaust.

Recovered and restored by Amnon Weinstein, an Israeli violinmaker, the violins have never before been exhibited together in the Americas. They will premiere in Charlotte this April in exhibition at UNC Charlotte Center City and in a series of concerts featuring renowned musicians from across the world.

Embedded in the University’s commitment to bringing these remarkable instruments to Charlotte was the intention that the project would engage students from many different disciplines, spurring them to approach history and art from new perspectives. Ken Lambla, dean of the College of Arts + Architecture, issued a broad call to professors to participate.

Among those who responded was James Vesce, chair of the Department of Theatre.

“I’m always banging the drum for collaboration,” Vesce said. “When Ken asked us, ‘Do you want to be involved?’ I said, ‘Of course, we do.’”

Although there are several notable plays about the Holocaust, Vesce wanted to do something different. “We wanted to look forward instead of look back,” he said. “We wanted to expand the sense of hope and what that means.”

‘INTERVIEW THEATRE’ Vesce had worked with Salvatore before and was especially interested in Salvatore’s experience with a relatively new genre of drama called “interview theatre.” As the Department of Theatre develops a strategic plan for the future, Vesce said, “one of the principles is a commitment to new work and new ways of working. We want to explore new ways of creating work.”

Perhaps the most famous piece of “interview theatre” is “The Laramie Project,”

Photo by Wade

ton Photo by Wade Bru

Bruton

On the first day of “Topics in Theatre” class last semester, students brought in their most prized possessions. Well-worn stuffed animals, a bracelet, a photograph of an old friend, a mother’s journal — what appeared to the untrained eye as ordinary bric-a-brac were in fact precious artifacts from the students’ lives.

“On the surface they were everyday objects,” said Abbey Elliott, a senior theatre major who graduates this May. But when asked to tell about their possessions, she adds, “most people ended up in tears.”

What Elliott and the 11 other students in the class learned that day, said playwright Joe Salvatore, was that objects can have “immense power.”

“Objects carry memories. They link us to the past and present and sometimes propel us into the future.”

Salvatore, a successful playwright and, since 2002, a professor at New York University, was commissioned by the UNC Charlotte Department of Theatre to work with students to create an original play inspired by “Violins of Hope,” a project the UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture presents this spring. Like the bracelet and the teddy bears and the photographs, the Violins of Hope are mere things that have become invested with extraordinary meaning.

Collected over a period of more than 15 years, the instruments have histories

The violins that comprise the soul of Project/Hope and Violins of Hope have histories related to the Holocaust.

Project/Hope participants used their own “precious artifacts” as symbols of hope. Among them was sheet music of a Felix Mendelssohn concerto. Mendelssohn’s music was banned by the Nazis because Mendelssohn was Jewish. www.UNCC.edu

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a play by Moisés Kaufman about the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. Based on hundreds of interviews with people in Laramie, Wyo., the play premiered in 2000 and has since been performed across the world.

But Salvatore was actually introduced to that genre of theatre several years earlier while a graduate student. He taught a course that used the 1991 play, “Fires in the Mirror,” by Anna Deveare Smith, a pioneer of interview theatre.

Salvatore wrote his first such piece in 1999. He said that the process of interview theatre directly engages the community in complex issues.

“It is less about drawing conclusions for the audience than presenting a series of thoughts and ideas from which the audience can draw their own conclusions,” he said.

“Project/Hope,” as the work for UNC Charlotte is called, has grown out of an intensive collaborative process shared by Salvatore, Assistant Professor of Directing Robin Witt, and the dozen students who took the “Topics in Theatre” course last semester.

Beginning in August, the class met each Friday for three hours, led by Witt. Salvatore joined the class regularly by Skype and flew to Charlotte from New York several times during the semester to meet with them in person.

— the personal accounts of how it affected people’s lives. It taught us to look beyond the surface to that personal experience.”

Photo by Wade Bruton

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Theatre majors Abbey Elliott (left) and Celeste McCants took part in Project/Hope.

After introducing their special belongings to the class, the students began a four-week process of intensive research on the Holocaust.

“You learn about the Holocaust in high school,” said Celeste McCants, a junior theatre major, “but there were so many other facets to that history that I did not know about

What appear to be everyday bric-a-brac proved to be objects that carried distinct memories for the students.

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SHARED SORROW The historical stories the students encountered were often brutal. “One student talked about being paralyzed by the despair,” Witt recalls. In the first class “and every class for the first month,” McCants said, “everyone was in tears. But that shared sorrow really united us.”

It also prepared the students emotionally for the next step in the process: the interviews. In all, the 12 students conducted 26 interviews, talking to local citizens of all backgrounds, ages and life experiences, including a Catholic deacon, an undocumented immigrant, a doctor, a music teacher and a military veteran.

“We give voice to people who would never find themselves onstage,” said Salvatore.

“We locate voices that would not normally find themselves acknowledged. There’s something very empowering about that.”

The students asked each interviewee the same five questions: Define the word “hope” as if you were going to find it in a dictionary.

Describe a moment from your life when you needed hope. What is the relationship between hope and memory?

Describe an experience that you’ve had at a pawnshop.

What is your most prized possession, and how have you come to have it?

They were astounded by the answers they received. “The openness of people and their ability to bare their souls to strangers — we were constantly amazed that people will open up so much,” said Elliott. “It takes a lot of trust and respect.”

Salvatore and Witt taught the students to be scrupulous in their transcriptions of the interviews. “That authenticity,” Elliott said, “the struggle in their voice. We wanted to really honor what they were telling us in their stories.” The students learned, too, to recognize good dramatic material.

“Robin and Joe talked a lot about ‘finding the gold’ in interviews,” said McCants.

“When you’re sitting there and you hear it, you know it — that’s the gold.”

By November, the interviews were complete, and it was up to Salvatore to turn all that “gold” into a coherent piece of theatre, with a dramatic arc and compelling characters. As of the writing of this article in January, the play www.UNCC.edu

fe a t u re was in its second draft — a version “very, very different from the first draft,” he said.

“Objects carry memories.

They link us to the past and present and sometimes propel us into the future.”

www.UNCC.edu

ONGOING REVISION The play will be performed April 18-22 in Robinson Hall on the UNC Charlotte campus, and Salvatore said he may be making adjustments right up until show time. That constant revision, Witt said, is an important lesson for her students.

“Inquiry has to be constant. The exploration is non-stop in the creative process.

Everybody wants to be done, but for artists you can’t ever want to just be done.”

Beyond teaching the lesson of unending inquiry, interview theatre presents a challenge to the students who will act in the final production. Vesce calls it acting from the “outside-in.”

“It’s an imitative form of acting that represents the people interviewed. The characters are defined by their behavior — through gesture, vocal inflection, body language — that’s the way into the character.

Most acting is ‘inside out,’ where you try to

| UNC CHARLOTTE

find the motivation of the character. The actor goes away. You don’t realize the actor is working. In interview technique, you defy that principle. You actually show the actor playing a character, often by having the actor play more than one character.”

But perhaps the greatest lesson of all is that of compassion. Celeste McCants tells about a young woman she interviewed who had been trying to have a baby for two years. Soon after the interview, McCants learned that the woman was pregnant. She announced the news to the class, and the whole class celebrated.

“That unity that you feel with all these people,” she said, “the people you read about, the people you interview. There are these things that we’re all going to feel — that hope, that loss, that memory — there’s a connection that we all have, regardless of our differences. And I think people will get that from watching the show, as well.”

Meg Whalen is director of communications and external relations for the College of Arts + Architecture.

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Posttraumatic

Growth

By Lisa A. Patterson

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When UNC Charlotte professors of psychology Lawrence Calhoun and Richard Tedeschi set out to write a book about the positive changes that sometimes arise in the aftermath of trauma, the phenomenon they described didn’t even have a name.

“If there’s not a label, it’s hard to get people to pay attention. So we came up with the label ‘posttraumatic growth,’” Tedeschi said. Publishers rejected the book because they were unfamiliar with the term, until Sage Press granted the authors a contract.

In the years following their 1999 publication of “Facilitating Posttraumatic Growth,” the term posttraumatic growth has trickled into the vernacular, and the concept has gained traction within mental health circles.

Tesdeschi and Calhoun define posttraumatic growth as an experience of positive change that comes from the struggle with traumatic experience, including but not limited to change in one’s self, relationships, priorities or philosophy of life.

“Trauma, to a great degree, is in the eye of the beholder. We define trauma in terms of how much it shakes up the assumptive world,” Tedeschi said. “If the event makes people rethink their beliefs about how they want to live their lives, that’s traumatic.”

But one person’s trauma might not be another person’s trauma.

Calhoun and Tedeschi maintain parttime clinical practices in addition to doing research and teaching undergraduate and graduate students. Tedeschi cited an example from his practice involving a client diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“We’re talking about how the diagnosis was affecting him and he said, ‘You know what, my divorce was more traumatic than this. That was really the worst event in my life,’” he said. “You have to be very careful judging as an outsider what’s one person’s trauma and what’s not.”

While it’s tempting to view posttraumatic growth as the upside to trauma, the researchers caution that individuals experience and deal with traumatic events in individual ways. Some will perceive benefits from the experience, and others may not.

“The data suggest that a substantial proportion of trauma survivors report at least some positive changes arising www.UNCC.edu

Resistance to the concept of posttraumatic growth stems from cultural factors both within the profession of psychology and within Western societies. from their struggle with the aftermath of trauma, although the severity of suffering may counterbalance whatever experience of positive change may have occurred,” Tedeschi said.

PTSD MORE FAMILIAR In 1980, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual so that only people who had experienced events such as war or genocide were subject to a diagnosis of PTSD. That definition was broadened in 1994 to include other experiences that might be perceived as traumatic, such as car accidents or incidents of abuse.

In the ensuing years, PTSD has become a familiar diagnosis. Posttraumatic growth appears to be following the same trajectory.

Tedeschi and Calhoun assert

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that resistance to the concept of posttraumatic growth stems from cultural factors both within the profession of psychology and, more broadly, within American and Western society.

“American psychologists have difficulty understanding that you can both have a lot of stress and also experience significant positive changes from your point of view — one doesn’t go up when the other goes down,” Calhoun said.

“Indeed, where you look is where you go,” Tedeschi noted. “That’s been the problem in the trauma literature we’re trying to correct — people have not looked for this.”

According to the researchers, the literature is rife with reports of the negative side of trauma and the medical problems that result.

“Clients are only asked questions about how bad everything has been for them, and their symptoms and PTSD,” Tedeschi said. “Mental health professionals have not bothered to ask questions about whether anything useful has come out of the experience; if you don’t ask that question people generally don’t report the positive.”

After giving a talk at a VA hospital in Minnesota as part of a study of veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam, Calhoun recalled an encounter with one vet who was very intrigued by what the researchers had said.

“He asked his guys about what they thought of posttraumatic growth because they’d never mentioned it to him, and they said ‘you never asked us about it,’” Calhoun said.

The veteran went on to describe how every time he had an icecream cone or ate a hot dog he appreciated it so much more because it reminded him of the Japanese prisoner of war camp in which he was detained during the war, and how he wanted those things so badly while he was a prisoner.

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nearly 1,200 times by external researchers.

While awareness of posttraumatic growth as a potential outcome of trauma has risen, Tedeschi and Calhoun said there’s still a lot to do to get this beyond researchers to the people who help others with trauma.

“Only now are people starting to look at posttraumatic growth in the context of specific attempts to introduce it directly into clinical interventions,” Calhoun said.

Thus far, the military has been an early adopter of the concept.

“The military has started to pay attention to the possibilities of posttraumatic growth as a useful component to help both prepare soldiers who are going to combat zones and help soldiers who are coming back from combat,” Tedeschi said.

In the meantime, Tedeschi and Calhoun are revising the 1999 book. The new edition offers clinicians suggestions on how to approach themes that might point to the possibility of posttraumatic growth when they emerge.

They also address how people, other than clinicians, can act as “expert companions” to trauma survivors.

“Whether you’re a professional or a layperson concerned about someone you know, there’s a certain kind of companionship you can provide that allows people to express themselves,” Tedeschi said.

Richard Tedeschi

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LONGTIME COLLABORATION Tedeschi and Calhoun started their work together nearly 30 years ago. Both had recently earned tenure and were reassessing how well their clinical work matched up with their research interests.

They kept returning to questions of wisdom — what is it, and what makes people wise?

Ultimately they decided to interview elderly people who had gone through difficult events and had done very well in coping with them.

“We had tenure, so we felt it might be safe to pursue an area of inquiry that might not have an immediate pay off,” Calhoun said.

As they talked to these people, many of whom had been bereaved or suffered physical disabilities or illnesses as adults, they recognized themes of profound change.

“It was sort of shocking to hear from about 25 percent of the people that they considered these events the best things that ever happened to them,” Tedeschi said. “That work prompted us to look more closely at how negative events can be catalysts for personal transformation.”

“Psychologists are obsessed with numbers, so we developed the perceived benefits scale as a way to www.UNCC.edu

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measure the phenomenon,” Calhoun said. But they weren’t satisfied with the name of the scale — that’s when they came up with “posttraumatic growth.”

Decades later, the topic continues to hold their interest.

“We’ve still got a lot to learn,” Tedeschi said. “We don’t know exactly who is more likely to report posttraumatic growth, and what the circumstances are that promote it. We don’t know the trajectories over time — what this looks like five, 10, or 20 years out.”

Longitudinal studies are time and resource intensive, and few have focused on posttraumatic growth. However, Tedeschi is working on a followup to a study that was conducted in 1980 with Vietnam veterans who were prisoners of war. With colleagues at Yale University and UNC Chapel Hill, Tedeschi analyzed data collected more than 30 years later from the original study participants.

The findings have yet to be published, but the results revealed that the people who had suffered the most in terms of injury or torture report the most growth; the people who reported the most growth were also those who had the most support when they came back to the United States.

Tedeschi and Calhoun are careful to note that they brought to the fore something that has been documented for centuries.

“We are fully aware we didn’t invent this. It’s in Greek mythology — the hero goes out and has experiences in war and comes back wiser; it’s in novels, poetry, Presbyterian hymns,” Calhoun said.

“We helped focus some attention on a phenomenon that is in some way part of the human condition.”

Yet, despite its prevalence in human experience, posttraumatic growth was a phenomenon that did not have the attention of social, behavioral and medical scientists until Tedeschi and Calhoun gave it a name and a way to assess it.

Lisa A. Patterson is senior writer in University Communications.

Tedeschi and Calhoun invite people for whom the concept of posttraumatic growth resonates to get in touch with them. To find out more about posttraumatic growth and learn about opportunities to participate in research, visit the website http://ptgi.uncc.edu www.UNCC.edu

Photo by Wade Bruton

Share Your Story

Lawrence Calhoun

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By Paul Nowell

Signcryption technology becomes the international standard

Data Security

Guru

Yuliang Zheng is known as the father of a data security technology that is used by industries and individuals all over the world.

Yuliang Zheng, a professor in UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics, uses an “old school” example to illustrate the benefits of signcryption, the revolutionary new data security technology he invented.

“Signcryption can be viewed as a technology that hits two birds with one stone — the two birds being authenticity and confidentiality, and the stone being a single step of computation inside a computer chip,” he explains. “To understand the necessity of both confidentiality and authenticity, think of old-fashioned letter writing.

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“After one composes a letter to be addressed to a friend, one signs the letter first, followed by placing it into an envelope,” Zheng said.

“The purpose of signing the letter is to add authenticity to it … and the purpose of placing the letter into an envelope is to protect the letter from being snooped on while en route, that is, to have confidentiality.”

Known as the father of signcryption technology, Zheng is internationally recognized as an authority in cryptography and network security. He has published more than 200 scholarly articles and books on security and holds several

patents in cyber security. His most recent publication, “Practical Signcryption,” is currently on sale worldwide. He coedited it with Alexander W. Dent.

After nearly a three-year process, the International Organization of Standardization formally recognized Zheng’s research as an international standard. He continues his research in the Department of Software and Information Systems in the College of Computing and Informatics. He’s been a member of the UNC Charlotte faculty since 2001.

News of the adoption by the ISO came www.UNCC.edu

fe a t u re amid daily reports of cyber attacks and cyber crime around the world. Zheng said the application also enhances the security and privacy of cloud computing.

Signcryption is a breakthrough because it can make sure confidentiality is protected and authenticity is achieved seamlessly and simultaneously, Zheng said. For example, when you log in to an online bank account, signcryption prevents your username and password from being seen by unauthorized individuals. At the same time, it confirms your identity for the bank.

“This will also allow smaller devices, such as smart phones and PDAs, 3G and 4G mobile communications, as well as emerging technologies, such as radio frequency identifiers and wireless sensor networks, to perform high-level security functions,” he said.

In just a short period of time, signcryption has grown into an active research field as researchers from around the world are working on better techniques. Doctorate

Security Education Accomplishments The University’s Department of Software and Information Systems focuses on educating students about information assurance and security.

A part of the College of Computing and Informatics, the department has rolled up many accomplishments: 000 - Held the first annual security 2 and privacy symposium. It was a half-day event in December with approximately 60 attendees.

001 - The National Security 2 Agency designated the department’s information assurance program as a National Center of Academic Excellence in information assurance education.

This designation has been extended through 2012.

001 - The department established 2 the Carolinas Cyber Defender Program, part of the Cybercorps Program, which gives full scholarships to students to pursue information assurance studies and work for the federal government upon graduation. www.UNCC.edu

Known as the father of signcryption technology, Zheng is internationally recognized as an authority in cryptography and network security.

The department has received funding from the National Security Agency every year since that time.

002 - The Carolinas Cyber 2 Defender Program received Cybercorps funding from the National Science Foundation. Funding has been received uninterrupted since 2002. Over 120 students have been enrolled in this program.

006 - A team of students from the 2 department won the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The students defeated three other regional champions and a joint team from the U.S. military academies.

008 - The department’s information 2 assurance program became one of the first in the country to be designated by the National Security Agency as a National Center of Academic Excellence in information assurance research, for academic years 2008-2013.

007 - The Cyber Defense and Network 2 Assurability Center began in ’07 under a different name. In 2011, it was renamed.

The center offers high-impact research

| UNC CHARLOTTE

degrees devoted to this specific research are now available. Industries are now gravitating to the technology so as to create more secure data systems to address the ongoing battle against cyber crime.

This is highly significant for the banking industry as the fight against cyber crime escalates.

“By performing authenticity and confidentiality simultaneously, we can save resources, be it an individual’s time or be it energy as it will take less time to perform the task,” Zheng said. “Simply put, it’s a case of faster and more efficient computing — which equates to less power, less communication, less electricity needed, and time savings for individuals.

“So it is a more efficient, ‘green’ if you will, and on a global scale the impact is far more significant,” he noted.

Paul Nowell is media relations manager at UNC Charlotte. and education in network security, defense, assurability and privacy.

Specific domains of interest include: assurable and usable network security configuration, security automation, security evaluation and optimization, security policy synthesis, and problem/ threat diagnosis.

I n addition, CyberDNA seeks novel scalable authentication, accountability and privacy techniques for emerging technologies and critical infrastructure networks. CyberDNA offers an excellent educational environment through conferences, seminars, mentoring, and security labs and test beds, which attracts many graduate and undergraduate students to pursue rigorous research.

2011 - Hosted the 12th annual Cyber Security Symposium.

Since 2001 - The department has been the recipient of almost $6 million in grants from the federally funded Scholarship for Service program, which provides full scholarships to students studying information security and guarantees them civilian government jobs upon graduation.

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Between a Rock and a …

Rock

Photo courtesy of Venture

In 1971 UNC Charlotte’s Venture program grew out of a pilot program based on the well known Outward Bound program. Venture has continued to grow and expand into a unique experiential learning program.

Workshops offered through Venture have included whitewater kayaking, canoeing, rock climbing, spelunking, backpacking, sea kayaking, bicycling, cross country skiing and rafting. Here, a UNC Charlotte student wiggles through a crevice at Worley’s Cave in northeast Tennessee.

Venture also offers a Team Challenge Course and High Team Challenge Course (commonly referred to as the Low Ropes and High Ropes).

Over the past two years, Venture has averaged 580 events per year — with 40 trips, 351 challenge courses, 123 climbing wall events, 10 academic classes, 27 trainings and 23 rentals of outdoor gear. During that period Venture served an average of 13,122 people with 14,084 participant days of activities per year.

As Venture grows, its team of five fulltime staff continues to focus on the program primary purpose: providing opportunities for students and other patrons to learn about themselves and others in an outdoor environment. www.UNCC.edu

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Government in Your Backyard Policy wonk and plant guy explain how environmental policies come to be

By Arthur Murray

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le fe attiut re Eric Heberlig has an easy way about him. He clears children — he has three of them — from the family room with the same calm voice with which he explains his passion: Public policy and how it’s developed.

He uses that passion teaching political science classes at UNC Charlotte. But he also used it to co-author a recent book, “How the Government Got in Your Backyard: Superweeds, Frankenfoods, Lawn Wars, and the (Nonpartisan) Truth About Environmental Policies,” published by Timber Press.

Heberlig, associate professor of political science, is the living definition of a policy wonk and proud of it; he knows the ins and outs of how government runs. His interest started when he was growing up in Lewisburg, Pa., but not because of any particular event. “Through high school, I always followed the news and was interested in politics,” he said. “My friends followed politics closely, and we’d talk about it over lunch. I was always good at history and social studies in school, and I guess I thought when I went to college that I wanted to go to law school.”

DRIVING CHANGE But once he got to Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., he had an epiphany: he didn’t care for the contract side of law. “To me, politics was the social dynamic that drove historical change, so that’s what got me interested in government and political science,” Heberlig said.

He earned a bachelor’s in government from Franklin & Marshall in 1992, then obtained his master’s in political science from Ohio State in 1995 and his doctorate in the same subject there in 1997. He then worked as a congressional fellow for U.S. Rep. Thomas Sawyer during 1998 and 1999 before going into full-time teaching.

Heberlig laughs as he tells the story of how he wound up at UNC Charlotte in 2000. His thesis at Ohio State was on how labor unions mobilize political participation.

That, he said, made it somewhat surprising that he ended up in the Queen City. “North Carolina is the least-unionized state in the union, so it isn’t exactly the place where I’d expect to get a call,” he said. “They interviewed me and liked me, so here I am.” www.UNCC.edu

UNC CHARLOTTE CHARLOTTE || UNC

“Why in the world does government have these policies? They don’t make sense, from a scientific perspective especially.”

Eric Heberlig

Along the way, he also picked up an interest in environmental policy. “While I was in college, there was a corporation that came close to my hometown and wanted to place a toxic waste facility nearby,” Heberlig said. “The local people, of course, mobilized to fight it, so I studied that process. That’s where I first got interested.”

‘THE STUDIOUS ONE’ Franklin & Marshall is also where he met Jeff Gillman, his co-author on the book. Gillman, now an associate professor of nursery management at the University of Minnesota, remembers his friend as “the studious one, the one who was driven by his love of his subject.”

It carried through with his interactions with other students. “He’d get into discussions with other people about political issues, and he’d just take them apart because he was so well versed in his subject,” Gillman recalls. “I noticed him because he was always reading some political text or another.”

Gillman, whom Heberlig said has a “sort of libertarian bent,” has written a series of books on horticulture for Portland, Ore.-based Timber Press.

“As he was working on these other projects,” Heberlig remembers, “he was always thinking, ‘Why in the world does government have these policies?

They don’t make sense, from a scientific perspective especially,’ he thought. ‘The policies don’t fit with the science.’ So the question is, obviously, why do they exist?

So he put it in the back of his mind that some point he’d write a book on that.”

When he prepared to take on the subject, he realized he needed help. “His thought was that it seems like a lot of work to figure out the policy,” Heberlig said. “He thought, rather than figuring this out, I’ll call Eric.

He knows politics, he knows environmental policy and it seemed like a good way to combine our professional interests. He could do the biological sciences part of it, and I could do the politics and policy part of it, and it worked out really well.”

Gillman agrees it worked well. “This is truly a collaboration,” he said. “If Eric wasn’t my friend, the project probably never would have occurred to me. We’d been talking about doing something like this for a long time.”

The book is broken down into chapters on such topics as fertilizer, alternative energy and global warming. The authors present issues from both conservative and liberal viewpoints but draw no conclusions.

“What we tried to do was look at how public opinion and interest-group politics and the needs of politicians and executivebranch officials combine to make policies, which often made sense at the time they were created, but because our political system doesn’t change very easily, no longer fit the conditions we have now,” Heberlig said.

Though the book concentrates on national issues and policies, he believes North Carolina readers should pay particular notice to chapters on kudzu, organic foods, pesticides and genetic engineering of plants and plant patents.

CONCLUSION FREE Some critics have taken Gillman and Heberlig to task for failing to draw conclusions, but the authors take it in stride.

“That was our intention from the very beginning,” Heberlig said. “Both of us, as educators, wanted people to think through it for themselves. We wanted to present the science the best way we could characterize it, present the policy as even-handed as we could, and let readers decide for themselves, or spur their interest to do more research.”

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The reason for that approach, he said, is simple. “Our perception of the current political system is that people too easily start in their partisan camp and only look for information that confirms their pre-existing point of view.

There’s no way you can understand why anybody thinks differently if that’s the bubble you’re in. Our audience is the people who are open-minded enough to want to understand at least why others think differently — not that they’ll change their mind but at least they’ll understand why the other side thinks the way it does.”

This summer will be busy for Heberlig.

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He’s the co-chair of the 49er Democracy Experience, the university community that is doing educational and civic programming as a lead-up to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this September.

He also has been working to get students internships with the host committee and other organizers. “During the week of the convention, we’re partnering with an organization known as The Washington Center that, going back to 1984, has been doing academic programming at both party conventions,” he notes. Students from all over the country will be brought in; they’ll have academic seminars in the morning and fieldwork in the afternoon, helping the media or the party.

“We got 10 free slots for UNC Charlotte students to either do it here or in Tampa at

the Republican convention,” Heberlig said.

He’s planning on a book about how Charlotte manages the convention. “We want to ask questions like, what is similar about recruiting a convention as opposed to recruiting Chiquita International,” he observes. “How is it similar to other conventions — such as Baptists, the National Rifle Association or Amway?”

Heberlig also has another book already written — he’s just waiting for it to come out. It’s called “A Congressional Party’s Institutional Ambition and the Financing of Majority Control.” It focuses on how, since 1984, parties have placed more emphasis on winning control of Congress.

So would Heberlig consider seeking office? Not likely.

“I’m not that stupid,” he said. “I’m where I want to be. I don’t want to raise money to run a campaign. I don’t want to tell people I care about their problems when I don’t. I’m an introvert.

That’s not what I like to do.”

Arthur Murray is a freelance writer based in Indian Trail, N.C.

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Homeless

By Phillip Brown

Boomers

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New study focuses on the Southeast

Photo by Wade Bruton

As Baby Boomers age, the numbers of older adults who are homeless are expected to increase. Of particular concern is the population in the ages of 50 to 64 for which fewer agencies provide services.

UNC Charlotte social work assistant professor Lori Thomas is embarking upon a groundbreaking research project to study vulnerabilities associated with this specific homeless population. Her efforts are being funded through the prestigious John A. Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars Program, considered the preeminent competitive research award in the field.

“There has been very little research in homelessness among this age group,” said Thomas. “I will be conducting in-depth life histories of a number of individuals to investigate their experiences of trauma and adversity during the course of their lives as well as exploring how they have been able to survive as homeless individuals. I will also be interviewing health and human service providers to understand their perspectives on the population and the problem of older adult homelessness.”

In an effort to understand how the subjects became homeless, Thomas plans to gather information on their residential past from childhood to present, as well as to gather data on other aspects of their life histories that may have contributed to their homelessness or that helped them to survive life on the streets and in shelters.

Another component of the study will be to determine the types of social or charitable services these individuals have received throughout their lives — both from governmental agencies or the nonprofit sector.

“Did they experience foster care, and what was that like? Were they expelled from school?

These are some of the questions I’ll explore. I want to develop a cross-section of participants in my sample that will include those who are recently homeless versus chronically homeless. This will

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Lori Thomas is studies homelessness among Baby Boomers living in the Southeast. Her research is digs deep to understand life histories of a relatively new subset of homeless Americans.

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By Lisa A. Patterson By age 23, up to 41 percent of American adolescents and young adults have been arrested at least once for something other than a minor traffic violation, according to a study involving two UNC Charlotte researchers.

The study, published in the journal “Pediatrics,” garnered international attention. Co-authors Robert Brame, professor of criminology, and Michael Turner, associate professor of criminology, fielded a spate of media requests following the December release. They conducted the study with Shawn Bushway of the University of Albany and Raymond Paternoster of the University of Maryland.

“What this tells us is that getting arrested is a pretty prevalent experience,” Brame said.

The researchers analyzed responses of more than 7,000 young people to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth between 1997 and 2008. They found that between 25 and 41 percent of the respondents reported one arrest by the age of 23; 16 to 27 percent of the respondents reported being arrested by age 18.

The authors note that some of the participants dropped out of the study early, accounting for the range in reported arrests cited above. Moreover, the data does not indicate the nature or severity of the crimes for which the participants were arrested.

“One of the things a lot of people don’t realize about juvenile offending is people who commit those crimes don’t specialize — today’s burglar can be tomorrow’s robber,” Brame said. “It’s hazardous to infer from a young person’s arrested offense that any given crime is their specialty.”

Youth

Arrests Study involving University professors attracts national attention

EARLY ADULTHOOD CRIME The study has piqued interest in part because it is the first to assess youth arrest rates in America in more than 40 years.

As a graduate student, Brame encountered the 1965 study to measure youth arrest rates.

“The headline finding of the study was that the lifetime probability of arrest for a male for a non-traffic offense was 50 percent,” he said.

The researchers systematically compared their results to the 1965 study, finding that the results of the 2011 study mirrored the 1965 until participants reached the age of 18.

“The arrest rate for young adults 18 and under was approximately 19 percent in the 1965 study; we’re finding about the same number,” Brame noted. “But what’s happening that’s interesting is what’s going on in early adulthood.”

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Photo by Wade Bruton

coverage of young people there is tends to focus on them as violent criminals. At the same time, the media vastly underreport violence committed against young people.

Photo by Wade Bruton

Robert Brame (left), professor of criminology, and Michael Turner, associate professor of criminology, analyzed responses of more than 7,000 young people to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth between 1997 and 2008. They found that between 25 and 41 percent of the respondents reported one arrest by the age of 23; 16 to 27 percent of the respondents reported being arrested by age 18.

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Juvenile crime rates soared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to the American Youth Policy Forum, but even at their peak only a tiny fraction of youth were involved in serious violence.

Less than one-half of one percent of juveniles were arrested for a violent offense in 1992.

The young adults in the study were teens in the mid-1990s. The researchers point to a number of potential factors that could contribute to young adult arrest rates that are significantly higher than they were decades ago, including extended adolescence, increased likelihood of arrest for drunk driving, drug offenses and domestic violence.

However, delinquency as a whole in recent years has declined, according to Brame, following national trends in crime rates. In particular, violent and property crime among young people has decreased markedly.

But media reports seem to tell a different story altogether. A 2001 study by the organization Building Blocks for Youth found the news media report crime, particularly violent crime, far out of proportion to its actual occurrence.

According to the organization’s study, while the national crime rate dropped by 20 percent from 1990 to 1998, there was an 83 percent increase in the amount of crime coverage on network television. During the same period, the national homicide rate was down by almost 33 percent, yet network news coverage of homicide jumped 473 percent.

The report also indicated that what little media

TARGETING PEDIATRICIANS According to Brame and Turner, criminologists have a longstanding interest in who gets into trouble and why. As researchers, they try to understand the various types of behaviors that kids are involved in and figure out how to measure it.

“We then try to measure what happens to them once they become involved in the criminal justice system,” Brame said. “This is really the gateway to the criminal justice system; being arrested for something other than a minor traffic offense correlates to having an elevated chance of being arrested for other things.”

The authors submitted the study to “Pediatrics,” the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, because they wanted professionals who have contact with youth to be aware of the findings, and because there are health and behavioral problems that put young people at risk for criminal activity.

Some of the risk factors proven to be closely associated with delinquency include child abuse and neglect; exposure to drugs, youth gangs and firearms; truancy and school failure; and poor parenting skills. Untreated psychiatric disorders also have been linked to criminal activity.

“The arrest could open up a different kind of conversation with the pediatrician about what’s going on,” Brame said. The researchers acknowledge that pediatricians should serve as one point of intervention among many, including school personnel and family.

In an interview with WFAE’s Charlotte Talks, the researchers noted that while the crime rate has plummeted, the number of people incarcerated in the United States has skyrocketed. From the 1920s to the 1970s the incarceration rate was 100 inmates per 100,000 population. Beginning in 1973, the rate began to grow exponentially, reaching 500 inmates per 100,000 population by 2011.

“We increased our incarceration rate by a factor of five; that is a huge public investment,” Brame said.

The true return on this investment remains unclear; criminologists estimate that the rate of incarceration has contributed to 25 to 30 percent of the drop in crime that has taken place in the past 20 years.

“In the United States we try to keep people with offending records away from us because we think it makes us safer, but if we marginalize people with criminal histories — particularly old criminal histories — it may have unintended consequences for us as a society,” Brame said.

Lisa A. Patterson is senior writer for University Communications.

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University plays pivotal role for Batoni, Dot Metrics Technologies

By Melba Newsome

Man is an Island’ ‘No

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When Paolo Batoni, Ph.D., earned his master’s degree in electrical engineering with high honors, he began his 2005 commencement address with a quote from John Donne: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Six years later, Batoni has his Ph.D. (2009), and a position as lead researcher for Dot Metrics Technologies, a high-tech company populated with University alums.

The company was co-founded in 2003 by two of them, Rosanna Stokes (B.S. ’81) and her husband, Dr. Ed Stokes (M.A. ’84), a professor of electrical engineering at the University.

As the company builds a reputation in water-disinfection technology, the Donne quote still resonates with Batoni. Not only is Dot Metrics a team effort, he believes his academic and professional success were due, in large measure, to the supportive environment he encountered when he first arrived in Charlotte from Italy 11 years ago.

“Along the way, I received a lot of help,” he said. “There is no way for one person to achieve success by himself or herself. Many other people are involved.” Without the help of others, Batoni believes his immigrant experience would have been radically different.

He developed a severe case of wanderlust during the late 1990s while working in the computer field in his hometown of Pisa. He wanted to attend college in the United States, and a friend suggested he consider North Carolina, primarily because the climate and landscape resembled Tuscany. “Most Italians never leave the family, but my mom says I’m one of those Italians with bad genes,” he joked.

Although he could read and write English, Batoni was unable to speak or understand a word of it. “My friends and family thought going to school in a place where you don’t speak the language was absolutely insane and it would be a disaster for me,” he recalled. “The first two weeks were hell. Had I not paid in advance, I probably would have chickened out.”

Fortunately, he hung in. Within a few months, he was fluent in English, excelling in his classes and smitten with the Queen City. He ultimately earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from UNC Charlotte, all with top honors. He was also the first person in the Carolinas to become an IEEE Charles LeGeyt Fortescue Scholar, representing support from one of the most prestigious engineering societies in the United States.

While completing his doctorate, Batoni www.UNCC.edu

Photo by Paolo Batoni

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Deep UltraViolet Light Emitting Diodes (pictured here) are a chemical-free means to disinfect water.

Without the help of others — including many at UNC Charlotte — Batoni believes his immigrant experience would have been radically different. acquired practical business skills and accepted a highly coveted position as a graduate research intern at GE Global Research, following in Rosanna Stokes’ footsteps. Stokes had spent 20 years in Albany, N.Y. working for GE as a research scientist, a business development manager, a global product manager and new product development leader. In 2003, she chose Charlotte as the place to start her own business.

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“I’m an entrepreneur at heart and being able to develop new technologies and bring them to market is something that has always inspired me,” Stokes said. “Being linked with a university in an incubator system provides access to a lot of services. It’s a great atmosphere for entrepreneurial endeavors and we get to work with other people who are focused on developing technology.”

When Stokes offered Batoni a job as research leader, he quickly accepted. He could return to Charlotte, the University and work on novel technology with people he respected.

Most universities have incubator centers but the Charlotte Research Institute was the ideal partner for Stokes and Dot Metrics: She could hang out her shingle in her hometown and at her alma mater. Her connection with the University also would significantly reduce overhead and provide access to a large knowledge pool throughout the campus.

Currently, each of Dot Metrics’ three fulltime employees is a UNC Charlotte alum.

Like Batoni, Director of Research Jennifer Pagan obtained her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UNC Charlotte.

Postdoctoral research fellow T. Robert Harris received his doctorate at N.C. State University and his bachelor’s degree at UNC Charlotte.

Addressing what they view as a growing demand for clean water, Dot Metrics is focused on Deep UV LED technology for water disinfection. Its technology has overcome negatives associated with standard mercury-based UV disinfection. Dot Metrics hopes to bring the product to market within the next year.

“As water becomes more scarce, the population is increasingly concerned about the chemicals used to treat the bacteria in water,” Stokes said. “A chemical-free water treatment is very attractive to all of us.”

Said Batoni, “Water is an economic lubricant like oil with one exception: there is no substitute for water. By meeting a growing need of a very large market, a small company like Dot Metrics can have a very large impact. We can do something good for the world and still leave a legacy.”

Being part of an entrepreneurial team making strides in addressing a world problem only strengthens Batoni’s belief in what can be done through collective action. John Donne would be proud.

Melba Newsome is a freelance writer based in Charlotte.

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Research

Gem

Letter from Camp Lamb offers glimpse of Civil War

The Digital Collection at J. Murrey Atkins Library provide a treasure trove of rare and unique materials for use by scholars, historians and the otherwise curious. Through collaborations with libraries, archives, museums and other cultural institutions in North Carolina and the Southeast, the Digital Collections preserve our region’s rich heritage.

The Knox Family Papers is among the digital collection and includes materials generated by the Knox and related MECKLENBURG families documenting much of their daily activities from the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries. Most of the papers in this collection are letters to and from family members, promissory notes that document short-term loans between friends and family members, papers concerning the settlement of estates of deceased people, the ownership of slaves and events during the Civil War, such as the following letter written by a Confederate soldier: 32 UNC CHARLOTTE magazine

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Tuesday, March 15, 1864 Camp Lamb, Wilmington Dear Sis, I received your kind letter on yesterday and was truly glad to see a letter from you. I [sic] the [sic] opportunity of answering it. I am well at present and have been since I came to camp. The service agrees with me very well, but home would agree with me better.

I think so at least. I suppose you are aware that I have been at Fort Caswell two months and a half. Our battalion was ordered here last Friday. I was down the beach some 15

miles at the time with some 12 others of our company. We went down there with some artillery to shoot a blockade vessel, but it was too far off. We stayed there one day and night. It rained and hailed very hard while we were there. When we started back to the Fort, there was two of the artillery men riding on the cannon. They fell off. Somehow the wheel of the wagon ran over the head of one and killed him instantly. It ran over the thigh of the other and hurt him badly, though it did not break his thigh. They belonged to the light artillery. I got to this place Sunday night and found the battalion. We were under marching orders. I do not know why www.UNCC.edu

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the order has been revoked for the present.

I think we will remain here for a while.

Your Aunt Hannah Knox’s boy, Watson, is dead. He died last week of typhoid fever.

He was working at Fort [sic] two miles from Caswell. They work the negroes very hard and feed them badly. Our troops on Bald Head Island sunk a Yankee vessel last week.

The crew made their escape in small boats.

I wish they all had went to the bottom with the ship. Kizzy, I see from the tone of your letter that you have enjoyed yourself finely at the parties. I would like to have been there. I think I could have enjoyed myself too, young as I am. You know, I stand pretty high on the other side of the Catawba. You say that you are going to school and have no time to get married. I say you can go on Saturday and study your speech at night. You complain that you have no gray horse to ride as it is leap year. You may go to my house and get a bay filly to ride which I think will do as well. I am glad to hear that you have a fine school and that you like the teacher.

I hope he will do well. Try and make good use of your time at school. Do not let the marrying business interfere with your study.

I am sorry your brother’s stay at home was

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so short. I pity Joseph. I think the service will go hard with him. I am glad to hear that you got a letter from William. I hope, here soon, he may get home. Nathan Taylor’s son, William, has come to our company. He is under age or he could not have come. Give my respects to Father and Mother and all

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the family. The paper is bad and the men are shaking the floor so I can’t write.

I will close by asking you to look over my bad writing.

Yours, I. J. Price

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Scholarship established in nursing alumna’s memory

Fitting Tribute When Ashley Lutz’s friends, family and mentors gathered to talk about a new scholarship established in Lutz’s name, a deep reservoir of emotion emerged to paint the picture of a hard-working, caring young woman with a passion for nursing.

Lutz was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer as she prepared for her nursing exams in anticipation of a May 2011 graduation. Ann Hart, Lutz’s clinical advisor, proctored Lutz’s last exam from beside her student’s hospital bed.

“Her nursing reflected her as a person,” Hart said. “She was kind, compassionate, very soft-spoken, not easy to frazzle. The kind of person you would want to take care of you.”

Though her prognosis was not good, with characteristic determination Lutz left the hospital and, refusing to be bound to a wheelchair, walked across the stage to accept her nursing pin and join her peers at graduation. That moment was the realization of a dream Lutz had nurtured since her junior year of high school. Days later she died.

According to Lutz’s mother Lisa, doctors speculate that the disease progressed slowly from an undetected juvenile cancer to an advancedstage cancer.

Those who knew and loved her have established The Ashley Lutz Memorial Scholarship in Nursing, to be awarded for the first time in May 2012. Eligible undergraduates must demonstrate passion and leadership in the field of nursing.

The idea for the scholarship originated with Ashley’s peers and grew into an effort that includes Sigma Theta Tau International Gamma Iota; the Association of Nursing Students, for which Ashley served as treasurer; friends; family and colleagues.

The students plan to build an endowment — requiring a minimum fund of $25,000 — so that the scholarship will be available in perpetuity. They have collected donations in trunks decorated with the phrase “Loot for Lutz,” and continue to hold fundraisers for the scholarship. The Association of Nursing Students has contributed $2,500. While the endowment is built, Sigma Theta Tau will provide the annual scholarship award in Lutz’s memory.

Nancy Fey-Yensan, dean of the College of Health and Human Services, was touched by the effort and by the story of Lutz’s strength. “I have never seen an effort like this — it’s really very special,” she said.

For Lutz’s parents, Lisa and Chris, and her fiancé Christopher Emory, the scholarship is a fitting tribute to a young woman who took great pride in her academic performance and demonstrated deep devotion to her chosen profession.

“The scholarship means a lot to me because I know it would mean a lot to her to help someone else. That’s just the kind of person she was,” Lisa said.

“We’re very proud — Ashley loved this school; she loved everything about it.”

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Photo by Wade Bruton

By Lisa A. Patterson

An effort to build an endowed scholarship in memory of nursing graduate Ashley Lutz has united faculty, staff and students. Pictured are members of the Association of Nursing Students, Lauren Wilder and Brittany Thomasson; and Ann Hart (middle), acting president of Sigma Theta Tau.

WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE The Association of Nursing Students will host a fundraiser Friday, April 27, from 7-9 p.m. in the Lucas Room of the Bonnie Cone Center. Dinner will be served; all donations collected at the event will be applied to the scholarship endowment.

Online donations can be made at www.uncc.edu/giving.

Select “Other” from Former ANS President Katie Preske spearheaded the drop-down menu on the right, and the creation of the click “Submit Dropdown Field,” then type Ashley Lutz Memorial “Ashley Lutz Memorial Scholarship Fund” Scholarship in Nursing. as the designation.

Individuals who would like to make a tax-deductible donation to the scholarship can mail a gift to University Development, Attn: Heather Shaughnessy, UNC Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, N.C. 28223. Make checks payable to UNC Charlotte Foundation and write “Ashley Lutz Memorial Scholarship” on the memo line.

The Lutz family has also created a scholarship inAshley’s name at Burns High School, Shelby, NC. For additional information, contact Heather Shaughnessy at 704-687-7737 or visit www.health.uncc.edu/alumni-giving/ latestphilanthropynews.

Lisa A. Patterson is senior writer in University Communications. www.UNCC.edu

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The Rowe arts building includes an auditorium, offices, galleries and studio space for potters and other artists.

Continued from p. 9

Cameron can now successfully walk the length of six football fields. His doctors told him to “‘take what we say with a grain of salt. We can only tell you what we know, but that doesn’t take into account the power of the human will,’” he said.

RETURNING TO SCHOOL In the fall of 2009, Cameron returned to UNC Charlotte. But he was not alone; his brother Derrick also chose to become a 49er.

Considered a perfectionist by family and friends when it comes to his studies, Cameron was nervous about his return and his ability to do well. His brain injury didn’t affect his cognitive abilities, but he is unable to write or type.

After getting speech recognition software installed on his computer, Cameron did well in his first course back, an honors western culture course, which was writing intensive.

“The injury definitely was a setback,” he said. “But I will never let someone tell me that I couldn’t do something.”

He was also grateful for all the accommodations and assistance professors like Connie Rothwell and the Honors www.UNCC.edu

College made to ease his transition back to UNC Charlotte. “The University made it incredibly easy to come back, almost too easy; it was effortless,” he said.

Cameron was also able to assist younger brother Derrick with his transition to college, and offer study tips and advice.

For the first time, the brothers were able to go the same school at the same time and even took a course together.

In addition to academics, Cameron picked up where he left off by catching up with old friends, meeting new ones and even participating in a leadership and development program called LeaderShape.

He enjoyed his time there and learned a lot about himself and the other participants.

“I never once felt like I was handicapped or treated differently,” he said. “It was refreshing to be somewhere and have a completely normal experience like everyone else.”

Cameron’s plans have changed some since the accident, and his major is still undecided. His determination to fully recover from the accident and accomplish his goals is a testament to his willpower and perseverance.

When he and Derrick graduate, they will add to the Rowe legacy embedded in

the bedrock of UNC Charlotte. While he has certainly had more than enough of his share of adversity, Cameron continues to push forward and unknowingly inspire others, including onlookers like me. “There are still tough times, but at the end of the day you have a choice to move forward or go back,” he said. “For me, going back is not an option.”

Derrick echoes Cameron’s sentiments and uses his brother’s no-nonsense approach to his everyday life philosophy, always reminding his friends not to take anything for granted.

Derrick cannot help but take pride and be inspired by both Cameron and their great-grandfather, Oliver Rowe.

Derrick smiles every time he walks into the Rowe Arts Building and sees his greatgrandfather’s portrait. “You see that picture right there. That’s my great-grandfather.”

When I asked Derrick and Cameron’s dad, Mark, how his grandfather would feel about his legacy, his reply was, “Oliver Rowe would be very pleased, and very proud of Cameron.”

Laura Rowland is a graduate assistant in the Office of Parent and Family Services.

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giving

By Lynn Roberson students and encourage partnerships that enliven our shared economic and cultural future.”

Pre-tenure faculty members in the departments of English, religious studies and history are eligible to receive funding from the endowment. All winners have been tenured and promoted to associate professor, with strong records in teaching, service and leadership and research. Each has published at least one book, and several have written multiple books. The first award was made in 2005.

Over the years, Gwynn delighted in hearing about the faculty who received funding, said Shaw, who is current chair of the UNC Charlotte Foundation and former chair of the UNC Charlotte Board of Trustees. A retired Duke Energy executive, she came to Charlotte many years ago as president of Central Piedmont Community College.

Wise and Witty

Mentor

Photo by Glenn Roberson Photography

Frances Gwynn was a teacher in every dimension of her life

Ruth Shaw, herself an educator and leader, is surrounded by mementos of her mother, the late Frances L. Gwynn. Shaw and her husband, Colin, established the Frances L. Gwynn Endowment to support young faculty in the humanities.

When Ruth and Colin Shaw of Davidson sought a way to honor her mother, a belief in the importance of liberal arts education led them to establish the Frances L. Gwynn Endowment to support young humanities faculty members in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

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analyze, synthesize and problem-solve, it really gave you a window into any occupation or profession.”

Gwynn was a public school educator and counselor.

“We are extraordinarily grateful to Ruth and Colin Shaw for their gift to our college,” said Nancy A. Gutierrez, dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. “Gifts such as this generous endowment allow us to inspire our faculty, provide enriching experiences for our

MEANINGFUL LETTERS “One of the wonderful things about making the gift when she was alive was when I received letters from the faculty,” Shaw said. “Those letters meant so much to my mother, hearing that something that was done in her name and her honor was making such a difference. I am so glad we were able to do it at a time when she could revel in it.”

Gwynn passed away on Feb. 3, 2011, at the age of 97 at her home at The Pines in Davidson.

Shaw said her mother was a “wise and witty mentor” to her family, her friends and to young women she came to know at The Pines and through Davidson United Methodist Church.

“I think the first thing almost anyone would say about her is that she was a lifelong teacher and she was that in every dimension of her life,” Shaw said. “She was a teacher in the public schools for basically 40 years. In addition to that, she was a teacher of her children, her grandchildren and her great grandchildren.”

Gwynn endowed people around her with a commitment to equality. “She was a believer in equality across race and gender long before that was either the law or politically correct,” her daughter said. “It was simply what she believed was right.

She taught those lessons at the knee for me and my sister and all the members of the family.”

‘GENUINE HUMILITY’ Gwynn also instilled the principle of giving back. “Truly in her was a genuine humility that seems incredibly rare, a humility from knowing that so much of what happens in life www.UNCC.edu

is all about luck and timing,” Shaw said.

“If we are so fortunate, then sharing that good fortune is important to the world and important to us as human beings.”

That foundation of giving lives on in Gwynn’s grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. “Even the younger ones, the great-grands, already are raising money for local causes or working with groups at their churches,” Shaw notes. “It’s part of the warp and woof of how they live their lives.”

For the Shaws, their decision to create the endowment also gave them an opportunity to contribute to a university and region that hold meaning for them.

“We had developed a real sense of connection to this region and this place,” Ruth Shaw said. “We had gotten to know literally every person who had served as chancellor. I don’t think that many people have an opportunity to actually be part of shaping the face and character of an institution. For people in this region, it’s an extraordinary opportunity.”

UNC Charlotte relies on generous investments and support from dedicated alumni, parents, friends, faculty and staff.

Gifts to UNC Charlotte help advance its mission as North Carolina’s urban research university, offering internationally competitive undergraduate, graduate, doctoral programs, as well as professional education and research.

More information on ways to give can be found at https://giving.uncc.edu/.

Lynn Roberson is director of communication for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Gwynn Endowment Award Recipients To date, the seven faculty members who have received awards from the Frances L. Gwynn Endowment are: Kirk Melnikoff, English Jennifer Munroe, English Aimee Parkison, English Heather Perry, History Tony Scott, English John Staunton, English Mark Wilson, History www.UNCC.edu

Continued from p. 27

provide insight into some common precipitating factors across older homeless adults with different life histories,” Thomas stated. “There is a pattern based upon limited research. We see people who age through homelessness into older age, but we are seeing these newly homeless individuals who are often women. For them, it is often the case that a spouse or caregiver has passed away, and they no longer have the same income level or social support. “ Because the overwhelming majority of research on homelessness is from studies in very large urban areas, such as Boston, Los Angeles and New York, Thomas’ study in Charlotte is expected to provide a new perspective in this field, as it will be one of the first major research endeavors on this population conducted in the southeastern United States.

“We really don’t have a lot of research about homelessness in the South and even less about older adults,” observed Thomas. “Much of the emphasis is placed on other homeless subpopulations in larger cities around the country.

For seniors, by the time someone is 62 to 65, they have more resources available to them in the form of housing and entitlement programs, so we see a smaller percentage of them on the street. However, this is also due to premature mortality. Many homeless adults don’t live into older adulthood.

In fact, people on the street age 15 to 20 years faster than those in the general population.”

Thomas noted that homeless adults older than 50 comprise a quarter to a third of the overall homeless population.

Prior to joining UNC Charlotte in fall 2008, Thomas completed a doctorate in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University. She also earned Master of Social Work and Master of Divinity degrees. Between her master’s and Ph.D. degrees, Thomas worked with an affordable housing community corporation in Richmond, Va. In addition, while completing her Ph.D., she coordinated and directed the development of a permanent housing and comprehensive mental health program for chronically homeless individuals in the greater Richmond area.

As a member of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Coalition for Housing, Thomas noted her research has implications for public policy related to affordable housing, health care and how services are provided.

“We don’t have enough empirical feedback loops in Charlotte about how we’re doing on homeless services. I want to take this research in conjunction with some of my other studies and see it used to inform what we do as a community to better serve this population.”

To assist Thomas with her research efforts, the

Thomas’ study in Charlotte will be one of the first major research endeavors on this population conducted in the southeastern United States.

Hartford award and the Department of Social Work are funding two graduate assistants; they will benefit from valuable hands-on experience in qualitative research. As a Hartford Geriatric Scholar, Thomas will benefit from special faculty development workshops and mentoring programs to advance her work as a researcher and teacher in the field of geriatric social work.

“I am very excited and honored to be a recipient of the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars Program. The work of the foundation is to have an impact on how social work practitioners work with our growing aging population. The research being funded by the Hartford Foundation will influence and inform the social work discipline and impact the teaching of future practitioners,” noted Thomas.

The John A. Hartford Foundation was established in 1929; it is committed to “training, research and service system innovations that promote the health and independence of America’s older adults.” Through its grants, the foundation seeks to strengthen the nation’s capacity to provide effective, affordable care to an increasing older population by educating health professionals and developing innovations that improve and better integrate health and supportive services. Hartford and his brother George L. Hartford were former chief executives of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co.; they left the bulk of their estates to the foundation upon their deaths in the 1950s.

The Gerontological Society of America administers the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars Program. The society is a national nonprofit membership association founded in 1945; it is the “driving force behind the advancement of gerontology both domestically and internationally.” Serving more than 5,000 members, the society also publishes the field’s preeminent peer-reviewed journals in biological, psychological and social sciences.

Phillip Brown is internal communications manager at UNC Charlotte.

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UNC CHARLOTTE |

49 e r n o te b o o k

Continued from p. 11

SPRING SPORTS TO SHINE As March unfolds, the 49ers spring sports will soon take center stage.

The Charlotte 49ers boast defending Atlantic 10 Champions in baseball, golf and women’s outdoor track. All three will be on display this spring.

The 49ers baseball team, led by preseason all-America pitcher Andrew Smith from Matthews, N.C., has been picked by the A-10 coaches to repeat as league champions. Charlotte went 43-16 last year in winning both the A-10 regularseason and tournament crowns, advancing to the NCAA Tempe, Ariz. regional.

Under longtime head coach Loren Hibbs, the 49ers have captured four of the last five A-10 regular-season titles (’07, ’08, ’10, ’11) and three of the last five conference tournaments (’07, ’08, ’11).

The 49ers golf team, under first-year head coach Ryan Cabbage, will play for its seventh straight A-10 Championship while pursuing its school-record eighth straight NCAA Tournament appearance. The 49ers boast senior Olafur Loftsson, who qualified to compete in the PGA Wyndham Championship as an amateur last year.

The 49ers outdoor track teams have dominated the A-10 since joining the league six years ago. The women have won five outdoor titles in their six years in the league, including the 2011 title, while the men have won three and were league runner-up last season.

In other spring sports, the 49ers softball team is picked to finish fourth in the conference after posting its sixth straight 30-win season in 2011. Junior Briana Gwaltney, who ranks third all-time in home runs, leads the team after earning first team all-A-10 honors last year.

The men’s and women’s tennis teams, which will dedicate the new Halton-Wagner Tennis Complex this spring, are picked to finish fifth and seventh in the A-10, respectively.

For schedule and ticket information on athletic events, please visit www. charlotte49ers.com. You may also follow the 49ers on Twitter @charlotte49ers and via the Charlotte 49ers Facebook page.

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Top: Olafur Loftsson qualified to compete in the PGA Wyndham Championship last year as an amateur. Left: Briauna Jones will be helping UNC Charlotte defend its conference track title.

Right: Hurler Andrew Smith from Matthews, N.C., is a preseason All-America selection.

HELP FUND SCHOLARSHIPS The 49er Club sponsors two key events in the spring: The 49er Club Golf Outing and the Great Gold Rush Auction. Proceeds from both will benefit the 49ers Athletic Foundation and the athletic scholarship fund. Below is information on each. For additional info — or to register — contact Kelly Weatherman at kaweathe@uncc.edu or call the foundation at 704-687-4950.

49er Club Golf Outing April 23: The 35th Annual Liberty Mutual Invitational 49er Club Golf Outing will be held at Pine Island Country Club in Charlotte. The captain’s choice tournament begins at 11 a.m. with registration and practice beginning at 9 a.m.

Great Gold Rush Auction June 2: Open to the public, the 30th annual event features nearly 1,500 items for auction. The event includes a silent auction of items ranging from artwork and restaurant certificates to home and garden fixtures, sports supplies and memorabilia. The 50-item live auction includes getaway vacations, furniture sets, a home-entertainment center, one-of-a-kind opportunities and tickets to events like the Super Bowl. www.UNCC.edu

U.S. NATIONAL TEAM

SOCCER PLAYER.

ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICAN. MUST BE A 49ER. UNC Charlotte is home to the spirited. The tenacious.

Can-do kind of pioneers who raise eyebrows and leave a mark. Whether it’s academics, athletics, or the arts, we’re home to world-class achievers and leaders. 25,300 students strong and growing, UNC Charlotte boasts an award-winning faculty, notable alumni, and a student body of winners.

Stake your claim to a university that doesn’t just try – we succeed.

Lindsey Ozimek Women’s Soccer MVP B.A. Special Education Class of 2008

UNC CHARLOTTE |

building blocks

The Pause

that Refreshes

Some brands never die — namely CocaCola and Lance snacks. In this 1959 shot from UNC Charlotte’s formative years as Charlotte College, these distinctly well-dressed students pause for a refreshing six-ounce jolt of Coke. Some things have changed a lot in the last 53 years: • Only a minimum of 24 ounces of sugary, caffeine-laced soft drink will do today. Coke is still viable, but Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Rock Star and Starbuck’s shots give it a run for its money. And in this photo, where’s the Chic-fil-A? • Today, a random sampling of five students is likely to turn

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up a great many tattoos and body piercings — noticeably absent here.

• Also noticeable in this photograph is the homogeneity of the students. Today’s UNC Charlotte is the most diverse campus in the UNC system. Thousands of students and faculty hail from China and India. More than 101 countries and 49 states comprise the student body, and almost every one of North Carolina’s 98 counties is represented.

• In 1959, none of these students lived on campus — Charlotte College was not a residential university. More than 11,000 of today’s 23,500 students live either on campus or within two miles of it.

Yes, things have changed a lot in 53 years. But one thing the school hopes never changes — the looks of friendship and camaraderie on the students’ faces.

Go Niners — Stake Your Claim!

www.UNCC.edu

perspective

| UNC CHARLOTTE

Through the prism of experience

Narratives of Gold

By Tanure Ojaide, Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies

The jewelers at Wuse Market welcome you warmly to their sheds filled with millions in assortments of gold— mostly yellow and occasionally white; silver stays away.

They buy, exchange, and sell gold—their scales and calculators ready for whatever transaction sought.

“Today the price of gold has gone up,” one explains, and I cherish a trader telling the truth that hurts his profit, a rare commodity in the market of fortune seekers.

One of my colleagues sells a necklace for forty-two thousand naira, a gain of twenty thousand after wearing it for ten years.

She was satisfied with the bargain she struck in several minutes.

Another colleague wants to buy high-quality gold to treat herself after reimbursement of a long overdue payment.

Of GL, the Hausa jeweler says: “It’s only coated with gold but not pure.” “What of Italian gold?” the prospective buyer asks.

“That’s good but many others are better,” he says like a sage.

He goes on to tell how Saudi is better than Italian, Dubai superior to Saudi, and Indian the highest priced.

He talks of carats that mean much to the price placed on gold; for him 18 carats the standard in his gold-lavished shop.

After toying with white gold, my celebrating colleague settles for a Dubai set of earrings and necklace to dazzle.

She paid a ponderous sum, smiling to out-shine the gold.

As soon as she pays, at about six, the jeweler shuts his shed, and I leave with a fresh sense of gold, not the glittering metal but a complex possession with so many long narratives.

By Tanure Ojaide, (after visiting a jeweler at Wuse Market, Abuja)

As a scholar-writer, I not only create literature, a cultural production, but interpret it.

Literature expresses feelings and ideas through the prism of a person’s experiences, worldview, sensibility, realities and aesthetics.

Since nobody is an air plant, I see myself as an African open to Western and other cultural practices and views to complement my humanity. I shed aspects of my culture that are no longer relevant and incorporate aspects of others that will make me whole in the ongoing dynamics of human existence. The more I learn about others and their cultures, and others about me and my culture, the more human we all become.

I see a symbiotic relationship between my scholarly and creative writings, which reinforce each other. Similarly, there exists a symbiotic relationship between my creative and scholarly works and teaching, which also support each other.

For almost half of my life I have been living in two worlds, the African and the American, and the exposure makes me what I am and what I share firsthand with my students. UNC Charlotte has made what I am possible.

You Don’t Have to Be

By Tanure Ojaide, You don’t have to be Jewish to shiver at the nightmare of Auschwitz you don’t have to be black to feel the agony and shame of slavery you don’t have to be native to be hurt by the arrogance of discovery you don’t have to be foreign to know what discrimination means you don’t have to be minority to understand the dominion of big numbers you don’t have to be homeless to go through the vagaries of life you don’t have to be rich to fear the uncertainty of tomorrow

www.UNCC.edu

Photo by Wade Bruton

you don’t have to be crippled to suffer the pain of the handicapped you don’t have to be a star to stare at the volatility of the weather you just have to be human to know the plight of others.

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These engineering students won best senior project for a device that combines solar and hydrogen fuel cell power to supply a 500-Watt electric load.