Students and faculty focus on cuisine and culture

Dishing Up OriginalResearch

Volume 6, No. 1 FALL 2013

INSIDE

50 Years of the Humanities p. 6

Secret Lives of Faculty p. 18

The New Coach on the Court p. 26

M A G A Z I N E

ashevilleUNC

50 Years Through the Humanities

UNC Asheville celebrates five decades of shared experiences.

6 18 26The Secret Lives of Faculty

A sailboat racer, a cake decorator and a harpsichord player—just to name a few.

From College to a Career

Men’s basketball head coach Nick McDevitt knows what it takes to be a Bulldog.

F E AT U R E S

Food for ThoughtWhat’s cooking in the liberal arts

Undergraduates and faculty mentors dish up research to change the ways we eat. (Photo by Galen McGee ’08)

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D E PA R T M E N TS

UNC ASHEVILLE SENIOR STAFF

CHANCELLOR Anne Ponder

PROVOST AND VICE CHANCELLOR FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS Jane Fernandes

VICE CHANCELLOR FOR STUDENT AFFAIRS William K. Haggard

VICE CHANCELLOR FOR FINANCE AND OPERATIONS John Pierce

VICE CHANCELLOR FOR UNIVERSITY ADVANCEMENT Buffy Bagwell

SENIOR ADMINISTRATOR FOR UNIVERSITY ENTERPRISES AND DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS Janet Cone

CHIEF OF STAFF Christine Riley

UNIVERSITY GENERAL COUNSEL Lucien “Skip” Capone III

UNC ASHEVILLE MAGAZINE STAFF

EDITOR Amy Jessee

DESIGNERS Nanette Johnson, Mary Ann Lawrence

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Paul Clark, Aaron Dahlstrom ’09, Jon Elliston, Hannah Epperson ’11, Mike Gore, Amy Jessee, Steve Plever, Karen Shugart, Melissa Stanz, Rebecca Sulock ’00

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS David Allen ’13, Luke Bukoski, Perry Hebard, Galen McGee ’08, Matt Rose, Jameykay Young

UNC Asheville Magazine is published twice a year by UNC Asheville Communication and Marketing, with support from the UNC Asheville Foundation, to give alumni and friends an accurate, lively view of the university—its people, programs and initiatives. Contact us at magazine@unca.edu.

UNC ASHEVILLE ALUMNI OFFICE

ASSOCIATE VICE CHANCELLOR FOR ALUMNI RELATIONS Kevan Frazier ’92

Address ChangesOffice of University Advancement & Alumni GivingCPO #1800 • UNC Asheville One University Heights • Asheville, NC 28804-8507alumni@unca.edu • 800.774.3381

UNC Asheville enrolls more than 3,700 full- and part-time students in more than 30 programs leading to the bachelor’s degree as well as the Master of Liberal Arts. The university is committed to equality of educational opportunity and does not discriminate against applicants, students or employees on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, gender, disabling condition or sexual orientation.

© UNC Asheville, November 2013

ON THE COVER: Lisa Riggsbee ’15 and Associate Professor Amy Lanou serve up their specialty—a healthy combination of food and facts—in the Teaching Kitchen. (Photo by Galen McGee ’08)

T h i s y e a r , U NC a s h e v i l l e C e l e b r aT e s 5 0 y e a r s of our flagship Humanities Program, one of the foundational

distinctions that our graduates tell us, year after year, have

made a profound difference in the choices they have made for

their futures. To this day, we remain one of the few universities

that anchors the humanities at the core of our curriculum—at

“The Heart of the Matter,” as the American Academy of Arts

and Sciences titles their recent report on the subject.

We have reached a time when

the value of higher education has

become, at least in part, mea-

sured by our ability to contribute

to a healthier society. Our faculty

members and undergraduate

student researchers have earned

national recognition for doing

exactly that, winning the pres-

tigious 2013 William E. Bennett

Award for Extraordinary Contributions to Citizen Science from

the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement. You’ll

read about studies in the kitchen, in the campus gardens and

in the classrooms, a seriously creative combination that’s

changing the way we think about food and leading the way in

entrepreneurship and practicality for the future.

In this issue of UNC Asheville Magazine, you’ll also see another

side of our faculty, as a few professors share their previously

hidden talents, detailing how atmospheric sciences dovetails

with sailboat racing on nearby Lake Julian and how chemis-

try can make the best cakes—expertly decorated, of course.

We also introduce you to some extraordinary faculty who

are helping to put UNC Asheville students on the map, such

as International Studies Lecturer Jinhua Li and Associate

Professor of New Media Lei Han, who led students on an inter-

disciplinary trip through China this summer. And you can catch

up with Nick McDevitt, the first UNC Asheville alumnus to lead

our men’s basketball team as head coach.

You’ll also see a new side of the magazine, recently redesigned.

We’re sharing more stories from Around the Quad and filling

our pages with the content that keeps you connected to the uni-

versity, the greater Asheville community and your classmates.

With this new magazine, the stories do not end in these pages.

Look for links to web extras, the new News Center and behind-

the-scenes videos. We also invite you to share your story in

your own words. We look forward to hearing from you.

—Chancellor Anne Ponder

ponderings

A R O U N D T H E Q UA D

P R A C T I C A L LY S P E A K I N G

L O N G I T U D E & L AT I T U D E

G O, B U L L D O G S !

C L A S S N O T E S

O f f T H E PA G E

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UNC Asheville launched two new major

programs this fall—the Bachelor of Arts

in Art History and the Bachelor of Fine

Arts in Jazz and Contemporary Music.

Both gained approval from the UNC

Board of Governors this past spring

based on the strong curricula already

built by the faculty and serious student

interest in the subjects.

“With the new B.F.A. program in Jazz

and Contemporary Music, the students

will be able to function as professional

musicians,” says Music Department

Chair and Professor Wayne Kirby.

“With a variety of new ensembles,

we’re preparing the students to do all

kinds of gigs—musicians have to be

able to play in many styles to be able to

work consistently, and they need great

sight-reading skills to do recording

sessions.” The department has added

faculty integral to Asheville’s hot new

jazz scene, who are able to give the

B.F.A. students experience performing

in clubs.

The new Art History Program also links

students to the art world off-campus,

bringing in local curators and gallery

owners to talk to classes, and through

student internships in places like the

Flood Gallery and the Asheville Art

Museum. As an early example of their

collaborative work, the Asheville Art

Museum will feature an exhibit from

January through May curated by Leisa

Rundquist, associate professor of art

history, with help from Katie Johnson

’13 and current students.“We have

many art graduates already succeeding

in the art history field, and the new de-

gree should help open even more doors,”

says Rundquist. “It signals to employ-

ers and to other universities that our

program has a high standard—an inten-

sity and academic rigor. Our students

will go into graduate programs in art

history and jobs ranging from library

science to archival work and museum

work, to journalism and art criticism—

art history involves really solid writing

and research skills.”

First DegreeUNC Asheville Debuts

Two New Majors

The B.F.A. in Jazz and Contemporary Music offers students the opportunity to perform in various professional-level ensembles.

“We have many art graduates already succeeding in the art history field, and the new degree should help open even more doors”

—Leisa Rundquist, associate professor of art history

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Digital stacksRamsey Library Makes Room for Electronic Resources

If you are reading this magazine in a

digital edition, you aren’t alone, accord-

ing to new University Librarian Leah

Dunn, who is now in her second year at

UNC Asheville.

“We’re in a time of rapid transition and

it’s now accelerating,” she says. “What

we used to see with journals becom-

ing electronic, is now happening with

books. E-books have taken off, certainly

in the popular market, and it’s affecting

the scholarly market now as well.”

The library now has a choice to pur-

chase publications in print or elec-

tronically, says Dunn, who had been

library director at Guilford College and

before that, spent 11 years working at

UNC-Chapel Hill. “The downside is

there are people on both sides, but we

can’t supply both because of limited

resources, so we have to think strategi-

cally about how to reach the most peo-

ple. Sometimes it’s print, but more often

now, it’s electronic. We’re very quickly

moving into that realm.”

One upside is that e-books on the schol-

arly market are typically much less

expensive than paper copies, and with

unlimited licenses, readers don’t have

to wait for others to finish a book before

“borrowing” a copy. Another upside is

that the full text of e-books is viewable

to search engines, but weeding through

those search engines can still be com-

plicated. Students and faculty now

have round-the-clock online assistance

through NCknows, a statewide library

reference, and reference librarians also

are ready to answer questions in person.

“Any time you come, you’ll see the

library is full of people studying,” says

Dunn, “so we’re looking at how we

can make the limited space we have

more comfortable and accommodate

more people.”

One obvious answer is to eliminate

some of the stacks of paper books.

“Electronic collections make a lot of

sense,” she says. “When space for

physical books is in competition with

space for people, our priority has to be

the students and faculty who use the

library and making sure they have a

place where they can do their work.”

take careHealth and Counseling Center Expands Services and SpaceStudents who return from winter break feeling the onset of

cold season can find comfort in the expanded Health and

Counseling Center, which will relocate from Weizenblatt Hall

to 118 W.T. Weaver Boulevard this winter.

“We’ll be able to expand our square footage, offer better

services and add services, such as physical therapy and IV

therapy,” said Director Jay Cutspec. “The benefit will be that

students won’t need to go to urgent care as often, since we

will be able to manage most of their care here. We’ll be on

one floor instead of the current two floors and able to fully

implement our integrative care model, as well as host events

and groups in the large meeting space.”

The campus-contiguous building was formerly owned by the

Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC), making

it ideal for use as UNC Asheville’s Health and Counseling

Center with only minor renovation. The university purchased

the property in July for $3.95 million, using funds from the

UNC Asheville Foundation and from student fees.

The shared purchase also will encourage shared use of the

space. The offices of University Advancement, including

Alumni Relations, will move from Owen Hall to the second

story of the building in 2014, welcoming graduates and

friends of the university with plenty of parking and a healthy

dose of cheer.

Visit the library online at bullpup.lib.unca.edu

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running the BoarDNew Members and Chair Bring Experience and Enthusiasm

New Board of Trustees Chair

N. King Prather first visited

campus in 2004 when his

son Nick was choosing a

college. Nick enrolled here

in 2005 and was soon joined

on campus by his twin

sisters, Rachel and Lindsey.

The three Prather siblings

graduated together in May

2010, and after serving on

the National Parents Council,

King Prather was appointed

by the Board of Governors

as a trustee in 2011. He was

elected chair earlier this

year. “I can’t put my finger

on it,” says Prather, “but

I notice an energy on and

around campus...excitement,

innovation, collaboration and

a commitment to creativity

that is engaging and addic-

tive. I am excited to be a part

of it.”

Prather is senior vice pres-

ident and general counsel

of BlueCross BlueShield of

North Carolina.

Kennon Briggs, appointed

as a trustee last spring by

the Board of Governors, got

involved with the university

three years ago as a part of

the National Parents Council.

His daughter, Kasey Briggs,

is a junior and member of the

Bulldog cross country and

track and field teams. Kennon

and his wife Kimberly are

also avid runners—she is

a marathoner and he runs

half-marathons. Briggs also

is serving on the Bulldogs’

Circle of Champions capital

campaign. “I just felt like a

member of the Bulldog family

from the very beginning,”

he says.

Professionally, Briggs served

the state’s community

college system. Prior to his

retiring in 2012, he was the

system’s executive vice pres-

ident and chief of staff, and

was CFO for 11 years.

J.W. Davis¸ appointed to the

Board of Trustees last spring

by Governor Pat McCrory, is

an associate with Bison

Investments. “My involve-

ment with UNC Asheville

began with my employer at

the time, Carolina First,”

says Davis. “Carolina First,

now TD Bank, made a

financial contribution to

Pisgah House, the chancel-

lor’s residence, and my wife

and I began endowment

scholarships for students.”

Davis also served on the

Foundation Board for six

years, and says, “It has been

very rewarding because

I’ve gotten to know many

students. Our university is

truly molding our future

leaders, and I am very proud

to make a contribution.”

Piyush Patel was appointed

by former Governor Beverly

Perdue to complete an unfin-

ished term on the board and

was reappointed last spring

by Governor McCrory. An

inventor who holds many

patents, Patel is director of

engineering at Qualcomm,

and he is passionate about

the importance of higher

education and keeping it

accessible. “Education is

what attracted me to this

country,” says Patel, a native

of India. “Education is the

equalizer in society. I feel

very fortunate that I am

able to be part of it. When

you come here from abroad,

you realize how unique the

democracy is, how unique

the system is.”

Kennon Briggs and his daughter, Kasey Briggs ’15, meet up at the Cross Country Carnival.

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Bulldogs love bicycles. That’s just a fact at UNC Asheville. So in August, the campus celebrated Bulldog Bicycle Bonanza, introducing students to the many bicycling resources in the Asheville area, including a new do-it-yourself bicycle repair station in front of Zeis Hall.

BullDogs on BikesIt’s Not a Circus Act, It’s a Transportation Celebration

arts Fest coming in 2014Creating Community through the Arts

This four-day festival from April 10–13, 2014, will culti-

vate creative and critical thinking, while also fostering

community through participation and engagement with

arts events and activities across the UNC Asheville

campus. Local artists and alumni will be encouraged to

share their talents and expertise, and area schools will

be invited to participate in interactive arts activities for

all ages and abilities.

Save the dates and stay tuned for further developments

and announcements of guest artists!

artsASHEVILLE

FEST

unc

Check arts.unca.edu/ARtSfest for more details, dates and times. Arts Fest logo designed by Casey Puccio ’14

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Writ ten by amy jessee

through the humanities

6 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

50

many freshmen enter UNC Asheville with some of the same questions: What will I major in? How will I talk to professors? Where will I find friends and fit in? What

do I want to do after graduation? But by the time they sit down in their first required humanities course, they’ll share a few bigger questions that come to define their experience as under-graduates and as citizens of the world: What is the nature of the good life? How are we like—and how are we unlike—the people who built our cultures? What do we live for?

UNC Asheville graduate Katie Rozycki ’07 measures the answers in cups of coffee, using a mug that sums up at least one Humanities Program director’s approach to the in-depth study required of the subject.

“As a freshman at convocation, we received a coffee mug with a quote from Dr. (Peg) Downes. It said, ‘Liberal arts education: the freedom to ask questions and the courage to seek answers.’”

Rozycki, along with the thousands of students who have completed humanities course requirements over the 50 years of

the program, continues to search for these answers by gaining an understanding of the past and celebrating the accomplishments of the program.

the early Years When the Humanities Program started at UNC Asheville in

1963, it joined a larger movement in the state and nation to break from the traditional methods that had divided academic disci-plines. Philip Walker, now a professor emeritus of history, joined the faculty that same year and served on the committee tasked with the curriculum renovation.

“In 1963, the word that we had was that the Asheville branch of the University of North Carolina would be something new and special,” he recalled. “The new faculty members were instructed to spend our first year working on a new curriculum, and there were several watch-words, widely bandied about, including experimental, interdisciplinary and integrative.”

Faculty created six courses at then Asheville-Biltmore College and buildings were constructed to foster the shared experience.

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Lipinsky Hall, with its 600-seat auditorium, was dedicated in 1964, and Carmichael Humanities Building and the 300-seat Humanities Lecture Hall opened in 1966. Walker became the first director of the Humanities Program in 1970.

“I always felt a sense of pride in the humanities because it seemed to be very successful, and it accomplished the sorts of things that we were concerned with in the beginning,” said Walker. “It got away from increasingly narrow specialization and avoided the problem that students were graduating without a broad enlightenment of the world they found themselves in.”

Michael Gillum, professor emeritus of literature and lan-guage, led the Humanities Program from 1972–75 and 1979–82, describing the structure as similar to the current curriculum of four courses, but with more reading, due in part to a fifth course at the time.

“Humanities director Robert Trullinger (who led the program from 1975–79) successfully moved to widen the reach of the pro-gram to include both faculty and materials from the natural and social sciences. This stabilized the base of support for humanities on campus and gave UNC Asheville the model that continues to flourish,” said Peg Downes, fifth and ninth director of the program and author of “The Humanities Program at UNC Asheville,” an article published in Alive at the Core by Michael Nelson & Associates (2000).

A pedagogical pauseDuring her tenure, Downes furthered the collaboration

among interdisciplinary faculty, establishing weekly faculty meetings in 1983. These sessions, which are still held today, give faculty the opportunity to discuss the readings and establish a shared syllabus for the courses.

“When I was hired in 1988, I felt confident in the history courses I was asked to teach,” said Bill Spellman, professor of his-tory and director of the program from 2000–02. “But what gave me pause, what scared me really, was teaching in humanities because it asked me to go outside of my comfort zone. It was compounded by the fact that it’s team-taught, so you are teach-ing in front of your colleagues, but that is part of the genius of humanities. You have people from different disciplines who are all reading the same material, but we each view it through a slightly different lens.”

As faculty from across the university became more involved in the program, they took a hands-on approach to the texts as well, creating custom readers that matched the unique curricu-lum and mission of the program, which is to help develop world citizens of broad perspective who think critically and creatively.

Merritt Moseley, current chair of the Department of Literature and Language and director of the Humanities Program from 1989–92, created the first reader for the 200-level course, and he served as the general editor for the current 100-level reader.

1963 1964 1966 1970s 1984faculty-elected committee decided on a new general education program, resulting in six four-hour required courses called the humanities.

humanities program began at Asheville- biltmore College.

lipinsky hall formally dedicated on february 17.

oliver C. Carmichael humanities building and humanities lecture hallformally opened on february 22.

faculty widened reach of program by including material from natural and social sciences.

Chancellor brown awarded special funding to the humanities program.

hUmANities historY highlights

The Humanities Lecture Hall

was the first building on campus

that gave the Humanities a home.

“Humanities is the core of the core. It’s something that stu-dents have in common. When they get to be seniors, no matter what they major in, they’ve read some Chinese poetry, some Shakespeare, and the Bhagavad Gita—there’s something to be said for having a shared culture,” Moseley said.

“It’s a long process that takes a text from the ancient world to something students can carry around in their backpacks,” said Grant Hardy, professor of history and current director of the Humanities Program. “I think they are curious at first. We take them through something that is very strange on their first read-ing in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and we show them that here they are talking about friendship or gender relations or about society and how to provide for a civil society. Those are questions that are still with us now. It’s amazing that a text that is more than 4,000 years old now is still applicable.”

The curriculum and best practices were nationally recognized in the 1990s when UNC Asheville was one of nine “mentor col-

leges” selected by the Association of American Colleges and the National Endowment for the Humanities to help other colleges strengthen their core curricula.

Downes, professor emeritus of literature and language, continues to consult internationally, sharing UNC Asheville’s experience and expertise in the humanities with colleges around the world.

A World viewAlumni carry the lessons of humanities courses beyond cam-

pus, discovering their applicability in near and far locations.History major Wes Morrison ’97 tested his knowledge and

skills in 2004, serving as a company commander in the first Army National Guard Brigade to enter Iraq and again in 2009 when he was deployed to Iraq as the executive officer of the 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 120th Infantry. While on this second tour, he worked with the Iraqi Ministry of Antiquities to secure a 4,000-year-old Sumerian Era archaeological site near Baghdad.

1989 1990s 1991 1993 1995humanities program 25th Anniversary!

reading for the humanities 224 published; edited by merritt moseley.

Association of American Colleges & the National endowment for the humanities selected UNC Asheville to be one of nine “mentor colleges” to help other colleges strengthen their core curricula.

The Asheville Reader, Volume II: Humanities 214 published; edited by peg downes.

The Asheville Reader, Volume III: Humanities 224 published; edited by merritt moseley.

The Future and the Individual, 4th edition published; edited by mark West.

humanities is the core of the core. it’s something that students have in common. When they get to be seniors, no matter what they major in, they’ve read some Chinese poetry, some shakespeare, and the Bhagavad Gita—there’s something to be said for having a shared culture.” — merritt moseley, director of the humanities program, 1989–92

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“The Army taught me how to lead soldiers in combat and natural disasters, but UNC Asheville taught me how to think crit-ically, communicate and apply negotiation skills to address issues of governance,” he said. “I drew from lectures on the history of Iraq, the Epic of Gilgamesh, leadership experience in SGA and more to prepare for being immersed in their culture.”

Jessica Wallace ’08 applied her skill set before graduation. The double major in history and literature, who is now a Ph.D. can-didate in American history at The Ohio State University, capped off her humanities courses with a service learning project.

“We applied a lot of the themes and issues of the contem-porary world, from hearing lectures about poverty and energy sustainability, multiculturalism and diversity,” she said. “We could see these issues being played out in the third-grade class-rooms where we completed our service learning as tutors. It showed us that what we read about and study in school really does matter in the larger world.”

Mass communication major Rozycki, who still holds on to her now-famous quote mug from faculty mentor Downes, also values the humanities in her career as an annual giving manager at Charlotte Latin School.

“A key to my appreciation of it is my ability to relate to almost anyone,” she said. “By studying so many facets of our history, culture and the arts, I’ve been able to learn how to relate to peo-ple better, to figure out what makes them think, and to develop a genuine interest in people.”

the Contemporary WorldThat interest in the individual becomes the central focus in

the capstone humanities course. “It’s natural for people to be attracted to contemporary mate-

rial, because it’s easier to see the relevance to their own lives,” said Grace Campbell, lecturer in humanities. “But what’s great about our program is that it emphasizes the continuities over the course of history, and it casts the contemporary material in a new light.”

In that way, the humanities transcends its 50 years at UNC Asheville and centuries of human experience. It is the under-standing of the past that illuminates the present, and in the case of this next decade, the future of humanity and humanities.

“We have a kind of versatility and adaptability in our program to stay on the cutting edge of pedagogical development. We work together as teams, and that cooperation makes it possible to harness new knowledge and new technology. We are going to lead in the digital humanities if we get the resources to do it,” said Campbell, who developed a pilot course this past summer.

Digital humanities, as the next frontier, involves the use of digital technology to investigate questions in the humanities and to communicate scholarship and ideas in digital form.

“Whatever their professional passion—be it a chemist, a weather forecaster, or an English teacher in high school— graduates will have some sense of perspective,” said Spellman

“We are always asking questions about meaning in our lives, and humanities began that conversation for them, even if it didn’t always provide the final answers.” 4

1998 20142002–04 2008 The Asheville Reader: The Medieval and Renaissance World published; editors Cynthia ho, sheryl sawin and bill spellman.

A new edition of The Asheville Reader: The Individual in the Contemporary World published; editors grace Campbell and reid Chapman.

The Individual in the Contemporary World;

editors grace Campbell, michael gillum, dorothy

sulock and mark West.

The Medieval & Renaissance World; editors

Cynthia ho, John mcClain, sheryl sawin and

bill spellman.

The Modern World; editors ed Katz and tracey rizzo.

The Ancient World; editors brian hook,

merritt moseley and Kathleen peters.

four Asheville Readers published: humanitiesprogram

turns 50!

for the complete timeline, go to humanities.unca.edu/celebrating-50-years1 0 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

What's cooking in the liberal arts“We all eat.” That seems obvious. But a statement like that at UNC Asheville

isn’t going to be left without discussion. A subject as ubiquitous as food invites explo-

ration from many angles—a perfect challenge for UNC Asheville students and faculty.

Written by HannaH epperson ’11

food for thought

Above: Associate Professor Amy Lanou cooks up a healthy curriculum and meal in UNC Asheville's Teaching Kitchen in the Wilma M. Sherrill Center. (Photo by Galen McGee ’08)

Below: Senior Emma Hutchens tends to the Rhoades Property Garden on campus. (Photo by Perry Hebard)

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“People think food is a narrow topic,” said Amy Lanou, associate professor of health and wellness. “But by the time you start thinking about the whole food system and all the aspects of the food system, from agriculture to marketing to consumption, it’s really a broad topic.”

Research starts with how food is grown. How is it processed and prepared? How is it advertised, and how does that affect the culture of the consumers? For that matter, how does the culture affect the food? UNC Asheville students and faculty from environmental studies to literature and language are examining food and what food means to us—a journey that takes us from the tiniest chemical elements to far away coun-tries and ancient times.

It begins in the garden.

A Seed of an IdeaUNC Asheville has a community garden, and senior Emma

Hutchens wants everyone to know about it. “The Rhoades property was purchased by UNC Asheville a

few years ago,” Hutchens explained. “There is a functioning community garden there. The Rhoades Garden is there to serve the UNC Asheville community as well as the community that surrounds the campus.”

The garden, managed mostly by the Student Environmental Center, flourishes with vegetables, herbs and annual plants. There are plans for growing perennials as well, such as berry bushes and fruit trees. It’s already buzzing with bee hives too.

What the garden is missing, however, are students.“I noticed immediately that not many people know about

it,” Hutchens said. “Is transportation a barrier? Is it that the garden’s not very visible, or does it need better signage?”

So Hutchens is conducting an undergraduate research project to find the answers, with support from the Local Food Research Fellows program. The fellows program, part of a larger project led by Interdisciplinary Distinguished Professor of the Mountain South Leah Greden Mathews, is funded with support from the National Research Initiative of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture [USDA Grant #2012-68006-30182]. Under the guidance of Kevin Moorhead, professor of environmental studies, Hutchens is creating and distributing a survey to determine what the community wants to get out of the garden, and how to get more students’ hands in the soil.

“People in America right now are eating very badly,” Hutchens said. “We’re eating food that’s not nutritious, we’re losing heirloom varieties of plants, and there are people living in inner cities—and that’s including Asheville—who don’t have enough to eat.”

Appalachian residents displayed extreme sophistication in their knowledge of foodways systems, knowledge of preserving, canning techniques, exhibiting knowledge of nutrition.”

—Jessica LeWis ’ 14

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Hutchens sees access to community gardens as a step toward solving those problems. She also is helping Moorhead teach an agricultural systems class, which brings students into the garden once a week.

“If I can get students to grow food for the rest of their lives, I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something,” Moorhead said. “It could be as simple as a tomato plant.”

The 18 students in the class are currently planting a fall garden in raised beds and preparing additional beds for the spring. The garden also is fertile ground for scientific research. Page Johnston, a senior environmental studies student who is also a Local Food Research Fellow, is comparing the effects of different fertilizers on her vegetable yield, including a special organic fertilizer called “biochar.”

Johnston hopes her research will help future UNC Asheville students use the space in the garden effectively. Ryan Rosemond, also a senior environmental studies major, and the student manager of the garden, hopes it will “capture the imagination of students,” and encourage them to explore the opportunities the garden can provide them.

The food grown by this class doesn’t need to travel far. It will go across campus to UNC Asheville’s Teaching Kitchen, to the students in Lanou’s “Foodways in History and Culture” class.

Cooking Up Curiosity“It’s like having a wet lab for chemistry,” Lanou explained.

“You can talk about principles until you’re blue in the face, but until you’ve actually mixed vinegar and baking soda, you don’t know what it does.”

That same approach works with healthy cooking. The Teaching Kitchen, which has been host to a variety of organi-zations and courses for the Asheville community, will feature a UNC Asheville academic course for the first time this semester.

“They’re going to be learning healthy eating principles,” Lanou said. “Not just how to cook, but the history of the food culture.”

And the Teaching Kitchen isn’t the only lab that’s focused on food. In her “Food of Chemistry” course, Sally Wasileski helps students overcome their fear of chemistry with ice cream.

“We’re trying to relate basic chemistry principles that we would teach in a general chemistry course here, but give exam-ples of that through food,” the associate professor of chemistry explained. “So if someone wants to describe the difference between a chemical change and a physical change, well, a phys-ical change is making ice cream.”

Turning something from a liquid to a solid, like freezing ice cream, is one delicious physical change. And that’s just the first day of class.

“For every topic, we do some different examples. We make truffles, we bake cookies, we make angel food cake, we make mayonnaise and butter. We learn different chemistry principles and how they manifest in these different foods.”

A Healthy Helping of ResearchFood, of course, is more than just the elements that create it.

Across the Quad from the chemistry lab, in the department of literature and language, senior Jessica Lewis is taking a closer look at the cultural significance of food, particularly the signifi-cance of cornbread in Appalachia.

Senior Jessica Lewis turned to canned goods and cookbooks to research Appalachian foodways. (Photo by Luke Bukoski)

Katie Borders, Cassi Sorrell, Kamren Kowa and Alex Ray, who traveled abroad to Greece and Turkey over the summer, come together for a reunion meal, sharing memories and recipes. (Photo by Luke Bukoski)

1 4 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

“Food is a very intimate thing,” Lewis said. “One item of food says a lot about your class: how much time you have to put into it, how many resources you have to put into it, what kind of tools you need to make it.

“It says a lot about the society from which you came, how that came to be,” Lewis continued. “For instance, cornbread occurred from ethnic mixing, though not very peaceable, of African Americans and Native Americans and European descen-dants existing together.”

As foodways scholar Elizabeth Engelhardt explains in her research, missionaries who were sent to Appalachia to bring reforms in health and education targeted corn, what they saw as savage and unrefined, to be replaced with wheat—cornbread to be replaced with biscuits.

“A lot of it had to do with class, and how much money you had,” said Erica Abrams Locklear, associate professor of liter-ature and Lewis’ research adviser. Paraphrasing Engelhardt’s work, Abrams Locklear stated, “You could grow your own corn, but wheat is much more difficult to grow in Appalachia, so you generally have to import it. You can bake cornbread in an iron skillet over a fire or you can bury the Dutch oven in the coals, but to make beaten biscuits you actually need a stove, you need a marble slab, you need labor, you have to have more economic capital.”

Through her USDA-funded research, Lewis studied count-less cookbooks, missionary publications and oral histories of Appalachian residents, and made an interesting discovery.

“What I saw was a complete and utter discrepancy between the perceptions of Appalachian residents’ knowledge and their actual knowledge,” she said. “In the oral history reports, Appalachian residents displayed extreme sophistication in their knowledge of foodways systems, knowledge of preserving, canning techniques, exhibiting knowledge of nutrition—all of which were things that missionaries targeted in need of reform in the missionary publications.”

Lewis found contemporary examples of this disconnect as well, including a travel show that featured Appalachia as an exotic cuisine location, similar to other episodes exploring foreign countries such as Cambodia and India. But she also is finding more recent instances of Appalachian people having a voice in representing their own food culture.

“What’s interesting is that, at least in cookbooks, there is a reclamation of these foods that were demonized,” Lewis said.

“There’s this sort of active agency for Appalachian people to speak up and say, ‘this is our food, and we’re proud of it.’”

Tasting HistoryUnderstanding the foodways of a place also can be a great

introduction to international cultures. As Lewis was learning about local culture through food this summer, students in the

“Foodways of the Mediterranean” study abroad course were delving into the culture and cuisine of Turkey and Greece. It was the perfect way to connect not only to a foreign culture during their trip, but also to ancient history.

Sweet! “Food for Thought” Cluster Wins National Award

The faculty team behind “Food for Thought,” UNC Asheville’s interdisci-plinary course cluster exploring issues related to food production and consump-tion, has been named the winner of the 2013 William E. Bennett Award for Extraordinary Contributions to Citizen Science from the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement.

The award-winning faculty team consists of:

• Sally Wasileski, associate professor of chemistry

• Karin Peterson, chair and professor of sociology

• Amy Lanou, Sara and Joseph Breman Professor of Social Relations and associ-ate professor of health and wellness

• Leah Greden Mathews, Interdisciplinary Distinguished Professor of the Mountain South and professor of economics

• David Clarke, associate professor of biology

• Jason Wingert, assistant professor of health and wellness

• Ellen Bailey, lecturer of French and Spanish

Courses in the cluster include the biology class “Plants and Humans,” “Food Politics and Nutrition Policy” in health and wellness, and “Elementary Spanish for Health Professions,” among many others.

FA L L 2 0 1 3 1 5

Dig into more details at magazine.unca. edu/FoodForThought

“Food has always been part of the fabric of life,” said Lanou, who taught the course as one of three classes offered during the trip. “It’s another one of those nice connections to history. So many of the foods we ate then and were available then are foods we still eat. That’s a really easy connector for folks to Mycenaean times or ancient Greek times or Roman, across the centuries.”

“I specifically remember when we were in Greece, seeing the barley and wheat growing,” said Lisa Riggsbee, a junior health and wellness promotion major. “Amy (Lanou) would pick it and say, this is what it looks like, and it’s still growing here, just like it did a bajillion years ago.”

“We would go to these sites and there would be fig trees and olive trees,” added Andrew Sparks, a junior mathematics major. The students picked lemons outside their hotel, or adventur-ously sampled shark and octopus—tentacles and all.

The students cooked three meals together as a group: the first in the Teaching Kitchen at UNC Asheville before their travels began, a second on the island of Lesvos in Greece, and

a final Mediterranean potluck and mini-reunion when they returned to Asheville. The potluck gave the students a chance to reminisce about their adventures together while sharing some of the food they had learned to make—spanakopita, zuc-chini fritters, Santorinian salad—and the chance to talk about the research they conducted once they got home.

For example, Sparks focused his research on the military city-state of Sparta. “At that time exotic foods and spices were considered luxuries, and effeminate,” he said. “And in a military state like Sparta, anything effeminate was looked down upon. So, pretty much you had to eat disgusting food, like black broth.”

Fortunately, students found the overall experience more appetizing, and back on campus they can still sample a piece of the experience in the Ancient Garden, located near New Hall, where just outside of their classes they can pick grapes and blueberries. It rounds out a food journey that took them to kitchens and dinner tables halfway across the world and finally found them back home, in the garden. 4

1 6 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

There are only six known photographs

of the events at the Gettysburg ceme-

tery taken on the day Abraham Lincoln

delivered his famed address in 1863.

So Assistant Professor of New Media

Christopher Oakley and his students in

their continuing work on The Virtual

Lincoln Project expanded their re-

search to look closely at those photos

with a goal of setting a more realistic

scene for their 3-D animation of the

16th president.

The photos show the actual setting at

Gettysburg, and with his discerning

eye, Oakley found an additional rare

surprise—what many experts believe is

the president himself where he had not

been previously identified. Smithsonian

magazine says Oakley has made “the

most significant, if not the most provoc-

ative, Abraham Lincoln photo find of

the last 60 years.”

“I was looking at Seward [Lincoln’s

Secretary of State] in the picture, and I

was not looking for Lincoln at all,” said

Oakley. “As an animator, I’m trained

to look at and study movement. And in

the first of Alexander Gardner’s photos,

I could see Seward from the side, and

I knew who was around him. And in

New Media Project Gives New Insight into Historic Event By Steve Plever

“Christopher oakley...stumbled upon

what looks to be the most significant,

if not the most provocative, Abraham

Lincoln photo find of the last 60 years.” — Smithsonian magazine

Virtual Certainty

the second Gardner photo, someone

new had entered. My eye drifted to

him, and it hit me. I jumped up saying

‘No way—it can’t be!’ I’ve been staring

at Lincoln’s face for decades, and that

night at 3 a.m., he looked back.”

Oakley’s fascination with Lincoln start-

ed in kindergarten and has only grown

stronger. He has col-

lected life casts of the

late president’s face

that his students now

use as models for

The Virtual Lincoln

Project. And he’s

visited Gettysburg

several times, taking

students along for

the adventure on a

recent trip.

“It was a unique experience because we

were making all these things [virtually]

that we hadn’t seen with our own eyes

besides the pictures online,” said Hagen

Carringer, a senior new media stu-

dent. “Then when you’re actually there

and see how similar it is…when you’re

standing right where Lincoln stood,

allegedly, it all just comes together.”

Allegedly becomes the key word in their

research because of the sometimes

inaccurate accounts of the scene. The

UNC Asheville researchers recently

added a few of their own corrections to

the chronicle. They have demonstrated

that there were two speaker platforms

at Gettysburg, not one, and that the

seats were in curved, auditorium-style

rows, not straight lines as previously

depicted. The new sighting of Lincoln

PrACTICALLY SPEAKING

Lu

KE

Bu

Ko

SK

I

Christopher Oakely (far right) and the students working on The Virtual Lincoln Project made several discoveries about the 16th president in their two years of animation work.

FA L L 2 0 1 3 1 7

PrACTICALLY SPEAKING

in one of the photographs remains the

most contested discovery.

That’s because other scholars already

had claimed to establish that a differ-

ent man in the same photo was Lincoln,

and that claim had landed them on the

front page of USA Today only six years

ago. After spying Lincoln’s admit-

tedly fuzzy profile in the ‘wrong’ place,

Oakley did what he calls a “historian’s

happy dance.” And in the months that

followed, he employed his deep knowl-

edge of Lincoln, and the high-tech tools

of new media, computer science and

physics to make a case that has con-

vinced many leading scholars of Civil

War photography and brought media

attention from USA Today, the New York Times and the History Channel.

Students like Carringer believe that

Oakley has the real Lincoln, having

seen his evidence and based on their

own intimacy with Honest Abe. “We’re

constantly having to look at him from

a 3-D perspective from all angles, and

his profile is so distinct,” he said. “It is

spot on.”

But Oakley wants more scientific

corroboration. “The next piece is to

go back to the cemetery and go old

school—to take everything we’ve

learned with our new media technology,

our science, and go test it with props

and sets, the camera equipment of the

time and see if we can re-create that

moment and those photos,” he said.

“That will tell us if we’re right or wrong.”

to find the latest news and photos from the Virtual Lincoln Project, go to facebook.com/TheVirtualLincolnProject

Oakley obtained a scan of the Alexander Gardner image, which allowed him to zoom in on the fuzzy figure of Lincoln. He overlaid a known image of the president to confirm the identification.

Photo credit: Alexander Gardner, November 19, 1863. Dedication ceremo-nies at the Soldiers’ National cemetery, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division ID: LC-DIG-ds-04063u. Graphic by 5W infographics.

1 8 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

Written by Jon Elliston • Photos by Luke Bukoski

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Teaching doesn’t leave a lot of time for off-campus interests, but some UNC Asheville faculty members still find ways to pursue their personal preoccupations. Here are the stories of five professors whose hobbies and sideline specialties might surprise you.

the Cake CreatorWhen Sally Wasileski, an associate professor of chemistry, fin-

ished her Ph.D. nine years ago, she was sorely in need of a break from the rigors of academia. “Graduate school was so intense, so I went looking for a creative outlet,” she remembers.

Wasileski found that outlet in cake decorating. After taking a class at a craft store, where she learned the basic techniques, she’s spent years experimenting and perfecting her frosted creations.

“Cake decorating allows me to be very detail-oriented, which I like,” says Wasileski, who rarely makes the same cake design twice. “It’s a fun challenge for me.”

Some of her designs are nothing if not challenging. For a friend’s recent wedding, for example, she crafted a cake resem-bling a stack of antique books. It took her about 15 hours, she estimates, and she even brushed gold paint-looking food coloring on the edges of the “pages.”

Then there was a recent birthday cake for Wasileski’s 4-year-old daughter, who loves airplanes: It was shaped like a 747. Another was shaped like a teapot, and another like a xylophone.

“To me it’s about finding an inspiration—whether it’s my own or something that someone who I care about wants,” she says.

Asked if there’s any crossover between her university work and her passion for cakes, Wasileski quickly responds in the affirmative.

“As a chemist, I’m very interested in the chemical properties and the chemistry going on in cooking and baking, and I think that knowledge allows me to experiment a little more” she says. And that’s not all: “I teach a chemistry course for non-science majors based on the science of food,” she notes. “We make angel food cake, because that’s an example of protein interactions and how proteins unfold and bond with each other.”

Science aside, Wasileski stresses another important aspect of her cakes. “Sure, a cake needs to be structurally sound,” she says, “but it also needs to taste really, really good.

See more of Wasileski’s cakes and a behind-the-scenes video at magazine.unca.edu/secretlives

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2 0 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

“A lot of people I race against think I have secret knowledge that helps me to do well.” —Chris Hennon

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the Sailboat Racer Perhaps it’s only fitting that Chris Hennon, an

associate professor of atmospheric sciences, would love a sport that depends on gusts of wind. But the story of how he got into sailboat racing begins with affection of another sort.

“I met my wife, Paula, in grad school,” Hennon explains. “I had never even been around a boat or sailed before, but she was really into racing. And she basically said, ‘If you want to go out with me, you need to learn how to race a sailboat.’”

And so he did. “I was scared at first, but she taught me everything about how to sail and how to race a boat,” Hennon says. “And it pretty much snowballed from there.”

Now, the two are competitive racers who can be regularly spotted tacking across Lake Julian in one of their three small boats. They’re active members of the Asheville Sailing Club, where Hennon is the “vice com-modore,” or second-in-command. He also was recently appointed president of the national association of Jet-14 sailboat racers.

Hennon says he loves the spirit of competition at races, but sailing also serves as a kind of anchor for his marriage. “That’s where our leisure activities overlap the most,” he says. “Sailing is where we intersect, and I think that’s really important, to have something in your relationship that you like to do together.”

You might wonder, does Hennon’s knowledge of atmospheric sciences give him a leg up on the lake?

“You would think I might have an advantage because I study the weather and the wind,” he says. “A lot of people I race against think I have secret knowledge that helps me to do well. But I don’t find that it helps much at all.” The mountain-area winds, he says, are just too unpredictable, even for a seasoned meteorologist.

the Home Brewer“Of course, Asheville is a great beer town—so there’s no great need for me to make my own,” notes Classics Professor Sophie

Mills. “There’s obviously some other need that I have that this satisfies.”Mills started brewing four years ago, after taking a course at Hops & Vines in West Asheville. Now she makes her own beer

in five-gallon batches at what she calls a “nanobrewery” in her home.“It’s huge fun, and very different from what I do for work,” says Mills, the current NEH Distinguished Professor in the

Humanities. “I spend my days looking at texts and thinking about language and culture—it’s quite a mental occupation. Brewing is very physical, very hands on. And you know, the yeast takes the time that it takes—you can’t rush it, and it will be fermented when it’s done. So it’s a good sort of corrective to the other things in life that I have to rush through.”

Mills dubbed her beer-making operation The Five Felines, in homage to her five cats. “I name all the brews after the cats, so there’s Titus’ Tipple, Old Sour Puss, and Black Cat Porter,” she says. “I make a lovely, dark coffee porter, which is named after the rear end of one of my cats: It’s called Furry Buttocks.”

While Mills enjoys the making (and the drinking) of the beers, she’s also grown fond of sharing them with friends.I give my beer away a lot,” she says. “And it’s very nice when people come over to the house and sometimes specifically ask

for one that I’ve made.”

“It’s a good sort of corrective to other things in life that I have to rush through.” —Sophie Mills

2 2 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

Humanities Lecturer Ann Dunn is teaching four classes this semester, to a total of about 100 students. On “the side,” she directs the Asheville Ballet and owns the Asheville Acad-emy of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. And then there are her family obligations, which include helping to care for her five children and 10 grandchildren.

“I live in two different worlds, actually, more than that,” Dunn says. “The main two worlds are dance and academia, and I’m very committed to and involved in both. It’s not like one is a hobby and the other one isn’t.”

How does she do it all?To begin with, “I get up early in the morn-

ing,” Dunn says. The first half of her day is immersed in the university. Then, she heads home for lunch—and a Sudoku puzzle and quick nap to clear her head. Then she shifts to her dance duties, which include teaching classes and choreographing and producing old and new works.

Dunn is quick to say she gets lots of help on that dance side. “I have a huge support system at the ballet,” she says. “There are many days when I do not even go to the studio.”

The real secret, she says, is noticing how her two worlds intersect and complement each other.

“I would almost not divide the areas of ex-perience in my life,” Dunn explains. “I have to divide them in the scheduling of my days, but it’s not a matter of being spread too thin, it’s a question of how can I cram in another thing that’s so exciting to me. And these things feed each other: Everything feeds making dances, because you’re making dances about the hu-man experience.”

Dunn’s students, she says, are usually sur-prised to find that she has a specialty outside of teaching the humanities. “But they’re surprised in a nice way,” she notes. “They realize, ‘Oh, she’s not just trying to open my head up and stuff information into it. She’s doing something with her own life, too.’”

“Everything feeds making dances, because you’re making dances about the human experience.” —Ann Dunn

the Dancer & Choreographer

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“Reading Bach is like reading the most difficult Shakespeare you can imagine.” —Blake Hobby

the Dancer & Choreographer

the Baroque Musician When Blake Hobby, an associate professor of literature,

took a job at UNC Asheville in 2003, he was stunned to run into Charles McKnight, an associate professor of music. That’s because McKnight had taught Hobby music history and theory decades prior, when Hobby was a music major at Stetson University in Deland, Fla.

“I had no idea we’d wind up teaching at the same uni- versity,” Hobby recalls.

They wound up doing even more than that: Six years ago, Hobby and McKnight, along with fellow musician Gail Ann Schroeder, formed the Asheville Baroque Trio. The ensemble plays 18th-century music, with Hobby on the harp-sichord, McKnight on the recorder, and Schroeder playing the viola da gamba, a bowed string instrument with frets.

“To return to playing with someone after many years, it’s a

strange and neat experience, and a reminder of what goes into a great student-teacher relationship.”

And while Hobby teaches literature, not music, he says there’s plenty of connection between the two disciplines.

“For whatever reason, people who are really good with music are usually very good with language,” he says. “It’s the reading thing and the concentration thing. For exam-ple, I opened the concert the other night with a 10-minute Bach piece. Reading Bach is like reading the most difficult Shakespeare you can imagine.”

The trio performs at various venues in and around Asheville, but “our favorite place to play is on campus, where we’ve had a growing audience,” Hobby says. Attendance at the trio’s occasional on-campus performances, which used to draw about 30 people, is now up to about 100. 4

2 4 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

When UNC Asheville students trav-

eled abroad this summer on the first

faculty-led trip to China, they found

themselves the focus of study as much

as the subjects on their syllabus and

undergraduate research projects.

Shelby Vecchio ’14 studied the

architecture in each of the four cit-

ies: Beijing, Shanghai, Ha’erbin and

Xi’an. Comparing the landscapes and

cityscapes, the new media major was

struck by the disparity in the places

they visited—shacks and subsidized

housing cheek to jowl with skyscrap-

ers. Nonetheless, Xi’an and Ha’erbin

reminded her of Charlotte or Atlanta.

“I honestly didn’t expect to see so much

tourism and so many places that re-

minded me of the U.S.,” Vecchio, from

Lawrenceville, Ga., said. Still, she defi-

nitely felt like she wasn’t in Asheville

any more.

“I got a lot of looks and double takes.

People would stop and take pictures

of me, because it was obvious I was

from another country,” she said. The

experience gave her a sense of what

it’s like to be stereotyped because of

nationality.

Justine Reid ’14 noticed what women

were wearing, as part of her under-

graduate research examining the

verbal and nonverbal ways that China

communicates with itself and the out-

side world. Observing the bold colors

and stylish clothes that young, rural

Chinese wore to historic sites, Reid

noted that Chinese women in their

dress exemplify the new China, rush-

ing to catch the modern world as the

old China disappears.

But the study abroad was about more

than observations. As part of the

Asian Studies and

International Studies

Programs’ efforts to

globalize the UNC

Asheville campus,

the experience

gave students the

opportunity to learn

aspects of Chinese

language, culture and

society that they can apply to their

academics and careers.

“China is becoming an indispensable

part of the world now,” said Jinhua Li,

lecturer in international studies and

director of the Study Abroad to China

trip in summer 2013. “Our students gain

an in-depth understanding of the coun-

try and culture through their engaged

individual research projects, and then

obtain a unique perspective as cultural

explorers and ambassadors, which con-

nects them to the larger world.”

That’s part of the reason why UNC

Asheville students choose to study

abroad. The three-week trip was

organized and led by Li and facilitated

by Lei Han, associate professor and

director of new media. The 11 students,

many of whom had never been out of

the country, met May 13 for a one-week

program on campus before leaving

for the international experience. They

received six credit hours for two

courses—Exploring China and New

Media (INTS 376/NM 376).

UNC Asheville has study abroad

programs in more than two dozen

countries. Studying in another country,

whether for a few weeks or a semester

or two, gives students new perspec-

tives and dovetails perfectly with UNC

Asheville’s liberal arts orientation, Han

said. The liberal arts and sciences are

all about drawing upon a wide variety

of studies and experiences to think

critically and creatively. Travel is an

excellent way to augment and appreci-

ate classes that students have taken in

fields that include language, business

and culture.

LonGITudE & LATITUDE

a Country of studyChina Trip Connects Students Across the World By Paul Clark

Senior Shelby Vecchio learns to write “beautiful tree” in Chinese.

“A liberal arts education teaches

students to be lifelong learners, to

constantly seek new knowledge...”

—Lei Han, associate professor and director of new media

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For more information about study abroad and study away, go to studyabroad.unca.edu.

“A liberal arts education teaches students to be lifelong

learners, to constantly seek new knowledge and experience,”

said Han. “Study abroad in China enhances our students’

ability to become global citizens. It prepares our students for

vocation and employment in the global economy.”

The peer-to-peer experience was particularly beneficial.

Students get a perspective from other students that they

can’t get anywhere else, so Han and Li made sure the UNC

Asheville students spent lots of time with their peers at

Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications and Harbin

Normal University.

Li recalls listening in on a conversation between a small

group of UNC Asheville and Chinese students. They were

talking about education and job prospects in China and

in the U.S. Traveling abroad and pursuing a liberal arts

education isn’t possible for most Chinese students, the

UNC Asheville students learned. From talking to her

students later, Li knew that they had been changed by the

discussion, as well as by the overall trip. Not only did they

understand more about Chinese culture; they also realized

how lucky they are.

“There’s nothing like going to a different continent to make

you think about your own culture,” Reid, a Hendersonville

native, said. “For a lot of Americans who haven’t left the

country, it’s hard to realize how much of the things you

think about and do are the result of your culture. You think

everyone thinks the way you do. When you go to a different

country, it shows you a lot about who you are.”

LonGITudE & LATITUDE

Associate Professor Lei Han (far left) and Lecturer Jinhua Li (far right) led the students on a tour to the “Bird’s Nest” stadium in Beijing, designed for the 2008 Olympics.

2 6 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

GO, BuLLdoGS!GO, BuLLdoGS!

It’s been a big year for Nick McDevitt

’01. The new Bulldogs head men’s

basketball coach earned that position

last April. He did that while leading

the team after former coach Eddie

Biedenbach resigned after 19 years.

And oh yes, he also got married. He

will quickly tell you that getting mar-

ried is the most important thing that’s

happened in his life so far this year—

and that’s indicative of his core values.

For Coach McDevitt, faith and family

come first, but make no mistake, this

coach will win many games—he’s got

his eye set on another Big South Con-

ference championship. However, he’s

equally focused on helping his young

men grow and learn.

“To me, our biggest win

comes on graduation

day, seeing our seniors

get their degrees,” he

said. “As important,

we want to foster all

our team members,

helping them mature

into fine men through

the game of basketball.”

He knows that process well, having

started as a student-athlete at UNC

Asheville before graduating into his

coaching role.

Practice and Progress Director of Athletics Janet Cone has

known McDevitt for many years. When

she was coaching basketball at Mars

Hill College, she watched his progress

as a high school athlete, and as a UNC

Asheville basketball team member.

“He is a man of great integrity, with

a great, supportive family,” she

explained. “As a servant leader he

does what he needs to help others.

When he speaks publicly, he begins

by talking about the university, then

the athletics department, the men’s

basketball program, and then,

reluctantly, himself. It’s never about

him, it’s about us, the university.”

Longtime UNC Asheville Associate

Athletics Director Mike Gore also

has known McDevitt many years. He

remembers being one of McDevitt’s

camp counselors at the UNC Asheville

basketball camp.

“It’s been fun watching Nick grow into

this job,” he said. “He was always well

mannered and classy, and he still is. A

lot of people have dream jobs, and this

is his dream, the job he wanted. It’s

nice to see it work out.”

Coaching LegacyCoach McDevitt grew up in Marshall,

N.C., only 30 minutes from Asheville.

He played basketball, baseball and

football until high school when bas-

ketball became his focus. He had a lot

of family help— from his dad, Wayne

McDevitt (former chief of staff for Gov.

James B. Hunt), to his uncle Ricky

McDevitt, who coached the girl’s varsi-

ty team at Madison County High School

at that time.

from College to a CareerNick McDevitt Leads the Bulldogs as Men’s Basketball Head Coach By Melissa Stanz

“A lot of people have dream jobs, and

this is his dream, the job he wanted.

It’s nice to see it work out.”

—Mike Gore, Associate Athletics Director

FA L L 2 0 1 3 2 7

GO, BuLLdoGS!GO, BuLLdoGS!

“My dad was with me all the way from youth-league basket-

ball from age 5–13, coaching and mentoring me, and Uncle

Ricky helped me a lot too. I think my whole family knew I

had a career in sports because I could calculate point differ-

entials as a very young kid, before I could even do math!”

Family ties to UNC Asheville run deep in the McDevitt

family. Nick’s father, uncle and sister are all alumni. His

parents dated in high school; some of their dates includ-

ed basketball games at the university’s Justice Center.

His grandfather helped install some of the plumbing in

Governors Residence Hall. And of course, Nick is a graduate

himself, the first alumnus to hold the men’s basketball

head coaching position.

He attended UNC Asheville on an academic and athletic

scholarship and majored in history. He knew he wanted to

be a basketball coach, but he thought he would graduate

and teach high school history, earning a spot as a high

school basketball coach and eventually working his way into

a college coaching job. His plans were jump started when

Biedenbach hired him at age 22, straight out of college.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” he recalled. “An

assistant coach left as I was graduating, and I was fortunate

to be hired.”

An Educational ApproachMcDevitt spent 12 years as an assistant and associate bas-

ketball coach before assuming the head coaching position

this year. He says Biedenbach mentored him, teaching him

the business and nuances of the game.

“Coach Biedenbach gave me an invaluable piece of advice

after I got the head coach job,” he remembered. “He said to

always ask myself if my decisions were in the best interest

of the players and to listen to my heart.”

BECOMING A bULLDOG

stuDent athleteA four-year letterman, McDevitt played for the Bulldogs from 1997 to 2001, while pursuing a degree in history.

assistant anD associate coachHe graduated to an assistant coaching position, moving into the associate coaching role in 2011.

champions on the courtIn these roles, McDevitt helped lead the Bulldogs to three Big South Con-ference regular-season championships and two trips to the NCAA tournament.

leaDers For liFeMcDevitt earned the men’s basketball head coach title in 2013, becoming the first UNC Asheville alum to advance to this position.

McDevitt leads from

the perspective of a player

2 8 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

uNC Asheville men’s basketball faces a tough early-season schedule, opening the season against Kentucky on Friday, November 8. the Bulldogs will be home in Kimmel Arena starting December 12. For game information and tickets, go to uncabulldogs.com/tickets.

GO, BuLLdoGS!GO, BuLLdoGS!

CoaChing Challenge

McDevitt and the Bulldog men’s basketball team welcome former head coach Eddie Biedenbach and the UNC Wilmington Seahawks to the mountains on December 28.

He credits his training as a teacher at

UNC Asheville for helping him stay

ahead of the curve.

“Training as a teacher helps me teach

the game. I still use the methods and

techniques I learned in my education

classes,” he said.

Senior Jaron Lane tells a story that

demonstrates McDevitt’s unique ap-

proach to the game.

“When I was red shirted last year due

to injuries, he came to me. I was so

discouraged, and he told me to focus on

getting better,” he recalled. “He said

not to think about it as a bad thing but

to deal with it as a man and a person.

That really opened my eyes, and I ap-

preciated his kindness.”

The Past and PresentAlthough McDevitt coached men’s

basketball for a dozen years, his

appointment as head coach was not a

given when the former coach left. Cone

explained that a search committee

conducted a rigorous search, inter-

viewing many candidates both on and

off campus. She said the entire search

committee agreed that McDevitt distin-

guished himself.

“He had been preparing for a long time

to be head coach, and he was ready,”

she said. “He had his own vision, tak-

ing the best from the past but bringing

a new, creative touch to the program.”

FA L L 2 0 1 3 2 9

Davis Sets Up National Team By Mike Gore

UNC Asheville sophomore

volleyball player Katie

Davis was selected to par-

ticipate in this summer’s

USA Volleyball Women’s

Junior A1 National Team.

The team attended a 10-

day training camp and

competed in Europe from

July 9–20. Team USA

capped its experience with

the 9th Annual European

Global Challenge in Pula,

Croatia.

The Global Challenge

Team consisted of 12 ath-

letes competing against

other top junior national

teams from Europe. The

program is the premier

international travel program for

junior-age athletes in the United States.

Davis enjoyed an excellent freshman

season for the Bulldogs in 2013. She

was Asheville’s starting setter and

led Asheville in assists with a 9.07

per set average. She also made the

Big South All-Freshman team and

was named Rookie of the Week twice

during the season.

NIGHt GAMES ARE oN tHE HoRIzoN FoR

tHE BuLLDoG BASEBALL AND SoCCER tEAMS,

tHANKS to A $500,000 GRANt FoR outDooR LIGHtS

FRoM tHE BuNCoMBE CouNtY touRISM DEVELoPMENt

AutHoRItY, ANNouNCED LASt SPRING.

high sCores

Katie Davis ’16 prepares to serve.

GO, BuLLdoGS!GO, BuLLdoGS!

AwArDS & HONORS

Administrators and

athletes earn accolades

Janet cone honoreD as unDer armour athletics Director oF the YearUNC Asheville Director of Ath-letics Janet Cone was named as one of 28 winners of the Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year Award by the National Asso-ciation of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. She received her award at the James J. Corbett Awards Luncheon, June 15, at NACDA’s 48th Annual Convention at the world Center Marriott resort.

Cone is in her 10th year as Direc-tor of Athletics at UNC Asheville, while simultaneously serving as senior administrator for univer- sity enterprises.

stuDent-athletes make the honor rollMore than 60 percent of UNC Asheville’s student-athletes have earned a spot on the Big South Presidential Honor roll for the 2012-13 academic year.

To make the honor roll, a student-athlete must maintain a 3.0 grade-point average over the entire academic year. This year UNC Asheville had 105 student-athletes with a 3.0 or higher GPA for the year. For the latest news, rosters and schedules for all uNC Asheville Division I teams,

visit uncabulldogs.com.

We love to hear from

alumni—and so do

your classmates!

So be sure to send us

your accomplishments,

career moves, family

news, fascinations

and celebrations.

Either log on to

alumni.unca.edu

or send an e-mail to

alumni@unca.edu

1969Douglas Norton recently

retired from his First Union/

wachovia banking career. He now

lives in South Carolina with his

wife, Dianne.

1974Charles “Chuck” Campbell is currently the Board Chair of

CarePartners Health Services in

Moores Pond Farm in Fairview.

1975Zollie Stevenson Jr. has

been elected vice president

of the American Educational

research Association. He also

is an associate professor of

educational administration

and policy in the School of

Education at Howard University

in washington, D.C.

1981James Cassara recently

completed his national

recertification in teaching.

notesclassDROP US A LINE!

He teaches art at Claxton

Elementary in Asheville and is in

his 29th year of teaching.

1983David Morris Pickett created a

non-judgmental TV talent show

called un-DISCOVErED, which

can be viewed on ATMC.net and

YouTube.

1986Alan Lewis Robinson is the

owner and president of Global

Travel in Asheville.

1988Allan Dawson is now a self-

employed real estate investor in

Asheville.

1989Bill Clute is a senior software

developer for Asset Point in

Greenville, S.C., chapter director

for reasonable Faith, and an

airshow pilot performing in an

airplane that he built himself.

1991Patrick Britz and his wife,

Joanna, welcomed their second

daughter, Delaney Miles, on April

14. Their first daughter, Emersyn

reese, was born November 9,

2011.

1992Christopher Boe earned his

second doctoral degree from

Gardner-webb University. He

serves as an associate professor

and director of graduate teacher

education at Pfeiffer University.

Julie Partin Laird moved to

Dallas and is working as a market

manager for walmart.

1994Tara Quinn was promoted to

executive director of the Capital

region Land Conservatory in

richmond, Va.

Cynthia Robbins Shan-Khan was recently named to the

board of directors for the North

Carolina School Public relations

Association and the Tar Heel

3 0 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

Chapter of the Public relations

Society of America.

Dottie Owensby Shepard is

the nursing operations manager

for wake Forest Baptist Health.

1995 Erin Kelly and her husband,

Jesse Crespo, welcomed their

son, Cruz Joseph, to the world on

July 22.

1996Mark A. Dann and his wife,

Susan, welcomed twins, Cian

robert and Alana rose, on

March 24.

1997 Anna Rinaldi Discenzo

has been appointed to the

Association Montessori

Internationale—Elementary

Alumni Board as the publications

and communications chair.

1998Nate Conroy is now employed

as the agile transformation coach

at NTT Data Federal Services Inc.

Tracy Kelly relocated back to

Massachusetts in 2011. She works

as a development associate at

NEADS—Dogs for Deaf & Disabled

Americans.

Dee McKinney is associate

professor of history at East

Georgia State College, and she

has been appointed director

of distance education for the

college.

Alice Pruette currently works

as a music teacher for New

Dimensions Charter School in

Morganton and as a private voice

instructor at Studio K Dance

Academy.

April Cash Ziems is currently

working on a telecom project as

a regional fiber site acquisition

manager with a major cellular

carrier.

1999Alphonso Donaldson recently

earned a master of school

administration from UNC-Chapel

Hill.

Claudia Hurtado-Myers has

recently graduated from law

school and opened her own law

firm.

Mike Matthews and his wife,

Heather, welcomed the birth of

Mia Cecille Matthews on June 13.

2000Ardie Hollifield and her

husband, Michael Dinwoodie,

gave birth to a baby girl, Ainsley

Inez, on May 30.

Lola McPartland and her

husband, richard, celebrated the

birth of their daughter, Annabel

Caroline, in March.

2001Clark Chilton has been

ordained as a deacon in the

United Methodist Church in June.

Bryan Ray Richerson married

Myriah Skidmore Richerson ’00. He is currently teaching

at west Hall High School in

Gainesville, Ga., and serves as

the head women’s basketball

coach.

Terese Annette Southern

married Ryan Southern ’02 on

July 20.

Elizabeth Saxman Underwood has been promoted

to executive director for

government and community

relations at the University

of Arkansas—Fort Smith. She

also has received a Fulbright

Scholarship to study in Germany

and France this fall.

Eric David Winters and his

wife, Faymi Daystrom winters,

recently welcomed their son,

Jasper, on June 7.

2002

Julie Nicholson has received a

juris doctor from UNC-Chapel Hill

and now resides in Asheville.

2003Carly Gramer DaCunha

married Imar DaChuna Jr. in

January. They currently reside in

Orlando, Fla.

Jeffery Dore married Kari

Sederburg in May.

Emily Gracey Miller and Troy Miller ’02 recently welcomed

their first child, Aaron Jackson,

on July 4.

Whitney Butterworth Rivera and her husband, Joshua Rivera, welcomed the birth of

their daughter, Lilianna Christine,

on Feb 8.

CLASS noTES

FA L L 2 0 1 3 3 1

HomecomingFebruary 27–March 1, 2014Mark your

calendar

unca.edu/homecoming

CLASS noTES

Anna Catherine Canady married Daniel Sommerfeldt

in April.

Tish Franklin married Adam

Trescott in March.

2004Shannon Baccaglini married

Michael Baccaglini in April.

She is the assistant director

of membership for wolf Trap

Foundation for the Performing

Arts.

Bailey Schultz Balentine

moved to wilmington to start

a career as a family medicine

physician. In 2012, she welcomed

the birth of twins.

Samantha Bowers is a project

manager with Asheville Housing

Authority and serves as vice

chair for the nonprofit’s board.

Ray Harmon recently married

Mick Miller. He also has

graduated from The Catholic

University of America’s

Columbus School of Law and is

now working in the D.C. area.

Laura Price Hickman works as

assistant vice president—senior

financial analyst for Bank of

America in Charlotte.

Breanna Pratt and her

husband, Greg, welcomed a

daughter, Farrah Mae, into the

world on March 3.

Jolene McGill was appointed

acting finance and acquisition

branch chief at the National

Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration’s National

Climatic Data Center. She also is

teaching a section of Principles

of Accounting at UNC Asheville

this semester.

John Mitchell is the business

and community development

director for Henderson County.

2005Toyna Rene Barrow works

at Hendersonville Veterinary

Hospital.

Erin Wood Creasman

is currently teaching third

grade in Brevard.

Ashley Garrison and Greg Garrison welcomed a baby

boy, Finnegan walter, into

the world on March 29.

Theresa Jenkins and Earl

Jenkins have a son, Austin,

born in 2012. They also have

a daughter named Madison.

2006Keshia Onuoha is currently

working at Preferred Care

Partners Management Group

in Texas. She recently has

been accepted at Texas

women’s University.

JoAnna Porterfield

married Andrew Porterfield

in November 2011. They

recently had a baby girl

named Alexandria, and now

they are residing in Fort

walton Beach, Fla.

Leanna Virginia Terrell works as a registered

nurse at Mission Hospital in

Asheville.

2007 Erza L. Cates married

Stephanie Chinnaponges in

July. He also received a Ph.D.

in environmental engineering

from the Georgia Institute

of Technology in May.

He currently works as a

postdoctoral researcher at

Yale University.

Daniel Hartis recently

wrote Charlotte Beer: A History of Brewing in the queen City, which was

published by The History Press

in March.

Erin Lee McDonald married

James Hamilton in April.

Phillip McGuffee is the special

services manager and biodiesel

plant operator at Midlands

Biofuels in winnsboro, S.C.

Lindsey Pfundstein recently

started her own practice with

her partner, Kate Palmer, called

Intuitive Transitions in Kingston,

N.Y.

Angela Ramsey has been

interning at the Mary Benson

House, a residential substance

abuse treatment program.

Lisa Walsh has recently earned

a Ph.D. in geology from the

University of Maryland. She

works as a seismologist for the

Nuclear regulatory Commission

in washington, D.C.

Megan Bre Watts is the

associate product developer for

Tiltworks in Asheville.

2008Lynn Baker recently received

a position as the environmental

health and safety associate with

Caterpillar Precision Seals in

Franklin.

Ryan Dodd earned an M.S.

in soil science and a minor in

geographic information systems

from NC State University. He now

works at Cascade Earth Sciences

in Visalia, Calif.

Sarah Grace recently accepted

a new position at the Parish

Group in downtown Asheville.

Lee Griffin earned a master of

education in secondary social

studies from UNC Charlotte in

May.

Amy Harless is a research/

techniques development

meteorologist at the Aviation

weather Center in Kansas City,

Mo.

Brennan McKinney and his

wife, Leanne, gave birth to a

daughter, Lillian ruth, on May 7.

Mary Mills married Kevin Dillion

on June 22. They now reside in

whitsett, where she is employed

as a science teacher with

Guilford County Schools.

Nicole Caldwell Saunders

received the “rookie of the

Year” award from Johnson &

wales University in Charlotte,

where she works as coordinator

of student activities.

2009Michelle Barbeau was

recently hired as the director

of operations for the nonprofit

running Mates in Charlotte.

Shawna Carroll graduated

with a master’s in international

security from Sciences Po in Paris.

Sealy Chipley currently

is residing in Asheville and

employed at Land-of-Sky

regional Council.

Robyn Fender graduated from

the UNC Eshelman School of

Pharmacy with a PharmD. She

will be starting a pharmacy

practice residency at Novant

Health Presbyterian Medical

Center in Charlotte.

Stephen McGarity entered the

Ph.D. program in social work at

the University of Georgia this fall.

Karen Leigh Rigsby married

Josh rigsby on July 20.

Meredith Morgan Troughton

married Thomas Troughton in

2012. She recently earned a

master of public affairs from

western Carolina University and

is now working in Buncombe

County.

Adam Vick recently accepted a

position with Liberty Distribution

Company as a National Account

Manager in Nashville, Tenn.

3 2 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

CLASS noTES

NAME A WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

RIVER, and it’s likely that Kevin Colburn has played a role in its conservation.

The 1998 UNC Asheville graduate has negotiated for rivers and streams for 12 years as part of American

Whitewater, a stalwart advocate for the preservation and protection of waterways throughout the United States. Now national stewardship director of the Cullowhee-based non-profit, Colburn joined the organiza-tion when he was just 25 years old.

It’s a path that began at UNC Asheville, where he focused on envi-ronmental studies and conducted undergraduate research at the Tallulah Wetlands.

“That was absolutely a formative experience,” said Colburn, who is

based in Missoula, Mont. “Not many undergrads get paid for three years to do work that is related to the field they’re studying.”

Raised near Biglerville, Pa., Colburn’s decision to attend UNC Asheville was shaped as much by the region’s

recreational opportunities as his aca-demic goals. When he looked at the

environmental programs avail-

able in southern Appalachia, UNC Asheville stood out. “It just seemed idyllic, and it was,” Colburn said.

In 1995, he and Leland Davis ’97 founded the UNC Asheville Paddling Club. Colburn estimates he taught at least 100 people how to roll a kayak in the campus pool. The club’s adviser, Associate Professor of Economics Chris Bell, would later join the board of American Whitewater, as would Davis. And it was while working at the Tallulah Wetlands that Colburn would meet his wife, Mamie Smith Colburn ’00.

After graduation, Colburn moved west, earning a master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana. Impressed with his academic work, American Whitewater hired him as their eastern conservation and access associ-ate. Upon returning to Asheville, he quickly immersed himself in dam re-licensings and other projects in-volving rivers such as the Nantahala, Tuckasegee, Chattooga, Catawba and Cheoah.

These days, he’s planning a move back to Western North Carolina, where he’s working on the forest planning for the Nantahala National Forest, which could lead to new river protections under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. He’s also building grassroots support for getting “a pretty big roster” of waterways in Montana designated as National Wild and Scenic Rivers.

“We could potentially be protecting hundreds of miles of streams,” said Colburn. “It’s a pretty amazing opportunity.”

A DRIVINg FoRCE Alum Kevin Colburn advocates for preservation and recreation By Karen Shugart

“Not many undergrads get paid for three

years to do work that is related to the

field they’re studying.” — Kevin Colburn ’98

Colburn used ultralight pack rafts to document potential Wild and Scenic Rivers in Montana’s backcountry.

FA L L 2 0 1 3 3 3

HEATHER THOMPSON GOT HER

FIRST bREAk IN CHEROkEE, after graduating in 2009 and finding a Craigslist post asking for movie ex-tras for the Road to Nowhere.

“I overheard the costume designer say, ‘We really need an assistant for a few days, but we can’t afford to pay anyone,’” Thompson remembers. “I just walked over and said, ‘I’ll do it.

I’ll do it for free. I do all the costumes for my own short films. I’ve done it for 48-Hour Film Festivals.’”

Without really knowing the tools of the trade, she took on the job—and did it so well that the designer kept her on for the rest of the movie. Thompson parlayed that experience into another job in New York, borrowing $100 for a one-way plane ticket, and couch surfing while she worked as an intern for a production company. After that, she landed a full-time position costuming for Showtime’s Emmy-winning spy thriller series Homeland.

That’s a serious gig for the mass com-munication major, who studied docu-mentary filmmaking. But Thompson made several connections at UNC

Asheville and credits lecturer Anne Slatton with helping her succeed.

“When I would come to her with a crazy idea, instead of thinking how weird it was, she’d say, ‘I bet you can pull this off, let’s talk about how you’re going to do it,’” she says.

Since then she has succeeded, living in Charlotte and working on Homeland and Banshee, another Showtime series. She recently worked on the movie Grass Stains, along with a commercial for Texas Pete. Now she’s headed to Los Angeles to “day play,” which is industry speak for taking contract work on the sets of different shows and movies.

In the meantime, she’ll be working on her own stand-up comedy and writing a one-woman show about her family.

“I’m a really creative person, and for the past few years I’ve been work-ing toward someone else’s creative vision,” she says. “But now I want to do my own thing.”

By Rebecca Sulock ’00

AT HoME oN SET Alum Heather thompson Fits the Costumer Role

“I’m a really creative person, and for the past few years

I’ve been working toward someone else’s creative vision,

but now I want to do my own thing.” — Heather Thompson ’09

2010Erin Jones is currently a leasing

manager for apartments in

downtown Greensboro.

Jensel Garcia launched rock

Hard records in Memphis, Tenn.

Garth Grimball earned

a master of fine arts in

performance and choreography

from Mills College.

Regan McBride is an organizer

at Fuse washington, which is part

of the Progress Now network.

Whitney McGinnis married

Tom Kazanova on May 18.

Robert Muirhead is now

residing in Asheville. He received

his MBA from western Carolina

University.

Justin Newhart is currently

managing the marketing for The

Cabin restaurant, Bernadette’s

restaurant and The Cajun Village

in Gonzales, La.

David Bradley Pickett

received an M.A. in kinesiology

and sport studies from East

Tennessee State University. He

was recently hired by Milligan

College in Johnson City, Tenn.,

to serve as an assistant cross

country and track & field coach.

Joshua Rosenburg married

Katie Clayton ’07 on April 13.

He is in his second year teaching

in the educational psychology

and educational technology

doctoral program at Michigan

State University.

Anna Roth was hired at

Gill’s Pier winery in northern

Michigan as the tasting room and

operations manager.

CLASS noTES

3 4 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

Helping Students MakeHistory

Each time Mark Lawson ’79 attended UNC Asheville, he found a dose of purpose, starting with a history degree and time spent on the courts and field as a basketball, tennis and soccer player.

“they gave me a chance when no one else would,” Lawson said. “UnC asheville took me on no less than four different occasions—transferring from Chapel Hill, after my military service, following my nursing degree, and finally for graduation.”

the nurse anesthetist and father of two daughters credits that time at UnC asheville, as well as his nursing studies at sampson Community College, with giving him the knowledge necessary for the nomadic profession. self-employed since 1988, he’s worked at more than 40 hospitals filling in during acute-need shortages. and he’s recognized acute needs in other areas as well, having served as a commissioned officer in the air Force reserve. He plans to take care of both of his alma maters through his will and has established the Mark Lawson Fund for the study of History, an endowed scholarship at UnC asheville.

“anesthesia is about helping. My family has always been about helping. so i told myself, if i ever make it, i’ll try to make it easier for someone else, particularly those who are determined to realize their goals.”

Making a difference for students at UnC asheville can start at any time, from establishing a scholarship to naming the UnC asheville Foundation as a beneficiary in your will or living trust.

For more information, contact Julie Heinitsh, director of planned giving and major gifts, at 828.232.2430 or jheinits@unca.edu.

Lauren Turnburke was hired

as a BB&T branch manager

in Charlottesville, Va., after

graduating with an MBA from

Arizona State University in

November 2012.

2011Cortland Mercer graduated

from the Coro Fellows Program

in Public Affairs in Los Angeles

in June.

Beth Porter lives in washington,

D.C., working as the membership

marketing coordinator for Green

America.

Jessica Yee graduated from

New York University with a M.S.

in publishing. She now works

at Open road Media, an e-book

publishing company.

Christopher Zarzar is

currently a graduate student at

East Carolina University where

he is studying geography and

developing a climatology of

precipitation organization for the

Southeastern United States.

2012Brittany Bell is currently

attending Lenoir-rhyne

University to obtain a master’s in

clinical mental health counseling.

Theresa Collosso joined

AmeriCorps in August.

Michelle DiPietro recently

accepted a job at The HOPE

Center in Mityana, Uganda.

Michael Friedrich moved to

Columbia, S.C., in November 2012

and has taken a position with

PricewaterhouseCoopers. He

married Ariel Greer in March.

Ashley Lauren Gunter

is now employed with East

Carolina University’s Office of

Environmental Health & Safety

working on business continuity

planning.

Michael Jozefowicz works as

a retail sales supervisor at The

Biltmore Company in Asheville.

Andorra Morgan will be moving

to Indonesia to join the Peace

Corps.

Jami Naber joined the U.S. Air

Force and is working in Florida as

a physical therapy technician.

Marson Nance is working as an

environmental field biologist and

desert tortoise monitor for B&E

Consulting LLC in Las Vegas.

Ashley Peterson is currently

enrolled in western Carolina

University’s master of public

affairs program.

Taija Tevia-Clark is a web

specialist at Bellevue College in

Olympia, wash.

2013 Justin Greene is currently the

seventh-grade social studies

teacher at Ardnt Middle School in

Catawba County.

Rachel Cook Lampros is

currently a math teacher at Polk

County Early College.

Emily Myers is working at

Staples as a copy and print

center associate in Asheville.

James McLelland accepted a

position at Mission Health in IT

operations.

CLASS noTES

FA L L 2 0 1 3 3 5

Did we miss your

class note? Check

online and send

your update to

alumni.unca.edu/

class-notes.

3 6 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

Wiley Cash ’00 came back to Western North

Carolina this fall to share his story—from the

pages of his New York Times best-selling novel,

A Land More Kind Than Home, to his experience

growing up in the area and graduating from

UNC Asheville. If you missed the “Celebrating

Madison County” event, you can still hear from

the Goodman Endowed Visiting Artist through

our video series “In Your Own Words” at

youtube.com/UNCAsheville.

To share your story, write to us at magazine@unca.edu or

tag your social media posts and photos with #uncavl.

#uncavl

oFF THE PAGE

Visit us at www.unca.edu

SeriouSly Creative

Jennifer Schuller Forsyth’s career at The Wall

Street Journal puts her at the intersection of hard

news and human interest, a unique perspective she

first formulated through undergraduate research at

UNC Asheville. A Fulbright Fellowship and graduate

degree later, she continues to show how world-class

reporting requires expert research and benefits from

a historical point of view.

That’s the power of today’s liberal arts.

“At UNC Asheville, our professors

encouraged us to think broadly,

explore new topics and be part of the

national conversation. I found that

incredibly creative and encouraging.”

—Jennifer Schuller Forsyth ’90

United States Editor

at The Wall Street Journal

3 8 U N C A S H E V I L L E M A G A Z I N E

The newest class of Bulldogs comes to campus in the largest numbers in recent history and with a combined average

SAT score of 1,201. UNC Asheville welcomed some 600 freshmen and 375 transfer students this fall, starting with

convocation and a rub of the Rocky statue for good luck throughout their college careers. (Photo by Perry Hebard)

A Pat on the Back

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