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McCullough Fellows 2024

By UNC Asheville

May 5^th, 2025

The prestigious McCullough fellowship allows undergraduate students to spend the summer deeply engaged in applied research addressing challenges in land use and conservation, urban planning, sustainable agriculture, and resilience and environmental sustainability—all in collaboration with community partners and under the guidance of expert faculty mentors.

Learn more about this year’s McCullough Fellows and their real-world work!

New Genetic Technologies to Improve the Conservation Management of Smoky Mountain Elk

Phoebe Carnes

Community Partner: Natrieifia Miller and Joe Yarkovich from the National Park Service

Faculty Mentor: Graham Reynolds, associate professor of biology

In 2001-02, 52 Manitoban Elk were reintroduced to the Great Smoky National Park for the first time since they were extirpated, or made locally extinct, in the late 1850’s. Now that they have been settled for over two decades in Cataloochee Valley and Oconaluftee, the population size has grown to 250. However, radio collar data shows two distinct herds that are relatively settled in their own locations without much mixing.

Phoebe Carnes spent the summer gathering biopsy samples from newborn calves in order to extract DNA information that would help determine if there is a geographic or genetic barrier to the expansion of elk in the Great Smoky Mountains. Carnes also spent considerable hours capturing photos of the elk.

“I'm really passionate about wildlife education,” Carnes said. “I really like capturing the stories of these individuals to share with our visitors, school groups, even some UNC Asheville students that I brought out to the field with me.

She followed individuals, showcasing a range of elk from just a few days old calves, to one of the oldest, who was among the first group of relocated elk.

An elk calf wearing its radio collar. Photo courtesy of Phoebe Carnes.

“She passed away recently at 25 years of age. Elk usually only live to be about 12 or 15 years old. She really represents the resilience of these animals,” Carnes said. “These sorts of stories I find really cool. People connect with these animals.”

Now that the DNA is collected, Carnes will extract the DNA and use a Nanopore sequencer to generate a low pass genome sequence, which will be analyzed for signs of past or present inbreeding, genetic bottlenecking, or genetic drift, all of which would result in a lack of genetic diversity among the herds. From this, a report can be generated for the benefit of the National Park Service biologists.

“This is really awesome technology,” Carnes said. “It's cutting edge. And because we have this here in house, the biologists are not going to have to worry about spending the money to get these materials because we can do it.”

One of the eldest elk of the herd, and one of the original elk reintroduced to Maggie Valley. Photo courtesy of Phoebe Carnes.

An elk calf in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Photo courtesy of Phoebe Carnes.

McCullough Fellow Phoebe Carnes educates students about elk.

An elk calf with its mother. Photo courtesy of Phoebe Carnes.

McCullough Fellow Phoebe Carnes educates students about elk.

Composting in Asheville: Assessing Current Practices and Exploring Sustainable Solutions

Ava Bjorkman-Tracy

Community Partner: Cassandra Lohmeyer, recycling coordinator for Buncombe county

Faculty Mentor: Dee Eggers, associate professor of environmental science

Ava Bjorkman-Tracy examined the existing composting programs in the area by visiting multiple municipal and commercial composting facilities such as the Henderson County Transfer Station, and the composting sites at Warren Wilson College and at the Biltmore Estate.

“This impacts Asheville's greenhouse gas emissions and landfill space. Buncombe County landfill is expected to hit capacity in around 20 to 25 years, after which all of the municipal solid waste will have to be shipped elsewhere,” Bjorkman-Tracy said. “Buncombe County estimates that 57,500 tons of food waste is landfilled each year, which would mean that the county landfill releases approximately 64,000 tons of CO2 equivalent annually from food waste.”

Ava Bjorkman-Tracy toured several composting facilities around Asheville.

Conducting a survey of the participants of the Buncombe County Food Scraps Drop Off Program, Bjorkman-Tracy found that inaccessible or overflowing bins coupled with unpleasant drop-off sites served as barriers to the average person composting through the program.

She found that 224 tons of food waste were composted through the program, diverting 251 tons of CO2 equivalent from the Buncombe County landfill. However this is only 0.47 percent of the total food waste produced, indicating “vast room for growth,” Bjorkman-Tracy said.

Some avenues to expand composting in Asheville include expansion of the food scraps drop off program, development of pilot composting sites in the Buncombe County landfill, and further opportunities for private/public partnership in composting initiatives.

McCullough Fellow Ava Bjorkman-Tracy conducted a survey evaluating the county's Food Scraps Drop Off program.

ᎡᎶᎯ ᏗᏂᎦᏘᏱ Elohi Dinigatiyi: Emphasizing Relationality in Co-Stewarding Cherokee Ancestral Homelands

Jane Jeffrey

Faculty Mentor: Trey Adcock, associate professor of American Indian and indigenous studies

Community Partner: Earthkeepers, Bonnie Claxton, Program Manager with EBCI Civil Law and Tommy Cabe, EBCI Forest Resource Specialist

In her presentation, Jane Jeffrey first introduces herself in terms of her relationship to nature.

“The land that I grew up on and the family that I was raised by, shaped my view of the world,” Jeffrey said. “By nature of existence we are connected, and because of that connectedness, we are accountable for the relationships we have with each other and nature.”

Her project revolves around understanding co-stewardship, the cooperative arrangements between department bureaus and tribal nations in managing, conserving and protecting federal lands and waters.

As part of her research, she attended many meetings with the Center for Native Health; Earthkeepers, a grassroot-level cultural advisory board; National Park Service and US Forest Service, as well as reading through past meetings in order to create a report that identified key themes in these conversations.

The McCullough fellows spend time in the Museum of the Cherokee People.

Some of the themes she presented include logistical constraints such as lack of funding, changing administrations, and lack of native representation. There were often gaps between the language used that indicate different ways of understanding the land, for example referring to land as a natural resource implies a transactional relationship to it. Consulting and incorporating indigenous knowledge in an ethical way also posed an issue historically.

“Despite these challenges, meaningful work continues to happen that is important to the community and ecological integrity. Responsibility between all entities and nature is foundational.”

The McCullough fellows spend time among Cherokee land.

The Last Chair of the Forest and the Plastic Bottle

Edwin Salas Acosta

Faculty Advisor: Victoria Bradbury

Community Partner: Asheville Art Museum

“The first epiphany was to see a really big tree. It made me question. And the question was, how many years is this tree?” Salas Acosta said. “What is the testimony of this tree? This tree, when born, didn't see white people, didn't see nothing of this technology, nothing of concrete. My epiphany finish when I see a plastic bottle.”

He thought the tree could be hundreds of years old, and wondered what would happen to it, and the plastic bottle, in 500 years. This led him to research on climate change and the likelihood of losing all our forests in the future. He decided to make a film telling the story of a dark, possible future, where only one dying tree is left.

The other fellows had a chance to visit Edwin Salas Acosta's exhibit in the Asheville Art Museum.

With the wood of the last tree, “The people decide to make a chair and put it in the Asheville Art Museum. They make this chair because the tourists say, ‘We’ve got to see the forest of Asheville.’”

“‘We don’t have the forest, but with the last tree, we make the decision to create this chair.’”

Salas Acosta was introduced to virtual reality headsets by his faculty advisor, Victoria Bradbury. His 6-minute film was created using Unreal Engine, a computer game graphics engine, and is intended to be viewed through a headset.

“Virtual reality helps to obstruct you from the current reality to the new reality,” Salas Acosta said. “This can help to create the consciousness from this virtual reality to something that can happen and it will happen.”

In addition to the VR experience, Salas Acosta recovered an antique chair made from lumber of local forests for visitors of the exhibit to sit in while they watch the film, and has a plastic bottle displayed alongside it.

After Helene hit, Salas said he had a second epiphany, while seeing the fallen trees and having to drink from plastic water bottles when city water was out, that the potential destruction of the forest he imagined could be much sooner than 500 years.

“I want to dedicate all this work to the more than 10,000 fallen trees. And of course, we don't forget the lives of our citizens who will never return to walk in our forest,” Salas Acosta said.

The exhibit is also dedicated to Homero Gómez González, who died defending the forest for the monarch butterflies in Mexico.

The other fellows join Edwin Salas Acosta for a day at the Asheville Art Museum.

Recreational Water Quality Monitoring in the French Broad River Basin

Kari Kvittem

Faculty Advisor: David Gillette

Community Partner: Anna Alsobrook, watershed outreach coordinator for MountainTrue

The French Broad River is a central feature of Asheville and the surrounding region, both for industry and recreation. Its basin encompasses about 2800 square miles in North Carolina and much of that is state and national forest land. However, in 2022, 19 miles of the French Broad was deemed an impaired waterway due to regularly high levels of E.coli, a bacteria often used as a barometer for water quality.

“The health and resilience of the French River directly impacts and is impacted by the health of the communities around it socially, environmentally, and economically,” said Kari Kvittem.

Kvittem completed her summer research by doing weekly sampling and analysis of seven different sites in the French Broad River Basin, looking for a correlation between the presence of E. coli and turbidity, the quality of cloudiness or thickness due to suspended matter in the water.

“I then shared the results to MountainTrue social media and the Swim Guide website, enabling the public to gauge the relative safety of various recreational activities in the basin.”

Kari Kvittem explains the water sampling process at the French Broad River.

MountainTrue is working to establish real-time water quality estimators, Kvittem’s research indicates that Champion park could be a good location for this as its turbidity was a good estimator for E. coli.

The most common sources of E. coli are from livestock such as cattle, urban stormwater runoff, failing wastewater systems, and land development near the river. Contamination is exacerbated by a loss of floodplains, wetlands and forest ecosystems that act as buffers along the river.

Kvittem also noted that Helene has likely changed the correlation between E. coli and turbidity at all sites, and further research will be needed to assess how the river has changed since.

The other fellows join Kari Kvittem at the French Broad River to learn about her research.

Shifts in Avian Community Composition in Response to Eastern Hemlock Decline in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Nicole Moordian

Faculty Advisor: Andrew Laughlin

Community Partner: Clayton Gibb with Blue Ridge Audubon

Nicole Mooradian spent her summer on the trails of the Great Smoky National Park, sometimes as early as sunrise, conducting avian count surveys.

“I really enjoyed my fieldwork out there this summer,” Moordian said. “We visited 202 sites spread out along different trails that include a wide range of elevation and topography types. We recorded all individual birds heard or seen within a ten minute period.”

Her research sought to better understand the way avian communities have shifted in response to the decline of Eastern Hemlock trees due to Hemlock Wooly Adelgid infestation. The adelgid, an invasive species from Japan, feasts on the sap of the tree, cutting off nutrient flow, leading to defoliation and mortality within four years, if untreated.

First, Moordian collected vegetation of all Hemlocks within 30 meters of the site, recording the size and health of each tree. Out of the 202 sites, 99 showed a high decline of healthy trees.

After surveying, she compared the bird species that are at the sites currently to historic data from prior to the adelgid’s introduction to see how the avian community changed over time.

The McCullough fellows join Nicole Moordian for a day of bird watching at the Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary.

She found some species, such as the Acadian Flycatcher and the Black-throated Green Warbler among others, showed significant decrease at sites with high Hemlock decline. These species are known to be Hemlock-associated in the northeast, meaning they depend on the tree for habitat. Some species showed decline overall, regardless of the state of the hemlocks.

Some species were increasing in population overall, and particularly at sites of high Hemlock decline. The Brown Creeper, a bird that forages in dead bark, is increasing at sites with dying Hemlocks.

Overall, the avian communities are changing and several appear to be declining specifically, in relation to the Hemlock’s decline.

“This can inform conservation efforts of the species, but also this really beautiful tree that's not only important to birds, but to preserving the integrity of Southern Appalachian ecosystems,” Moordian said.

McCullough Fellows learn about Nicole Moordian's research while birding.

The McCullough fellows join Nicole Moordian for a day of bird watching at the Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary.

Great Blue Heron at the Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary seen by the McCullough Fellows.

McCullough fellows learn about Nicole Moordian's research while birding.

© 2026 UNC Asheville

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