Home

10%

At the Intersection of What’s Known and What’s Possible

By UNC Asheville

June 25^th, 2020

How do you change a world with a changing climate? You mentor the change makers, work at the intersections and boundaries of knowledge creation, and go out into the world and apply what you’ve learned to real, meaningful action. That’s what’s happening at UNC Asheville—on campus, in our community, across the country and around the world.

Where Boundaries Apply

UNC Asheville’s NEMAC (National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center) describes their team as a boundary organization, facilitating the interaction between science producers and users. In short, they make complicated science understandable.

That’s a big part of why the NEMAC team was called upon by Governor Roy Cooper to be a part of the team working to develop the state’s Climate Risk Assessment and Resiliency Plan, which was released in June 2020.

“There’s two components to the plan,” explained Karin Rogers, director of operations at NEMAC. “There’s the clean energy part, and then there is a climate resilience plan part.”

NEMAC is focusing on the state’s climate resilience plan, something they have plenty of experience with after working with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to develop the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit and working with municipalities and regional councils of government across the Southeast to build climate resilience.

An example of a floodplain map created by NEMAC

“Knowing that the climate is changing and we’re facing a new reality in relation to climate change and climate hazards—things like sea level rise and flooding and hurricanes, drought, wildfire… all these things that are happening across the U.S. and indeed across the world. It’s all about preparing now, preparing and building capacity prior to an event, so that when an event does occur, you’re able to bounce back more quickly and with less loss,” Rogers said.

The U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit looks at resilience on a national level, providing scientific tools and information to help people manage their climate-related risks and opportunities. To build the toolkit, U.S. federal government agencies gathered resources that can help people take action to build their climate resilience.

But climate change effects people and governments at every level, from national down to municipal.

“With the changing climate, we’re really being forced to change,” said Jim Fox, who recently retired as NEMAC’s director. “This is what’s happening with North Carolina. We’re seeing an increased frequency and severity of hurricanes—that’s an $18 billion impact on North Carolina alone. That pain occurs on a local level.”

“Geographically we’re all being hit with different things, because it’s not a blanket ‘droughts happening everywhere’ or ‘wildfires happening everywhere’ issue. It’s a localized problem,” Rogers said. “So the state is now embarking on this planning process. They’re asking, statewide, where are the vulnerable and at-risk areas for flooding, drought, wildfire—all these various hazards that the National Climate Assessment is saying are going to happen.”

But even at the state level, developing a resilience plan is complex, especially in a state like North Carolina, which has many different regions, economies, and industries to consider, along with multiple threats, from flooding to drought.

“Let’s take flooding is an example,” Rogers said. “Part of the resilience assessment is to say, ‘OK, flooding is going to occur. What assets are we specifically interested in? Is it commercial properties? Tourism or road access, residential properties, vulnerable populations?’ There are multiple ways to examine how one particular threat might impact the assets that you care about.”

An example of a water quality map created by NEMAC

Through a series of in-person workshops, members of the NEMAC team helped state agencies, led by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ), identify projected threats to the assets they are interested in, find vulnerabilities, map them out, and identify actions to address them.

“Essentially what we’re doing is helping them put a blueprint together, a roadmap, to do the assessment,” Rogers said.

It’s the kind of roadmap that will be invaluable in leading the state through projected future changes in the global climate, and it’s the kind of work that can only happen when you’re working across boundaries.

“NEMAC only succeeds through the power of its partnerships and collaborations,” said Fox. “The state relies on our university system to help build the capacity to guide our state in the right direction. NEMAC can be that ambassador for our University to our community and at the state and national level. That makes me very proud and happy. We’re successful as a university center if we can do that, making the impact that the University invests in us to make.”

Jim Fox, recently retired NEMAC’s director

Creative Collisions

You never quite know what you’re going to walk in on when you visit The Collider in downtown Asheville, where NEMAC’s off-campus office serves as the anchor tenant. You might find a city planner and urban designer leading a discussion on walkable cities in the main event room, or a group of community members gathered in the lobby before a presentation on fermentation by the Asheville Museum of Science. You may walk in on a quieter day, when members of The Collider’s network of businesses, organizations, and individuals working towards advancing climate change solutions are busily working in one of the co-working spaces or offices.

But you’ll almost certainly walk in to find a group of recent UNC Asheville alumni who have taken vital leadership roles at The Collider, handling everything from communications to event planning.

At the Intersection of What’s Known and What’s Possible

Miles Kish, a December 2019 graduate in political science; Megan Odom, a December 2019 graduate in international studies and business; and Mickey Snowdon, a 2020 MLAS graduate, form the entire staff at The Collider under the direction of Mary Spivey, The Collider’s community manager.

“We’re figuring out and building the direction of the Collider as we go,” said Snowdon, the communications liaison for The Collider. “It’s so bottom-up, it’s so interesting and exciting to be a part of this team.”

As communication liaison, Snowdon spends a lot of time interviewing members of The Collider about their work to share with the public, largely through the online publishing platform Medium. It’s given him the opportunity to be at the center of an important local movement focused on climate change.

“It matters that we focus on climate change,” Snowdon said. “It matters that we focus on both mitigation and adaptation. You can’t really focus on one without the other. The Collider, to my knowledge, is one of the only organizations in Asheville that is specifically focused on advancing solutions to adapting and mitigating climate change.”

“It’s been a whirlwind to say the least,” said Odom, who started at The Collider as an intern and became the events coordinator full-time after she graduated. “I’m contacting individuals who are interested in hosting events, handling everything from sending the original quote to the contract to the invoice, setting up and breaking down…and thinking of programming for our members, what they want, what they need, how I can best support them. And then working with partnerships as well, and trying to develop those.”

Odom hopes to continue working in non-profit management throughout her career, and aims to one day run her own non-profit organization. “I do foresee climate science being a part of it, just because climate change is going to affect everybody. So working here and being able to interact with our members and seeing what they’re doing is going to give me a competitive edge, because I’m getting in on the ground floor, essentially.”

Kish, who studied political science and history at UNC Asheville, started as the operations assistant and moved into the membership coordinator role at The Collider once he graduated.

“Even though I’m not studying it, something I really care deeply about is climate change. I think it’s really the fundamental issue of our time,” Kish said. “I really love taking these big issues and distilling them down to policy. That’s what I’ve been doing in classes, as well. Everyone here has big ideas, and I love the way that the members have a very specific niche, so it’s great to see how those things bounce off and reflect each other.”

Even in the face of the global climate crisis, Snowdon says his work at The Collider has shown him that there is still reason to hope, and to work hard toward solutions.

“I’m optimistic. Any time that I write a story and talk to members, I always focus on either what you can do as the audience, or what our members are doing about the climate crisis. And there’s always something,” Snowdon said.

“There’s always something that we could be doing or that our members are already doing. So that gives me a lot of hope, that it’s not just writing these headlines that are all doom and gloom. We have to move beyond that. It has to be what’s next.”

Expanding the Reach

UNC Asheville alumnus Jeff Hicks '08 found his passion at the intersection of computer science and environmental studies, which led to internships at the USDA Forest Service and NEMAC, and now a career that helps communities prepare for and respond to a changing world.

FernLeaf Interactive was born out of this intersection between research and practice, building on the NEMAC-developed national standard climate risk assessment framework to provide localized products and consulting support for communities most at risk from climate change.

Learn More about Hicks' Work

Beyond Asheville

Rachel Dunn dedicated her time with NEMAC’s internship program as the community narrative writing intern before graduating in 2018. Her work required extensive research and writing for case studies featured in the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit, which provides help to communities with communicating climate resilience actions and opportunities.

Each case study displayed a combination of science, community interests, and policy actions in a concise, engaging, and accessible way— the main components of the types of writing required for her future graduate work and internships.

“I was able to use this experience to demonstrate that I had the research and writing skills to contribute to the interdisciplinary field of climate policy,” said Dunn.

Through her internship with NEMAC, Dunn was introduced to the concept of climate vulnerability, which is a combination of physical climate change effects created from the community and the communities’ ability to show resilience to these threats.

“This way of thinking about climate impacts has helped me understand the different aspects of climate change that can be addressed through policy. This has also informed the framework that I am using in my capstone project,” said Dunn.

Since graduating from UNC Asheville with a bachelor’s degree in atmospheric sciences, Dunn has continued her education with a master’s degree in climate science and policy at Bard College’s Center for Environmental Policy, located in New York’s Hudson Valley.

“I chose this graduate program to build on the interest in applied climatology that I developed at UNCA and NEMAC. After graduation, I am hoping to enter a career in climate policy, with a focus on climate and security issues,” said Dunn.

Her education at Bard College is a two-year program consisting of a course-heavy first year, an extended internship, and a capstone project for the completion of her degree. The classes she studied consisted of climate science, agriculture, economics, and policy.

She participated in two internships for her degree. The first was with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a non-profit organization. The experience allowed her to research and develop clean energy policy strategies that will impact the community in which she was raised.

She witnessed the process taken for policy advocates to build partnerships and connect with other communities they work in.

Her second internship was with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Change, where she worked with negotiators ahead of COP25, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the UN Climate Change Conference, held in Madrid in December 2019.

“Thanks to my background in climate science, I got to work with the State Department office's scientists on climate science and topics related to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Dunn.

Dunn dedicated her capstone project to the ways that climate change impacts the occurrence of violent conflict. In order to do this, she carried out a climate-conflict risk assessment for Uganda, creating a map of the convergence of risk factors at the subnational level.

From the transition to high school to college, undergrad to graduate programs, in-person classes to online classes, and now the transition from graduate school to pursuing her career, Dunn is remaining hopeful while entering the next step of her future.

“We are working towards common goals, but now we have the opportunity to discuss those goals together. I think society overall, by asking for a better future, is being inherently hopeful. By taking part in that discussion, I can be hopeful too,” said Dunn.

Climate Change at the North Pole

That hope has taken some UNC Asheville graduates who interned with NEMAC to places most would see as beyond bounds.

In September, in the small city of Ny Ålesund, Norway—the northernmost city in the world—UNC Asheville alumnus Robert David ‘13 was preparing to spend the next two (dark) months on a research campaign to learn more about cloud properties and aerosols, and their effect on climate change. Just 850 miles south of the North Pole, David and the research team faced freezing cold temperatures, harsh winds, and endless hours of night to collect their data.

Read David's Story

Button Label

Q&A: HOW 3 UNCA STUDENTS’ FIELDWORK IS ADVANCING THE SCIENCES & SUPPORTING COMMUNITIES IN WESTERN NC

February 23^rd, 2026

Read

Finding Her Place in the Big Cheese

How UNC Asheville helped Shannon Herlihy transform a passion for food systems, health, and justice into a career supporting small-scale cheesemakers around the world

Read

MAHEC Internship Prepares UNC Asheville Students for Careers in Medicine

At the Intersection of What’s Known and What’s Possible

February 23^rd, 2026

How UNC Asheville helped Shannon Herlihy transform a passion for food systems, health, and justice into a career supporting small-scale cheesemakers around the world

January 26^th, 2026

Senior Chemistry Student Adam Wold Powers Meaningful Change in Sustainability Research

December 2^nd, 2025

An epic journey from UNC Asheville to the prestigious Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program

February 23rd, 2026

How UNC Asheville helped Shannon Herlihy transform a passion for food systems, health, and justice into a career supporting small-scale cheesemakers around the world

January 26th, 2026

Senior Chemistry Student Adam Wold Powers Meaningful Change in Sustainability Research

December 2nd, 2025

An epic journey from UNC Asheville to the prestigious Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program

February 23^rd, 2026

January 26^th, 2026

December 2^nd, 2025