Looking Back, Forging Ahead

Our Favorite Stories from 2023

By UNC Asheville

January 8^th, 2024

It's been an incredible year at UNC Asheville, as we welcomed new faces to campus, celebrated accomplishments from the classroom to the farthest reaches of outer space, engaged more deeply in our community, and so much more.

Take a look back at some of our favorite stories from the past year, and join us as we look ahead to a new year, and new stories, in 2024.

We kicked off the academic year by welcoming the largest incoming class to campus in the past four years, and one of the most diverse incoming classes ever.

Then in November we welcomed (back) Kimberly van Noort as our newly appointed Chancellor-elect.

We’re looking forward to welcoming more students in the future with the help of our newly announced Access Asheville financial aid program, which makes our University more accessible and affordable than ever before.

We Made the Grade

We received rankings and accolades from Niche, US News and World Report, Princeton Review, and the Fiske Guide to Colleges. Our Education Department and Mass Communication Department also received special commendations this year, along with our fantastic faculty.

Our Alumni Made an Impact

Our alumni excelled in their fields, from creating the most detailed and accurate fall foliage map available to designing health-related software for Apple, from serving as the “Native Tooth Fairy” to making sure every North Carolinian has the opportunity to vote.

Our Students Got to Work

Our students took their education beyond the four walls of the classroom with classes like fish ecology and the consulting practicum course in the Business Department, and with hands-on projects like constructing a geodesic dome for the Asheville Art Museum and building a new solar vehicle prototype.

And their hard work was recognized: third-year painting major Lydia Ham was named a finalist for the AXA Art Prize; chemistry and biology students brought home a number of awards from prestigious academic conferences recognizing the very best student research; and students Dylan Major and Ari Puentes were awarded a Goldwater Scholarship, the preeminent national scholarship awarded to undergraduates studying the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics.

And our student athletes excelled both on the court and in the classroom.

We hosted incredible artists like author John Vercher, our Wilma Dykeman Writer-in-Residence, and ceramicist Tara McCoy, the first endowed artist in the “Celebrating Cherokee Heritage through Art and Making” grant.

From June 13-17, some of the country’s preeminent global thought leaders converged over three days in WNC for the second annual Asheville Ideas Fest, rooted in a belief that seeing the world’s significant challenges from new perspectives can improve our world.

We explored Native music and culture here at home and from around the world with the Hip Hop Nativo Festival, and we learned more about our region’s hidden history with the RAIL Project Symposium.

And we expanded our horizons with incredible guest speakers like award-winning author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates and United States Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

And Explored the Farthest Reaches of Space

UNC Asheville students and faculty reached for the stars–and beyond–with two UNC Asheville students receiving competitive North Carolina Space Grants; three students completing faculty-mentored undergraduate research at Yerkes Observatory, the birthplace of modern cosmology; and a grant giving faculty, students, and a global team of scientists access to hundreds of hours of observing time with the James Webb Space Telescope to study distant galaxies.