Along with the 13 student-athletes who presented at the Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium, there are even more who join the ranks of researchers through their literature reviews, senior thesis or with a portfolio showcase. With practice, training and meets (both here and away), it’s no question UNC Asheville’s athletes are busy. But like all students, they balance the research between their academics, and for these students, between their games as well.
Jessie Frank, senior political science major and editor-in-chief of Dignity, UNC Asheville’s undergraduate human rights journal, has spent her years at UNC Asheville deeply committed to the study of human rights, campaign finance and prepping for her freestyle events in the pool. Her research currently consists of studying PACs and super PACs, as well as the impact dark money has on campaign communications and the power behind the campaigns.
"“It’s common knowledge that money equals power, but through my research, I’ve found we’re complacent on that idea, and we’ve just accepted that as a model,” explained Frank. “That has an effect on silencing voices in the media. It’s taking a lot of work to research and find connections that might not be explicit, and digging for it yourself. There hasn’t been enough outcry to overturn that system. I find that it’s getting worse and worse everyday, but that’s a lesson everyone learns through political science in general."
Alongside research for her senior thesis, Frank helps to manage Dignity, which is open to all students from the UNC System and collects art as well as short- and long-form works about all aspects of the human rights conversation. The next edition of Dignity will be published May 1, 2023.
Frank spends the rest of her time swimming laps in the Sherrill Center. She’s found that staying engaged and active in campus activities and with her team members has been challenging, but ultimately rewarding, in her years at UNC Asheville.
“Lots of caffeine!” said Frank, remarking on how she’s able to commit to so many different outlets. “It’s a lot, but I try to be involved on campus outside of being an athlete, so the biggest thing is relying on my friends and teammates, communicating with my coaches and professors. My best advice would be to find joy in the moments, and knowing that it’s all going to pay off. Knowing that I’ll graduate as a student-athlete, and knowing that I made an impact means a lot to me.”
After graduation, Frank is looking forward to continuing her position within the House of Representatives in D.C., where she currently works as an executive assistant. Her work with Dignity and research into campaign finance will help her bring awareness to the effects of dark money in Congress. She hopes that she’ll be able to change thoughts around PACs and how money dictates political power, and work toward reversing the harm dark money has had on political campaigns.
“UNCA, especially the Political Science Department, will always have my heart,” said Frank. “It’s a great program filled with great professors who want to see you succeed, and it’s been very valuable to me to have professors support my path through college. For being a student-athlete, it’s been tough. A lot of early mornings, late nights, entire weekends gone, but I’ve met some of my best friends on the team, and those memories will never be taken away.”
Researching two heavy medical diagnoses, terminal cancer and depression, senior chemistry major Nathaniel Edwards began to question the relation between the two. For his neuroscience seminar class, Edwards reviewed literature around the properties of psilocybin and the positive effects on depression and anxiety in terminal cancer patients.
Psilocybin, the compound found in “magic mushrooms,” mimics serotonin when used as a treatment for terminal patients, helping to mitigate symptoms of anxiety and depression.
“When patients are diagnosed with cancer, oftentimes there are mental health issues associated with the diagnosis,” said Edwards. “So anxiety and depression have been deemed risk factors for early death due to things such as decreased treatment adherence, decreased quality of life, and increased suicide ideation. If we can mitigate these stressors, it may lead to better treatment outcomes overall.”
Edwards found through this research that his passion for oncology—which he’s planning to study in medical school—combined with psychiatric care, was an important but less discussed aspect of terminal cancer diagnoses that thoroughly interested him.
“If I was able to be the person to bridge the gap between oncology and psychiatry, I think it would be very rewarding for me,” said Edwards.
As for his time between his research and his cross country and distance events, Edwards found the most important part to managing his commitments was intention. Having research that was important and inspiring never made the research feel like work, and neither does running. He noted that he’s forever grateful for his teammates, and all of his professors from both programs for the lessons he’s learned under their guidance.
As one of the 2022 McCullough Fellows, Addison Wright has combined her passion for journalism with her interest in sustainability to research the semiotic and rhetorical differences used to discuss food justice in Western North Carolina. Partnering with the Food Justice Planning Initiative (FJPI) and Laura Meadows, assistant professor of mass communication, Wright tackled the difficult conversations around food inequity and communication disparities in the communities around Asheville.
“I asked them, ‘What would be helpful?’ and they talked about communication,” explained Wright. “I asked community members and leaders if they thought the internet was an accessible way to communicate and collaborate, and what other strategies–like word of mouth or flyers–and finally what terminology was used. I found that the internet can not be the sole tool of communication in WNC and word of mouth is very important.”
Alongside the method of communication, Wright found the type of terminology mattered greatly within these communities. The distinction between a discussion around “food” and “food justice” almost drove away some community members for fear of a lofty and unintelligible debate.
“Language and terminology has to be inclusive,” said Wright. “A lot of people did not understand the term food justice, so I stuck to just saying food. People agreed with the definition of food justice, but whenever I said the term, people were confused or felt it was a condescending scholarly term.”
The hardest part for her was the outreach side of her research. The process of gaining trust of community members took all summer, as food insecurity and justice is a sensitive topic for many confronted by it. Wright described an informal way of networking around the community before she was even invited to a community potluck or a board meeting. Through her work building trust within the community, Wright was able to discover alternate forms of communication that are undervalued in the digital age.
“Sometimes people would cite meeting at a certain place at a certain time as the main method of communication,” explained Wright. “So one person mentioned that there was one grocery store, one McDonalds, one gas station in their area, where they meet once a week before work and that’s how they communicate about resources and events in their county. It was really interesting to find that people are still gathering routinely in public places, and not everything’s digital nowadays. When people don’t have consistent access to the internet, they tend to gather in public places, which is why word of mouth was so important to these communities.”
Just like Frank, Wright spends her time away from research swimming with her teammates. Wright noted that her time in the pool was a needed relief from always writing her fellowship report this past fall semester. Her sport gave her a quiet place to relax, see her friends, and just swim the butterfly. Outside the pool, Wright reflected on her experience as a McCullough fellow and how it would impact her work as a journalist.
“This fellowship not only taught me a lot about interviewing and data analysis but also gave me a passion for community partnered research. I want to carry that into pursuing journalism. It also brought up questions like ‘How accessible is language, how accessible is communication’, so I have a lot more to think about in my own writing.”
For these students, and the many others like them, their research has provided new questions, complex answers, and a fresh perspective on their futures past UNC Asheville. Until they graduate, they continue to run, jump, swim, and sprint through the rest of their early mornings and late nights, looking forward to the opportunities that lay ahead of them.
© 2026 UNC Asheville
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