Last semester, you might have found health and wellness major Estefany Flores walking the track weekly with 11 local community members. Flores utilized her senior capstone to lead the “Walk with Ease” Arthritis program for the first time in Spanish, helping local Hispanic community members reduce their arthritis pain. Before walking the track, Flores spent hours translating in preparation.

“I want to make sure they're getting all the health benefits they can get out of this program. I worked extra hard to make sure I was translating as much information as I possibly could,” said Flores. “It's so rewarding to see the impact that it's making on the Hispanic community and to be that person to break that language barrier. Being involved in my community really makes me feel so good about myself.”

While many would expect climate research to come from the environmental studies department, two economics students, Dylan McBridewood and Felipe Ahumada, approached climate resiliency from an economics perspective last fall.

“My work contributes to accurately pricing climate risks within municipal bonds, potentially leading to increased financing costs in flood-prone regions and reduced costs in safer areas,” said McBridewood. “Such insights are vital for making more informed investment decisions and guiding urban development towards areas with lower risk. Ultimately, this research aligns financial incentives with the goal of enhancing climate resilience.”

Senior economics major Felipe Ahumada took a different research route and applied economics to the prestigious McCullough Fellowship, which focuses on conservation, land use, and environmental resiliency. Ahumada, along with the four other students selected, partnered with a community organization and faculty member to construct an applied research project that impacts the community.

Mass communication major Lauren Boyle worked with her senior seminar class and Anne Slatton, a mass communication assistant professor, to publish a podcast about diversity in the classroom. The podcast was titled “UNCA Identity, More than a Four Year Institution” and can be found here.

“Our senior seminar project was an accumulation of various skills learned through our time in the mass communication department,” said Boyle. “One of the benefits of mass communication is there are many avenues you can follow within the degree. Because of this, while we have all taken the same courses for our major, we’ve been able to strengthen our different skill sets depending on how you approach the classes.”

Computer networking allows devices to share information and resources within a business environment, but computer science major Eric Dunbar says small businesses do not have the time to learn all the intricacies of computer networking. His application leverages network automation to remove this burden.

“This application handles the security side of computer networking and makes sure that everything runs properly,” said Dunbar. “It ensures that you're not going to have this instance where you configure something and then everything goes down.”