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Sustainability Education at UNC Asheville

This Year’s McCullough Fellows Explore Mushrooms, EVs, Food Justice and More

By UNC Asheville

September 26^th, 2022

Sustainability, one of UNC Asheville’s core values, can be found at the heart of so much of the work that takes place on campus, from our pollinator gardens to our Carbon Commitment to our Interdisciplinary Certificate in Sustainability, and especially in the work of our McCullough Fellows. This prestigious fellowship, under the leadership of Alison Ormsby, environmental studies faculty and director of sustainability, 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, in their own words:

Andrea Carver

Major: Interdisciplinary Studies, Concentration in International Studies and Interdisciplinary Certificate in Sustainability

Project: Bird Conservation through Lights Out Asheville

Faculty Advisor: Andrew Laughlin, UNC Asheville Professor of Environmental Studies

Community Partner Organization: Blue Ridge Audubon Society

The Idea: My McCullough project focuses on initiating the Lights Out Program, through the Audubon Society, which works with building managers, building owners, tenants and residents to turn their lights off from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Why It Matters: Birds are really impacted by light pollution. It disrupts their circadian rhythm, and it is completely disorienting them, because that's their main migratory time. The air is cooler at night, so that allows birds to fly more easily, and they see better at night than during the day. And there’s not as many predators out at night.

Sustainability Education at UNC Asheville

The Work: Right now, I am collecting baseline data to gauge the state of light pollution downtown. I have a spreadsheet with 150 of the businesses downtown. I'll start at 11 p.m. and and count how many how many windows are lit up, and that business. Then for two months we're going to be engaging with the community and these business owners, sending them emails and holding educational events. Then I will do more surveys to see how successful our community engagement was, to see if the number of lit windows has gone down.

The Future: I want to go into international sustainable development and possibly do something with the sustainable developmental goals that the UN has created. That provides the framework on a macro scale on how to make economies and businesses work under a circular economy, and be more resilient and sustainable.

Ari Puentes

Major: Biology

Project: Using Citizen Science to Study the Impact of Prescribed Fires on Fungi in Dupont State Recreational Forest, NC

Faculty Advisor: Jonathan Horton, Biology

Community Partner Organization: Asheville Mushroom Club

The Idea: What we’re trying to find out is how long it takes fungal communities to return to their original state before a prescribed burn. Is 13 years long enough? What happens after one year, or two years? We’re trying to understand how long that recovery period is.

Why It Matters: It’s really not understood how fungi are affected by fires. Some studies have been done in various places around the world; many in ecosystems very different from this one. Understanding how the fungal communities are affected by fires will also help us understand how plant communities are affected by fires. If there is a loss of the fungal communities that the trees depend upon for nutrients, those trees’ health will also be affected. So if you’re doing a prescribed burn too frequently and you’re destroying the fungi and not giving it enough time to recover, it’s not good for forest health.

The Work: All of our research plots are located within different areas of Dupont State Recreational Forest that have had prescribed burns, except for our controls. We walk the plots, as systematically as possible, and look for fungi. For each fungus that we find, we photograph, count, and take detailed notes on its habitat, size, and any other defining features (sometimes taste or smell). All photos and descriptions of fungi will be uploaded to the iNaturalist citizen science platform.

We collect specimens of all fungi that haven't been found before so that we can identify them, extract DNA, and put them into the new UNCA Fungarium. The species identifications and counts will be used to quantify fungal diversity in each of the plots so that we can find out if/how diversity changes over time after the forest is burned.

The UNCA Fungarium is a collection of dried specimens with detailed descriptions. We want to start building a database to support the fungarium, so we’ll be able to run the fungi we find in the future back through our own sequences.

The Future: After I graduate from UNC Asheville I plan on going to graduate school so that I can continue to pursue mycological research. I think my McCullough project will definitely set me up well for graduate school since I'm gaining experience in many different research techniques. I have loved the process of starting the UNCA Fungarium, and can definitely see myself doing this as a career in the future. I'm really glad I got this opportunity to work on something that I'm passionate about!

Owen McDonald

Major: Mechatronics/Engineering

Project: “EV Charging Planning: Charger Where?”

Faculty Advisor: Rudy Beharrysingh, Mathematics

Community Partner: Land of Sky

The Idea: Our project is focused on creating an algorithm for optimizing the locations of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and determining how well equipped a cities current infrastructure is to meet expected demands. By utilizing geographical information such as road and building data, and assigning use-case profiles to existing infrastructure, we can offer information that will be helpful for city planning as EV use continues to grow.

This algorithm is utilized to create a computer application called "Charger Where?" which will allow planners to control a variety of parameters to find tune it the varying needs of towns and cities.

Why It Matters: As electric vehicles began to be available, we rushed to develop charging networks along the exits of major highways. This is because at this stage the primary focus was to make cross country travel possible for EVs. Now that this is largely accomplished, chargers intended for localized daily use are beginning to be available. As more manufacturers are releasing all electric models, EV registrations and the installation rate of charging infrastructure have been rising rapidly in response. This makes now the time to be proactive as opposed to reactive with grid design.

I am hoping to provide a valuable tool to aid the expansion of infrastructure. My hopes in doing so are to increase charger availability for drivers by analyzing their needs, lower the cost burden of expanding infrastructure by providing a planned out system, and to help the environment by making EV's suitable for more drivers and minimizing land waste.

The Work: I read and write on electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and power grids. I am having to consider multiple angles to get a sense of the larger context. For example, you have the natural trends of market stabilization as a product gets normalized.

While EV's themselves of course follow this trend, so does the technology that allows them to exist. Lithium costs have fallen an incomprehensible amount while becoming more reliable and boasting higher efficiencies. I have spent time researching the trends of these markets. Other research parameters are exploring ways to collect vast amounts of data, and how similar studies have acquired and handled theirs.

I have been building the “Charger Where?” program in Python using quite a few libraries to perform advanced functions such as geospatial reasoning and browser automation!

The Future: I am hoping to work initially in the aerospace sector, I would also like to work with embedded systems in the electronics sector, finally I want to work in the motorcycle industry at some point as well, which parallels this project moreso. The motorcycle market is just now beginning to work towards electric drivetrains. There are fully electric motorcycles out right now, but they are priced with a similar concept to the Tesla Roadster to fund R&D for advancements in this new technology.

Owen McDonald received a certificate of appreciation from his community partner, Land of Sky, for his work.

Addison Wright

Major: Mass Communication/Political Science double major

Project: “Applying Theories of Communication to Food Justice in Western NC”

Faculty Advisor: Laura Meadows, Mass Communication

Community Partner: Food Justice Policy Initiative

The Idea: Thanks to the McCullough Fellowship, I was able to partner with the Food Justice Planning Initiative to conduct research and analysis on communication around food work in Western North Carolina.

Instead of applying one umbrella way to reach people, I surveyed and interviewed community leaders and members to ask how they communicate in their specific area. Is the internet in their area reliable? What other communication methods do they recommend and use? What language and words are most accessible and promote collaboration instead of division?

Why It Matters: Previous research I have worked on showed that food inequity is highly prevalent across Western North Carolina counties, a problem exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. By highlighting underlying disparities and causing supply chain shortages that created more reliance on local food systems, the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique opportunity to advocate for the importance of creating and maintaining more resilient local food systems.

In order to impact these local food systems, advocates and experts must communicate and work with community members. But how to tailor messages to reach different local areas and conduct broad, effective communication with community members?

Additionally, NC Broadband, along with the majority of the community members in this study, have reported very low internet access in Western North Carolina. If there is low internet access, how is information about food resources reaching community members? How is collaboration being found? These questions are especially relevant as COVID-19 has forced many of these resources to communicate solely through online methods.

The Work: Using Goffman's (1974) theory of communication studies on frame analysis, I investigated how to frame issues, through what language and methods, to create an accessible and valued avenue of communication between communities and initiatives, and thus facilitate more accessible and community-driven collaboration.

This study found a wide range of methods and language people use to communicate and collaborate in Western North Carolina, and that understanding communication is highly impactful in this region’s food systems work.

What I do on a typical day working on this research project varies widely. Some days, I may be emailing a lot with community leaders. I may be attending in-person and virtual meetings to connect with community members in these areas. I may be interviewing community members and leaders and transcribing the insightful quotes, which took a long time. Other days, I am traveling for a long extent of time to attend community events to meet and connect with people in person.

The Future: I would love to go to graduate school for journalism and continue learning about community-partnered research and reporting. Afterwards, I want to pursue a career around communications, hoping to be a journalist focusing on environmental issues one day.

This research has taught me the power of interviewing and connecting with community members. As an outsider to these counties, it took a lot of trust and networking to have meaningful conversations with community members. However, after establishing meaningful relationships and trust, I found these conversations to be incredibly important and educational to finding a mutual understanding and working together.

From this research, I have found a passion for community partnered research and reporting—collaborating to create a platform for community members to tell their own stories.

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