Victories for the Bulldog Men's and Women's Basketball teams, dancing with old friends returning home for special alumni celebrations and fun student activities highlighted the UNC Asheville 2020 Homecoming.
In sports, there are special moments that can live forever.
At UNC Asheville’s Homecoming basketball doubleheader, February 22, such a moment was celebrated at Kimmel Arena.
Sheila Ford Duncan, the first woman in college basketball history to amass 2,000 points and 2,000 rebounds in a career, saw her jersey number 54 unveiled from the rafters during a halftime ceremony. It was another first for Ford Duncan, as she became the first Bulldog basketball player—male or female—to have her jersey retired by the UNC Asheville athletics department.
UNC Asheville Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Britt Lundgren has been named a 2020 Cottrell Scholar, an honor that comes with a $100,000 prize from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) in support of her research on how galaxies evolve over cosmic timescales.
“We know that galaxies require supplies of cold gas to form new stars. Unfortunately, such gas is often not very luminous, making it difficult to detect in the outskirts of galaxies, particularly when those galaxies are at great distances from Earth. Backlighting experiments offer a solution to this problem,” says Lundgren.
Samantha Creech, a UNC Asheville senior majoring in physics with astronomy and math minors, has been named the recipient of the Astronomy Club of Asheville-Carolyn Keefe Scholarship, which provides $2,000 to be applied to the cost of attending UNC Asheville for the academic year, and a one-year membership in the Astronomy Club of Asheville.
Creech was selected for the scholarship based on her academic record, recommendations, a personal essay, and extra-curricular activities, which includes participation in a highly competitive physics REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) and serving as a docent at UNC Asheville’s Lookout Observatory.
The Blue Banner, UNC Asheville’s student newspaper, earned eight awards at the annual statewide College Media Association’s conference held Feb. 29, 2020, at East Carolina University.
The Blue Banner received the following awards for 2018:
New York Times bestselling author Erik Larson, in conversation with Denise Kiernan, discussed his new book, The Splendid and the Vile – A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, to a full house in the Blue Ridge Room on Feb. 28.
Larson is the author of seven books including five New York Times bestsellers. Kiernan is the author of New York Times bestsellers, Girls of Atomic City and The Last Castle.
UNC Asheville alumna Kerri Eaker of Asheville, NC, has been appointed as the Chair of the NC Council on Developmental Disabilities (NCCDD) by Governor Roy Cooper. She recently chaired her first meeting at the February 6-7 quarterly gathering of the 40-member Council in Cary, NC.
Eaker is the Family Support Outreach Coordinator for The Family Support Network™ of WNC at Mission Children’s Hospital in Asheville, NC. She has worked for the organization for nine years assisting families with children with special health care needs, developing and implement-ing trainings and materials and conducting workshops for parents and professionals throughout the western part of North Carolina.
Why is an artist – Professor of Art and Department Chair Tamie Beldue – spending hours standing in the cold, day after day, drawing scenes of the renovation of Owen Hall?
“It actually started at the Asheville Art Museum when that building was being renovated. I was part of a hard hat tour of the museum and I just found myself looking around thinking ‘this is an incredible urban landscape, and I want to draw it,’ says Beldue. So she and faculty colleague Suzanne Dittenber, a painter, got permission, and for a time, set up easels inside the museum during its renovation.
“This composer [of the "Odyssey"] really understood human nature and human desire for distraction and seduction and fascination. That says something about why it continues to charm us. It’s a marvelous, fascinating thoroughly worthwhile text in the context of these particular dialogues. I also think that it’s important to reflect on how it is composed so brilliantly, that it makes us want to root for the hero … He’s clever, he’s resourceful. We wanted him to get her and we wanted him to win. Just as we all ourselves, as it were, want to win in our own heroic journey. We all want to get home in our own lives.” - Sophie Mills, Professor of Classics
Weather waylaid renowned neuroscientist Richard Davidson's talk on meditation, but UNC Asheville still explored mindfulness and contemplative practices with a lecture by Associate Professor of Psychology Patrick Foo, The Neuroscience of Meditative Practices, and a flash-meditation session in Ramey Library.
Dr. Rick Chess uses meditation in poetry classes to encourage students to create from a mindful state of consciousness.
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