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By Olivia Fey
The UNC Charlotte community learned on Monday night that Provost Joan Lorden has decided to step down at the end of the current academic year after 18 years of working for the university.
Lorden arrived at Charlotte in 2003 and since then has served as a vital leader across multiple departments, aiding in the development of the College of Arts and Architecture, the Office of Undergraduate Education and the School of Data Science among other achievements. Under Lorden’s supervision, thirteen doctoral programs were established and research funding more than doubled for the university. As a neuroscientist and an active member of the Charlotte community, Lorden has also advocated for programs to support women faculty in STEM. She is involved in several organizations including the Echo Foundation, the Women’s Impact Fund and the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. Her dedication to these issues led her to being named the 2016 Charlotte Woman of the Year. Lorden is the longest-serving provost in the UNC system, committing nearly two decades of her work to the Niner Nation. Before coming to UNC Charlotte, Lorden served as director for the program of neuroscience and was Dean-in-Residence and Associate Provost for Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s graduate school. She holds a B.A. from the City College of New York and a Ph.D. from Yale University. In a statement, Lorden said, “Even with all the ups and downs and challenges we have faced over these past several years, I still cannot imagine a job I would have enjoyed more.” ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Owen Sizemore
As summer break for students officially passes its halfway mark, many are in good spirits. New reported COVID-19 cases across both the nation and the state of North Carolina are at some of their lowest numbers since March 2020. Mask mandates, gathering limits, social distancing guidelines, and other precautionary measures that had been in place for nearly a year-and-a-half are, for all intents and purposes, completely gone. Students have a lot to look forward to with their eyes on an in-person fall semester complete with face-to-face instruction, full-capacity sporting events and an overall bustling campus of new and returning students.
Our nation’s return to a “normal” way of living is unquestionably the result of mass vaccination throughout the past six months. As of this article’s publishing, The New York Times reports that 55% of Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, with 48% fully vaccinated. And while the rate at which unvaccinated people get their shot is dwindling, there are nonetheless 160 million fully vaccinated Americans that have slowed the spread of COVID-19 dramatically. For many, myself included, this summer has felt like the most “normal” time in what seems like an eternity. I have had the privilege of spending close time with friends, family and co-workers wherever and however I please because I got my shot. The science is abundantly clear: if you are fully vaccinated, you can go almost anywhere and do almost anything without risk of severe sickness or hospitalization. For unvaccinated Americans, however, enjoying their summer without fear of sickness is ignorant at best – and deadly at worst. According to the CDC, more than 99% of COVID-related deaths in June were among unvaccinated people. Personal feelings and political beliefs aside, the facts speak for themselves: if you choose to go unvaccinated, you are putting yourself at immense risk of severe illness, particularly as the highly transmissible delta variant of COVID-19 now represents the majority of new cases across the country. The delta variant brings with it new challenges that vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans alike will face. As a result of its highly transmissible nature, combined with the fact that millions of Americans still haven’t received their shot, both The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report a 94% COVID-19 case increase nationally over the past 2 weeks. As sad as it may be, we are not done dealing with COVID-19 anytime soon. As long as Americans are still getting sick by the thousands and dying by the hundreds each day, with the potential for these numbers to grow, COVID-19 will continue to be at the forefront of our personal and social lives. So, what does this mean for college communities? It means that until schools and their surrounding counties can keep new COVID-19 case numbers low and vaccination numbers high, this fall will likely look a lot like the last one, with strict limits on in-person classes, gatherings and events. Colleges and universities simply cannot take the risk of fully “re-opening” their campuses if students are going to be sick; it hurts their bottom line immensely as they pay for routine testing for unvaccinated people, provide personal and medical services to those infected or in quarantine, and miss out on ticket sales and revenue from sports games that are now forced to reduce their capacity for fans. The condition for colleges and universities to manage the fall semester in a “normal” way is a simple one: members of the school community, particularly students, must be protected from COVID-19 through vaccination. I have spoken with many friends and family members who tell me that they’re “waiting for the right time” to get the vaccine. Maybe in their minds, that time is the end of the summer, or perhaps the end of this year. If you're one of those people, I deeply hope you understand that there is no better time than right now to get vaccinated. I am aware that many are anxious of potential adverse health effects that may come from receiving a vaccine. It’s true: COVID-19 vaccines, like many other forms of preventative medicine, come with risks. However, this risk is microscopic compared to the threat of infection or hospitalization from COVID-19 should you choose to go unvaccinated. Bloomberg reported that for every million people vaccinated in the United States, just 2 to 5 of them will have a severe allergic reaction to the vaccine. And even if you aren’t concerned about your personal health, colleges and universities are waiting to make critical decisions on how their schools will be operating based on student vaccination numbers. It doesn’t make sense to remove social distancing and mask-wearing policies if administrators have no idea whether their student body can safely navigate such an environment. But with enough students fully vaccinated, schools can remove these precautions without worry. The summer is almost over, and in a matter of weeks thousands of college students across North Carolina will be back in the classroom. Right now, we have the power to choose what we want that classroom to look like. If we enter the fall semester with a majority of students fully vaccinated, I am confident that we will be happily sitting in classrooms and lecture halls across campus, engaged in personal and meaningful learning that we have missed out on for nearly two years. However, if we fail to step up to the challenge and vaccination numbers remain low, I expect another grueling semester behind the webcams of our laptops. Let’s make the right decision: get vaccinated as soon as you can and encourage your friends and classmates to do the same. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Lucas Thomae
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist best known for The 1619 Project, was set to be given a tenured position at UNC this summer. Instead, the school has opted to give her a five-year fixed contract, as reported by NC Policy Watch.
The decision has drawn heavy criticism from many prominent members of the UNC Student Body who say that the school caved to political pressure from conservatives. On May 20, a group of “UNC student leaders and advocates” published a letter under the website of the UNC Undergraduate Executive Branch, directly addressing Hannah-Jones. “We are frustrated and disappointed that our University, the flagship institution of the UNC System, has failed not only you, an outstanding alumna, but its students, its faculty, its community as a whole—and yes, the spirit upon which Carolina was founded: Lux Libertas—light and liberty,” the letter reads. The letter goes on to state, “Walking into this University, unfortunately, you are walking into a place where respect is minimal, criticism is high, and quantity is all too few for academics of color—especially Black women. Knowing this and recognizing the critical importance of upholding the integrity and impact of your work, we cannot ask you to come here. We respect your work and your contribution to this country’s history too much for you or your scholarship to be the constant target of disrespect here at Carolina, be it from our leaders in South Building, the Board of Trustees, or Board of Governors.” The letter had 31 signatures, among them Neel Swamy, the President of the Graduate and Professional Student Government, and Collyn Smith, the Vice President of the Undergraduate Student Government. The same day, Hannah-Jones tweeted, “I have been overwhelmed by all the support you all have shown me. It has truly fortified my spirit and my resolve.” The UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media had sought out Hannah-Jones for its Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. Susan King, dean of the school, supported tenureship for Hannah-Jones, and faculty also published a letter expressing their support of Hannah-Jones and displeasure with the university’s decision. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Owen Sizemore
On Thursday afternoon, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Chancellor Sharon L. Gaber sent an email to the Forty-Niner community outlining the university's plans for on-campus operations for the fall.
The short message began with Chancellor Gaber outlining the success of the UNC Charlotte community on keeping COVID-19 cases low on campus throughout the spring semester, as well as noting that vaccine distribution across the state of North Carolina is happening quicker than anticipated. Gaber articulated that "This is very good news, and it means UNC Charlotte is in a position to plan for a return to full operations in fall 2021". Gaber outlined several goals and expectations for what campus life will look like at the start of the Fall 2021 semester. These expectations include:
UNC Charlotte's expectations for the fall are a swift turnaround from current university operations, where just a small fraction of students live on campus with even fewer in-person courses. Dining halls, sporting events, and many facilities are also at a highly limited capacity. UNC Charlotte administrators are optimistic that the fall 2021 semester will see a return to pre-COVID-19 standards of living and learning, betting on the ability of students, faculty and staff to become vaccinated well before the start of the term. In a similar spirit of transitioning back to full-capacity campus life, the university also recently released a statement committing to an in-person commencement ceremony for the Class of 2021 from May 13-15. Exact details regarding the number of ceremonies and their times are to be announced on April 7. In-person academic courses are also planned to be offered for UNC Charlotte's Summer term, albeit at a limited capacity similar to current spring operations. NC College Beat has not found any guidance released by the university regarding their goals for Summer term courses or campus living. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Thomas Gessner
I don’t have to explain what a midterm is to college students. Or do I? Personally, I find the term and usage quite confusing. Now, it shouldn’t be confusing; it’s the middle of the term, and that is when an exam of some sort is given on the material learned up until that point. All of this makes perfect sense, and if college professors and universities followed this definition, I wouldn’t be writing a blog about midterms, but here we are.
Let’s break my schedule down to show why I am confused about all of this. My semester began in mid-January and I had my first midterm towards the end of February, so already there is a problem. The semester ends in mid-May, but my first midterm wasn’t even close to two months into classes, so what’s the deal? I thought, “Well, maybe there are more classes in the first two months of the semester, so everything evens out and the exam truly is in the middle.” I wasn’t even mad at this point. In fact, I was willing to believe that I had made a mistake and that the midterm was near the middle of the semester, but boy was I wrong. After my first midterm, I moseyed on over to my syllabi for my other classes to find my other midterm dates, assuming I would have to ramp up my studying to prepare for the slew of exams in the coming week. So imagine my surprise when I looked at my other midterm dates and saw they were all almost a month later! Okay, so my first class with the February midterm must have just been weird and out of pocket. Maybe there was some scheduling issue or something else that caused this midterm to not be in the middle of the semester. Then, I looked just a little bit closer at what was already in front of me, and I discovered the perpetrator in all of this. This class had two damn midterms. Two. Listen, I’m not upset at this fact because there are two exams instead of one, I’m upset because they are both called midterms. Based on the definition of the word, along with common sense, there can only be one midterm, because there can only be one middle of something, like a semester for example. To really hammer my point home, imagine you are running in a race on a trail and you reach a marker labeled as the halfway point, then after a while you reach another marker that also claims itself as the halfway point. Despite there being two halfway markers, that does not mean there are two middles of the race. When I am watching a two hour movie and stop it at an hour in, that is the middle; when I stop the movie 40 minutes then at 80 minutes, the movie doesn’t have two middles. I realize that these examples are just me bashing the concept of two midterms based solely on the simplistic, broken down definition of the word “middle”, but my God there are so many words in the human language that can be used, like “test”, “exam”, “quiz”, to name the obvious ones. And you the reader are probably asking, “Well, what if your professor has to have a midterm but wants two big exams before the final?” It’s actually not that complicated. If you have to give a midterm, then give a midterm, a singular midterm, not two, and if for some reason you don’t have to give a midterm, then give two tests and call them major tests or exams or whatever, just not midterms. As silly as this all sounds, and it is beyond silly that I am complaining like this, I will say that words and definitions matter a lot to me, especially pertaining to their usage in everyday life. At the risk of sounding even more pretentious, a quote from George Orwell’s 1984 that remains relevant (not just to midterms, but still) states: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” People need words and vocabulary to better think; without a wide range of words, it becomes more challenging to differentiate between ideas, concepts, and physical things. Let’s imagine that the only word to describe something good was “good”. If there is no other word or variation of “good” that can be used, then the human brain will have trouble classifying things that it finds to be well, good. Because of that, everything called good is placed on the same level. There is no nuance whatsoever between each “good” thing since the exact same word is used every single time. Okay, so I made my point about why myself and George Orwell care about words and language, but I swear it all ties back to the idea of a midterm and how professors and teachers are hopelessly twisting the definition to mean any exam that is not the final for the course. I pray our society does not reach a point where every examination is called a midterm, like if athletes took drug midterms, or someone gets "midtermed" for chlamydia. I like midterm as a word, in fact I like it so much I’ve used it an inordinate number of times, which could very well be detrimental to my whole argument here, but nevertheless, my point stands that the word midterm should be protected, and not used to describe tests that don’t occur in the middle of something. At the end of the day, there aren’t two middles, so we should stop acting like it. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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9/1/2021
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