UNCG raised more than $115 million in its Students First Campaign as the five-year fund drive came to close.
Officials announced the milestone as the drive concluded Tuesday, June 30. The grand total of $115,346,891 exceeded the $100 million goal by 15.3 percent, through gifts and pledges from approximately 22,000 donors. The campaign’s two key initiatives – undergraduate and graduate scholarships and faculty development – drew the bulk of the campaign’s gifts with more than $75 million.
The campaign has created 14 new professorships, 203 new undergraduate scholarships, 42 new graduate scholarships, and 155 program funds and student awards programs. Gift totals included $57.5 million from approximately 14,000 alumni; $22.6 million from over 6,000 friends including parents; $30.8 million from approximately 1,000 corporations, foundations and others; and $4.4 mil1ion from about 1,000 faculty and staff.
Patti Lupone
Aycock Auditorium will resonate with the soulful voices of a South African choir, the fluid rhythms of a renowned dance company and the jazz sounds of one of America’s most celebrated operas when performers take center stage for the 2009-10 University Concert & Lecture Series.
The series, now in its 83rd year, will bring five must-see performances to the historic auditorium on the campus of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Shows will start at 8 p.m., with the exception of “Porgy and Bess” which will begin at 3 p.m.
Season ticket packages will be available beginning July 1 at boxoffice.uncg.edu or by calling (336) 334-4849.
An international group of Alzheimer’s researchers will present a one-day conference for the Triad – Living Well with Memory Loss: Finding the Balance – 8 a.m.-4:15 p.m. Friday, July 31, at UNCG.
The UNCG Center for Research Excellence in Bioactive Food Components recently worked with a Chinese university to conduct an animal study of the kidney damage caused by melamine, the contaminant that has sickened and killed pets and babies in recent years.
UNCG has a second confirmed case of the H1N1 flu. A female student came to Student Health Services with flu-like symptoms on Monday, June 15; and test results received Wednesday, June 17, confirmed that she has the H1N1 virus.
The student has been treated and is isolated at home and recovering. The student lives and is employed off campus.
An endowed professorship is being created in honor of Patricia A. Sullivan in recognition of her service as UNCG's chancellor.
The Patricia A. Sullivan Distinguished Professorship in the Sciences is being created by several donors who have contributed or made pledges for the necessary $417,000 for the endowment. UNCG will apply for matching funds – $250,000 from the C.D. Spangler Foundation and $333,000 from the N.C. Distinguished Professorship Endowment Trust Fund – to bring the total endowment to $1 million. The endowment is being created as part of the UNCG Students First Campaign, which ends June 30.
The fund will add a nationally known scholar to UNCG’s faculty when the pledges are fulfilled. Sullivan is a biologist by training, and the endowment will establish a professorship in the College of Arts & Sciences, to be assigned to either the Department of Biology, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Department of Geography or Department of Physics & Astronomy.
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Much has been written about the rise of urban poverty in the 1950s and 1960s, decades considered to be the roots of the current problems in U.S. inner cities. But most of it has been written from a male perspective, excluding the unique experiences of women trying to hoist their families above the poverty line despite the roadblocks they faced.
Dr. Lisa Levenstein, an assistant professor of history at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, reframes the experience of urban poverty through the lenses of women in her new book “A Movement Without Marches.”
Her findings challenge notions about the roots of chronic poverty. “Poor women did not cause their own poverty – they were not lazy, they were not irresponsible,” Levenstein said. “It took a tremendous amount of work, foresight and determination to seek resources from public institutions and to survive on the meager amounts of assistance offered. These women were determined and resourceful as they strove to create better lives for themselves, and especially for their children.”
Although a million people in the U.S. are believed to suffer from aphasia, roughly 40 percent have no contact with other aphasics. Caused by brain trauma, most often stroke, aphasia can impair speech, comprehension of speech, writing and reading.
In order to help aphasics and their families and friends deal with the communication disorder and the social isolation it often causes, the UNCG Speech and Hearing Program at the North Campus of Gateway University Research Park hosts an aphasia support group, which meets 4-5 p.m. on the second Monday of each month. The meetings are free and open to the public.
The University Libraries have acquired the papers of prolific inspirational poet Roy Z. Kemp.
Kemp, a Cornelius native, published more than 3,000 poems in his lifetime. His poems inspired readers of spiritual magazines like Ideals for decades. He is perhaps best remembered for his message that “There is no better or more blessed bondage than to be a prisoner of hope.”
The Kemp collection, donated by his family, represents 18 linear feet of papers. The collection includes letters documenting his publication history and correspondence with spiritual magazines as well as his personal correspondence while he served in World War II.
When he was a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, Duane Cyrus would find a seat in the wings or in the audience to watch spellbound as his fellow dancers performed “Steps in the Street.”
Now, more than 15 years later, Cyrus, an assistant professor of dance at UNCG, will spend the next year studying and sharing that 1936 composition with a new generation of dancers.
Supported by a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and university matching funds, the project will culminate with performances at the end of the spring semester. Venues will include local high schools, where UNCG student dancers will perform and discuss the work.
The 1889 flood in Johnstown, Penn., killed 2,200 people.
More than 650,000 households sought FEMA assistance after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.
When Tunguahua, a volcano in Ecuador, erupted in 2006, 15,000 people were in shelters without sufficient sanitary facilities. Schools were taken over by those needing shelter, putting classes on hold.
Eric Jones and Art Murphy, anthropology professors at UNCG, have long been intrigued by the intersection of natural disasters like these and the socio-economic backdrop that frames them. What factors enable one area to recover smoothly while others remain mired in the aftermath? How do the “Haves” in a society fare versus the “Have Nots”?
Their interest in how power and wealth distribution impacts disaster recovery, has led them to compile and edit a new collection of articles by diverse experts in the fields of anthropology, sociology, economics, political science and geography. The book, “The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters,” grew out of a conference on the politics and economics of natural disasters that UNCG hosted in 2007.
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