Library Brown Bag Talks will be offered via Zoom during the Spring 2021 semester. An email will be sent to the UNC Asheville community during the week of the talk with information about logging into Zoom.
All Library Brown Bags are free and open to UNC Asheville students, faculty, and staff. Several select Brown Bags will be open to the larger community and will require registration.
For questions or comments about Library Brown Bag Talks, please contact Gene Hyde, Head of Special Collections and University Archivist, UNC Asheville. ghyde@unca.edu or 828-251-6645
Thursday, January 21
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Jordan Perry, Healthy Campus Liaison
Meredith Silver, Research Assistant
"Student Health Ambassadors: Building the Ship As We Sail It"
The Student Health Ambassador program began in Summer 2020 with a goal of reducing the likelihood of COVID-19 transmision on campus and promoting general wellness among students. Join Student Health Ambassador program co-coordinator Jordan Perry, project evaluator Meredith Silver, and Student Health Ambassadors themselves to learn about the work of the Student Health Ambassadors (so far!), preliminary evaluation findings, and plans for Spring 2021.
Thursday, February 11
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Jessica Pisano, Writing Program Coordinator
Regine Criser, Director of First and Second Year Academic Success
Kate Zubko, Interim Director of the Humanities Program
"Getting to know UNCA’s First-Year Experience Pilot Program"
Interested in learning more about a new collaboration to support first-year students at UNCA? Join Regine Criser, Jessica Pisano, and Kate Zubko for a brown bag conversation about the First-Year Experience Pilot, a program that centers connections and connectivity and strives to help first-year students connect their academics with their lives while building community, even in remote spaces.
Thursday, February 18
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Lora Holland Goldthwaite, Chair, Classics Department
"Money Matters: Religion and Coinage in Ancient Rome"
Roman gods are featured prominently on the coinage of the Republic; but when the emperor Augustus comes to power there is a shift in their portrayal that aligns with a shift in religion itself. Join me to look at some beautiful ancient coins and discuss how they can illuminate the relationship between human and divine in ancient Rome--and hear about my project to publish a new find of Roman Republican coinage
Thursday, February 25
12 -1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Patrick Bahls, UNC Asheville Prison Education Program
Gene Hyde and Ashley Whittle, UNC Asheville Special Collections
Kathleen Lawlor, Economics
"Restorative Justice and Archives: using archival evidence to examine the legacy of Asheville's Urban Renewal programs"
Restorative justice, as a concept, seeks to find solutions to difficult problems rooted in systemic instances of racism along with stereotypical preconceptions and ideas historically applied specifically to people of color. Archival repositories, and the papers, documents, photographs, and histories that form their core, can play an important role in restorative justice. Archives can provide researchers, community organizers and activists with resources of value to mitigate and repair the historical impact of systemic racism.
This talk will discuss the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville's (HACA) urban renewal records, which are housed in UNC Asheville's Special Collections, within the context of restorative justice. Gene Hyde will discuss the acquisition and description of the HACA records from an archival perspective, then Patrick Bahls and Kathleen Lawlor will discuss their current research projects using the urban renewal records. All three will discuss plans to continue this research and to make the records more widely available.
Thursday, March 11
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Kathleen Lawlor, Certification Coordinator
Alison Ormsby, Interim Co-Director of Sustainability
"UNC Asheville's Sustainability Certificate"
Learn about UNC Asheville's Sustainability Certificate from Certification Coordinator Kathleen Lawlor and Interim Co-Director of Sustainability Alison Ormsby. Our increasingly complex and interdependent world needs critical thinkers with strong problem-solving skills who are able to address the long-term viability of social-ecological systems. The Interdisciplinary Certificate in Sustainability seeks to give students from any major a broad understanding of environmental, socioeconomic, and humanistic systems through interdisciplinary academic preparation, community engagement, and cross-campus collaboration so that they can help develop local and global solutions for a sustainable future. The certificate requires the completion of a minimum of 13 semester hours and 5 courses, to include IST 330, Sustainability Seminar, the required core course for the certificate.
Thursday, March 18
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Kirk Swenson, University Advancement
"The Role of University Advancement in an Evolving UNC Asheville"
Do you find yourself wondering what the difference is between fundraising and advancement? Hear from Vice Chancellor Kirk Swenson as he shares the advancement philosophy, current plans for the university's comprehensive campaign and how partnership across campus is necessary for our institutional success.
Thursday, March 25
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Chelsey Augustyniak, Career Center
"Career Conversations - How we can all talk with students about their career development"
Every member of the UNC Asheville community plays an important role in our students' career development. The Career Center has created a document called ‘Career Conversations’ which could be helpful when you find yourself having these conversations with students, no matter which phase of the career development process they are in. We will review the Career Conversations document, talk about ways the Career Center can assist your students, and chat about what you and your department are already doing to help your students prepare for what’s next!
Thursday, April 1
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Jackie Hamstead, Environmental Specialist, Campus Operations
"Guide to Sustainable Retirement Investing at UNC Asheville"
This presentation will touch on some of the basics of sustainable retirement investing. Attendees will learn about the tools and resources available that help individuals assess if their investments are aligned with their personal values. We will discuss what other colleges and universities have done on this front before offering next steps for interested investors.
Thursday, April 8
12 - 1 PM - This Brown Bag has been canceled. We hope to reschedule it for next semester.
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Angel Kaur, Neuroscience
"Building SciComm Skills through Undergraduate STEM courses"
Effective science communication has been identified as one of the core competencies of STEM education. Yet, most undergraduate students do not receive explicit instruction on how to effectively communicate science to a diversity of audiences. Instead, communication assignments typically help students become proficient at sharing scientific information with other scientists through research articles, poster presentations or oral presentations. This presents a missed opportunity to instruct students on the complexities of communicating to the general public, the importance of which has come into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Translating research findings so they can be understood by a non-specialist audience requires practice and deep learning, and can act as a powerful teaching tool to help students build science literacy skills and experience greater engagement with course content. In this session, I will share strategies to infuse science communication instruction into STEM courses, and preliminary feedback from students on their experience with these assignments. I also invite other faculty and staff working on science communication instruction to join the session and share their best practices.
Thursday, April 15
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Ken Betsalel, Political Science
Dwight Mullen, Professor Emeritus, Political Science
"What's Love Got to Do With It?: Looking Back at Asheville Through Photographs"
25 Years ago Ken Betsalel put together a documentary photography exhibit of his work "As I Know You" at the YMI Cultural Center in Asheville, the exhibition was followed up by a published photo essay introduced by the writer Wilma Dykeman, entitled, "Seeing Community." Many of the photographs focused on the Asheville community. We thought it would be interesting to revisit the photos in a conversation with Ken and Dwight Mullen on what the photographs might teach us about race relations in Asheville, memory, and the changing way we see community.
Thursday, April 22
12 - 1 PM
Via Zoom - login information will be sent via email a few days before the talk
Leisa Rundquist, Art History
"The Power and Fluidity of Girlhood in Henry Darger's Art"
Leisa Rundquist will discuss her new book, The Power and Fluidity of Girlhood in Henry Darger's Art, forthcoming from Routledge in April 2021. From the publisher’s blurb: “This book is the first to examine Henry Darger’s conceptual and visual representation of “girls” and girlhood. Specifically, Leisa Rundquist charts the artist’s use of little girl imagery—his direct appropriations from mainstream sources as well as girls modified to meet his needs—in contexts that many scholars have read as puerile and psychologically-disturbed. Consequently, this inquiry qualifies the intersexed aspects of Darger’s protagonists as well as addresses their inherent cute and little associations that signal multivocal meanings often in conflict with each other. Rundquist engages Darger’s art through thematic analyses of the artist’s writings, mature works, collages, and ephemeral materials.”