Previous Campus Themes
At Western Carolina University, our mission is to foster a holistic understanding and appreciation of the WNC Mountain Life. We are committed to nurturing wellbeing for our community through intentional connections with nature and embracing the rich cultural heritage of the region. By celebrating the uniqueness of the Appalachian environment and the Cherokee traditions that are our history and present, we aim to cultivate a deep respect for our surroundings and promote sustainable living. Our goal is to engage the campus community in meaningful experiences that reflect the interconnectedness of life, environment, and culture.
The Mental Health and Wellness campus theme sought to engage the Catamount community in important conversations and experiences to increase our understanding of mental health and wellness. By exploring the broad impacts of mental health and wellness, we can help to create a community of support and care for students, staff, faculty, and the communities in our region.
On the tail of Sustainability and the Environment, it made perfect sense for the 2020-2021 campus theme to be WATER. The theme intended to engage the campus community in immersive and intellectual experiences to explore water through myriad lenses (economic, political, educational, cultural, geographic, environmental, and others) and to heighten the community’s understanding of how it impacts self, the region, the nation, and the world.
Programming efforts at WCU looked very different during the 2020-2021 academic year due to the global COVID pandemic. As a result, it was decided that WATER would be extended into the 2021-2022 academic year. Co-chaired by Eli Collins-Brown, Director of Coulter Faculty Commons and Bruce Gehrig, Joe W. Kimmel Distinguished Professor of Construction Management and Director of the Kimmel School of Construction Management, the steering committee, many of whom also served for two academic years, awarded over $20,000 to more than 10 applicants to help educate the campus community on topics related to water.
Water was also the theme for the OneBook selections for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years. I 2020-2021 the selection was The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman and in 2020-2021 students read The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America's Dilemma by Alex Kotlowitz.
Sustainability is something that affects everyone in some way. During Western Carolina University’s 2019-20 academic year, it will affect WCU students as the new campus learning theme.
“Sustainability and the Environment” was chosen after a survey by the Office of Undergraduate Studies was conducted among faculty, staff and students during the fall 2018 semester. The survey drew more than 430 responses.
Since 2009, WCU has selected an interdisciplinary theme for campus conversations, curricular and co-curricular connections, and enrichment
“I am excited that ‘Sustainability and the Environment’ has been selected as next year’s campus theme,” Acting Provost Carol Burton said. “(Chair) Jerry Miller and the steering committee will do a fabulous job of overseeing our intellectual discourse and educational opportunities around this topic. It is timely, provocative and engaging; it is one of our areas of distinction, and connects well with our mission and strategic plan.”
Miller, WCU’s Blanton J. Whitmire Distinguished Professor of Environmental Science, said it’s an exciting topic, while also pointing out that 2020 will be the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
“It’s an important topic,” Miller said. “It’s in the news all the time, whether it’s climate change, or corporate sustainability, or issues dealing with domestic water supply, both quantity and quality. It’s just a pretty broad topic that affects all of us.
Miller said he is looking forward to seeing the many ways sustainability issues will be implemented across campus disciplines.
“We have an Office of Sustainability and Energy Management and they’re doing a lot for Western as a whole,” Miller said. “But then there’s a lot of activity in terms of course work. In the sciences – chemistry, biology, natural resources management, geology – we all have courses related to that. But in addition to that, you have environmental courses related to history and religion, music, art. It’s just one of those topics that’s going to be pretty easy to implement.”
Previous theme, “Defining America,” has been successful in bringing the campus community together for conversations and activities related to events throughout the country, Burton said.
“Our current theme, ‘Defining America,’ is a great example of an interdisciplinary theme and our steering committee, led by Angela Dills, Dana Patterson and Lane Perry, is doing a marvelous job of shepherding a variety of activities that accomplish these goals,” Burton said.
After a campuswide poll last fall, the selected theme the 2018-19 academic year is “Defining America.” Since 2009, WCU has selected an interdisciplinary theme for campus conversations, curricular and co-curricular connections, and enrichment.
“During our times of rapid change and development, it can be valuable to take pause and reflect on how far and from where we have come, to seek clarification and to recognize where we are, and to intentionally plan for how best to move forward together,” said Center for Service Learning Director Lane Perry, who is overseeing this year’s theme. “This theme is designed to be that moment in time. The period to reflect through historical, cultural, economic, political and geographical lenses with the greater intention of reflecting, exploring and learning about America `from sea to shining sea.’ ”
The steering committee for “Defining America” is co-chaired by Intercultural Affairs Director Dana Patterson and Gimelstob-Landry Distinguished Professor of Regional Economic Development Angela Dills. The theme’s broad scope will allow disciplines from across campus to participate.
“Every discipline will be encouraged to highlight the contributions that their field has made, continues to make and has the potential to make in the future,” Patterson said. “America has a long and complex history, as well as an exciting outlook for the future. I believe that students will find this theme engaging and exciting as they are encouraged to go beyond the surface and intelligently question some of the previously held beliefs about how America has been defined and understood by previous generations. It invites a new and innovative perception that includes every voice, every perspective and every idea that comes out of the unique journey that we will embark on as members of the Catamount community.”
Dills points out that a lot of those discussions are already taking place in classrooms across campus. Having this theme will allow them to come together.
“The committee is excited about connecting these discussions across classrooms, outside classrooms, and with the wide variety of extracurricular and community-engaged events on campus,” Dills said. “We look to provide opportunities for students to share their own varied definitions of America and to participate in a deep and broad intellectual discussion of how America might be.”
Carol Burton, who oversaw the campus themes prior to taking on her new role as acting provost in January, said the Cherokee theme was immensely popular and believes “Defining America” is a timely theme.
“The selection of (Cherokee) gave impetus to us to celebrate, learn about and honor the rich legacy of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians that is so important to our region and location,” Burton said. “Our relationship with the Cherokee came into its own this year, and I salute the efforts of Sky Sampson, director of the Cherokee Center and Dr. Lisa Bloom, endowed professor in the School of Teaching and Learning and chair of the theme committee this year, as well as the committee and so many others for their diligence and passion for the topic.
“I think we have a real opportunity with next year’s theme to tie in what we are currently discussing on campus around the issues of climate, as well as to explore new and old concepts of America. The theme also ties in nicely with the OneBook selection for next year, `The Book of Unknown Americans.’ ”
When it came time to select a new interdisciplinary learning theme, Western Carolina University didn’t need to look far. The heritage and tradition of a proud people permeate the very ground upon which the university is built. Thus the selection of the 2017-18 theme of “Cherokee: Community. Culture. Connections.”
An interdisciplinary learning theme fosters campus conversations and connects students with collaborative opportunities for an integrated campuswide experience. For the past seven years, WCU has selected a learning theme for such reasons. This marks the first time that faculty, staff and students were able to vote on a topic. Of the six choices, “Cherokee” received nearly a third of the votes.
In announcing the selection, Carol Burton, associate provost for undergraduate studies, said the learning theme “will afford us an opportunity to really dig in and not just articulate better our relationship with the Cherokee, but build on it, enhance it and, more importantly, educate our students and faculty and staff about the Cherokee and this beautiful place where we are and its importance.”
The tribal and demographic context for the theme of “Cherokee” will be largely in keeping with WCU’s neighbors, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and the portion of their ancestral home that they still retain, the Qualla Boundary. During the Indian Removal of 1838, the Cherokee who owned lands largely in present-day Swain and Jackson counties as a collective – with the deeds held by a white “chief” – were not forced to leave their homes, while others evaded capture by hiding deep in the Great Smoky Mountains. Today, the Eastern Band is a federally recognized tribe, and the 57,000-acre Qualla Boundary and numerous land parcels in Cherokee and Graham counties is a sovereign nation, with its own government, judicial and law enforcement system, schools and more than 15,000 enrolled members.
An archaeological field school explores Cherokee heritage on campus in a dig supported by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Tribal Historic Preservation Office and N.C. Office of State Archaeology.
“The Cherokee people have a very rich history in Western North Carolina, some of it right here on our very own campus, something that many folks are not aware of,” said Lisa Bloom, chair of the learning theme steering committee and the Jay M. Robinson Distinguished Professor of Educational Technologies. “Even more importantly, they have a thriving culture that contributes in so many ways to our lives in the region. My hope is that, through the campus theme, our students, faculty and staff will explore the rich culture and heritage of the Cherokee people, understand and appreciate their contributions both past and present, and make connections with the Cherokee community.”
The ties between WCU and the Eastern Band are indeed deep and historic. WCU’s Cherokee Studies Program, with both undergraduate and graduate degrees, is renowned for its curriculum in the culture, language, history, health and environment of Cherokee and indigenous issues. The Sequoyah Distinguished Professorship in Cherokee Studies, fully funded in 1998, is currently held by Brett Riggs, a research archaeologist who has worked with the Eastern Band on projects since the 1990s. In 2016, the university signed a memorandum of agreement with the Eastern Band and two Oklahoma-based Cherokee tribes to continue its commitment to the academic study and promotion of Cherokee language, history and culture.
WCU also is a lead partner in the ongoing Cherokee Language Revitalization Project, an initiative to provide broader, more comprehensive training and learning opportunities. For example, Project Songbird, a collaboration with the Eastern Band’s Kituwah Preservation and Education Program, recorded original songs in the Cherokee language. Another example is the work with the New Kituwah Academy, a Cherokee immersion school, where Bo Lossiah ’05, curriculum, instruction and community supervisor, has been a leader in those efforts. Last year, the preservation and education program and WCU’s Cherokee Language Program worked with the WCU Print Shop to create card games for learning Cherokee pronouns, as well as a Cherokee language board game created by WCU graphic design students. The games were given to Hunter Library’s Special Collections and the New Kituwah Academy.
The two-year interdisciplinary exploration of Africa! More than a Continent allowed faculty, students, and campus offices and organizations to use Africa’s past, present and future to explore broad questions in culture, the arts, healthcare,business, politics and policy, history, literature, education, the environment, science and technology, athletics, and society.
The theme had a two-pronged approach. The first year, 2015-2016, the theme focused on general awareness topics such as geography, politics, history, arts, food, culture, and health; then the second year, 2016-2017, had an embedded, deeper approach including performance exchanges and study abroad.
For 2016-2017, Western Carolina University partnered with Samaritan’s Feet, an international charity that supplies shoes for children in local communities as well as around the world. This partnership allowed for many grassroots involvement of students, staff, faculty, and the greater community.
This campus theme's mission was to aid in fulfilling WCU's goals of increased internationalization of its curricula and enhanced diversity of its faculty and staff as stated in the 2020 Strategic Plan, to highlight the histories and cultures of African countries and peoples, and to recognize the connection of Africans to people of African descent in the United States (and in WNC specifically) in order to celebrate the roots of African American culture, history, and experience.
We did this by exposing the WCU community to the diversity of the African continent and its many countries such as its races, geography, ethnicities, environments, cultures, religions, animals, governments, and natural resources. We studied the connection of European colonialism with the development and modern history of the colonized countries of Africa. The impact of neocolonialism through the late twentieth century until today both in Africa and throughout the world was explained. Students experienced the contributions of Africans to the fine arts all over the world: music, painting, sculpture, literature, film, and drama. They also were tasked to identify the significance of African histories and accomplishments in education, science, math, government, art, and architecture. We engaged with African oral culture in the form of folktales, proverbs, and storytelling. And connected WCU's community with African individuals, groups, and organizations including lectures, seminars, shows, and classroom-to-classroom projects.
In tandem with WCU's 125th-anniversary celebration, this theme allowed faculty, students, and campus offices and organizations to use our state’s past, present and future to explore broad questions in culture, the arts, healthcare, business, politics and policy, history, literature, education, the environment, science and technology, athletics, and society and more.
The theme allowed for the opportunity to link classroom assignments and activities to the 125th-anniversary celebration addressing questions such as:
- How has our state’s history and culture shaped our social and political realities?
- What social, cultural, and demographic changes will shape our state’s future?
- What are North Carolina’s contributions to the Arts?
- How should North Carolina business evolve to compete in a global economy?
- What major forces will affect health care in our state?
- How will we educate the next generation of North Carolinians?
- How should we foster a climate of scientific, technological, and cultural innovation in North Carolina?
- How will we balance growth and environmental sustainability?
- What issues does our state face and how can our universities help find solutions?
Other elements of the Campus Theme were:
"North Carolina in Dialogue: Our Past, Present, and Future" Undergraduate Essay Contest
An essay contest open to all WCU Undergraduate Students where entrants wrote a 750-word essay on the prompt: As young people in North Carolina, college students have a unique understanding of the past, a distinct perspective on the present, and a special opportunity to shape the future of our state. Where do you see yourself within the unfolding history of North Carolina and how do you envision your role in shaping the present and future of the state?
North Carolina in Dialogue: Our Past, Present, and Future
The focus of this conference was to provide a platform for our students and the public to learn from distinguished scholars and public activists/intellectuals who can reflect, analyze, and offer various perspectives on North Carolina’s history, politics, and culture. Additionally, this event aimed to build a dialogue between scholars and activists so they may learn how they can work together to improve the future of North Carolina.
Each year for the past four years Undergraduate Studies has facilitated an interdisciplinary, institutional theme to connect curricular and co-curricular experiences across disciplines and provide a framework for common intellectual experiences for our students.
This year's theme is the Decade of the 1960s - Take it all in! provided a great opportunity for students to learn about their field from a different time period – and the opportunity to add to their portfolio – and sharing what they learned with the greater university community.
One event held was a discussion on war focusing from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Students were asked to engage in discourse on these wars, their impact on current endeavors and their influence on activism.
Gloria Steinem, an award-winning writer and activist spoke at the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center. Steinem has been involved globally in feminist and social justice movements for more than four decades and wrote a book about her years as a feminist organizer titled "Road to the Heart: America as if Everyone Mattered."
Steinem's address at WCU followed the annual Gender Research Conference held on campus and is part of events connected to the 2013-14 campuswide interdisciplinary learning theme, "1960s: Take It All In."
"Gloria Steinem became a beacon of the 1960s women's movement, and through her visible leadership women were able to make changes in workplace equality, violence against women, reproductive rights and political influence, to name a few," said Marilyn Chamberlin, WCU associate professor of sociology, director of women's studies and steering committee member for the 1960s learning theme. "Her work gave the women's movement a collective voice around which to rally, a voice that is still very active today in the same areas."
The "New Lens Film Series" featured six films shown throughout the academic year each with their own tie to the 1960's.
A week of celebration that honored Martin Luther King Jr., with a number of events on Western's campus. During our two MLK Days of Service, 136 students participated in 13 projects for a combined 355 hours of service! To conclude, Nikki Giovanni was a guest speaker and presented to a packed house of engaged students and faculty/staff that evening. Then on January 29, more than 200 students met with 44 community organizations at the 8th Annual Service Learning Fair.
The Department of Intercultural Affairs hosted the V-Day/ Vagina Monologues Campaign by showing a documentary "It's a Girl" to discuss the gendercide in India, as well as China, and to show violence against women beginning as early as birth. Another event that took place, V-Men Standing Up and Speaking Out, was an opportunity to speak out against sexual assault.
A Hunger Banquet, students had a free meal and learned more about hunger as well as food insecurity issues around the world. Attendees were encouraged to bring donations of non-perishable food items.
The 12th Annual Gender Conference: Women & Ethnicity. This conference consisted of papers or poster presentations focusing on gender research. The keynote speaker, Crystal Endsley, will speak on behalf of women's experiences due to ethnicity.
The No Limits March: This event is in celebration of the power, strength, network, and community of women on campus. Influential female faculty/staff will speak about their challenges, strengths, and journeys. A march on campus will follow and refreshments will be served.
Dance Marathon is a national event to raise money for the Children's Miracle Network. Participants raised money that helps sick kids. The year culminates in a 12-hour long event where students stay on their feet through dancing, games, and entertainment; the question that is asked, 'will you dance for the children who can't? There were over 300 participants that rose over $8,000 for the Children's Miracle Network.
Habitat for Humanity Women Build Saturday, Habitat for Humanity is sponsoring 'Women Build' workdays! Volunteers helped build and remodel houses for our low-income neighbors in the community.
24th Annual International Festival has given the community and various students on campus the chance to engage and explore the different cultures our world has to offer. This event includes different food, music, dance and artistry.
Jeans Day Friday, an Italian Supreme Court decision overturned a rape conviction because the victim wore jeans, reasoning she must have helped her attacker remove them. On Denim Day, wear your jeans as a visible sign of protest against the myths that still surround sexual assault.
FOCUS: First-Year Opportunities for Community and University Service was an outstanding success with nearly 200 first-year Catamounts engaging in the very local Western Carolina University community.
Voter Registration Day! We registered any students interested in being a voting member of the Jackson County precinct. Whether RED or BLUE in affiliation, you can't get purple without combining both!
Author Paul Loeb (Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times and The Impossible Will Take a While) gave out assignments and selected readings from Soul of a Citizen that faculty and staff can use to integrate this presentation into their curricula.
GET OUT AND VOTE! The Public Policy Institute, Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning, and WCU organized non-stop shuttles to and from the local polling place (Cullowhee Recreation Center).
WCU's Poverty Project allowed the WCU community to develop a better understanding of the root causes and consequences of poverty. It also taught students what they can actually do about poverty's different manifestations through a year's worth of engaged teaching, learning, service, and creative and scholarly opportunities centered on poverty, both in local communities and global society, as well as their interconnection.
It was a chance for all of us – students, faculty, staff, and community partners – to think together about an enormously complex problem in an interdisciplinary way, and also to place it in the more specific context of our own individual lives and vocations (or majors). We like to say that Western is a place for those who want to make a difference in their world, and this theme provided an opportunity to do just that: to clarify what our values actually are with respect to poverty and associated issues, and to practice the kind of responsible civic engagement that is consistent with those values.
Outcomes of the Poverty Project were to:
- Develop a more comprehensive intellectual and emotional (empathetic) understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty-related issues, both global and local, as well as what they can do about them, from the consideration perspectives informed by their own disciplines and those of others via traditional classroom teaching and learning, participation in student clubs and organizations with poverty-focused activities, and service with community partners.
- Work collaboratively across disciplines and in local and global communities with faculty, staff, and community partners (including through advocacy) with individuals from a variety of philosophical, religious, socio-economic, and other backgrounds; some may choose to integrate projects they engage in, into their electronic briefcases for future presentation.
- Clarify the place of poverty and associated issues with respect to their own values through participation in and reflection on a variety of activities, both inside and outside the classroom.
- Contribute to potential solutions to poverty-related issues in theoretical and practical terms through participation in scholarly and creative activities (via discipline and course-specific approaches, as well as focused undergraduate and graduate research), service-learning, and student organization events.
- Take action through participation in real-world, poverty-focused projects and initiatives – including advocacy and civic engagement projects – with relevance to the content and skills of their own majors and vocational goals, as well as the lives of informed and responsible citizens.
As part of the WCU Poverty Project, several students in the Philosophy and Religion department's course, 'Religion, Suffering and the Moral Imagination,' participated in the annual conference of one of the world's most respected humanitarian organizations, CARE. Students advocated for programs designed to increase education, reduce and prevent disease, and help improve access to food and clean water supplies, which are targeted to help the poorest of the poor worldwide, and particularly women and children, who suffer disproportionately from poverty.
The 2010-2011 interdisciplinary learning event will focus on health and wellness,
community outreach, research and creative scholarship, service learning and advocacy.
The presentation of “Sweet ‘N Low” is a WCU Quality Enhancement Plan initiative. This
interdisciplinary learning event will focus on health and wellness, community outreach,
research and creative scholarship, service learning and advocacy. As students explore
knowledge and concepts that are relevant to daily life, they engage their academic
and personal lives.
Departments and programs involved in the health professions, diet and nutrition, and physical fitness are an obvious starting point for studies about health and wellness. However, this topic can be examined from many other perspectives, including political science, business and finance, communication, the sciences, philosophy and the arts. Approaching the conversation about health and living well from these different perspectives is empowering to all who choose to participate.
Sweet 'N Low: Intentional Learning – Intentional Well-being was performed at The Fine & Performing Arts Center on Sunday, January 30, 2011.
Jonathan Cobrda, a sophomore at Western Carolina University pursuing his bachelor of fine arts in musical theatre, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 12. He created “Sweet ‘N Low” to raise awareness about the disease. Cobrda believes artists have the power to advocate for causes that are important to them, and he spent last summer touring the country with his show with sponsorship from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Cobrda has visited many classes this fall to share his story as WCU explored the topic of health and wellness across disciplines via coursework, research and community outreach.