Mold outbreak in Hunter Library finally under control

Version of story originally published in print for the Western Carolinian. Mold is not an unusual thing and as WCU Faculties manager, Joe Walker says it is a naturally occurring process. For the Hunter Library it was a ten-month clean-up project and over 15.000 bound journals tossed in the big dumpster at the back of […]

Bird collisions happening around WCU campus

Version of the story was originally published in the Western Carolinian. Dead birds are found throughout campus but who or what is to blame? WCU’s newest and most transparent building, Apodaca, has been linked to the death of close to 60 documented birds this fall. Bird collisions and how many   The American Bird Conservancy has […]

‘Cooking’ up the future of biotechnology

Apadaca’s 353 chemistry lab is home to lots of research equipment, chemical substances along with hardworking students and faculty.   Dr. Channa De Silva, chemistry professor, is the faculty advisor for one section of lab. The focus is on nanotechnology. What is nanotechnology?  As De Silva explains, nanotechnology is not new but today its applications can bring […]

What’s brewing on WCU’s campus?

Western Carolina students are crafting happy hour into the hoppy semester with the evaluation and experimentation of homebrewing in class. Sean O’Connell, microbiology professor and mentor at WCU for 21 years, is teaching students the process of crafting their own beers, ales, malts, and more. Students were put to the test by crafting their own […]

Moon research that is out of this world

I never thought that as a journalist I would be able to hold a 4 billion year old rock in the palm of my hands. This meteorite is one of many in Dr. Amy Fagan’s collection. Fagan is an associate professor of geology at WCU and the chair of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group for […]

Dead whales and Vikings

Vicki Szabo simply couldn’t resist when she was asked to harvest the bones of a beached, 13-foot long, pilot whale that had been dead for two months. Szabo, WCU history professor, studies Norse Vikings in the sub-Arctic from the year 800 to 1300. Vikings would make tools and weapons out of whale bones. Her mission […]