Learn from the experts: Tourism conference to focus on festival success

Tourism is a huge topic with a major impact on Western North Carolina’s economy.

Western Carolina University will host the second annual Tourism Conference next week to focus on one major aspect of the tourism industry — festivals and events.

Conference highlights native culture as integral to addressing health issues

fr nativehealthIt was a century ago that Beverly Kiohawiton Cook’s relative was taken from his family and shipped off to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Those years at school, days of travel away from family and forbidden to use native dress and speech, were traumatic.

In search of the perfect word: Literary festival returns to WCU

art frA writer looking at a blank page is a like a painter staring at a fresh canvas, a sculptor facing a block of clay or a woodworker holding a chunk of wood. The desire to grab words from thin air and construct them into sentences, notions and ideas comes from an internal fire to describe human emotion and situation. It is a calling, one that picks its creators when the time and place is prime. Writers are messengers, connecting the unknown cosmos to an everyday modern reality.

WCU bucks national trend toward more part-time hires

Western Carolina University has held steady on its rate of tenured and tenure-track professors over the last decade, keeping numbers of permanent faculty that far outstrip the national average.

Aging WCU faculty points to job satisfaction, university says

fr WCUWhen Bruce Henderson first came to Western Carolina University back in 1978, he was just happy to have a job. The market was tight when he finished his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, so he took what he was offered. Within a couple years, he figured, he’d be able to move somewhere more notable than the little college in Cullowhee.

$22.5 million construction project coming to WCU

fr wcubuildingCampus dining is headed for an upgrade at Western Carolina University, with renovation toward a new and improved Brown Building due to start this fall.

Tailgating zone expands at WCU

fr wcucampusThe decision to expand the tailgating area at Western Carolina University boiled down to one simple thing, the university’s attorney Mary Ann Lochner told the Board of Trustees’ Administration, Governance and Trusteeship Committee last week.

University says county development ordinance shouldn’t apply

County and university officials had a sit-down last week over the question of whether Western Carolina University should fall under Jackson County’s revised subdivision ordinance.

WCU to end off-campus busing

Once the spring 2015 semester wraps up at Western Carolina University, off-campus students will no longer have the option of catching the bus to classes. 

While enrollment at the university — and development around it — is increasing, ridership on the off-campus route has been declining. So, WCU has decided to get rid of the off-campus route and funnel those resources instead to the on-campus routes.

‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ to hit WCU stage

art frTransvestite. Transsexual. Transylvania.

Three words that immediately conjure images of extravagant parties, mad scientists, death, rock-n-roll, Meatloaf, aliens, sing-a-longs, freedom and sexual liberation. What “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” did, and continues to do, for society can never be overstated. Originally written as a stage musical, the story hit the big screen in 1975, cueing a new dawn in acceptance and understanding in everyday life. It kicked the door down for punk rock, 20th century cultural evolution, independent filmmaking and LGBT rights by simply stepping over the line of what it means to truly be yourself in a sometimes stifling world where being one-in-the-same is “easier” than being one-in-a-million.

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