Welcome Message

May 31, 2023

Dear UNCW Community: 

Congratulations to all our Seahawks who graduated this month. More than 3,000 brand new alumni earned degrees during the commencement ceremonies. I am proud of what the Class of 2023 has accomplished so far and look forward to seeing what its future holds. 

May also brought the launch of the redesigned uncw.edu website. The new site reflects UNCW’s dynamic and innovative approach to education. With a new program finder to showcase degree options and an engaging design featuring increased accessibility, the new website highlights the unique stories of our university like no other. 

Those stories are also highlighted at key campus events that bring together scholars and other visitors to share experiences and knowledge. The Global Marine Science Summit, sponsored by the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, was hosted May 17-19 at our Center for Marine Science. The summit was a venue for international scientists, policy makers and industry leaders from the U.S. and overseas to develop solutions for global marine science issues and to address the economic climate of coastal regions. 

UNCW hosted other major regionally relevant and globally important summits this month:

• The NASPA Region III Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education/Southern Association of College Student Administrators Mid Managers Institute, held May 21-25, gave mid-level professionals the opportunity to develop the skills, strategies and relationships to make an impact. The conference enrolled more than 80 student affairs personnel from across the southeast for professional training and curriculum.
• The UNC System Advancement Symposium gathered 450 executives, frontline fundraisers, alumni relations professionals and advancement services employees from affiliated institutions to learn from and network with colleagues and more than 100 speakers May 22-23.
• UNCW’s Department of Film Studies hosts the annual conference of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image beginning today. This is the first time the international, interdisciplinary gathering of experts working to understand the ways in which moving image media reflect, shape, and are shaped by the human mind is in North Carolina.
• The AIMS Conference, also starting today, promotes collaboration among scientists working in dynamical systems, differential equations and applications. An international event, the conference boasts 800 participants from 61 countries, including plenary speaker Ingrid Daubechies, the 2023 recipient of the Wolf Prize in Mathematics.

In addition to hosting visitors on our campus, we’re working with collaborators to put our scholarship to work in the world. The North Carolina Ecosystem Technology project has been awarded $1 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation's Regional Innovation Engines, or NSF Engines, to develop an economic engine that could rapidly improve the quality of life in rural coastal communities. The NCET team, comprised of 11 principal investigators from seven institutions including UNCW, received one of the first-ever NSF Engines Development Awards.

Seahawks are excelling elsewhere, as well. Baseball won its seventh CAA Championship title, and six Seahawks earned spots in the NCAA Track & Field East Preliminary Round as the spring season draws to a close. The UNCW media production team took home a first place award at the recent DigiFest® Temecula film festival in California for its documentary “Game On UNCW: Esports + Education.”

As these accomplishments show, our recent graduates leave UNCW’s classrooms behind for now, but they join a teal network eager to support them and help them pursue their goals.

Yours in Seahawk spirit,

Aswani K. Volety
Chancellor