From Staff Reports

UNC Asheville was recognized at a meeting Dec. 7 as the “Green University of the Year” by the Wenoca chapter of the Western North Carolina Sierra Club.

The chapter cited UNCA’s “significant sustainability initiatives and applauded the breads of the university’s efforts, particularly those catalyzed by the Student Environment Center and the Office of Sustainability.”

UNCA Chancellor Mark K. Grant noted that, “Sustainability is one of our core values, essential to our mission as North Carolina’s designated public liberal arts university and a founding principle of our new strategic plan, and we are honored to receive this award in an area with many local champions.”

In 2016, UNCA received certification as a Bee Campus, becoming the eighth institution to earn the honor. The university also collaborated with Asheville Design Center in fall 2016 to build the Bee Hotel, a home for solitary bees near a campus pollinator garden.