UNC Asheville is ranked fourth in the nation among public liberal arts colleges in U.S. News & World Report’s 2003 annual college rankings. This is the third consecutive year UNCA was among the top five. The annual rankings look at a range of measures, including academic reputation, commitment to instruction, student abilities, and graduation and retention rates.

U.S. News also introduced a new ranking of schools with outstanding examples of academic programs that lead to student success. UNCA was ranked ninth in the nation among all colleges and universities and second among all public colleges and universities for Undergraduate Research. Begun two decades ago, UNCA’s Undergraduate Research Program provides students in all disciplines the opportunity to work with faculty mentors to design and conduct their own research.

The U.S. News ranking highlights UNCA’s growing national reputation. Earlier this fall UNCA was ranked eighth among the nation’s best academic values in the 2003 edition of The Princeton Review’s "The Best 345 Colleges." UNCA was also named a Best Buy Among American Colleges for the ninth year in the 2003 edition of the Fiske Guide to Colleges.

UNCA Chancellor James Mullen emphasized that each of these rankings affirm the wonderful opportunity UNCA offers to students in Western North Carolina and across the state and nation. "The University of North Carolina Asheville is earning a national reputation for excellence. The faculty, staff and students of our university have created a liberal arts community of learning that stands with the best in the country," said Mullen. We describe here the UNC-Asheville undergraduates who have enjoyed their research experiences at PARI.

2003-2004 ACADEMIC YEAR

Loring Watkins, a Mathematics major, was awarded a grant from the UNCA NCUR Program to analyze stellar spectra taken with the Mt. Palomar 60-inch telescope and echelle spectrograph.

Andrew Nicholson, a Physics major, is developing a new laboratory excercise for the School of Galactic Radio Astronomy Smiley Project. Andrew is supported through a Space Telescope Science Institute Hubble Space Telescope Education/Public Outreach Grant .

Jonathan Walker, a Computer Science major, is building and programming our robot that is being prepared for the new PARI ScienceZone project. Designed for K-8 students, the robot will be controllable over the Internet and conduct physics experiments. Jonathan is supported by a grant from the Janirve Foundation.

Michaela Logue continues to work on the Polaris monitoring project.

Dr. Joseph Daugherty , an astrophysicist in the UNCA Computer Science Department developed the PARI 4.6-m Smiley Radio telescope JAVA Internet controls. Dr. Daugherty now has his Object Technology class of nine students (Spring 2004) working on the scheduler and database related to the Smiley use.

2002-2003 ACADEMIC YEAR

Michaela Logue is working primarily on the Polaris monitoring project, but is also involved in the development of a temperature-sensitivity model for the 26-m West radio telescope receiver.

Matt Hoyle, a physics major at UNCA is developed the software and hardware for temperature stablization of the 26-m radio telescopes receivers.

Dr. Daugherty and his Object Technology class of nine students (Spring 2003) developed a new scheduler and database for the Smiley Project.

2001-2002 ACADEMIC YEAR

During the Fall 2001 Semester year, Dr. Randy Booker, Chair of UNCA Physics was on sabbatical. Dr. Booker brought one of his students, Paul Marshall. Together they began mapping regions of star formation at 1420 MHz and 4.8 GHz which Paul continued during the Spring 2002 academic year.

SUMMER 2001

During the Summer 2001, Jeff Tharp, at UNCA worked with us on the problems of daytime optical stellar photometry.