WGSS students are known for their interdisciplinary reach, community activism, and inclusion-oriented way of looking and interacting with the world. Many of our students are double majors, partnering WGSS with History, Sociology, Mass Communication, or Environmental Sciences. We welcome students of any major / minor to build a WGSS internship, and we encourage students to couple internships with a Community Engaged Scholar project (Key Center has more information about this graduation distinction). All WGSS majors complete a capstone research project, and these reflect a wide range of genres and publication mediums.
Recent Senior Projects
- Lennon O’Hagan – “Queering Campus: What Can UNCA Faculty and Staff Do To Improve LGBT+ Student Experiences?” (qualitative and quantitative research project with focus groups and survey data ending with a formal climate report related to LGBTQ+ student experiences at UNC Asheville)
- Sarah Taylor – “Helping Pets Find Happiness in Their Forever Homes” (direct service with Mountain Pet Rescue developing a print training guide to help prevent pets who are adopted from the organization from being returned)
- Hannah Rose – “How Storytelling Can Promote Self-Growth and Social Change” (qualitative research related to high impact reflection practices in a book circle using Gayle Jones’s Corregidora)
- MJ Gamelin – “Using Paper Ephemera To Tell Our Stories Our Way” (investigating hobbycrafting as activism focusing on paper ephemera utilized as a tool for community building)
- Kiru Scollon – “The Lesbian Community During the AIDS Crisis” (examining how lesbian exclusion during the AIDS crisis impacted their chances for survival)
- Riley Hall – “Women and the Holocaust: How Gender Shaped Experiences in Nazi Germany” (literary case study of Edith Bruck, a Hungarian born Jewish woman that survived multiple concentration camps as a young girl, and Maria Mandl, an infamous female Nazi guard that was stationed at the highest rank at Auschwitz-Birkenau)
- Kathryn Maser – “Sterilization of the American South: Stories of Black and Indigenous Women” (an interactive digital timeline of events, legislation, and documents that supported medicalized eugenics)
- Rose Gilbert – “Human-Animal Bond and the Unhoused Population” (direct service project in partnership with Asheville Humane Society to help vaccinate and sterilize pets among the unhoused communities)