Carolina Moments

A group of our admissions ambassadors asked their fellow students, "What's your favorite Carolina moment?" What's the one moment that epitomizes their experience as a Carolina student? Check it out!

If you're a current student interested in applying to become an admissions ambassador, see their website for all the details!

J-School Tells the Powerful Story of Water in New Multimedia Project

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of corresponding with Stephanie Bullins about 100 Gallons, the latest production from Powering a Nation.

Can you give us a quick orientation to Powering a Nation?
Powering a Nation is a fellowship program offered by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication that aims to report on energy news with transparency, engagement and trust. It was initially funded by News21 as part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, which allowed some of the top journalism schools in the nation to experiment with journalism in the changing landscape of new media. In its fourth year now, Powering a Nation has received more than 45 national and international awards for its storytelling, visuals and interactivity.

Clearly, there’s a strong correlation between this year’s Powering a Nation theme and the UNC academic theme of Water in our World, but why “100 Gallons”?

This year, on the heels of Coal: A Love Story, the Powering a Nation fellows wanted to focus on a more non-traditional form of energy. As we were tossing around ideas for what "powers" our lives, water stood out as an important resource. In the weeks before the project truly started, we spent countless hours brainstorming, pitching stories, revising and pitching again in an endless cycle. Eventually we decided the story we wanted to tell was our deep connection to water, from birth to death. We debated the title for the first several weeks of the project before we finally landed on 100 Gallons, which is the amount of water an average American uses on a daily basis. 100 Gallons, as a title, emphasizes our lifelong connection to water by pointing out the importance we place on it every day.

How did you select the individual stories for the feature reports? (And did the team really spend 7 hours in a sewer?)

In the beginning, we knew we wanted to tell traditional character-driven stories in addition to creating the visually exciting centerpiece video. For some of the stories, the videographers knew what they were going to film. Jon Kasbe, a senior Communications major, had spoken with Steve Duncan and seen his work before meeting up with him in the sewers of New York City (where he really did spend seven hours filming). But some of the stories came to us by surprise. While live-tweeting a fracking rally in Ohio, we happened to meet Christine Moore, a woman struggling with leaving her farm because she feared her water might be contaminated by the controversial natural gas drilling practice. She invited us back to her home and we followed her on a hunch that her story would be powerful. Now Christine's story, which took three visits to Ohio to capture, has become one of the larger feature stories on the site. 

Now that the site has launched, what’s next?
Now that we've finished this project, most of the fellows and student contributors have been thrust into the "real world," where we're all looking for jobs, while a few of the team members will be returning to UNC to finish their undergraduate or graduate degrees. We plan to keep promoting 100 Gallons and we hope that it will continue to engage users and encourage them to explore the human connection to water. As for Powering a Nation, we're all looking forward to seeing what next year's group of fellows will produce.

Last question: whose unlucky cat got dunked?

Dante, the unlucky cat, actually belongs to Cath Spangler, a former Powering a Nation fellow. While the videographers were in New York, they were able to meet up with her, where she's working as a multimedia producer for The New York Times. None of the shots in the video are staged — they were all collected as real moments in people's lives — so we were all surprised and excited when the videographers came back with footage of Dante's first bath.

In addition to 100 Gallons, you can also view previous Powering a Nation projects online. Much thanks to Stephanie and the Powering a Nation team for their incredible work!

Student Stories

Last week, we had a fantastic time criss-crossing campus with a photographer, capturing student faces, voices and stories during a three-day photo shoot. We met with more than 40 students to snap their pictures and talk to them on video about their experiences at Carolina. I interviewed some amazing students who are doing extraordinary things--muscular dystrophy research, community development work with local schools, studying the conflict zones of the Republic of Georgia, to name just a few. I was blown away by these students, and I am a pretty tough one to impress.



The three-day shoot was tiring, but fun. We must have walked back and forth across this campus a dozen times. (Not all that bad a walk at all, as our Director Stephen Farmer wrote below, but a more difficult feat after the sixth time in one day!)

We're looking forward to sharing the video and stories that we are recording with all of you through this blog, as well as on our new website. We're redesigning the website, so look forward to much more multimedia and lots of opportunities to hear directly from current students.



But in the meantime we are getting ready to begin reading your applications! Consider this my first official reminder: the first deadline is just over three weeks away! I'm going to nag you as badly as your mother.

Below is a short excerpt from one of our interviews. Julia is a senior chemistry major; she's the one doing the muscular dystrophy research. When I asked her to tell me more about her research, her eyes just lit up and she enthusiastically began talking. I think that's the thing I love most about being on this campus--people here seem to find a passion, and they just run with it. The enthusiasm is contagious and inspiring. Enjoy!