UNC Asheville is crystal-clear in its mission — and the students and the local community are reaping the results, Anne Ponder, the school’s chancellor, said during an Oct. 23 luncheon meeting of Leadership Asheville Forum at the County Club of Asheville

Ponder addressed “What’s New at UNCA?” About 70 people attended. 

The Asheville native became UNCA’s chancellor in October 2005, after serving for 10 years as president of Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H. She has a national reputation as a strategic planner.

Ponder said her talk would address surprising demonstrations of the liberal arts at UNCA, provide answers to “What are MOOCs?” and answer the  burning question of “How many days till basketball season starts” at UNCA?

She was introduced as someone who “traces her roots to the 1780s, when Asheville was known as Morristown.” (The town was renamed Asheville in 1797.) Ponder earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in English at UNC Chapel Hill.

Ponder began her address by noting that UNCA “continues to show up” in “all of the national rankings... We show up for quality for what we offer... and affordability.”

She added, “We are in the top 10 — top 10 — nationwide for all colleges and universities for students who graduate with the least debt.”

After citing several other achievements for UNCA, Ponder said, “And we have been recognized for our town-gown relations...”

Most important of all, she said, “UNC Asheville has never been more widely respected and known ... than now.”

“It’s not the Asheville-Biltmore College (founded in 1936) “from the middle of the 20th century” that offered two-year degree programs at what became the first state-supported community college. In 1966, the school graduated its first four-year degree-holders. On July 1, 1969, the institution’s name was changed to UNC Asheville. 

Regarding the changes from a community college through today, when UNCA is receiving top national recognition among its peer universities, Ponder said, “It’s an astonishing progress for a university in under a century.”

At that point, Ponder recognized the  accomplishments of two UNCA faculty members, beginning with Dr. Bert E. Holmes, the school’s Philip G. Carlson Distinguished Chair and professor of chemistry.

Specifically, she noted that he has earned the 2014 American Chemical Society Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution. “He has been recognized as the premiere faculty member in the country for this year,” the chancellor said, as the crowd applauded.

Another outstanding faculty member, Christopher Oakley, assistant professor of new media, recently drew the national spotlight for his discovery of Abraham Lincoln in a rare photo at the scene of the Gettysburg Address, Ponder noted.

Oakley, a historian and expert on Lincoln, has been working with students on a project called “Virtual Lincoln,” that will be ready to give the famous speech on the date and hour of the 150th anniversary of the “Gettysburg Address” — on the UNCA campus. 

“That’s the hardest thing in 3D (dimension) -- to revive a real-life human being,” Ponder said. “What happened is they discovered a photograph of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg that never had been known. So Christopher Oakley deserves applause.” (The crowd applauded.)

Ponder also noted that recently took the opportunity to know three UNCA students, with whom she made time to interact. “Even I, as chancellor,  get to know a dozen or so students each year.”

She reviewed the goals and aspirations of three students, all rising seniors. They are all exceptional and involved in a great many things. So those are three snapshots, working backward, that you don’t have to be rich to attend UNC Asheville.

“About 40 percent of our students are Pell (Grant)-eligible,” meaning their family incomes are under 40 percent, Ponder said.

She added, “Our students are very interested in multiple things…. I was walking across campus” recently and several students “just had come out of differential equations” class and” they were hanging around waiting to attend Mandarin Chinese” class.

After a pause, Ponder quipped, “So what I want you to have a sense of is UNC Asheville is for the really cool kids....”

“Another thing I’d like to brag about is there is a magnitude of economic profile for UNC Asheville, which is quite surprising. UNCA as a whole contributes about $268 million” to the local economy. ‘Our students alone spend over $30 million per year” in the local economy, she said. Regarding UNCA’s various boosts to the local economy, Ponder quipped, “Now I’m an English major, but I know that’s really good.”

Turning to MOOCs, which Ponder defined as “massive open online courses,” she said, “They are created by some other entities. They are offered for educational credit online for free. They tend to choose the very best speaker or drama. That particular trend has bloomed in the last couple of years.”

In her career in academic, Ponder noted that, “in the mid-’90s, the academic purposes of the Internet began to be more widely used. … It changed what it meant to be a scholar... All of a sudden, small colleges like UNC Asheville could be a winner because you could live in Asheville and still be a world-class scholar.”

“The places where there are rich intellectual communities… all of a sudden that comes to our threshold. As long as our faculty keeps up... So the competition that MOOCs will offer for community college or large lectures” will be a good thing. “So all of a sudden, UNC Asheville is optimally positioned....”

Finally, she said with a broad smile, here is “an answer to my third topic: ‘How many days till the start of the basketball season?’ The answer is ... 16 days.” The crowd cheered.