The series Where We Live: History, Nature, and Culture, will present a program called “Beautiful, Beneficial Bees.”

The program will be focused on beekeeping in Western North Carolina and will cover a brief history of beekeeping, structure of a hive, what it takes to be a beekeeper here, issues that we face, the need for bees and what the average person can do to support bees and other pollinators. 

Immediately after Jackson County Public Schools Associate Superintendent Jake Buchanan and Southwestern Community College President Don Tomas proposed their respective departmental appropriations for fiscal year 2026-27, Jackson County Manager Kevin King presented commissioners with a May 19 draft county budget that left both requests unfulfilled.  

Western Carolina University is celebrating a milestone achievement that underscores its commitment to student success, interdisciplinary learning and hands-on research.

This spring, Asratun Sarmin Anjum, an international student from Bangladesh, became the first WCU graduate in 25 years to earn a degree rooted in physics — an accomplishment made possible through a customized, interdisciplinary academic pathway. 

Western Carolina University will launch a new Master of Science in engineering program in fall 2026, expanding graduate opportunities and responding to growing regional demand for engineers with advanced credentials. 

The in-person program, based at WCU’s Cullowhee campus, blends advanced coursework with applied research and interdisciplinary collaboration.

A Western Carolina University geochemistry professor is leading new research in Antarctica that could reshape scientists’ understanding of the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Shane Schoepfer recently returned from an expedition to Seymour Island near the Antarctic Peninsula, where he and a team of researchers collected fossil and sediment samples dating to the end-Cretaceous extinction about 66 million years ago. 

This week’s Haywood County Commission meeting featured over a dozen speakers decrying the board’s decision to not grant the full funding requested by school officials ahead of the budget vote. 

The meeting began with County Manager Bryant Morehead presenting the budget, as he’d done during an earlier meeting. The budget looked almost the exact same as the prior presentation with one exception, an additional $1 million fund balance appropriation to bolster school funding, leaving the county $700,000 short of meeting the $3 million funding increase request. 

When Jackson commissioners on May 5 reviewed a draft document outlining the framework of a new county library board upon departure from Fontana Regional Library system, Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper, clad in a Turning Point USA T-shirt, was quick to express her central grievance: “I don’t think [a board member] ought to have a library card.” 

Bitter laughter erupted from the audience. 

Historically, Haywood County Schools has run a tight ship in the face of slim county appropriations. Last year, it pulled from its own fund balance to finance operations; in 2022, it cut 36 positions. 

But for the coming academic year, Superintendent Trevor Putnam made a dire case for additional funding. Any further cuts, he said, would deny HCS students a quality education.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. REACH advocates routinely work with victims and survivors of all forms of sexual assault and abuse. After 38 years in this work, I can say, without reservation, that sexual assault, particularly child sexual assault, is our most underreported crime. It devastates victims in innumerable ways and leads to many other forms of both victimization and perpetration. 

Haywood Community College President Shelley White got little pushback for the additional $268,000 she has asked for from county commissioners in HCC’s 2026-27 budget proposal, but Haywood County Schools Superintendent Trevor Putnam’s request for an extra $3 million encountered some resistance.