The inaugural cohort of the University of North Carolina Asheville’s new master’s program in environmental resilience arrived on campus at a fraught and fortuitous moment.
The university’s announcement of the program last April came amid growing uproar over its plan to develop 45 acres of wooded campus. By the time classes began in August, the school had unveiled a plan centered on a 5,000-seat soccer stadium, then hit the brakes after a tidal wave of criticism.
Nine of the cohort’s 10 students got their undergraduate degrees from UNCA, and they were well aware of the tension around the woods. Willow McNeil, who majored in biology at UNCA, said she got flack from some community activists, who asked why she would return to a school poised to raze one of the city’s largest swaths of urban forest. Angie Herbert, who had been a geoscience undergrad, felt conflicted enough that she contemplated a similar program at Warren Wilson College — then had a revelation while attending an on-campus pro-woods protest…