By Annie Stuart
Congratulations to the 2026-27 Hunter Scholar, Dr. Amber Vermeesch! The Hunter Scholar Award, sponsored by Hunter Library, the Graduate School of Research, and the Office of the Provost, supports faculty research through Hunter Library. Scholars are selected based on their proposals’ use of the library, opportunities for graduate students, and longevity of the project. Dr. Vermeesch is the first Hunter Scholar from the College of Human and Health Sciences and serves as a distinguished associate professor in the Department of Nursing. Her project, BELLA: Bringing Elder Living & Longevity to All – Rediscovering the Foundations of Dignified Communities of the Aging in the US, examines historical senior living models that successfully balanced autonomy, dignity, community, and continuity of care that can be translated into a contemporary framework. This project will lead her through archival research with Hunter Library, systematic literature reviews, and public policy to promote physical and emotional wellness for nearly 18% of the population aged 65 and older.
Dr. Vermeesch has been a family nurse practitioner since 2006 and became a certified nurse educator in 2017. Her nursing expertise is in physical and emotional wellness, particularly through intersections with nature. Within this expertise, she has investigated lifestyle modification, resilience, coping strategies, cultural sensibility, physical activity, and integrated health among vulnerable populations.
Yiqing Yang, Associate Professor of Sociology and International Studies and the 2025-2026 Hunter Scholar, shared her experience at the Faculty Scholarship Celebration on March 26. Dr. Yang’s project studied the COVID-19 pandemic in Western North Carolina. During her remarks, Dr. Yang reflected, “One of the things I learned over the past year is that answering even seemingly straightforward questions about COVID-19 is not simple…A significant part of this project has involved identifying limitations and thinking carefully about how to approach them in a rigorous way.”
“At the same time,” Dr. Yang said, “we’ve been building a structured timeline of the pandemic as it unfolded across Western North Carolina—connecting global and national events to what was happening locally, county by county. That kind of contextual work is essential if we want to understand not just what happened, but how communities experienced it.”
The library expresses its thanks to the members of this year’s Hunter Scholar selection committee: Emily Naser-Hall, Yiqing Yang, Chelsea Weddle, Kloo Hansen, and Heidi Buchanan.
Author Bio: Annie Stuart, an English and Political Science major at WCU, completed a Professional Writing internship in the fall of 2025. She continued as a student worker at Hunter Library in the spring of 2026.
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