Vaughn Schmutz appointed inaugural senior Gambrell Faculty Fellow

By Asha Ellison

Associate Professor of Sociology Vaughn Schmutz, Ph.D., was recently selected as the senior faculty fellow for the 2025-26 Gambrell Faculty Fellowship. He is the first senior faculty fellow in the history of the program. The Gambrell Faculty Fellowship began in 2019 to support innovative scholarship that leads to an improved quality of life for all who call the Charlotte region home. 

The fellowship is led by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute (Institute), a unit within the Division of Academic Affairs and the region’s applied research and community outreach center. The Institute works across complex arenas that can influence our shared quality of life. Some of those areas include arts and culture, education, the economy, the environment, health and mental health, housing, justice and safety, civic engagement, belonging, transportation and more. Since its inception, the fellowship has  named 49 faculty fellows and supported 30 research projects that represent seven UNC Charlotte colleges.

In this role, Schmutz, who was a 2020-21 Gambrell Faculty Fellow, will guide and mentor Fellows across cohorts. His primary focus will be to strengthen connections between faculty researchers and the Charlotte region, helping to solve barriers to research completion and assisting with research translation and dissemination efforts. Additionally, he will assist Institute leadership with the design, evaluation, and implementation of programs that enhance the effectiveness of overall fellowship.

“I look forward to being able to brainstorm with the fellows about how to connect with the community,” says Schmutz, who believes in the power of interdisciplinary collaboration. “If I can impart any knowledge about what I’ve learned over the past 5 years, that is amazing, but I’d also love to hear where they want to take their projects, who they want to meet, who they want to talk to, who they want to know about their research, and how that could develop into larger interactions, events, or channels of communication that really make a difference in our community.

Schmutz, who grew up in western Massachusetts, credits his early interest in sociology with the world events and cultural shifts that occurred in his youth and early adulthood. Those early experiences and reflections helped Schmutz realize there is a sociology of everything.

“I felt like there was no way I could ever get bored pursuing this career because there is so much to study – it evolves,” he says. “Even the Gambrell Fellowship, for me, represented a little shift in my research path that now has shaped much of what I’ve done the last 5 years.” 

Schmutz holds two doctorate degrees: one in sociology from Emory University and another in arts and culture studies from Erasmus University Rotterdam. His published research has appeared in interdisciplinary journals such as Poetics, Cultural Sociology, and the International Journal of Comparative Sociology, to name a few. In 2019, Schmutz became a founding advisor for Arts Impact Charlotte, a community-university partnership that connects artists and organizations focused on social impact. Today, he continues his work at UNC Charlotte as an associate professor of sociology and the director of the master’s program in interdisciplinary studies. 

“We are excited to welcome Vaughn to the leadership of the Gambrell Faculty Fellows,” says Dr. Lori Thomas, director of the Charlotte Urban Institute and the original developer of the fellowship program. “Vaughn’s work as a faculty fellow in 2020 emerged from interdisciplinary collaboration and he, in turn, was able to use the fellowship as a springboard for future collaborative efforts that continue to benefit our community. He brings that vision to his leadership and will be able to support new faculty fellows in expanding the impact of their work.”

Vaughn joins Thomas and Dr. Liz Morrell, who lead the fellowship program for the Institute.