A longtime University of North Carolina at Asheville professor has been tapped to lead the school’s health and wellness research center, an operation dogged by a whistleblower lawsuit and a series of Carolina Journal reports on its use of federal grant money.
Aubrianne “Aubri” Rote, who has taught at the university for more than a decade and chairs its Health Sciences Department, took over as director of the North Carolina Center for Health & Wellness (NCCHW) on July 1, the university confirmed to Carolina Journal. She takes the reins from Emma Olson, who had run the center on an interim basis since December 2023. Olson, who is now associate director of the center, remains a named defendant in the whistleblower suit.
The leadership change lands while the center is still contending with claims from one of its own former researchers. Aidan Settman was brought in to help publish research from the center’s pandemic-era Student Health Ambassadors (SHA) program. According to his lawsuit, Settman was terminated four days after he took allegations of research misconduct and manipulated data to UNC Asheville’s top lawyer. He sued the university and Olson in February 2025, as reported by Carolina Journal in March.
A Buncombe County judge dismissed the suit in May 2025, but Settman appealed, and filed his opening brief in that appeal on Feb. 26, 2026. The appeal remains pending.
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