Higher Education

New River Community and Technical College will offer an Appalachian Folklore and Heritage Writing class at its Nicholas County Campus in Summersville, West Virginia, on Thursday evenings beginning Sept. 16, 2021, from 6 to 8 p.m. At the conclusion of the five-week course, participants will receive a bound, hard-back book of the stories written in … Read more

West Virginia University plans to fully reopen its campuses this fall, according to school officials who attribute the decision to continued decreases in cases of the pandemic and the knowledge that vaccines are safe and effective. COVID-19 numbers within the U.S. and West Virginia have significantly decreased as the number of vaccinations has increased, according … Read more

The spring 2021 semester at West Virginia University begins on January 19, and WVU officials are urging students and employees to exercise extreme caution. The largest university in the Mountain State, enrollment at its main campus in Morgantown usually exceeds 25,000 annually while more than 29,000 enrolled statewide, including those at its new southern campus … Read more

Dr. W. Franklin Evans has been named the 37th president of West Liberty University, located at West Liberty, West Virginia, in the northern panhandle of the Mountain State near Pittsburgh, Pa. Evans officially took the helm on Jan. 1, 2021, is the first Black president in the school’s 183-year history and follows President Stephan Greiner, … Read more

Millipedes represent some of the earliest known terrestrial animals and are highly understudied, but two West Virginia University researchers are working to shine a light on these important invertebrates. Several years ago, Matt Kasson and Angie Macias set out to better understand the association between the millipede Brachycybe lecontii and fungi, its life-sustaining food. “Millipedes serve an important function in ecosystems. … Read more

The National Science Foundation has awarded a one-year $999,000 planning grant to Shepherd University to develop a comprehensive plan to cost-effectively connect the university to the Internet2 national backbone. “This planning grant will support Shepherd’s exploration of the feasibility to connect to Internet2,” said Dr. Robert Warburton, dean, College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. … Read more

West Virginia University’s Duncan Lorimer might be the “godfather of the fast radio burst,” but a pair of international students have taken exploring these mysterious cosmic flashes to a new level. In 2007, Lorimer was credited for helping discover fast radio bursts—the intense, unexplained pulses of energy, light years away, that pop for mere milliseconds. … Read more

Mark Anthony Manchin, Ph.D., has been selected as the 25th president of Glenville State College, according to officials at the school in central West Virginia. The college’s Board of Governors made the selection after an extensive search process that culminated last week in on-campus interviews with five finalists at Glenville, West Virginia. “I am excited … Read more

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity for reform that could break the chains of outdated, and perhaps ineffective, approaches to policing, says a former police officer and professor of sociology at West Virginia University. Dr. James Nolan, who spent 13 years with the Wilmington Police Department in Delaware, says the outbreak is, in part, … Read more