Chris is WVPB's North Central/Morgantown Reporter and covers the education beat. Chris spent two years as the digital media editor at The Dominion Post newspaper in Morgantown. Before coming to West Virginia, he worked in immigration advocacy and education in the Washington, D.C. region. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
Toyota West Virginia is expanding its high school education program in West Virginia where students get hands-on manufacturing experience before graduation.
Toyota West Virginia is expanding its high school education program in West Virginia where students get hands-on manufacturing experience before graduation.
Juniors and seniors in Putnam County can now join the 4T Academy, a work-based learning program at the Buffalo, West Virginia facility.
Students gain real world experience in electrical, pneumatics, hydraulics, precision machining, industrial automation, robotics and more while working alongside and learning from industry professionals. Seniors receive an hourly wage during their final semester in the program.
Toyota West Virginia established the program last year in a partnership with Kanawha County Schools along with The Education Alliance and Purdue University’s Indiana Manufacturing Competitiveness Center.
Twenty-four Putnam County students from five schools will join 12 Kanawha County students from eight schools in the program next year.
Millions of federal dollars will help early childhood education and development in the Mountain State.
Millions of federal dollars will help early childhood education and development in the Mountain State.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded close to $13 million for two Head Start programs in West Virginia.
Head Start supports early childhood education and emotional development from birth to age 5, as well as providing health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and families.
Close to $8 million will go to the Southwestern Community Action Council which services Wayne, Lincoln, Cabell, and Mason Counties.
The remaining amount – more than $5 million dollars – will go to the Community Action of South Eastern West Virginia, which services Mercer, Summers, and Monroe counties.
The West Virginia National Cemeteries Project pairs history graduate students from West Virginia University with high school students from Grafton High School to delve into the lives of veterans buried in the local cemeteries.
Kyle Warmack, West Virginia Humanities Council program officer and the project’s facilitator, said the project’s goal was to foster deeper engagement with the stories and sacrifice of local veterans, but also to promote important research and writing skills.
“At the Humanities Council, I have the privilege of working with a lot of folks in academia at the college level, and when you talk to them, there can sometimes be frustration with the students that they have coming in, and the level of experience they have with research and writing,” he said.
For the cemeteries project, Warmack helped pair history graduate students from West Virginia University with high school students from Grafton High School to delve into the lives of veterans buried in the local cemeteries. Grafton was a logical place for Warmack to start the project.
“Look at Grafton and the long history that they have with the cemetery, with the Memorial Day parade they have here,” he said. “Parades are wonderful, these are wonderful displays of both community and patriotic sentiment. But when do we get a chance to tell the stories behind the veterans that we’re celebrating? There are thousands of headstones in these cemeteries.”
The Grafton National Cemetery was established in 1867 as a permanent burial site for Union soldiers who had died in hospitals and on battlefields throughout West Virginia. Two years later, the town held its first Memorial Day parade, a tradition that continues to this day. Then, in the 1960s, the West Virginia National Cemetery was established five miles away in Pruntytown as the Grafton cemetery began to fill up.
Some of the students from Grafton High School and West Virginia University that participated in the West Virginia National Cemeteries Project pose for a photograph at the Taylor County Historical and Genealogical Society Monday, April 24, 2023. Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
For high school students like Karigan Roudte, who researched the life and World War II service of twins Charles and William Lewellyn of Harrisville, the process was eye-opening.
“It’s an amazing experience. I honestly have never really thought about war as much as I have,” she said. “It’s brought so much insight to me to see how these twin brothers, they grew up together and they died together, how they intersect. It’s honestly a real changing thing, how I thought about war and life, and it’s brought such a new world and opened so many different doors to me. I think it’s a really great thing that they brought us to be able to experience.”
Becky Bartlett is a teacher and librarian at Grafton High School, and along with her colleague Richard Zukowski, she supervises the students’ research. Bartlett said the project is an engaging way for her students to learn research skills that go well beyond the computer.
“Probably one of the most important things for the kids of the 21st century to learn is that not everything is online. Since I have been the librarian, I have literally had students say to me, ‘It’s all online,’” she said. “They don’t understand, because they’ve grown up in a life that they can easily get online and search, that sometimes you have to go find a book. Sometimes you have to go to the courthouse and pull records. Sometimes you have to actually contact people to get interviews that were recorded, things like that, that aren’t online.”
Students had the opportunity to learn about major military events like the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in World War II, to the more human aspects of service, like Pauline Tetrick of Bridgeport who joined the Women’s Army Corps at the age of 36, at the end of the Korean War.
Beyond hard skills, one aspect of the project that Bartlett likes is that she can see it fostering a deeper interest in history, one that she hopes will last her students a lifetime.
“We have learned a lot just about the history of these wars that these veterans served in. I did not know the story behind the USS Indianapolis until we did this project,” she said. “There’s that rabbit hole, you learn something, and then you see the connection to it in so many places. And I think they’ll probably be learning stuff for the rest of their lives.”
One of the displays created by students presents information about veteran Bud Greathouse, who was killed in action serving on the USS Indianapolis. Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
That level of engagement is certainly evident when speaking with Emily Bublitz who is a graduate student of history at West Virginia University.
“We do a lot of the back-end research,” she said. “In the initial stages, we go in and we have this huge master list of everyone who has been buried at the National Cemetery, then we go through and research the vets to try and get one that we find that has enough materials on them to know that we can write a biography based off of them, because some people, there’s nothing. Maybe, there’s like just a draft card, but there’s nothing else.”
For Bublitz, the most rewarding aspect of the project is precisely why it was established: making a human connection to the name on the gravestone.
“The more I learn about these veterans like that, the more I care about them and their stories, and I want to do them justice,” she said. “That becomes very central to how I go about doing my work with this. I see it as giving them back their personhood, because they’re more than just veterans. That’s such a core part of who they were, but they’re also more than that. I want them to be remembered as fully fleshed out people who had families and interests and hobbies.”
The West Virginia Humanities Council hopes to expand the project to more schools in the coming years.
A Charleston area teacher has won a technology award partially sponsored by the CIA.
A Charleston area teacher has won a technology award partially sponsored by the CIA.
Tiffany Pace, a STEM educator at Cross Lanes Elementary School, was named one of the inaugural winners of the Central Intelligence Agency Mission Possible Operation Advance Technology Competition Wednesday.
The award comes with a $60,000 computer and coding lab for her Charleston classroom, as well as laptops and the choice of other STEM equipment.
Pace is one of five winners in the competition and was selected from the Southeast Region, which includes schools from Washington, D.C. to Florida, and as far west as Louisiana.
The Operation Advance Technology program aims to help improve science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education in schools and is sponsored by the CIA and managed by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Monongalia County Democratic Party has released a short list of candidates to replace Del. Danielle Walker in the state House of Delegates.
The Monongalia County Democratic Party has released a short list of candidates to replace Del. Danielle Walker in the West Virginia House of Delegates.
Earlier this month, Walker, the only Black woman in the West Virginia Legislature, stepped down as delegate for the 81st House District to become the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia. She also stepped down from her position as the vice chair of the state Democratic Party.
The Monongalia County Democratic Party has submitted three candidates to Gov. Jim Justice for his appointment to the remainder of Walker’s two-year term, which began this January.
Candidates include:
Anitra Hamilton, president of the Morgantown/Kingwood Branch of the NAACP of West Virginia.
Emily Harden, a Presbyterian pastor.
Marly Ynigues, who is seeking a seat on Morgantown’s city council in Tuesday’s election.
In the announcement, Mindy Salango, Chair of the Monongalia County Democratic Executive Committee, said she was, “thrilled at the enthusiasm of the many Democrats who reached out to help fill the seat.”
The 81st district encompasses a portion of Morgantown, including the neighborhoods next to West Virginia University.
West Virginia University initially adopted a test-optional admissions policy ahead of the Fall 2020 semester, when restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic were keeping many college-bound high school students from taking either the ACT or SAT.
West Virginia University (WVU) has permanently adopted a test-optional admissions policy.
WVU initially adopted a test-optional admissions policy ahead of the Fall 2020 semester, when restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic were keeping many college-bound high school students from taking either the ACT or SAT.
George Zimmerman, assistant vice president for WVU Enrollment Management, said a variety of ways for students to engage with education have emerged, and higher education is evolving and changing.
“We’re not trying to keep students out at WVU,” he said. “We want to give students as much access as possible to a college education, and giving students the ability to make that decision as to whether or not they want to submit a test score, and if that’s the best representation of them, in terms of their academics, really opens that door for a lot of students.”
Nationwide, more than 1,800 institutions are test-optional or test-free, according to FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.
Zimmerman said the university’s recently announced budget shortfalls, as well as national drops in higher education enrollment, did not play a role in the decision.
“We were navigating a large societal change in terms of a global pandemic that we’ve never been through before, and students never been through before,” he said.
Students have the option of submitting test scores with their application, later or not at all.
“This policy is actually more about giving students that option to be able to apply with their scores or not, and really providing access and removing barriers for education,” Zimmerman said. “What we’ve seen nationally is that students like institutions to be test optional. I think there’s a lot of other characteristics that we’re really looking into and taking into consideration and making sure that we’re again, setting that student up for success.”
