The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching named Kateryna Schray as the 2014 West Virginia Professor of the Year.
Schray was among nearly 400 top professors in the United States who were finalists. Schray, an English professor, describes her teaching philosophy as “embarrassingly simple.”
Schray is in Washington D.C. today where the national and state winners are being announced and honored at an awards luncheon at the National Press Club. She also will be attending an evening congressional reception at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Schray has been at Marshall since 1996 when she was hired as an assistant professor of English. She is the fifth professor in Marshall History to have won the prestigious award.
Fall enrollment is down at most of West Virginia’s public four-year colleges and universities.
The Charleston Gazette says state figures show about 65,400 students are enrolled in public four-year schools. That’s down 1.6 percent from the fall of 2013.
The largest drop occurred at Bluefield State College, where enrollment declined by nearly 11 percent.
West Virginia University’s enrollment fell by 1 percent.
Enrollment also declined at Concord, Shepherd, Fairmont State and West Liberty universities; Glenville State and Potomac State colleges; and the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine.
Marshall University gained 20 students, an increase of less than 1 percent. Enrollment also increased at West Virginia State University and West Virginia University Institute of Technology.
Some 2,000 boxes of documents, 500 gigabytes of data and hundreds of pieces of memorabilia now have a new home at West Virginia University after President E. Gordon Gee and Senator Jay Rockefeller announced Saturday the university’s library will serve as Rockefeller’s official Senatorial archive.
During a presentation in the Wise Library on the university’s main campus, Gee also announced the creation of school in the Senator’s namesake. The political science program has separated from the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and will join with a policy institute that’s in the works to create the John D. Rockefeller IV School of Policy and Politics.
“[The school] is going to cover a broad range of study. It’s going to do it openly, honestly and absolutely fearlessly. Some of it will be controversial and so be it,” Rockefeller said.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
A view of the room in WVU’s Wise Library.
The senator said he plans to take an active role in shaping the education students of the school will receive, pushing the focus toward policy and public service.
“My vision, and one that President Gee and WVU shares,” Rockefeller said Saturday, “is a place that ignites the embers of service and scholarship in scores of young men and women for years and years to come, setting them on a path to utterly transforming West Virginia and maybe just a little bit the world.”
According to Dr. Scott Crichlow, who will lead the new school, the university hopes to have the policy institute in place by the summer of 2015.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Sen. Rockefeller spoke with reporters after the announcement Saturday.
As for the photos, awards, pottery and art the Rockefeller’s donated, many pieces are currently on display in a gallery in the Wise Library. The documents are in the process of being transferred to the school and will be available for study by students, faculty and, most importantly to the senator, the public.
“I hope when people read these volumes, they will better understand both the legislative issues, but also me,” Rockefeller said, :and why it is I fought so hard and continued to and will ever continue for those least able to fight for themselves.”
Rockefeller announced his retirement in January 2013. A transplant who originally came to the state as a VISTA volunteer, the senator also pledged to stay in West Virginia.
“West Virginia is where I found my life’s purpose, my spiritual calling,” he said, “and it is in West Virginia that I hope my legacy will be remembered and my journey as a public servant understood.”
Just days after a shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High school in Washington, the Cabell County Board of Education announced a new plan to deal with the same type of situation in their facilities.
Starting later this week and next Cabell County schools will change the way teachers and students respond to a possible intruder in their school. While the schools had some procedures before, they’ve now adopted the ALICE Principles, expanding their response. ALICE stands for:
Alert
Lockdown
Inform
Counter
Evacuate.
The pieces are performed in no particular order and provide a framework for an intruder.Students will learn how to act during an evacuation and what happens if they need to barricade themselves in their current classroom. Among those new procedures, the county will start to incorporate safe rallying points for students somewhere near the building. They are also looking at ways to use technology and how to respond to the situation if cell towers aren’t working during an emergency.
Expeditionary education refers specifically to learning associated with exploration and hands-on experiences. An expeditionary learning school planned for Cabell County has already undergone some changes even before the doors open.
The original plan was to have the middle school ready to become an expeditionary school that would combine the two local elementary schools, Geneva Kent and Peyton, by August 2015.
But once the project was put out for bid, the original cost estimate of just under $7 million dollars proved to be too low. It’s now believed it will take just over $13 million to turn the former middle school into a facility that could become an elementary school that meets today’s standards. The board later increased the budget to over $14 million for the project.
The new time table pushes the opening of the facility from fall 2015 to at least the start of the 2016 calendar year.
So the board was left with the decision to delay the opening of the school by a year or put the two groups of elementary students together somewhere else.
Credit Cabell County Board of Education
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The former Geneva Kent Elementary will serve as the new school for approximately 460 students the first part of the 2015-2016 school year.
An expeditionary learning school uses unconventional teaching methods, that include less lecturing and more participation. The method also includes projects that involve the community.
The Cabell County Board of Education is still deciding on the new school’s name, school colors and a mascot.
The Education Alliance, in collaboration with Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, hosted the second annual West Virginia Education Summit on Monday, October 20, 2014.
Business, community, education and legislative leaders are all part of this innovative discuss on how we can work together to achieve excellence in education in West Virginia.
