Higher Education Story Archives - Page 42 of 42 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

WVU President leaving for job at Clemson

A West Virginia University official says the university plans to start a search process for an interim president after President Jim Clements was named to the same post at Clemson University.

     WVU Board of Governors Chairman Jim Dailey says procedures are in place to form a search committee. He says that will start “in the immediate near future.”

     Clements was named Clemson’s 15th president on Monday. He had served as WVU’s president since 2009.

     When Mike Garrison announced his resignation as WVU’s president in June 2008, an interim president was named a month later.

“When President Clements came to West Virginia University, he brought with him an air of excitement about the future of our land grant institution,” said Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.

“Since then, he has built upon the University’s strengths–bringing new opportunities to both WVU’s students and our state. I’m grateful for President Clements’ service–and I wish him and his wife, Beth, and their girls, much success at Clemson.”

The following is a letter Clements released to the university community Monday:

Almost five years ago my family and I moved to Morgantown, West Virginia. At that time we didn’t really know anyone in the state. We quickly learned that West Virginia is filled with wonderful, hard-working, loyal, and dedicated people – and that West Virginia University is made up of great faculty, staff, administrators, and students. I am so thankful and honored that I had the chance to serve with so many outstanding people in the pursuit of the important land-grant mission at WVU.

Together, we built momentum for our University. We have broken numerous records including many in enrollment, fundraising, and research. We have been blessed to have alumni and friends who give so much to make a difference in the lives of others. The support through private giving has been overwhelming. Our hospital system has grown significantly with WVU health care providers saving lives as they reach out to every corner of the state. Our extension program expanded, and continues to be recognized as the go-to place in the local communities. Although there is much more to do in terms of salaries and benefits for the faculty and staff, we have made critical gains in funding more competitive salaries. We are in the midst of nearly $1 billion in construction projects that will provide an enhanced learning environment, better research labs, patient care, and improved housing for our students. These projects are building a better future for the generations that follow us.

We accepted an invitation into the Big 12 – one of the major power conferences in college athletics. This move was also about a realignment in academics and research with universities that share a common profile and mission with WVU. The benefits of this new partnership will continue to grow over time.

We tried our best to keep tuition low for our students – and we should be proud that our tuition is still several thousand dollars below our peer average both for in-state and out-of-state students. And, through strategic investments and the efforts of our faculty and staff, we have kept our academic quality high. In the past few years our students won numerous national awards, proving time and again that WVU can compete with anyone in the world. And, I am very proud of the fact that during my time at WVU we graduated 25,473 students. The amazing faculty and staff at WVU deserve all of the credit for this accomplishment.

When my family arrived at WVU we didn’t realize how much we would fall in love with the state and the university. Beth and I knew that it would be very difficult for any university to convince us to leave WVU. However, Clemson is a university that is very special to our family. Beth’s family lives near the university and her two brothers, and a sister-in-law, are graduates of Clemson.

I wasn’t looking to leave WVU. In fact, when I first was called I simply responded that I love WVU, the students, faculty and staff and the community. However, after much thought, reflection and prayer, Beth and I decided that this is an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up.

West Virginia and WVU will always have a very special place in our hearts. Three of our children currently attend WVU and they love it. Our son is in his fourth year at WVU and will graduate soon. Our twin daughters recently graduated from Morgantown High School. They are now enjoying their first semester at WVU.

Our youngest daughter Grace, who has special needs, did well at North Elementary School and Suncrest Middle School. She has been surrounded by loving and kind friends. However, as she enters the next phase of her life we believe that having her extended family close to her is something that will be very important.

In addition, Beth and I developed many strong friendships that we will cherish forever. We are so thankful to the large number of people who have been incredibly kind to us and our children.

We are also thankful to the WVU Board of Governors. They are an outstanding group of individuals who truly care about all aspects of the university. Their advice and counsel have been instrumental in our success. We are also thankful for the support of the governor, our elected officials at the state and federal levels, the Higher Education Policy Commission, the senior leadership team at WVU, the WVU Foundation Board, the WVU Alumni Board, the WVU Hospital Boards, the WV United Health System Board, and the wonderful faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of WVU.

We are very proud of what we accomplished together.

We wish you all the very best in the future. May God Bless the entire Mountaineer Nation now and always!

Festival of Ideas lecture to focus on WVU’s struggle to self govern

As part of Mountaineer Week at West Virginia University, WVU’s Festival of Ideas lecture series will host the author of a new book about WVU’s history over the last six decades.

Ronald Lewis is Professor Emeritus of history at WVU and the author of the new book, “Aspiring to Greatness: West Virginia University since World War II.” In the book, Lewis focuses on three significant factors that influenced the university and others like it across the nation:

Growth
Diversification
Commercialization

“These are actually transformative periods of higher education,” said Lewis. “Where after them, higher education is no longer the same than the period before.”

In his book, Lewis explains that federal programs after World War II, such as the GI Bill, allowed millions of people to attend college and led to WVU’s expansion.

The expansion forced WVU and other schools across the nation to expand facilities, create programs and hire more faculty. But Lewis says the usual pipeline of middle class white males who went to college dried up in the 1960’s and diversification of WVU’s student body came into play.

“I mean the United States was transformed by the civil rights movement,” Lewis said. “…the university has changed but I think it is because the country has changed profoundly.”

This expansion and diversification happened so dramatically that it revolutionized WVU’s infrastructure and ideology. Lewis also explains how one trend led to another, and that’s where we come to his third theme: commercialization. As public funding for public institutions, including WVU, has decreased in recent years, universities are looking at other sources for revenue, including grants, tuition and fundraising. Lewis also says this time period has universities thinking more like a business.

“It’s not really a business even though it kind of has to run like one. We don’t manufacture things, we generate knowledge and technology through research so that’s why we have to find a way for it to work for us,” said Lewis.

But according to Lewis, there is a fourth influential factor to WVU’s aspirations to be a great university. The struggle for self-governance is the focus of Lewis’s Festival of Ideas lecture Tuesday, Nov. 5.

“Self-governance is recognized by most higher education experts as one of the key ingredients in becoming a great university, that distinguishes a great university,” Lewis said.

According to Lewis, WVU struggled to govern itself in the 1970’s when the Board of Regents in Charleston controlled some of the university’s operations. Lewis will discuss more past and present-day issues that impact WVU’s quest to be among the great universities in the country at the Festival of Ideas lecture in the Mountainlair Ballrooms at 7:30 p.m.

Diane Jeanty is a Journalism Student at West Virginia University.

Lumberjackin Bluegrassin Jamboree celebrates 31 years

The Lumberjackin’ Bluegrassin’ Jamboree took full swing earlier this month at Twin Falls State Park. The annual event includes speed competitions,…

The Lumberjackin’ Bluegrassin’ Jamboree took full swing earlier this month at Twin Falls State Park. The annual event includes speed competitions, vendors, and bluegrass music.

Three school clubs from Penn State, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia University competed in various team events such as a log roll, cross cutting, chainsaw, bolt splitting and chopping. The students’ participation exposes them to the timber industry.

Twin Falls Activity Coordinator, Brian Danford, oversaw the student competition.

“All these students are learning how to, basically what people did in the olden days because they used cross cut saws and hand axes because, to fell trees,” Danford said. “Now days it’s more mechanized and they have chainsaws and everything else in order to get the wood out. But we want to teach them the culture so and get them some good competition.”

The co-ed teams competed for most of the day. There were male, female and co-ed events, including the jack and jill competition, where a male and female crosscut saw team would go against a team from another school.

The jamboree celebrated its 31st year. It’s a community event that focuses on the importance of the timber industry in West Virginia.

According to the West Virginia Forestry Association, the industry contributes just over $3 billion dollars to the state’s economy. Traditionally, timber ranks as one of West Virginia’s largest major industries following coal.

When the western Virginia, now West Virginia, virgin forests were discovered, they were filled with large trees, some reaching heights of 140 feet and 27 feet in diameter, which included oak, maple, poplar and the American Chestnut.

The chestnuts were killed off in the early 20th century by a fungus. Efforts are currently underway by the American Chestnut Foundation to restore the tree. Other trees under attack include the state’s hardwoods by the gypsy moth and hemlock trees by the hemlock woolly adelgid. The West Virginia Department of Agriculture is working to combat the adelgid through chemicals and natural predators. But Amanda Cadle who was watching the competition, shared a unique way of replanting hemlock trees, which she learned from a family friend.

“And so my friend, wanting to preserve the memory of his father,” she explained, “took his idea and cut some branches off of that tree right after they cut it. Probably about the size of a seedlin, you know about this big around. You just take a hatchet and you just kinda split the end and you just plant it in fertile soil.”

Cadle added that soaking the branches in water before planting them is helpful. She says her technique is working. However, her trees are in an isolated area away from the adelgid’ at a lower elevation and therefore in a somewhat protected environment. Whether or not her technique will work in other locations remains to be seen.

In addition to the lumberjack and jill competition, the Lumberjackin’ Bluegrassin’ Jamboree held a variety of other attractions including vendor’s arts and crafts, bluegrass music, square dancing, and hayrides.

The three day jamboree usually hosts around 3,500 visitors.

This year, Penn State came in First, WVU second, and Virginia Tech came in third.

WVU Medical School cooking up lessons in nutrition

Students at the West Virginia University School of Medicine Martinsburg, W.Va., campus are getting a side dish of cooking lessons along with their regular medical training.

The WVU Medical School’s Eastern Division is trying to fill a void in doctor education through a new class called Med Chef.

The 14 students who are currently earning degrees in the Eastern Panhandle are taking the class. Dr. Rosemarie Cannarella Lorenzetti, associate dean for student services, says medical students have not traditionally learned about nutrition

“In bio chemistry in their second year they’re taught a little bit about how glucose is taken by the cell and how the muscles utilize glucose or stored sugars like glycogen, those kinds of things,” Lorenzetti said. “But when you ask a typical third year student what kind of diet advice they give to the patient they say ‘oh we’re not supposed to do that that’s supposed to come from dieticians.’”

“And certainly in my over 30 years of practice as a family doctor patients ask me all the time for advice about eating,” she added.

Dr. Mark Cucuzzella, family medicine professor, said the goal is to arm future doctors with information they can pass along to patients when necessary.

“I don’t see in a 15 minute clinic a doctor’s going to break out a fry pan and start chopping vegetables, but what we’d like to do is connect the dots,” Cucuzzella said.

According to Cucuzzella those dots can include information about nutrition, what foods are healthy, or even what cooking classes are available in the community. He said eating right is the first step to maintaining a healthy weight, and those who are not overweight can often avoid diseases like diabetes or heart attacks.

“We have all this awesome new technology to take care of all these really bad things people are getting now,” Cucuzzella said. “But I think part of our mission is let’s not have to send people for all of these things too and not have to send them for the cardiac bypass and stents, let’s prevent it,”

The students and their professors took a cooking class at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College where they learned how to make dishes like California rolls and chocolate brownies with healthier ingredients. Lorenzetti said another lesson focused on how to ask about a patient’s eating habits in a nonjudgmental way.

“One time we took the whole afternoon and we were just working with the students on how do you take a nutrition history from a patient?,” she said. “I challenge all you to think about the last time you went for a checkup for the doctor and they asked what do you eat?”

Students Rob Ciancaglini from Annapolis, Md., and Wayde Gilmore from Elkins, W.Va., said the information they’re learning will help them be better doctors.

“You can’t have somebody walk into your office and you explain to them 10 recipes,” Ciancaglini said. “There’s no time for that in a clinic setting.”

But Ciancaglini said doctors can help patients make good decisions.

“So something like telling them to stay on the perimeter of the grocery store where all the fresher foods and ingredients are. If you give them simple rules like that then generally you’re going to kind of just eat healthier anyway,” he said.

“I think there are a lot of misconceptions about nutrition that are out there so I think as a future doctor I think it’s very important to learn how to be healthy, how to eat healthy, what good nutrition actually means,” Gilmore said.

“In the future when I’m in my clinic I want to be able to know the right types of things to tell my patients to help them lead healthier lives and to eat healthier because nutrition has an absolutely massive impact on the wellbeing of your patients,” Gilmore said.

Tabled report: How many high school seniors feel college bound?

Lawmakers delayed hearing a report from the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission Monday that showed only half of the state’s graduating seniors felt academically prepared to go on to college.

Chancellor Paul Hill was scheduled to present the report to the Legislative Oversight Committee on Education Accountability Monday, but the item was pushed until next month’s legislative interims because of time.

Legislators, however, were still provided with a copy of the report compiled from a survey of more than four thousand graduating seniors at 51 high schools across the state. It is intended to give lawmakers more insight as to why more students aren’t getting a college education.

According to the opinion survey, only 50 percent of graduating seniors in 2012 felt “very prepared” or “prepared” to go on to a 2- or 4-year degree program. The report also says 57 percent of students overestimated the cost of tuition at a four-year, in-state, public college or university. Those students also said the cost of attending was an obstacle. Socio-economic status and being a first-generation college student were also hindrances listed in the report.