Shepherd University Story Archives - Page 6 of 18 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Author Barbara Kingsolver Reflects On Appalachian Writing, Climate Change And Upcoming Novel

Kentucky author Barbara Kingsolver is the 2022 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University. While Kingsolver’s fiction takes readers all over the world, she says her Appalachian roots inspire key themes and ideas in her stories. Liz McCormick sat down with Kingsolver to learn more.

Updated on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 at 9 a.m.

Kentucky author Barbara Kingsolver has won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her latest novel Demon Copperhead. The book debuted in October 2022.

Kingsolver has won numerous awards and accolades over her career, including the National Humanities Medal, the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction in Britain, and her 1998 novel The Poisonwood Bible won the National Book Prize of South Africa, held a spot on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and was an Oprah Book Club selection.

While Kingsolver’s fiction takes readers all over the world, she says her Appalachian roots inspire key themes and ideas in her stories. Last fall, Kingsolver was recognized by Shepherd University as the 2022 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence. Liz McCormick sat down with her at that time to learn more.

Listen to the extended conversation below:

EXTENDED: Author Barbara Kingsolver Reflects On Appalachian Writing, Climate Change And Upcoming Novel

https://wvpublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/1007KingsolverQA_long_web.mp3?_=1

The transcript below is from the original broadcast that aired in West Virginia Morning on Oct. 7, 2022. It has been lightly edited for clarity.

Liz McCormick: What does it mean to be an Appalachian in your own experiences, in your own words?

Barbara Kingsolver: To me, it means home. It means recognizing and celebrating my own people. I grew up in the eastern part of Kentucky. I left my little rural town, as young people do. I lived all over the place on several continents, doing low paying jobs. And as I traveled the world, and this country, I encountered a lot of shocking stereotypes, a lot of condescension that made me mad, it still makes me mad.

After trying out a lot of different places, I came back home to Appalachia, and I now live on the other side of the mountains in southwest Virginia. But it’s the same culture. It’s the same language. It’s the same emphasis on community, and resourcefulness, and kindness that I grew up knowing and loving.

So as a writer, I see it as sort of my mission to represent us in a way that is seldom seen and seldom understood outside of Appalachia.

McCormick: Barbara, you’ve written a lot of diverse stories, ranging from novels, short stories, poetry; some of these stories take us all over the world. What sort of impact do your Appalachian roots play in your writing? Like with The Poisonwood Bible, it took place in the Congo, how does your background and roots here in Appalachia impact your writing?

Kingsolver: You know, they say that every writer is really writing the same story over and over again. And if that’s true, my story is about community. If I really examine all my works, even though I work hard to make each one entirely new, not just a new place and set of characters, but I ask a whole new question.

I’ve written about climate change and why that’s so hard for us to talk about. I’ve written, as you said, a book set in the Congo, which is about cultural arrogance, and how what one nation will do to another. So these are big, big questions, sort of urgent, modern themes. But if you sort of dig down into the heart of every one of these stories, it’s about community, what is our duty to our community? How do we belong to it? How does it belong to us? And how does that play against the really powerful American iconography of the individual, the solo flyer, the lone hero that’s supposed to be the American story.

But as a woman, and as an Appalachian woman, I always see the other people behind the solo flyer. The people who gassed up his airplane, the women who packed his lunch. I mean, there is no such thing as a lone hero. I’m interested in the heroism of people who think they’re ordinary, and people who are helping each other, creating families for each other or safety networks for each other, who are aware of their indebtedness to their neighbors and their people.

McCormick: I understand you have a book that is soon to be hitting bookshelves on Oct. 18. And that is Demon Copperhead. I want to ask you to talk with us about this book, and what can readers expect when they read this?

Kingsolver: Readers can expect a page turner. I live in deep, deep southwest Virginia, which is the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. So we are living with this, and I wanted for several years to write about it, and I couldn’t think of a good way in that would make this story interesting and appealing to people, to readers, because it’s a hard subject. It’s dark, it’s difficult. Kids coming up in this environment.

And then I sort of had a conversation with Charles Dickens, and I realized the way to tell the story is the way he told David Copperfield. Let the child tell the story. That’s what I realized I needed to do. So this kid who’s called Copperhead, because he has red hair. He has Melungeon heritage, if people know what that is, and he’s the child of a teenage, drug-using mother. He’s born on the floor of her single wide trailer home. And he comes into the world with this fierce — if a newborn can have an attitude, demon has it — he tells you his story from his point of view, mostly taking place in his teens and early 20s, as oxycontin is released into Lee County, where he lives.

But he tells this story in a way that’s in his own voice. In a way that will just give the reader a reason to turn every page because you need to know how he’s going to come through this. How he’s going to survive because he is a survivor. He’s funny, he’s fierce, and he’s passionate.

Shepherd University’s Tabler Farm Planting Eco-Friendly Food Forest

A tree planting for a food forest is scheduled this weekend at Shepherd University’s Tabler Farm, where volunteers can help plant edible species native to Appalachia.

“This region that we live in, Appalachia, is a really unique region in the world. It’s very, very highly biodiverse. And it is filled with edible species for humans,” Tabler Farm Coordinator Madison Hale said. “Food forests are really popular right now, but I was specifically wanting to focus on native trees just to highlight the unique ecosystem here.”

A food forest is a created ecosystem of edible plants for food production, mirroring how the plants are found in nature. They act as alternatives to annual crop production that are seen as more ecologically healthy and easier to maintain.

Hale oversees programs at the farm through the school’s environmental studies department, which helps train farmers in sustainable agriculture practices. This particular food forest program comes from a grant from the Cacapon Institute, an ecological conservation group.

Some of the species set to be planted at the forest include sugar maple, witch-hazel, hackberry and spicebush. Persimmons, serviceberries and redbuds were planted during last year’s event.

“There’s a wide range, there’s probably about 20 species that I know of that we could potentially incorporate into this food forest,” Hale said. “And we’re really just receiving whatever is available through the nurseries that Cacapon Institute works with.”

Hale said food forests aren’t just environmentally friendly. The act of planting them gives locals the chance to learn about native tree species and how they fit into the regional culture.

“I think by working with native species, you’re just helping foster that connection with people to the natural world,” Hale said.

The planting event runs Saturday, Oct. 8 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Tabler Farm in Shepherdstown. Information on how to sign up is available on the school’s event website.

What The Webb Telescope Means For W.Va. Science, Education

Last month, NASA released the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Able to capture six times more light than its predecessor, the Hubble, it’s the largest and most powerful observatory in space. Shepherd Snyder sat down with Shepherd University professor and astronomer Jason Best to discuss what the telescope’s launch could mean for both the scientific and education communities in West Virginia.

Shepherd Snyder sat down with Shepherd University professor and astronomer Jason Best to discuss what the telescope’s launch could mean for both the scientific and education communities in West Virginia.

Snyder: Getting started here, I just wanted to ask: what exactly is the Webb Telescope? Can you give me some history on what it is and why it matters in the world of astronomy?

Best: Certainly. Put simply, the James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most powerful space science telescope ever built. In the late 1980s, NASA recognized that there would one day need to be a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which at that time was about a year away from launching. Through numerous conversations and collaborations in 1996, it was formally decided that there would be a next-generation space telescope. Starting in the early 2000’s, construction began on the various pieces of this telescope because it was going to be an incredibly sophisticated instrument. This all came together over a roughly 18 year period. The telescope was launched in December of last year, 2021.

Snyder: A few weeks ago, the Webb Telescope and NASA released some very interesting images of outer space that have been making waves, both in the scientific community and on the news. I was wondering if you could go over what these images are and why they’re so important.

Best: Certainly. The images that were released in July, were the first full color images and some of the spectroscopic data that came from the James Webb Telescope. It was a way to announce to the world that the general science operations of the telescope had begun. What’s fantastic about these images is that the five images released actually tell the story of what Webb can do.

This image of Stephan’s Quintet shows the interaction between and among a grouping of five separate galaxies.

Snyder: Going back to the technology of the Webb Telescope, how is it an upgrade from its predecessor, the Hubble Telescope?

Best: The James Webb Space Telescope is really the successor, not only to Hubble, but in some ways to the Spitzer Telescope. The Hubble telescope, which is the space telescope that most people are familiar with, has a mirror that focuses on the radiation that comes in (to it). That mirror is approximately two meters across. The Webb Telescope, on the other hand, has a mirror that is about six and a half meters across. So that tripling in size gives you a much greater collection of radiation coming in (to it). And it allows you a greater sensitivity.

Furthermore, the Webb Telescope works in a different range of light. The Hubble Telescope works mostly in what we call optical light. It’s the type of light that we see with our eyes. The Webb Telescope works in what’s known as the infrared. The advantage of the infrared type of telescope is that it can see through the dust in space that would obscure light from Hubble. So it gives us a new window into the universe, it gives us a deeper window into the universe, it gives us greater sensitivity into the universe, it allows us to truly see farther, to see deeper and to see details that were heretofore unavailable to us.

Snyder: Now, you are an astronomy professor at Shepherd University. You’re very much involved in the school’s scientific community here. Just from your personal standpoint, as an educator, how would these images help further scientific education? Both in your local community here at Shepherd and also throughout the state, and even the country?

Best: The public has shown an interest in astronomy for decades, whether it has been the Apollo missions, the Voyagers which traveled past the edge of our solar system, the rovers such as Curiosity, which just reached its 10th anniversary on the surface of Mars. The public is interested in astronomy, because they’re interested in being able to see more deeply to understand the world around them. Whether it’s K-12 education, university level, or programs in the public, these images, and the images that will come from the Webb Telescope, will give us deeper insights into other worlds. And not only other worlds, but the worlds in our solar system. They will provide us with more detail. Webb will give us insight into the lifecycle of stars in a way that we’ve been unable to as yet understand. It will give us insight into galaxies over time, and how the large scale structure of the universe is established. And it will give us insights into the early universe, our beginnings.

The study of the Carina Nebula, shown here, gives us deeper insights into how stars are born.

So I see, at all levels of education, these images helping to engage the curiosity in each of us. In terms of research, these areas of research are each going to be expanding the scales that we’re talking about, going from planetary scales on the smallest, to the universe on the largest. We have a range of astronomers, geologists and chemists. When you’re talking about other worlds, the understanding of biological processes, we have a range of research possibilities, those research findings, which will then come into the classroom and help students learn more about how their entire universe works.

Snyder: Could we see these images and the other data we’re seeing – and we could see in the future from the Webb Telescope – be used as an education tool, maybe outside of college or higher ed classrooms?

Best: Most definitely. We will see these images engaging the public. We have already seen these images engage the public through various outreach programs, both formal and informal. The public hungers to understand its world around it. We can look back to 2017, the first total solar eclipse that was visible in the continental United States in a generation and the public engaged. They traveled across the country so that they could be in that relatively narrow path where the eclipse could be seen. The public cares about its world, the public cares about seeing what’s happening around it. So not only within classrooms, scientists, educators of all sorts are extending the outreach mission that astronomy is known for. Historically, astronomy has been about research, it has been about teaching, it has been about outreach. Those avenues are simply going to be enhanced by being able to show these types of images, to be able to talk about the data coming from the James Webb Space Telescope, the analyses that are going to be conducted and that are already being conducted. We will see this as a larger part of our science, education mission.

These pictures of the Southern Ring Nebula display what will happen when stars of certain sizes are about to transition into the end of their life.

The public in the United States pays for science. That’s important to remember. NASA is a government agency. It’s funded by you, by me. It’s a public trust. And astronomers have always believed that it’s important to show the public what this investment means. Because in truth, discovery has no roadmap. Not only the data coming from the James Webb Space Telescope, but the technologies that will go into things like helping people with better eye correction, to be able to help with other resources that heretofore we haven’t thought about yet. Since discovery has no roadmap, it’s important for us, as astronomers, to engage with the public to show them what their investment means and why it matters so much to them.

Snyder: Do you think this is a stepping stone for more in depth astronomy research in the future? What sort of programs or initiatives could we potentially see being explored as a result of these images?

Best: In terms of how we look at astronomy research, we always build upon what it is we’ve seen before so that we can understand more in the future. Hubble, for a generation of scientists, has provided an incredible platform in terms of our understanding the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope builds upon that platform for planetary scientists, stellar astrophysicists, extragalactic astronomers, cosmologists, astrochemists, astrogeologists, across the spectrum of our science. The discoveries that we are making and will continue to make will allow our science to continue to grow, will allow our discoveries to continue to be understood within the greater context of what it is we know. And in truth, this tool will help us be smarter tomorrow than we are today. But that’s what science is really all about. We know something today. We hope to know more tomorrow.

Snyder: Just finishing up here, did you have any closing remarks before we go ahead and end this interview?

Best: I often tell my students that the first three words that any astronomer says are, “I don’t know.” The three words after that are, “Let’s find out.” The James Webb Space Telescope is going to help us find out much more than we knew. It will make the next generation of astronomers smarter than the current generation. And that’s how it’s supposed to work. Because then that generation will help the public know more, and appreciate more. And that’s how, as a society, we continue to grow positively in our knowledge.

Shepherd University Enters International Exchange Agreement With Swiss Engineering School

The partnership with Zurich University of Applied Sciences' School of Engineering will allow for science, technology, and engineering students at both schools to study abroad, with the potential to cooperate on research projects and staff exchange in the future.

Shepherd University has entered a cooperation agreement with the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland.

The partnership with Zurich’s School of Engineering will allow for science, technology, and engineering students at both schools to study abroad, with the potential to cooperate on research projects and staff exchange in the future.

The exchange agreement makes studying abroad much more affordable. Samuel Greene, director for Shepherd University’s study abroad office, says lowering financial barriers is one of his goals.

“If you do an exchange agreement, then the students from Shepherd will pay exactly what they pay at Shepherd and almost all of their financial aid, including the West Virginia Promise Scholarship, which is pretty important for a lot of our local students, will apply,” Greene said.

Programs offered in English are available as part of the partnership, including multiple in engineering, as well as those in computer science, data science, aviation, and transportation.

This is the seventh international school Shepherd University has entered an agreement with, including schools in Mexico, Japan and Scotland. As a former study abroad student himself, Greene says these types of programs help students grow academically and personally.

“It stretches you as an individual, figuring out, ‘How do I operate in this different cultural context?’” Greene said. “And it helps you realize how similar people are in other places, despite the differences.”

Greene says he hopes to get the program running as early as this spring. Interested students can find information about the program at Zurich University’s website or by contacting Greene directly.

Shepherd University Professor Appointed To State Science Council

Jason Best, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Shepherd University since 1997, has been appointed to the West Virginia Science and Research Council.

PURVISphoto.com mike@purvisphoto

Shepherd University

The council is part of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and helps to attract research funds and infrastructure towards the state’s scientific institutions.

“I was both honored and humbled that the work I’ve been doing in the sciences over the past 25 years was recognized as such that it was considered valuable,” Best said. “To be able to bring my voice as a representative, not only of Shepherd University, but of the work that we’ve been doing across the (Eastern) Panhandle, I think is a high honor.”

Much of Best’s research at Shepherd involves the structure of the universe, galaxy evolution, and the history of astronomy. His appointment to the council will allow him to create more opportunities for research and promote science education in West Virginia.

“The council’s mission is significant because discovery has no roadmap,” Best said. “To be able to support those who are engaging with these ideas benefits all of us. It benefits the state, benefits the country, benefits the world.”

Best’s work as a professor involves overseeing the school’s observatory and teaching astronomy, physics, and physical science. He is also the university’s Assistant Provost for Institutional Effectiveness and Academic Strategic Partnerships.

His appointment to the council is for a four-year term.

Shepherd University Upward Bound Program Receives $1.5 Million Grant

Shepherd University’s Upward Bound program will continue with new federal funding from a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

This is one of ten such programs across West Virginia that helps income eligible high school students gain the academic skills to prepare for a college education.

“I think the program is important because there is a need for it,” said Cynthia Copney, director of the university’s TRIO programs. “In the state of West Virginia, we provide the community that the high schools are in with an educated workforce. We believe education is the way out of poverty and to get to where we want to be in life.”

TRIO programs are federal student services that help those who are disadvantaged. Upward Bound is one of the oldest of these programs, created as a result of 1965’s Higher Education Act.

The grant ensures funding for the program for the next five years, after the original five-year grant from 2017 recently expired.

Assistant program director Joselin Fuentes says Upward Bound helps first-generation students know what to expect.

“First generation income eligible students, they don’t develop a sense of belonging,” Fuentes said. “But through our program, they get to experience college before even coming to college, as high schoolers.”

This comes after a total of $3.4 million was also awarded to six West Virginia colleges before last month’s Upward Bound funding deadline. This includes a previous $298,000 award to Shepherd University, as well as awards to West Virginia University, Salem University, Marshall University, Concord University, and Davis & Elkins College.

Those interested in learning more can visit the program’s website.