Story Pitches

A West Virginia University student and his international team are working to develop a new source of natural gas that would allow local production. By-products of the source materials—wheat straw, mushrooms and beans—could be used as fertilizer, making the product both environmentally friendly and sustainable. Hasan Ul Banna, an electrical engineering student, and his team won first place at the third annual Student Congress hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Power and Energy Society for their innovative idea.

The West Virginia University Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design and WVU Extension Service are working together to launch West Virginia P20, a pilot program that establishes an early college and STEM (Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics) academy in Boone County’s Van School District.

The WVU Center for Excellence in Disabilities will hosting its first all-inclusive fundraising event - Run, Walk or Roll. Events at the WVU Coliseum include a 5K run, a relay track event, a one-mile fun walk and a kids 100-meter dash. People are encouraged to make their own teams and come out to help the CED expand services to individuals with disabilities and their families in West Virginia.

West Virginia University’s Mon Hills Records, is releasing music from one of WVU’s own and jazz music from multiple generations of WVU students.

This fall, students in the West Virginia University Reed College of Media will partner with the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication in a shared reporting and advocacy communications project. The two-year effort, funded by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, will document the issue of women’s incarceration in West Virginia and Oklahoma, the two states with the highest levels of imprisoned women.

A West Virginia University graduate student hopes to help African youth through sport. Zenzi Huysmans, who was born in the Kingdom of eSwatini in southern Africa, wants to give back to her home country by determining whether sport-based initiatives are an effective tool to support healthy development for young Swazis.

West Virginia University School of Medicine students can compete for a spot in the new Mountaineer Accelerated Track to Enter Residency, or MATTER program, which provides a fast-track curriculum option— allowing students to graduate earlier and with less debt. Beginning with the Class of 2022, entering in August, medical students can shave one semester off the four-year program. The program is aimed at getting medical professionals into patient care sooner to meet the state’s health needs and to help minimize student loan debt.

West Virginia University, students and faculty from the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences had the unique, hands-on experience of building and testing elements of Simulation-to-Flight 1 or STF-1, the state of West Virginia’s first satellite. The spacecraft’s payload includes three experiments from WVU.

West Virginia University continues fulfilling its land-grant mission by helping state communities maintain their most important infrastructure—water systems. WVU’s Chapter of Engineers Without Borders recently traveled to McComas in Mercer County to conduct an assessment of an abandoned water system.

For years, a team of West Virginia University researchers has been working alongside West Virginia Division of Natural Resources to restore and protect native brook trout in the state’s watersheds. Most recently, the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design provided access to its aquaculture facilities at Reymann Memorial Farm in Wardensville, allowing DNR scientists to successfully hatch fertilized native brook trout eggs collected from breeding-sized fish. WV Division of Natural Resources will release native brook trout into an Eastern Panhandle watershed that lost its population years ago Friday (May 25).