WVUToday on the Radio

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University, mountaineers go first. After leading higher education institutions for more than 44 years, including WVU two separate times, the coming months will be the last in the role of university president for the legendary, Gordon Gee.

Gordon Gee: I always loved West Virginia, that's the reason I returned. It's just a very special place.

Shauna Johnson: Gee came home to West Virginia's University in 2014, the place where he was first named president in 1981.

Gordon Gee: I've always felt very comfortable in my own shoes. I've always felt comfortable doing what I'm doing. I love what I do. I've never felt exhausted or I've never felt put upon. We've had enormous opportunities, enormous challenges, and sometimes a little hand-to-hand combat, but it's been a very energizing 45 years for me.

Shauna Johnson: It's that energy he says that makes him want to keep going.

Gordon Gee: I don't think anyone ever feels like they're quite ready to go. It's time, though. I was joking with someone the other day that all of a sudden I'm experiencing something I've never experienced before, and that is that I'm growing old. I don't feel that way, but I think that the timing is perfect for me. We've got a great new president coming in. University is in a very strong financial, social, cultural position, I believe, particularly given all of the things that are going on in the world, we are kind of a calming in a sea of turmoil right now.

Shauna Johnson: Gee counts the university's massive expansions in education and health care, along with its growing role as an economic engine for all of West Virginia among his greatest accomplishments. Above all, though, he says the university is its people, its faculty, staff, alumni, and students.

Gordon Gee: One of the characteristics of the West Virginia student body is the fact they love the place. There's just a real connection between the culture of the institution and the culture of our students, and both, I think, coincide to make it such a much better place.

Shauna Johnson: As he prepares to congratulate graduates during his final commencement ceremonies, the self-described happy warrior says he wants his legacy as president to be a university that encourages people to pursue their passions and their purpose.

Gordon Gee: Right to the end I'll be fighting to make certain that we continue to advance the institution.

Shauna Johnson: So let's go. Follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University, mountaineers go first. To create a more environmentally friendly future, WVU is committing to a comprehensive set of more than 20 sustainability goals outlining a roadmap for significant campus environmental improvements. Traci Knabenshue is the university's Sustainability Director.

Traci Knabenshue: The goals are looking at a 10-year timeline, so from now through fiscal year 2035, and it says, we're heading to a place where we are conserving more energy and looking closely at how energy that we are buying and consuming is being produced, making sure that we keep sustainability top of mind as we are doing the things that we need to do as a university.

Shauna Johnson: The goals designed to be aspirational and achievable follow a full analysis of best practices at peer institutions and reflect extensive campus collaboration and feedback.

Traci Knabenshue: We have; reducing waste, protecting land and water, and lowering emissions. We have about 23 goals in those three categories. Every year with these goals, we'll be tracking a key measurement for each one of them. So anytime you want to see how we're doing meeting a certain goal, you can go and find that information.

Shauna Johnson: Knabenshue sees these sustainability goals as an opportunity.

Traci Knabenshue: It's an opportunity for our faculty, staff, students, alumni, community members, to know where we're heading with sustainability, to rally around specific priorities. It's also a way that we can give tangibility to some of the sustainability areas that are a little harder to see.

Shauna Johnson: The established goals for the Morgantown campus are being used to aid development of campus specific goals at WVU Potomac State College and WVU Institute of Technology.

Traci Knabenshue: We're doing pretty well in a lot of areas, but we know we have a lot more that we can do. So that's what these goals are about, is incorporating those three pillars of environmental performance, what's good for faculty, staff, and students when they're here on campus, and then our financial bottom line to move the needle more.

Shauna Johnson: Find more information about the university's sustainability goals at sustainability.wvu.edu.

Traci Knabenshue: We're the flagship institution in West Virginia, so it's important for us to live what we are teaching and imparting to our students.

Shauna Johnson: So let's go. Follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University, mountaineers go first. One of this year's five inductees into the Academy of Distinguished Alumni is Laura J. Wood, a 1977 graduate of the WVU School of Nursing. Now executive Vice President of Patient Care Operations, System Chief Nurse Executive and Sporing Carpenter Chair for Nursing at Boston Children's Hospital, she serves as an example of the best of West Virginia's University.

Laura J. Wood: I share about the people of West Virginia, I share about the work ethic, I share about the values, it shaped who I was. And it was different, I had lived in several places around the country and when I came here, I felt like I saw the best of humanity.

Speaker 1: Wood's progressive healthcare leadership contributions span three renowned academic health systems, including Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Ties though still bind her to WVU, especially through friends she made as a student.

Laura J. Wood: We really formed close bonds. We helped each other academically, but being a nursing student is really a challenge in terms of evolving yourself personally and emotionally. You see death often for the first time. You see very poignant situations, people and families in really strained and difficult situations. And so we've formed incredible bonds being in these novel situations with one another. And many of these are lifelong friendships now that go back more than 50 years.

Speaker 1: Her advice for today's nursing students.

Laura J. Wood: Just keep swimming. That's one of my mantras that I say to myself. Because being a nurse is not easy, the conditions are not always easy. Lots of staffing challenges have existed since I started as a nurse. But just healthcare in general is very demanding, both physically and emotionally. I think you have to have endurance in you, but the rewards are huge. I've had so many opportunities and my life was changed by being around other people who were mission-centric and who cared about people and having an impact in their health and in their lives.

Speaker 1: Wood was recognized earlier this year with other Academy of Distinguished Alumni members, Linda Arnold, Luke Frazier, Sharon Burmeister Lord, and Diana Murphy. So let's go. Follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University, mountaineers go first. University Alumni and Friends will come together March 26th for the 8th WVU Day of Giving, the annual 24-hour fundraising effort organized by the WVU Foundation. Will Green is the Foundation's Senior Vice President of Development and Chief Development Officer.

Will Green: When I think of WVU Day of Giving, I think less about the importance to WVU itself or WVU medicine, and more about what it means for our ability to help others. For our ability to create access to a college education for students in West Virginia, embark on groundbreaking research and provide great clinical care to our patients.

Shauna Johnson: All areas of the university will benefit from gifts during Day of Giving, including student programs, infrastructure, athletics, and more.

Will Green: Scholarships are always in great need. A big part of our mission as a state university and the state university and land-grant University of West Virginia is to provide access to a college education for all students in West Virginia. Providing dollars that help students do that, that provide access to that college education is really important, and that can be by giving to unrestricted scholarship funds, scholarship funds in a certain area, or supporting the new WVU guarantee that was announced by the university back in January.

Shauna Johnson: More than 36,000 gifts have been made on WVU Day of Giving since its launch in 2017, raising more than $96 million.

Will Green: It's really about what these dollars allow us to do for others, to help others, to help first generation college students who may or may not otherwise have an access to a college education to provide great clinical care to patients who otherwise may not be able to access that and research groundbreaking research in a number of areas that are really going to help people around the world.

Shauna Johnson: Find more information about hourly and all-day challenges during Day of Giving on March 26, and give a gift online at dayofgiving.wvu.edu.

Will Green: There's a lot of ways that people can get involved with Day of Giving. It is fun. There are a number of challenges that people can really help to rally for areas and causes that mean something to them.

Shauna Johnson: Let's go. Follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University, Mountaineers go first. Meet the 71st Mountaineer mascot.

Cade Kincaid: My name is Cade Kincaid. I'm a junior accounting major, and I'm from Fayetteville, West Virginia.

Shauna Johnson: A lifelong Mountaineer fan, Kincaid is now donning the Buckskins to represent the university and the entire state.

Cade Kincaid: From four to 20 I was a Mountaineer fan. In the past two years, it really dawned upon me that if I were to take this role, that I could really make a change and really influence some people and influence our state in a good way.

Shauna Johnson: A member of the Honors College, Kincaid serves as a peer mentor and ambassador for the John Chambers College of Business and Economics.

Cade Kincaid: The thing I like best about WVU is how inclusive it is. It's really been a great opportunity to me. I came from a really small high school. I came here with one other student that I graduated with, and I didn't know what to expect. They've done nothing but welcome me and help me succeed. I've had a great time while I'm here. And then at the same time, I've really developed as a person, and I feel like it's all due to this university.

Shauna Johnson: Kincaid's parents are WVU graduates, so is his sister. He counts cheering on the Mountaineers against Pitt as the student of the week, alongside his dad as his favorite Mountaineer memory so far.

Cade Kincaid: This university means a whole lot to me and my family as well as this whole state. Just being a part of it and then being able to share that with my dad is pretty awesome.

Shauna Johnson: Now his dad, his friends and family, and gold and blue fans everywhere will be cheering for him as he helps bring on the Mountaineers.

Cade Kincaid: Mountaineers are people that climb for fun or for sport, and I think that figuratively, we climb mountains every day at WVU. We try to become better every single day. And once we get to that peak of that mountain, we're not going to stop. We're just going to keep going until we make this university and state as good as we want it to be.

Shauna Johnson: So let's go. Follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University Mountaineers go first. Now open to students on the downtown area of campus as part of the Foundational STEM Collaborative, the STEM Learning Center offering drop-in and appointment-based academic assistance study space and more for all majors.

Stephanie Young: The goal is to make sure that WVU students can be as successful as possible in STEM, whether that's a STEM major or a STEM course. We are here to support students, especially in their first two years.

Shauna Johnson: Stephanie Young, a teaching professor in the Department of Biology, is the director of what is a hub for all foundational university STEM courses required by more than 47 science focused undergraduate degree programs.

Stephanie Young: Part of the Foundational STEM Collaborative is devoted to working with our students, but we also are making a community of our STEM professors within Eberly College so that we can support one another, learn from one another, and do what we need to do to collaborate to make the student experience better.

Shauna Johnson: In its second semester, the STEM Learning Center's team works collaboratively with students and faculty members selecting learning consultants from each Eberly college department and responding to specific course needs.

Stephanie Young: We are here to serve all students in our introductory STEM classes, not just those. Within Eberly College, we welcome all students to join us for learning consultations, for workshops, and for any other types of social events that we offer. We are here to help.

Shauna Johnson: Here to help in Young's words, the whole student.

Stephanie Young: I have always loved working with students. I, in the biology department, work mainly with freshmen, and I appreciate that half of my job is to teach biology, and half of my job is to teach students how to college. So in this position, I have the opportunity to not only work with students in my biology classes, but students across the university.

Shauna Johnson: So let's go. Follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University, mountaineers go first. Being recognized for exceptional research activity, West Virginia University has once again been reaffirmed as an R-1 University, the highest possible research ranking from the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Fred King is the university's vice president for research.

Fred King: The Carnegie classification looks at the overall research productivity of higher education institutions. And so for WVU what it means is that we're being classified as one of the leading research institutions in the United States.

Shauna Johnson: One of the leading institutions, producing research, providing hands-on learning, and propelling graduate and undergraduate students into meaningful careers to solve real-world problems.

Fred King: Because we're the state's Premier Land-Grant University, we have all the disciplines here really. So that means that students can work up at health sciences, they could do fundamental neuroscience work, they can work over in astrophysics utilizing the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. They have a range of opportunities to use modern equipment to work with leaders in the field that you just can't duplicate at other kinds of institutions beyond the R-1.

Shauna Johnson: As the only R-1 university in the mountain state, WVU is an economic driver, contributing nearly $5 billion to the region's economy each year while serving students along with West Virginia, the country, and the world.

Fred King: Research is part and parcel of what we do, both in terms of education and in terms of service. Those are our missions as a land-grant, research, service, teaching. And I think at the end of the day, everyone at West Virginia University understands that everything we do is about the student, and how we can best prepare the student, so once they leave the university, they have a very successful life, and are afforded opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have been afforded.

Shauna Johnson: So let's, go follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University, Mountaineers go first. Support for international university students is available through the HomeStart Closet; an initiative that provides care packages full of items needed to live in residence halls or rental spaces to students arriving in Morgantown from all around the world.

Skylar Braithwaite: Any international student who's a current student at WVU would qualify.

Shauna Johnson: Campus and Community Life Assistant Director, Skylar Braithwaite, says most international students travel in with only the items they can fit in a couple of suitcases.

Skylar Braithwaite: The closet fills that gap to make sure that they have the items they need in order to be successful and be able to focus on their academics.

Shauna Johnson: To operate, the International HomeStart Closet relies on donations from local partners, community members, and alumni, including graduates who used the HomeStart closet as students.

Skylar Braithwaite: We want to make sure that they specifically have access to the resources that they need, because they shouldn't be focusing on, "Okay, I don't have bedding. I don't have plates and cups to eat off of." And then not be able to be successful in their courses because of that.

Shauna Johnson: The most popular items?

Skylar Braithwaite: Definitely bedding; pillows, pillowcases, sheets. Twin XL is the big one. That is all what the residence halls use. Comforters, blankets. Second after bedding is toiletry items; towels, washcloths. And then we can also supply kitchen supplies.

Shauna Johnson: Find out more at campuslife.wvu.edu.

Skylar Braithwaite: Making sure that the international students feel WVU is there for them and understands that there is a resource specifically for them and make sure that they feel supported by the university, I think that's important.

Shauna Johnson: So let's go. Follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.

Shauna Johnson: At West Virginia University, Mountaineers go first. A new year is bringing new benefits to members of the WVU Alumni Association with discounted membership rates now available for the Student Rec Center.

Andy Darling: We've pretty much got the whole gamut for indoor recreation and fitness.

Shauna Johnson: Andy Darling is the Director of Campus Recreation.

Andy Darling: Part of our mission is to serve the campus community. By definition, that's students first and foremost. They're the biggest portion of that population. It serves them indirectly as well to have a healthy and engaged employee population, as well as those that are really passionate about WVU, and our alumni really fit that bill.

Shauna Johnson: Located on the Evansdale area of campus, the Student Rec Center has been serving the university community for nearly 25 years.

Andy Darling: For many students, I think of it as their third place. If they're not in class or they're not in their apartment or their residence hall, this is the place where they find their outlets for recreation and social connection. For many of them, they find us.

Shauna Johnson: Now, those indoor fitness opportunities are being extended to members of the WVU Alumni Association, their partners, and dependents with specially priced options covering different timeframes. Details are available online at campusrecreation.wvu.edu.

Andy Darling: We pretty much have it all. So whether it's our 17,000 feet of weight and fitness space, or indoor track, or the indoor pools with our lap pools and our 20-person spa, 50-foot tall indoor climbing wall, we've got really a lot of opportunities for folks regardless of whether they're looking for a place to recreate, general activity, or if they're looking for a place to exercise and work out.

Shauna Johnson: All while being actively involved in the university community. So let's go. Follow our stories at wvutoday.wvu.edu.