Honors College

West Virginia University senior and member of the Honors College Trevor Kiess was announced as the next Mountaineer Mascot at tonight’s (Feb. 24) men’s basketball game vs Iowa State.

When Dillon Muhly-Alexander became the first student from Doddridge County High School to be named a West Virginia University Foundation Scholar, it was because of the leadership and compassion he showed for others by creating a backpack program to supply food to at-risk children. Now he has another first for his already impressive resume—the first WVU student to be named a Gates-Cambridge Scholar.

Four finalists will don the buckskins and carry the musket Monday (Feb. 12) in competition to be the next West Virginia University Mountaineer Mascot. The cheer-off will be held during the men's basketball game vs. Texas Christian University at 9 p.m. in the WVU Coliseum.

Dillon Muhly-Alexander, a 2017 West Virginia University graduate, has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, an award that funds graduate study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Muhly-Alexander, who was also a Rhodes finalist in 2017, is WVU’s first Gates Cambridge finalist.

A West Virginia University student with aspirations of becoming an anthropologist will spend the spring term in South Africa as a Gilman Scholar. London Orzolek, a junior majoring in anthropology and women’s and gender studies, is from Wheeling.

The weather outside wasn’t quite frightful, but it was delightful inside the West Virginia University Coliseum Friday (Dec. 15) as the largest December graduating class in the University’s 150 years received diplomas amid cheers, shrill whistles and honking horns from their friends and families.

A team of engineering students from West Virginia University recently conducted soldering experiments aboard the Zero Gravity Corporation’s microgravity research aircraft, G-Force One. The team built upon work done by past WVU Microgravity Research Teams in an effort to remove bubbles or voids that form in solder joints when soldering is performed under microgravity conditions. According to team advisor John Kuhlman, professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering, the voids make the solder joints weaker and less electrically conductive than they would be if they were created within Earth’s normal gravity.

For the second straight year, West Virginia University will have two teams in the Mars Ice Challenge, a special edition competition under NASA’s Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage brand of competitions.

Colin Lopez has been selected as West Virginia University’s first Schwarzman Scholar and one of only 142 students worldwide chosen to study at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China’s premiere institutions.

Just days after being named Mr. Mountaineer, a competitive award that recognizes exemplary academic achievement and extracurricular involvement, West Virginia University senior Garrett Burgess got word that he is a finalist for the prestigious British Marshall Scholarship.