School of Medicine

At the end of March, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice named Dr. Clay Marsh, the state’s COVID-19/Coronavirus Czar. While Marsh will continue his work with the state, in June he will begin to transition back into his position as West Virginia University's vice president and executive dean for Health Sciences. Moving forward, Marsh will continue to provide his invaluable insight and guidance as West Virginia slowly reopens and as the University plans for the return of students in the fall.

In this interview-driven series, “WVU and the Coronavirus” will examine what’s already known about COVID-19, share the latest information about the virus, explore how RNA viruses like coronaviruses work, and learn how the University community has responded to the global pandemic.

Fourth-year West Virginia University School of Medicine students pursuing clinical careers in internal medicine will benefit from a new scholarship that honors a retired alum’s immigrant grandparents.

A new cohort study out of West Virginia University suggests one piece of life-support equipment—an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine—can be especially useful for treating some of these COVID-19 patients. But ECMO may be less helpful for COVID-19 patients who are older, who have preexisting conditions and whose heart function has deteriorated.

From the mountains of West Virginia to cities and towns across the country and around the world, West Virginia University graduates and their families gathered around computers and other smart devices to attend Mountaineer Graduation Day on Saturday (May 16). The online experience, created due to social distancing restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, provided an opportunity for graduates to mark an important milestone and share familiar commencement traditions.

Jillian Blair from Wheeling Park High School, Olivia Dowler from Weir High School, Bethany Knight from Notre Dame High School, Rushik Patel from George Washington High School and Sarah Sweeney from Spring Mills High School are the 2020-21 cohort of WVU Foundation Scholars.

While West Virginia University’s 4,500-member Class of 2020 will graduate in various states and countries instead of Morgantown and in one ceremony instead of more than a dozen, graduates will be connected to each other and to Mountaineers around the world in WVU’s first virtual commencement ceremony.

Students who have exceeded classroom boundaries and demonstrated an unwavering commitment to solving complex global challenges and serving others—among them a distance learner with autism, a gymnast and an alternate Mountaineer Mascot—will receive West Virginia University’s highest student honor, the Order of Augusta.

Colson Glover, an Honors College sophomore from Lewisburg, will begin his year as the 67th West Virginia University Mountaineer Friday (April 24).

The WVCTSI’s COVID-19 registry, created by Dr. Sally Hodder and Wes Kimble, contains more than 7,500 negative cases and 450 positives from individuals tested through the WVU Medicine system.