Coaching Champions, Raise Your Voice and More

Coaching champions

The expertise of WVU, the experience of community mentors and the minds of West Virginia high school students created a winning formula at the world’s largest event for STEM students.

The Mountaineer Area RoboticS, or MARS, team received the Chairman’s Award at the annual FIRST Robotics Competition Championship in St. Louis, Missouri, in April 2017. The highest honor given at the championship, the award recognizes the team that the organization thinks “best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST.”

Earl Scime, the Oleg D. Jefimenko Professor of Physics and Astronomy and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has coached the team since helping to create it in 2008.

“I stay involved because these kids restore my passion for teaching,” Scime said. “They show up eager to learn and are self-motivated and incredibly focused. Every time I work with them, they restore my hope that we can build a society that values creativity, professionalism and diversity.”

Improving government effectiveness

Following WVU’s involvement in transition planning for Gov. Jim Justice, a multidisciplinary group including Christopher Plein, the Eberly Family Professor for Outstanding Public Service, has looked at ways government can be made more efficient, and not incidentally, less expensive.

The collaborative report represents WVU’s recent effort to take a moment to listen and learn. It makes no recommendations; rather, it is “intended to serve as foundational material for a much more in-depth examination of the many facets of enhancing local government efficiency and effectiveness over coming years and a delineation of options to achieve these goals.”

Raise your voice

WVU is an increasingly diverse place to learn, and our future will continue to see a growth in that diversity. Our students come from every county in West Virginia, all 50 states and over 100 countries around the world. WVU is aware of the differences this diversity fosters in its student body, and has several programs in place to bring all of its students together to form one WVU.

As part of that diversity, dialects from Newark, New Jersey and Mingo County, West Virginia, come into contact at WVU, as do languages from different continents and different language families. To celebrate this diversity, linguistics professor Kirk Hazen and journalism professor Mary Kay McFarland have created WVU Voices. This mini-documentary is designed to educate the WVU community and beyond to create a more knowledgeable, appreciative and welcoming environment on campus.

Language variation affects every person, and this video aims to bring those differences to light in a positive way. With the help of the Gabriel Brothers, Inc. Faculty Awards Program, WVU Voices aspires to foster a diverse culture in Morgantown, West Virginia, and further the mission of WVU. Watch the video at eberly.wvu.edu/news-events/eberly-news/2018/01/09/wvu-voices.

Laser focus

Physics Professor Mark Koepke is the new chair-elect of the OMEGA Laser User Group.

The group facilitates communication and exchanges among the users of OMEGA, from the users as a group to facility management and from users to the broader scientific community. The OMEGA Laser Facility, capable of a wide variety of scientific experiments, is a user facility featuring both high-energy lasers and high-intensity lasers.

Koepke will serve as vice chair for one year (2017-18) and chair for two years (2018-20). He has served on the group’s executive committee since January 2012.

Advocating for veterans

A WVU student aspiring to assist veterans who may have been wrongly discharged from service has been named a 2017 Newman Civic Fellow by Campus Compact, a nonprofit organization that advances the public purpose of higher education to educate students for civic and social responsibility.

Political science and world languages, literatures and linguistics student Garrett Burgess plans to use his fellowship year to work with the Veterans Advocacy Clinic in the WVU College of Law. He aspires to help individuals who received less-than-honorable discharges due to misconduct overcome mental trauma such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries. These “bad paper” discharges make veterans ineligible for certain VA benefits and hinder them from securing employment.

More than a food pantry

Philanthropy West Virginia presented the Volunteer Leader Award to WVU sophomore Roark Sizemore, a political science and Honors College student. He founded Pantry Plus More to respond to the growing need of students in Monongalia County who could not afford food, school supplies or toiletries. Pantry Plus More brings basic necessities to children by putting pantries inside public schools. Stocked with food, hygiene products, clothes and school supplies, students can take as much as they want, whenever they want, with complete anonymity. A seventh pantry opened in January 2018.

Celebrating Joan Gorham

At the close of the 2017, our friend and colleague, Dr. Joan Gorham, concluded her tenure as the associate dean for academic affairs in the Eberly College and retired. Dean Gorham has had a distinguished and remarkable career at West Virginia University as both a professor of communication studies and as an academic administrator for Eberly. She has been an invaluable asset to the College and the WVU community in many ways.

In 1995, Dr. Gorham was appointed as the associate dean for academic affairs. And for more than two decades, Dean Gorham has provided steady leadership to WVU’s largest and most complex college and its academic programs. She has made sure that our academic programs are innovative, responsive to student needs, academically rigorous and reflect the very best values of learning. Her efforts have had an immeasurably positive impact on both our students’ and faculty’s success. She has contributed to a tradition of excellence that everyone in Eberly can be proud of.

As important as her many contributions to WVU and Eberly, it has been equally important to acknowledge the way in which Dean Gorham has gone about her work. She is thoughtful, patient, supportive and kind in her approach and embodies the values of WVU. On a personal note, as a new dean of Eberly, I could not have been more fortunate to have someone so knowledgeable, helpful and pleasant to help me transition into my new role. Joan Gorham is truly an Eberly treasure.

We will surely miss her wit, her grace, her sense of humor and her style. However, I am content to know that Joan will never really be that far away from Eberly and WVU, and that she will continue to be a part of this great institution.

Please join me, and the entire Eberly community, in thanking Dean Joan Gorham for a job exceedingly well done and wishing her continued happiness and fulfillment!

— Gregory Dunaway, Dean, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Quotes from Joan’s colleagues

“We’ve all been so dependent on your patience, kindness and wisdom that I can’t imagine Woodburn Hall without your gentle, elegant presence. It will doubtlessly require an army of folks to take responsibility for all that you do, even though none of them, jointly or separately, can ever begin to take over all that you mean to those of us who have had the enormous privilege of working with you.”
— Jane Donovan Religious Studies Instructor (Retired)

“Your leadership has helped to keep the Eberly ship steady, consistent and moving forward through the years, and your gentle spirit in working with people is an example for all of us to follow.”
— Deana Morrow Director and Professor, School of Social Work

“You have had a wonderful, helpful and collegial impact on students far and wide across WVU, and that impact will last for generations. I have always had confidence that the Eberly and Davis colleges do and will work together for the benefit of our students, and you have had very much to do with that. It all matters.”
— Daniel J. Robison Dean, WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

“I want to thank you for being an excellent role model for how to treat people with respect and gratitude.”
— Maja Holmes Chair, Public Administration

“Thank you for your fine example of what a woman can do and who she can be on a university campus. I respect your commitment, hard work, ingenuity, integrity and intellect, and I’m grateful to have encountered you during my tenure at WVU.”
— Krystal Frazier Assistant Professor of History

“As a new interim director of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies last year, I had plenty of questions; fortunately for me, Joan Gorham had plenty of answers. I spent an hour every month of the last academic school year with her, getting advice from an expert about how to navigate the mysteries of administration. She answered my questions with patience and grace.”
— Cari Carpenter Interim Director, Center for Women’s and Gender Studies

“Your service to the state and West Virginia University goes far beyond your service rendered to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. Joan, here are some words I would use to describe you and your many gifts: mentor, role model, visionary leader, advocate for social justice and inclusion, student-centered, tireless worker, loyal, pays attention to detail, thoughtful, articulate, friend and colleague, and Mountaineer!”
— Dana Brooks Dean, WVU College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences

“The care and concern that you have shown to this beloved institution – but more importantly to its students – place you in a special category indeed. You truly exemplify the very best of the Mountaineer spirit!”
— Rawnette Murray BA Biology, Eberly College Visiting Committee Member