Highlander Highlights: Week of May 13, 2024

Every two weeks, Highlander Highlights shares with readers some of the extraordinary research and accomplishments happening on and off campus through the tireless work and curiosity of our students and faculty.

Player of the year

Going into the 2024 Highlanders softball season, Lexie Roberts had plenty of goals in mind for her team, but she set her mind toward one major personal pursuit: to be named the Big South Conference Player of the Year for her sophomore season.

A little more than a year ago, Roberts set a goal to crack the Radford team’s starting lineup. With a lot of hard work, she did. And once the season was over, the Mebane, North Carolina, native was named second team all-conference and was selected to the all-freshman team.

“After receiving these awards, I decided I wanted to do better my sophomore year, and I realized I have the ability to do so, “Roberts explained. “I have been working toward getting Player of the Year for the past year because I believed it was an achievable goal for me.”

On Wednesday, May 8, the conference announced that it had indeed named Roberts its top player for the 2024 season. Over the course of 18 games, Roberts hit for a .475 batting average, scored 16 runs and smacked three triples, topping the conference in each of those three categories. The center fielder was perfect in the field, committing zero errors on 89 batted balls hit her way.

Roberts was also named first-team all-conference, while three teammates – Kari Shedrick, Abby Wilson and Rachel Smith – also received all-conference honors.

“After the season ended,” Roberts said, “I thought I had a pretty good shot at getting this award, and I hoped that all my hard work would pay off, which it did.”

Roberts’ hard work and excellence are evident in the classroom, too. The accounting major has maintained a 4.0 GPA, which made her a no-doubt addition to the Big South’s All-Academic Team.

“I believe that anyone on our team could have gotten this because we all put in the work on and off the field,” Roberts said. “Our team had an overall team GPA of 3.81 in the fall, which goes to show how many of us could have received this award.

“Overall, I am very honored to have received these awards this year for softball.”

Hands-on learning with Virginia State Police

In early April, a group of criminal justice students made a short drive along Interstate 81 to the Virginia State Police Division 6 headquarters in Salem, Virginia, to get an inside look at the multi-faceted agency and learn about potential job opportunities.

Radford Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Stacey Clifton organized the event for the 26 criminal justice students. They engaged with several law enforcement experts, learning about K-9 units, polygraph, dispatch, search and rescue, drug enforcement and drug diversion, criminal investigations, motor squad, communications/radio tech and bomb and arson squads. The students also learned about LEICA, a 3D laser scanner that provides agencies with an avenue to create digital scene mapping and documentation for public safety and forensics; ANDE, a rapid DNA testing instrument that allows agencies to receive DNA results in less than two hours; and the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), which automates ballistics evaluations.

“My goal in organizing this event was to provide students with an opportunity to engage with a criminal justice agency outside of the classroom environment,” Clifton said. “We can spend an abundance of time in the classroom discussing various aspects of the criminal justice system, but engaging students with practitioners in the field broadens student perspectives and provides networking opportunities.”

Tyler Russell, a rising sophomore criminal justice major, said he would recommend future trips to anyone interested in law enforcement. “I was excited to learn how much of a variety the state police department had to offer, from K-9 to scuba diving in the field to 3D mapping and ballistics behind a desk,” said Russell, an aspiring game warden from Ellicott City, Maryland. “It was very clear that there’s a wide variety of specializations to pick from or grow into as you gain experience.”

Gaining insight into state police operations “can open up many different opportunities for you and can lead to finding what you truly want to do as a career,” explained Brooke Hall, a rising senior criminal justice major from Roanoke, Virginia. “It also opens up many different opportunities within the state police that I found super interesting, such as polygraphing or working for the Virginia Fusion Center. The trip was applicable to what I want to do with my career because beginning as a state trooper could lead me to begin my career as a crime analyst.”

Exploring history through trees

Professor of Geospatial Science Stockton Maxwell spoke in April to the “With Good Reason” public radio program about the restorative effects of wildfires.

Maxwell, who studies tree rings to chart forest fire history in Appalachia, explained in the interview how studying tree rings can help us understand the frequency in which fires have burned the landscape and how trees can teach us about the history of an area where human records no longer exist.

“If you think about a tree, they’re stuck on the landscape. They can’t move when a fire comes,” Maxwell explained. “And, so as the fire burns up to them, it heats up the cambium, or the outside growing portion of that tree, and it will kill those cells and injure them, but it may not kill the entire tree. So, that gives the tree an opportunity to callus over and grow some tissue to cover up that wound. We can date that injury and, by looking at multiple trees in a forest, we can understand how often fires have burned in that location.”

The show, “Mapping Climate History,” is available as a podcast at withgoodreason.org. The professor and dendrochronologist also appeared on “With Good Reason” in 2016 in a segment titled “The Tree Ringist.”

“With Good Reason” is produced by Virginia Humanities for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium, which comprises all of Virginia’s public colleges and universities. The award-winning program is heard by an estimated 100,000 people each week on public radio stations in 38 states, including Virginia and Washington, D.C. Thousands more listeners download the episodes via iTunes.