Every other week, our Highlanders are using their education to do extraordinary things. Here, we’ll highlight some notable mentions from local, regional, national and international news media. Whether our students, alumni, faculty and staff are featured as subject matter experts in high-profile stories or simply helping make the world a better place, we’ll feature their stories.
Getting out the vote
The electoral process is important to Devin Van Dyke.
Van Dyke, a junior political science major and Tazewell resident, recently traveled six hours to join more than 100 people for the Virginia Student Voting Summit.
The daylong event was held Sept. 13 at the Cedric Rucker University Center at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, with students, school administrators and others, exchanging information and ideas about campus voting efforts across the state.
“It brings different perspectives,” Van Dyke told the university. “Students from different colleges are coming together to share how they make their initiatives work on their campuses.”
Workshop topics included an overview of how ranked choice voting works, statistical evidence regarding underrepresented groups, the power of the disability vote and ways civic-minded students can remain active beyond election day.
“New” wheels
A freewheeling alumni has returned to Radford and hopes to become an active “spokes” man.
He’s Andrew Hund ’03 and in August he purchased the city’s longtime Main Street bicycle hub The New Wheel, the same shop in which he worked when he was a student.
Hund comes to Radford from Norfolk, Virginia, where for 15 years he owned and operated Hund’s Recycle Factory through which, according to a Sept. 13 story by Norfolk’s WVEC, “he’s built and given away hundred of bikes to friends, family and people he doesn’t even know.”
The WVEC piece also details his work as a Norfolk cycling advocate through the Bicycle Trails and Pedestrian board.
Hund told us he hopes his new business will see its official opening sometime this winter, and in addition to retail bicycle sales, he hopes it will also offer a bike museum and a location for work by his longtime partner, Dee Martin, a visual artist and fanzine publisher.
“I’m buying the coolest bike shop in my favorite town,” Hund exclaimed. “It doesn’t get much cooler than that.
“I’m coming back to Radford, where my heart beats at peace, and I hope to help build a healthier community with bikes.”
Nursing ambitions
The bad news?
A study by George Mason University recently revealed there are more than 20,000 nursing vacancies in the United States, a daunting prospect that might increase dramatically over the next 10 years.
The good news?
Southwest Virginia’s nursing schools are trying to turn that trend around – including Radford University.
“Radford’s nursing program has produced some of the finest nurses in the commonwealth for the past 50 years,” declared WFXR-TV in a Sept. 4 report on the nursing shortages. The story also noted that Radford is the only college of nursing among Virginia’s public institutions.
WFXR spoke with Radford’s College of Nursing Dean Wendy Downey, who said that potential Highlander hires come with good word-of-mouth.
“One of the things I’m really proud about is when (employers) contact me and they say, ‘Please send us Radford graduates, because I don’t have to teach them how to be a nurse once they’ve graduated and they come to work for us,’” Downey told the station.
“They are more work-ready.”
Safe at home
Like a lot of accidents, a student’s close call on the New River on Sept. 10 started out fairly simple – Cody Duncan was standing knee-deep in the water when he suddenly slipped into greater depths.
But as the minutes passed and the strong current slowed his recovery, Duncan’s situation became more precarious, more dangerous, and he was ultimately rescued from the water by fellow student Nick Barton and by Radford baseball coach Alex Guerra, who was walking nearby and sprang forward to help.
A Sept. 22 article in The Roanoke Times documents the escalation of the situation and the efforts by Guerra and Barton. Duncan spent some time in the hospital afterward but said his two rescuers had prevented the worst from occurring.
“You saved somebody’s life,” a policeman tells Guerra in the account. “Did you ever think you were going to do that today?”
The recovery was also documented in Lynchburg’s News & Advance and by the Martinsville Bulletin, as well as by WSLS-TV. The Roanoke television station also offered an additional story with river-related safety tips.