Our Highlanders are using their education to do extraordinary things. Every other week, we 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.
Adventure time!
Thirty-two colleges recently faced off in hopes of being named Blue Ridge Outdoors’ 2025 Top Adventure College, a bracketed competition between colleges and universities from around the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.
Hundreds of campaign posts hit the internet (including one that documents the excursions of a very active local university president), and thousands of votes were cast.
But in the end “there can be only one,” to quote the signature line from the 1986 film “Highlander” (!). And so it was that, in the final round, Radford edged out East Tennessee State University, a two-time champion in years past, to take the title this time.
Blue Ridge Outdoors celebrated Radford’s win by posting an announcement with an interview that covers some of the adventurous advantages the university offers its students.
“Radford is one of those places where you don’t have to go far to find adventure; it’s literally all around you,” the article declares. “The historic New River is a campus boundary, the Blue Ridge Mountains are as visible as a backyard and there are trails, rivers, crags, caves and campsites in just about every direction.
“If you’re into hiking, biking, caving, skiing, paddling, skydiving, climbing or just getting lost in the woods for a while, this place is a hidden gem.”
Gaining insight, building connections
Kirby Brown ’25, a forward on Radford’s women’s basketball team, is headed to Indiana later this month.
She’s one of just 200 student-athletes tapped to attend the 2025 NCAA Career in Sports Forum, held the last week of May in Indianapolis, Indiana. Attendees of the three-day conference learn about career opportunities in sports and can network with college athletics professionals.
"I'm incredibly honored to be selected for the NCAA Career in Sports Forum," Brown, of Hixson, Tennessee, said in a May 8 report by the Radford Athletics department. "It means a lot to be recognized for my passion and dedication.
“I'm looking forward to gaining insight into the industry, building connections and continuing to grow as a future professional in this field."
Brown has had an eventful month. In addition to earning her Bachelor of Science in sport management on May 10, Brown’s selection to the forum also came the week after she was one of two standout Highlander athletes to receive the Men’s and Women’s Strength and Conditioning Award, alongside men’s baseball pitcher Will Rice ‘25. Rice, from Suffolk, Virginia, also just graduated, with a degree in exercise, sport and health education.
Their sports prizes were presented May 1 at the RUBY’s Awards Banquet, the annual ceremony at which Radford University recognizes and celebrates the achievements of its student-athletes.
Learning firsthand
Late last month, we told you about six up-and-coming teachers who were completing their training through the Southwest Virginia Teacher Apprenticeship Consortium, a program launched by Radford’s College of Education and Human Development.
The initiative seeks to address teacher shortages and increase the number of qualified educators, and the group’s members are now headed for full-time positions in the same Region 6 school divisions where they were trained, including Pulaski, Carroll and Wythe counties and the cities of Radford and Roanoke.
On April 30, the half-dozen members of the inaugural class – Sherri Blair, Lianna Dillon, Cheyenne Hinkel, Alyssa Moffett, Claire Morris and Alicia Noble – celebrated National Apprenticeship Day on campus at Peters Hall, and Roanoke’s WDBJ-7 was there to document the occasion.
“When you apprentice, you’re working in the school division where you plan to become a teacher,” the program’s coordinator, Associate Professor Melissa Lisanti, told the station. “So you actually already know the curricula, you know the division policies, you know the school leaders. You already have colleagues.”
Blair, whose training included teaching first grade at Wythe County’s Spiller Elementary, said of the program: “We went from the beginning of the school year to planning everything … all the way to the end of the school year. So we’ve really gotten what it’s like to be first-year teachers, which we would not have gotten otherwise.”
The program is on track to expand even further this fall, when the number of apprentices will double to 12 teacher trainees.
Studio sounds and STEM
Another recent report by Roanoke's WDBJ-7 gives viewers a glimpse at the campus' new state-of-the-art recording facility while also introducing them to two faculty members who use music to enhance early education.
The May 15 piece looks at the work of Radford University associate professors of music Jennifer McDonel and Dave Rivers, who have collaborated on a multi-album project called “Little Beats: Counting, Shapes, and Sets.” Their music integrates lyrics and melody to ease very young listeners into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education.
McDonel, who is also an associate director of the Office of Undergraduate Research (OURS), and who on April 30 was named one of this year's Dalton Eminent Senior Scholars, started writing children's music in 2022.
Through her partnership with Rivers and their work with the national nonprofit "Zero to Three," they composed 44 songs with a basis in learning, and they’re now at work on an additional 20 tunes, coming next year, according to the story.
She told WDBJ she conceives the pieces by fusing children’s language and ideas with STEM content and concepts.
"So I was reinforcing ... the mathematics vocabulary, like counting, shapes, sets and patterning, and trying to write catchy tunes,” McDonel explained.
"This music is an invitation to participate," River said.
WDBJ interviewed the duo in the new sound studio that's part of the Artis Center for Adaptive Innovation and Creativity, filming them as they used the equipment to demonstrate their songs.
The story also provides a free link to the Zero to Three curriculum, which includes all the songs McDonel and Rivers released.