Our Highlanders are using their education to do extraordinary things. In this column, 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.
On-the-job “training”
Back when Emma Hanson Elder ’21 was a teen, a partial tear of her meniscus sidelined her from high school sports for a few weeks. That temporary setback, however, also helped introduce her to the field that would become her professional calling – athletic training.
Since graduation, Hanson Elder, a native of Gladys, Virginia, has served as an athletic trainer for Halifax County High School, assisting students with sports-related injuries and also preventing damage through planning when possible.
An extensive profile of her in the Gazette-Virginian (South Boston, Virginia) newspaper offers readers a long look at her background and her approach to her work, as well as the many ways she influences or blends with others – in particular, the six Halifax graduates who have gone into athletic training since Hanson Elder’s tenure began.
“I love when they come back and tell me about their experiences in college, what injuries they’ve seen and what teams they’ve worked with,” she told the newspaper.
“When they say they want to do what I do, that means a lot.”
The multiverse of ‘Madness’
If you’re still looking for advice on your March Madness bracket, well … [checks calendar] we’re afraid you’ve missed that particular boat this year. The NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament already tipped off this week, on Tuesday, March 17.
But earlier that same day, WFIR (Roanoke) spoke with Professor of Accounting Mike Chatham, a veteran bracket-master, about his strategies for successful picks, which don’t really come with a shelf life.
In a nutshell, his primary suggestion is to seek out that ever-evasive sweet spot between picking obvious teams and guessing the upsetters – Number One seeds still win the national title more than any other, he explained, but the tournament’s history shows at least one double-digit seed has made it to the Sweet 16 since 2008. Strike just the right balance, and one could go all the way.
He also said squads with senior rosters tend to perform better later in the tournament, and that teams draw an advantage if they’ve navigated tougher conferences during the regular season.
Ultimately, though, a large part of the thrill of March Madness comes from the fact that no amount of skill and shrewdness can guarantee that anyone can select all 63 consecutive outcomes.
“The grandmother that picks [teams] based on who has a cuter mascot tends to do just as well as the ESPN analyst,” Chatham concluded. “That’s what’s really fun about the tournament.”
Emergency attention
The Western Virginia Emergency Medical Services Council’s awards banquet was held March 12 at the Salem Civic Center.
The council’s prizes recognize exceptional service in its field and, as this year’s were presented, two Highlander staffers took top honors, according to a recent piece in The Roanoker magazine.
Radford’s Emergency Services Program Director and Lead Instructor, Kari Whitney, was named this year’s Outstanding EMS Educator. Whitney recently marked a decade at Radford; she started at the university as a clinical director and EMS instructor in the summer of 2015.
The 2026 Dr. Cheryl B. Haas Award, given to a physician who has made an outstanding contribution to EMS, was presented to Brian Ekey, who is the co-operational medical director for Radford University EMS and for Blacksburg Volunteer Rescue Squad. He is also Montgomery County’s operational medical director and works as an emergency medical physician at LewisGale Hospital Montgomery.
Additionally, Gov. Abigail Spanberger has designated Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Week to occur each May and, to mark the occasion, she has announced she will host an upcoming event at Virginia’s executive mansion to salute this year’s winners.
This year’s banquet also marked the 50th Anniversary of the Western Virginia EMS Council’s service to the region, which covers the counties of Alleghany, Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford, Botetourt, Campbell, Craig, Floyd, Franklin, Giles, Henry, Montgomery, Patrick, Pittsylvania, Pulaski and Roanoke; and the cities of Covington, Danville, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Radford, Roanoke and Salem.
The daytrippers
Last week, as part of an ongoing outreach effort, Radford University hosted 28 students from Patrick Henry High School in Glade Spring, Virginia, for a brief visit.
Their tour gave them a firsthand look at college life – including Radford’s residential and academic facilities – and they stopped in for lunch at the campus cafeteria.
Afterward, the school posted a gallery of snapshots from the trek on Instagram and on X.
March weather in the New River Valley is always something of a roulette wheel (ex: 80 degrees one day, snowing the next), but from the looks of the photos, the sun clearly came out to greet them while they were here.
