Eberly News

A West Virginia University researcher says Tuesday’s (July 23) surprise hydrothermal explosion at Yellowstone National Park’s Biscuit Basin doesn’t mean a larger eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano is imminent. The explosion, captured on video by park visitors, launched debris into the air and damaged the boardwalk, but no one was injured.

Gov. Jim Justice visited the Morgantown Campus Monday (June 24) to present Duncan Lorimer, a 2024 Fellow of the Royal Society, and Maura McLauglin, a new member of the National Academy of Sciences, with Distinguished West Virginian awards.

The best word for this is an experience — a potentially life-changing one for those students who earn the opportunity. This is the WVU Medical and Dental Brigades. The term brigade is fitting. It’s tactical, strategic, well-organized, and intense. A lightning rod. And for the students and volunteers who are accepted to participate, it’s often a wake-up call. “This is a different type of clinical experience, educational experience. It’s not one that happens in a classroom. I'm not even sure if it happens in a hospital space,” Brewster said. “They're learning a more holistic understanding of health and medicine.”

Sean McWilliams, associate professor of physics and astronomy in the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, was part of a team in 2015 that first detected those invisible ripples, which confirmed Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Now, with $750,000 in support from NASA’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, McWilliams will lead efforts to develop models to help facilitate observations from the planned space probe.

Katy Goodrich, assistant professor of space physics, receives 2024 WVU CAREER award. She believes her research project will make space science more accessible to institutions with limited resources. For her project, she’ll design a CubeSat, or miniature satellite, mission to study the Earth’s auroral acceleration region.

Amy Alvarez was an avid reader growing up. She still has the book from her childhood that sparked her love of poetry. It’s a collection of classic British poems from the 1800s and there was something about the language she found compelling, even at a young age.

Eight members of the faculty in Eberly College of Arts and Sciences have been recognized for their excellence in teaching, research and service.

Dead from a cocaine overdose, a waitress found in a trendy Wilmington, Delaware neighborhood set the gears in motion for one of James Nolan’s last cases as a vice detective. It also served as the catalyst for his next career investigating different strategies in policing as a West Virginia University sociology professor.

Each year, the organization awards $3,000 grants to a select group of teachers, college faculty and independent scholars to support research and writing projects in the humanities. The 2023 Humanities Council Fellows from Eberly College are Brooke Durham, Enkeshi El-Amin, Sean Lawrence, Austin McCoy, Mason Moseley and Devin Smart.