Eberly News

Students honored as 2025 Outstanding Seniors, Outstanding GTAs and Eberly Scholars
Every year, students from across Eberly College are selected as Outstanding Seniors and Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistants. Eberly Scholars are also chosen annually for a monetary award to help offset the cost of their education as they work to achieve their academic goals. Read about all three groups below.

Seven Eberly faculty members recognized for excellence in teaching, research and service
Each year, Eberly College honors faculty members with its Outstanding Teacher Awards, Outstanding Researcher Awards and the Award for Outstanding Outreach or Public Service. Recipients in each category receive a stipend to help further their research, teaching and service efforts.
University students earn Community Leadership and Civil Advocacy Certificate
The Stubblefield Institute for Civil Political Communications hosted a student recognition event on April 15 on the Morgantown Campus to recognize three students who completed its Community Leadership and Civil Advocacy Certificate program.

Rock Flow Dynamics software gift to WVU advances geoscience and energy engineering education
West Virginia University students pursuing careers in geoscience and energy engineering will have access to industry-leading professional software thanks to a $26.8 million gift from Rock Flow Dynamics.
The in-kind gift allows students and faculty at the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources and the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences to use tNavigator, a state-of-the-art reservoir modeling and simulation platform created by Rock Flow Dynamics.

Prepping for Doomsday: The Fight Against Disaster
For Amy Hessl, professor of geography at West Virginia University, the past can predict the future. Hessl is a dendrochronologist, a scientist who unravels climate histories and trends through the study of tree ring growth patterns. So when wildfires engulfed the Los Angeles, California area in January 2025, resulting in dozens of deaths and tens of thousands of destroyed structures, Hessl wasn’t taken aback. In fact, she said, ongoing warm air temperatures and variable precipitation – which can be presumed from her studies of climate history trends — will lead to even more extreme fires in the future.

IsoBioGeM Laboratory Leading Renewable Energy Research on the East Coast
The Department of Geology and Geography at West Virginia University (WVU) is at the forefront of revolutionizing the energy landscape through its pioneering work in geosciences. Nestled in the Appalachian region, WVU leverages its unique geological setting to explore sustainable energy solutions, focusing on geothermal energy, critical minerals, and hydrogen storage.

WVU paleoclimatologist predicts California fires will become ‘more extreme, more frequent, more widespread’
As the destruction continues with southern California’s wildfires that could be the costliest in U.S. history, one West Virginia University researcher said ongoing warm air temperatures and variable precipitation will lead to even more extreme fires in the future. Amy Hessl, a geography professor and paleoclimatologist in the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, has studied the relationship between fire and climate throughout the world, particularly North America, Central Asia and Australia. She attributes the widespread devastation of California’s fires to an unusual weather pattern, known as the Santa Ana or “devil winds,” that are unique to that area.

The Center for Resilient Communities Welcomes Eighteen Students to the 2025 Resilient Communities Internship Program
WVU Center for Resilient Communities Announces 18 Interns for 6th Annual Resilient Communities Internship

Money trees: WVU researchers looking at local benefits from climate change fighting ability in Appalachian forests
Researchers at West Virginia University are working to ensure small landowners and local communities, instead of large corporations, profit from the ability of Central Appalachian forests to remove greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.