Find out more about what is happening at WVNET.
Events, career opportunities and department updates.

West Virginia University’s Teaching and Learning Commons (TLC) provides teaching support and resources for faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Their team uses an evidence-based approach that emphasizes creativity, collaboration, and innovation.

WVU’s TLC works with campus partners to assist instructors in enhancing their teaching, both on campus and online, to deepen student learning. 

Since 2013, the WVU TLC has increased its spectrum of services to include consultations, workshops, on-demand resources, and annual events on a variety of topics aimed at empowering instructors.  Specifically, the WVU TLC offers course design/delivery services, classroom technology support, video/infographic assistance, and teaching practices peer support and learning communities.  The TLC Sandbox is a research and development initiative for faculty, GTAs, and staff to evaluate emerging technologies.  Showcase examples include experimental classroom space and the light board studio to develop instructional videos.

The WVU TLC invites you to come Celebrate with them (annually) with sessions designed to:

• Enhance your teaching;
• Showcase the latest instructional approaches and technologies;
• Promote networking for research collaboration (especially as it relates to the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning);
• Share examples of academic excellence (e.g., assessment, student success);
• Encourage fun and energizing wellness activities.

2020 was a year unlike any other before, with the COVID-19 pandemic presenting many new challenges for WVNET and our customers. WVNET management and staff expertly managed the challenges head on. The year consisted of some restructuring, staff retirements and some employees moving on to a new opportunity. But we still finished the year with six new employees joining the WVNET team, along with several employee promotions and advancements. On top of that, WVNET celebrated 45 years of service this year.

Kids Connect: With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing K-12 schools to immediately shift to remote learning, the absence of reliable, in-home broadband access was a major issue across the state. Partnering with the WV Department of Education and the WV Office of Technology, WVNET helped launch the Kids Connect Initiative, a statewide program to provide over 1,000 community hotspots for drive-up Internet access for K-12 students, including 670 K-12 schools 171 libraries, and 28 state parks. It also included hotspots at 38 colleges and universities, and provided drive-up Internet access for higher education students as well. From concept to power-up, the program took less than 60 days, thanks to the intra-departmental cooperation among these state agencies.

New Strategic Plan: A new five-year strategic plan was published, based on input from WVNET employees and customers, along with a review of the business trends and strategic technologies in education. This new plan included updates to WVNET’s mission, vision, and goals, and outlined operational initiatives for the next five years. It provides a roadmap to ensure WVNET is responsive to the needs of West Virginia’s higher education customers while maximizing the state’s investment in new technologies.

WV Statewide Technology Conference: After a brief hiatus, WVNET resumed the West Virginia Statewide Technology Conference (WVSTC) in 2020. What had been planned as an in-person event was reformatted to a virtual conference due to COVID-19 and was held from July 14 -16, 2020. WVNET worked with the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) and the West Virginia Office of Technology (WVOT) to put together a diverse program for K-12, Higher Education and Government users.

Plans are well underway for the 2021 WVSTC virtual event which is scheduled for July 12-14, 2021. Additional details, including speakers, agenda, and registration, will be posted to the conference website (wvstc.com) in the coming months.

Marketing WVNET: The Marketing Committee has been working to update the professional brochure designed for State Delegates and Senators that details our vast list of customers by political district. Combined with the WVNET organizational information brochure, these documents convey the importance of WVNET to the growth and vitality of West Virginia. The Marketing Committee has also been working to increase employee engagement and recognition by establishing “Employee of the Month” and “Customer of the Month” initiatives. In 2020, the committee provided updates to the WVNET Webpage and renewed social medial accounts with regular posts to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. WVNET’s social media engagement increased by 300% in 2020!

Quality Matters (QM): WVNET assumed management of QM for the State of West Virginia and conducted six subscriber-managed course reviews in 2020. As a result of COVID-19, course offerings were adjusted to meet the needs of the state, including offering eight additional courses. WVNET added Designing Your Online Course (DYOC) to the state license, conducted the first QM Zoom face-to-face session in the state, and added an additional QM peer reviewer.

Financial Impact: WVNET continues to provide financial savings to all of its higher education customers through group purchasing agreements that provide large discounts on technology purchases. In 2020, this resulted in West Virginia colleges and universities savings over $5.2M in software purchases alone. Add to that the expert technical talent and 24/7 support provided by WVNET and you can easily see how WVNET is a critical success for the citizens of West Virginia.

The NEW Teaching and Learning Commons

In July, WVNET launched the Teaching and Learning Commons. This prompted a change in focus for the Software Development team from an exclusively software/ application development focus to a more comprehensive focus that includes applications, websites, and content development. This change allows the Development Team to operate in a more flexible manner to better support the activities of the Teaching and Learning Commons and the broader mission of WVNET.

The 2020 Professional Development Week was held with 34 presentations to 431 attendees and 1564 registrations. Additionally, monthly training sessions provide continuous educational opportunities. A new TLC website and registration site were launched, and a documentation portal and course catalog were established. The TLC Team joined several online Learning Consortium and Professional and Occupational Development Organizations and was invited to participate in Academic Affairs Meetings to discuss the program.

Banner ACT Reporting Upgrade: WVNET has been working with our college and university customers over the past year with testing the new Banner ACT College Score Reporting upgrade provided by ACT and Encoura Data Labs. This new application bridges the gap in uploading high school transcripts, resumes, letters of recommendation, high school profile, admission essays, cover letter, and personal statements in addition to the super-scoring where the higher test scores are reported.

Banner Financial Aid: WVNET has worked with our college and university Banner customers over the past year to monitor and disseminate information regarding the CARES Act, provide updates to federal systems (COD, EdConnect, SAIG, CPS, etc), and address Banner Financial Aid concerns. WVNET aided colleagues inside and outside of West Virginia with troubleshooting problems and facilitated setup of new Banner procedures. WVNET continues to encourage the adoption of new procedures to help staff keep up with increasingly complex and evolving regulations.

DegreeWorks: Go-live kicked off this year for Ellucian DegreeWorks, a comprehensive academic advising, transfer articulation, and degree audit solution. “Connect, Learn and Engage” was the goal of the DegreeWorks Team for 2020 as we presented several live webinars via the WVNET Teaching and Learning Commons. Topics focused on the latest release of DegreeWorks and its new applications: Controller, Responsive Dashboard, and Web Transit. With on-site visits cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions, the team conducted more virtual conference calls to support our user community. The users will notice several changes, including a new user interface, as well as functional enhancements. The Degree Audit Worksheet displays more responsively in a mobile environment, the exception processing experience has been improved, and this upgrade is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

DegreeWorks team has begun the process of upgrading DegreeWorks from version 4.1.6 to the 5.x release.

Blackboard Learning System: WVNET administrators for Blackboard installed Medial Closed Captioning and adopted the ProctorTrack tool and SoftChalk. Additionally, WVNET provided training for Blackboard faculty users transitioning to virtual learning due to COVID-19.

Also, with recent changes made by Blackboard to sunset self-hosted software platforms, WVNET is developing a Request for Proposal to identify and select a new Learning Management System for the state. Plans are to implement a new system in the early summer of 2021 and assist customers with migrating their current Blackboard courses to the new platform before the start of Fall 2021.

Web Development

The WVNET Web Development Team is moving to better position itself to take on new projects and new partnerships by offering support and expertise for web-based projects. We worked extensively over the spring and summer to move Logan County Schools’ district website to our K-12 server and set up placeholder sites for each of its schools. More recently, projects have included launching the WV Kids Connect initiative and an accessibility audit and overhaul of the Higher Education Policy Commission’s website. The web team is also in the planning phase of working with Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College to assist with a site redesign and moving their website to WordPress.

Most notably, in 2020 the team worked with the First2 Network to convert their site from HubZero to WordPress, customized child theme development, and implemented social network functionality. This was an eight-month project that involved a good deal of project coordination between the customer, the WVNET Development Team, and the WVNET Systems and Operations staff.

Other Software Applications

The WVNET Software Development Team underwent a significant transition this past year with the retirement of longtime Software Developer and Team Lead, Mike Karolchik. Mike’s work spanned nearly 40 years and countless projects, including creation of the WVNET problem management and support system, OZ.

OZ Problem Tracking System: In 2020, we released the latest version of WVNET’s problem tracking system. We transitioned 13 customers to the OZ 5.0 and WVROCKS was added as a new customer. Additionally, custom code was replaced with reCAPTCHA for improved security and authentication rules were re-worked to help prevent unauthorized access.

PSTachio: WVNET’s Public Service Training application is used by public service providers throughout West Virginia. In 2020, PSTachio was moved to a single site so users can easily switch between regions when logged in and run reports across all regions. Various other enhancements were made to this application to allow for an improved overall user experience, including the addition of a new alert system to inform WVNET when users run into errors. Additionally, new announcements have been added to the home page to keep users informed on new features and other important information.

Systems and Operations

• Deployed Banner Access Management and educated our user community on its use.
• Maintained and updated customers’ Banner databases with regular patches and upgrades, ensuring enhanced security.
• Implemented reCaptcha for Banner access to prevent false applications from being submitted.
• Continued rollout of SQLNet Encryption to require encrypted communication to the database. This is in addition to the security measures already in place to protect database access.
• Implemented Ellucian Mobile and CRM Recruit / BRIM application which required multiple component upgrades and coordination with Ellucian.
• Enabled integration of Ellucian Ethos Identity Services with Microsoft Azure for a single sign-on (SSO) implementation. Worked with multiple schools to implement additional SSO solutions.
• Began implementation of Oracle Data Rest Services to migrate existing applications to a new and more secure platform.
• Upgraded datacenter computing infrastructure to increase performance.
• Migrated to a new SAN environment utilizing an all-flash array.
  Upgraded computing hardware to increase resource availability to the virtual environment.
  Upgraded Infoblox DNS appliances.
• Utilized third-party security scanning services to determine and mitigate risks with public facing servers.

Network Operations Center

During the COVID-19 pandemic and stay at home orders issued by Governor Justice, the Network Operations Center (NOC) continued working on-site to ensure support services remained up and running for state employees and students working remotely. The NOC took responsibility of scheduling video conferences for the court systems in February 2020. The average OZ tickets, emails and calls per week were 293. NOC staff will has earned HDI team certification. As a reminder, WVNET’s NOC is staffed 24/7/365 to serve our customers.

Telecommunications

• Provided Softphones to NOC and other key staff to be able to answer calls and work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Built a support line for the Kids Connect initiative for our NOC to help support students and families learning remotely.
• Upgraded Blackboard Learning Management system to be compatible with shift in user work and learning environments.
• Utilized WVNET’s F5 load balancer to find a solution to the depreciation of TLS version by several browser developers for both our Blackboard and Banner customers.
• Increased utilization of our F5 load balancer to provide an additional security layer for many of our hosted websites.
• Implemented new security training and phishing simulations to ensure WVNET staff use safe computing practices.
• Provided VPN solutions for people transitioning to work-from-home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Provided additional co-location services in our data center to a variety of new telecom vendors.
• Increased bandwidth to the Internet from both POPs and between the POPs to provide additional bandwidth during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Worked with WVNET carriers to increase redundancy to the Internet and Internet2 to handle additional network traffic due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Enabled the Federal court districts in West Virginia to expand telepresence video sessions due to travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Continued to mitigate malicious traffic on the network on a daily basis.
• Continued to work in concert with West Virginia Office of Technology to provide greater services to the citizens of West Virginia.
• Continued to enhance Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation services with a fully automated solution coming in Q1 2021.
• Reduced down time by providing replacements for failed BTOP-funded routers out of WVNET stock at multiple locations free of charge.

New Employees in 2020

Stephen Doll (System Administrator): Before joining WVNET, Stephen worked at WVU for 12 years in various roles. Prior to WVU, he managed Windows servers and networks for an IT servicing company. Stephen is certified in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), Comptia A+, Certified Novell Administrator (CNA), and received a degree in Computer Systems Applications from ECPI College of Technology.

Benjamin Frame (Network Operator): Along with his technical expertise, Ben is an entrepreneur who has co-founded two small businesses in Morgantown: Concierge Digital (providing consulting services) and DubVMade (promoting local music artists and events in West Virginia). Ben received an Associate’s degree in Information Technology from West Virginia Junior College.

Tiffany Goff (Executive Administrative Assistant): Tiffany has over eight years of experience as an executive administrative assistant and providing paralegal support experience in the healthcare field at Mon Health Center. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and HR Management from Fairmont State University.

Gustavo Keener (Banner Systems Administrator): Originally from North Carolina, Gustavo started his IT career by laying Ethernet wiring for a small business in Utah. He has worked on several roles ever since and in the last few years has worked as a full- stack software developer at Mylan and as a Database Administrator for a local non- profit. Gustavo received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Utah Valley University, and an Associate’s degree in General Science Studies from Brevard College. Gustavo is also fluent in Spanish (conversational and practical).

Annaliza Marks (Programmer Analyst for Banner Finance): Annaliza has over 25 years of experience in Information Technology and has worn many hats in the IT field, such as: Database Administrator, Web Page Administrator, Software Specialist, Programmer, Graphic Artist, Report Writer, and Blackboard Administrator. She has also taught Information Technology and Robotics to high school students. Annaliza received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems and an Associate’s degree in Technical Studies – Cisco Networking, both from Glenville State College. Additionally, she is certified as a Wimba Product Specialist, as well as Comptia A+ and Network+.

Kathy Stucklen (Network Operator): Kathy is an experienced Tier 1 Helpdesk customer support representative and administrative specialist, with several years in a fast-paced pharmaceutical environment. Kathy received an Associate’s degree in Computer Information Systems and an Associate’s degree in Criminal Justice, both from Kaplan University.

Employee Promotions and Advancements in 2020

Sarah Barnes to Supervisor of Development Team (previously Web Developer): In her new role as Supervisor of Development Team, Sarah will lead the Software Development and Web Development teams on current projects and plan for future projects in consultation with the Teaching & Learning Commons (TLC).

Jason Chastain to Telecommunications Supervisor (previously Telecom Specialist): Jason has taken on additional responsibilities of supervising the operations of the Morgantown telecommunications staff and for all WVNET telecommunication and networking systems, under the direction of the Manager of Telecommunications.

James (J.R.) Farley to Database Administrator Team Lead (previously Senior DBA): His team says, “J.R. is a great presenter and helps us understand complex systems by breaking them down into digestible chunks. He is the glue that holds the Banner DBA team together. His insight has helped us solve complex issues in a timely manner more times than one can count.”

Alexander Keefover to Instructional Designer, WVROCKS (previously Program Assistant II): Throughout the state of West Virginia, Alex leads WVROCKS instructors in designing and building online courses in accordance with current learning theories, design models, and compliance with intellectual property, privacy, and accessibility laws. Additionally, he assists with administrating Blackboard LMS and integrating new, external tools using LTI.

Phil Snitz to Manager of Business Operations (previously Business Manager II): Phil has taken on additional responsibilities of procurement and purchasing agent tasks while continuing to manage payroll and overseeing the accounts payable and accounts receivable functions.

In Memoriam

In March 2020, we lost a long-time employee and a well-loved colleague, Randy Long. His sudden passing was an emotional blow to his friends and colleagues at WVNET. In his honor, we have named one of the WVNET conference rooms after Randy so that he is always with us.

Similarly, another conference room was renamed after long-term WVNET employee, Allen Daugherty, who passed away in 2018.

New River’s IT Response to the Pandemic

Like many colleges and universities, since March 2020, New River Community and Technical College has been working and delivering services remotely.  This sudden change required us to quickly identify services not yet available to students and remote workers so we could modify these services to make them available for remote users.  While this sounds simple enough, it required a good deal of effort to modify several services while we were also working remotely and continuing to meet the daily demands of IT support.  When in-house modifications weren’t possible, we had to quickly purchase new service delivery solutions for several areas to fill these gaps. 

A summary of these changes provides an overview of this activity and progress. 

1. We changed the modality of nearly all courses to use Blackboard Learn and Zoom.  While the infrastructure for this was mostly in place, we did have to significantly expand our licensing for Zoom by purchasing an additional 40 Zoom Pro licenses.  With so many courses now using Zoom, we also had to increase our online storage space from 500MB to 3TB so we could keep at least one term of class recordings in the Cloud. 
2. Many of our faculty needed training to deliver course information using Blackboard and Zoom.  We relied heavily on WVNET for formal workshops and we greatly expanded our use of Quality Matters training to address this need.  We also improved our own IT knowledgebase and online support resources to answer common “how to” questions and provide step-by-step directions to users, but this effort was only able to occur after we replaced our Spiceworks ticketing system with Zendesk (April 2020).  Our Help Desk Manager was able to quickly make this transition and the change has clearly been an overall improvement for us, even though Spiceworks was free and Zendesk has an annual license we must purchase. 
3. Initially, our remote-working employees used home phones and cell phones to receive and place calls on behalf of the College.  With some effort, we were able to quickly forward calls from office phone numbers to personal phone numbers so that calls were not missed, but this was only a temporary and partial solution to the problem.  While calls were received through this effort, when employees returned calls from personal phones the Caller ID didn’t identify them as New River employees, so some employees expressed concern about making their private numbers available and some calls went unanswered because students didn’t recognize the caller’s number.  We began evaluating options to allow us to not use these personal phone numbers to make and receive calls and we started with Google Voice.  While this solution was an improvement, it created an entirely different phone number that still was not associated with the College, but that only solved half of the problem.  We then worked with one of our vendors, Alpha Technologies, to implement the Cisco IP Communicator softphones for employees to use at home which allows them to make and receive calls using their assigned office phone numbers.  We’ve implemented more than 60 of these so far and since they require a secure connection to our New River network, we’ve also expanded employee access to our VPN server to make this work. 
4. When we replaced our Spiceworks ticketing system with Zendesk, we added a virtual chatbot to our web site which provides better 24×7 support (and an easier to manage knowledgebase) to improve real-time support for remote students and employees. 
5. We purchased a web-based scheduling solution (AppointmentPlus) that integrates with Microsoft Outlook to enable students to schedule appointments more easily with faculty advisors and student support staff.  This effort has allowed remote students to schedule meetings with employees for assistance, since walk-ins were no longer possible. 
6. With employees working remotely, our on-site fax machines were no longer accessible.  We purchased a solution from XMedius for online faxing and secure file exchange so that prospective students can securely share information needed for admissions and to enable remote employees to continue receiving and sending faxes using their assigned fax numbers.  We ported three of our primary fax numbers to XMedius for this and we may end up porting more soon.  Now, employees can simply login using a web browser (from any location) to send and receive faxes and secure files. 
7. Our online admissions and course registration services were nearly ready for all users, but we had been limiting access to these resources to ensure that new students were receiving assistance with these tasks.  With significant effort and some minor changes to these processes that use Ellucian Banner, these services are now available to all students. 
8. One requirement for all newly admitted students is to complete our online orientation.  This information had not been updated for a few years, but we were able to update it using the online interface provided to us by the vendor, Comevo.  While additional improvements are still needed, it is much improved and working for now. 
9. Prior to the pandemic, many of our employees had been issued desktop computers instead of laptops.  As a result of the pandemic, all new and replacement computer orders were for laptops.  We also pulled laptops from mobile carts and other areas so we could issue these to employees.  We’ve never loaned or issued computers to students, but because of the pandemic, we’ve loaned a few older laptops to students for exceptional situations. 
10. Since 2009, we’ve hosted our own Microsoft Exchange email services and because storage needs have continued to increase, we’ve grown increasingly concerned about our ability to restore email from backups—which have grown so large that it may take days (if not weeks) to do a restore.  Ironically, despite all the other activity created by the pandemic, we’ve chosen to push forward with our migration to Office 365 in the Cloud and this will be completed in November 2020.  Email quotas will increase from 2GB to 10GB per user and we’re hoping for increased reliability and fewer concerns about backups and security. 

It is important to realize that all this effort has occurred while we continued to meet daily demands as well as continuing to work on previously planned initiatives.  Although progress was slowed, we have continued to make progress on our Data Governance initiative which includes creating policies and procedures where none yet existed for information security.  This initiative is not yet complete, but major milestones have been completed that we hope will satisfy auditors while also improving our own cybersecurity preparedness.  We’ve implemented KnowBe4 as a cybersecurity training solution for all employees and we use Linkedin Learning for privacy awareness training.  We’ve worked toward compliance for GLBA, GDPR, and PCI as part of this initiative.  Creating a framework of accountability for information security, has certainly been timely since the pandemic has resulted in increased threats to the personal information of our users as well as our College-owned data. 

In many ways, I feel New River was better prepared for this unexpected need to provide all services to remote users because of a few recently completed projects in some key areas.  In January 2020, we implemented a new single sign-on portal with PortalGuard (now BIO-key).  This solution replaced our portal that had been previously hosted by Unifyed and is now much easier for us to manage and far less expensive while also being simpler and easier for our users.  As part of this portal replacement project, our emergency alert system was much improved.  The alert system included with the Unifyed portal was never really an “emergency” alert system.  Instead, it relied on our own email server to deliver SMS messages and they were never prioritized.  As a result, an “emergency alert” could take hours to be delivered.  So, in January 2020 as we replaced the portal, we purchased a true emergency alert messaging system from Regroup.  This solution delivers messages within minutes since they are prioritized and do not use our own email system for delivery. 

One very good thing we’ve experienced from this pandemic has been the overwhelming support and unity we’ve seen from our vendors and partners.  Some have offered free or enhanced services, and all have been quick to respond to our needs by helping us to pilot and then implement new services. 

One “next step” for us is to join the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) to gain access to resources and information to support remote teaching and learning.  While we struggle with limited in-house resources for faculty development, we feel fortunate to gain so much in resources and information from WVNET, Quality Matters, and hopefully soon, the OLC membership and participation. 

Overall, our response to the pandemic has resulted in improved services in some areas and entirely new online services in others.  We feel this extraordinary effort to get courses and services quickly ready for remote users will be time well spent and a great investment for the College well into the future.  One of our strategic goals is to be more accessible to our students and nearly all the efforts I’ve described have moved us closer to achieving this goal. 

The Fall 2020 semester marks West Virginia’s Remote Online Collaborative Knowledge System (WVROCKS) ninth year of service to institutions of higher education in the State.

The WVROCKS portal delivers quality online courses to Regents Bachelor of Arts (RBA) and Board of Governor’s (BOG) degree students from eight different institutions: Bluefield State College, Concord University, Fairmont State University, Marshall University, Shepherd University, BridgeValley Community & Technical College, Southern Community & Technical College, and West Virginia Northern Community & Technical College. Their winning formula of accelerated, affordable, and accessible courses covering a range of subjects from the humanities to mathematics and sciences has been well received by adult students who have some college education but were never able to complete their degrees.

Despite the unusual circumstances brought on by Covid-19, enrollments remained steady at 2,713 and retention rates increased from 91% during the 2018/19 Academic Year to 96% in the 2019/20 Academic Year, and pass rates remained constant from the mid- to high-eightieth percentile. Translated, that means that more working adults have the opportunity to successfully obtain a college degree by taking online courses that work with their busy schedules.  

The close working relationships that WVROCKS administrators and staff have with the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission as well as the hosting services provided by West Virginia Network have greatly contributed to their success.  

First2 Network (First2) is an expanding group of people and organizations across West Virginia that seek to improve Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) persistence among rural, first-generation, and other underrepresented STEM students. As many as 7 in 10 first-generation students leave a STEM major within two years. First2 is working to change that.

What started out as a pilot project in 2016 to provide rising college freshmen with early exposure to STEM research, has turned into a National Science Foundation (NSF) Inclusion Across Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) grant funded initiative. In September 2018, First2 received an NSF INCLUDES award of $7.15 million for the next five years to double the rate of STEM graduates in the state of West Virginia from 30% to 60%. This funding, coordinated through the Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC) allows us to develop a statewide network of innovative stakeholders who will collaborate to solve the STEM persistence problem and grow our economy. 

At our core, we believe that students should be co-creators of the solutions to STEM persistence. Therefore, in addition to building research skills, First2 programming is centered around transferring student agency and developing students’ leadership capacity along the way to graduation. If you or your company is interested in partnering with First2 to help the STEM students of West Virginia succeed, please reach out to the First2 Program Coordinator, Jade Irving, at jade.irving@wvresearch.org. For more information about First2, please visit our website at https://first2network.org/ and follow us on social media!