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!

The service that the Morgantown Area Meals on Wheels provides is vitally important year-round, but especially during this period of social distancing. Their network of volunteers prepares and delivers an average of 115 fresh and healthy meals each day to clients throughout Morgantown and the organization has experienced an increase in meal requests due to Covid-19. Thankfully they have had 20 new volunteers  help out with the daily deliveries. In addition, a number of community partners have stepped forward with donations of food and funding. 

“The new volunteers have been a blessing, as many of our regular volunteers fall in the more vulnerable populations and this allowed them to suspend their volunteering, knowing the clients will still be cared for,” said Sara Bishop, manager of MAMOW. “The assistance we have received from our community partners has been wonderful.  The financial support eases the worries of the extra expenses when we already knew we needed to raise additional monies to fill our budget gap.“

How you can help: While volunteers do the delivery, donations, grants and foundations cover the costs of preparation and food. All meals are subsidized by at least $4 and as much as $9 per meal.  The organization does not receive state or federal funding and faces a $15,000 budget shortfall this year. 

To support the MOW mission please go to www.morgantownwvmow.org   

Zoom-bombing is the term for when individuals “gate-crash” Zoom meetings. These uninvited guests share their screens to bombard real attendees with disturbing pornographic and/or violent imagery. Most of these are perpetrated via publicly available Zoom links; however, not all depending on your settings. Here are ways to protect you and your guests from falling victim.

Read more about what you can do to protect yourself here: https://security.berkeley.edu/resources/cybersecurity-and-covid-19/settings-preventing-zoom-bombing

Tips courtesy of Zoom and UC Berkeley

The E-Learning department at Blue Ridge Community and
Technical College hosted its tenth successful Welcome Back Week in January
2020. The department’s e-learning support awareness program was started in the
fall of 2016 to educate students about the support options for Blackboard and
online learning while on campus.

During the first week of classes each semester, E-Learning
sets up a table in the café area on campus to serve as a one-stop shop for
login assistance and Blackboard support.

In addition to offering on-demand support at a convenient
location for students, E-Learning chooses a campaign theme for each Welcome
Back Week. Campaign themes highlight a specific technology tool or service. The
campaign topic for spring 2020 was Office 365. Campaign themes are a great way
to highlight the features of a particular technology tool. Office 365 was the
campaign theme for 2020 and was wildly successful. Many students successfully
logged in to and downloaded free Microsoft products directly to his or her
laptop before the end of the first week of classes.

In addition to providing a fun and engaging theme, The Help
Desk distributes informational handouts, offers free earbuds for use in the
computer lab and conducts a drawing each semester for a technology giveaway.
The E-Learning Help Desk has donated eight laptops and two e-readers as a part
of the Welcome Back Week student outreach campaign.

Blue Ridge CTC’s E-Learning Department is proud of the
technology support awareness that has developed on campus over the last five years
and hopes to continue to reach more students with improved programs and support
services in the future.

As part of spring prep week 2020, Glenville State College
offered a face-to-face “Applying the Quality Matters Rubric” course.  Prior to the start of each semester,
Glenville State College offers a prep week to ready and inspire its faculty. This
was Glenville’s first time hosting a face-to-face Quality Matters (QM)
workshop.  Dr. Roxann Humbert facilitated
the four hour course.  Since joining in
the summer of 2017, Glenville has embraced QM with over 60 percent of faculty completing
a workshop. 

The workshop generated positive feedback from faculty.  They felt Dr. Humbert was an excellent and
very knowledgeable facilitator.  They
enjoyed the hands-on learning and the ability to get immediate feedback.  Glenville hopes to offer more face-to-face workshops
in the future.

Panopto at
Glenville State College

Panopto is a lecture capture and video management software
used at Glenville State College for over two years.  It’s designed for both business and education
purposes.  The product is fully
integrated with Blackboard so there is no need for a separate login.  Faculty love the ease of use of the product
and have made videos that give an online course the personal touch that
students like.  The software transcribes
videos, making them ADA compliant and searchable by keyword.  Faculty have the option of sharing just their
screen and/or a video of themselves. 

This semester Glenville faculty will be using the product to
compile lecture recordings within a live classroom.  This is helpful for many reasons, as it
allows the faculty to upload the video to Blackboard and share it with students
who may have missed the class or for those who would like to hear the
information again. 

Product support with Panopto is also outstanding.  Glenville was assigned a representative who
schedules monthly check-ins with the Online Program Services Coordinator. 

If you have any questions about this software feel free to
email Robin Meadows at Robin.Cottrill@glenville.edu.