Watauga County Schools honored App State’s Child Development Center with a Servant’s Heart Award for helping Valle Crucis School recover after Hurricane Helene. When the school was closed, the CDC provided space for students, faculty and staff to continue learning together.

App State’s student-run newspaper looks back at the emergency efforts that helped keep the campus and community safe during Hurricane Helene, and explores plans to expand communication channels for future disasters. The article features App State alumnus Tom Beam ’89, disaster relief coordinator for Baptists on Mission; alumnus David Jackson ’00, CEO of the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce; Jason Marshburn, director of Environmental Health, Safety and Emergency Management; and Megan Hayes, director of chancellor communications.

Dr. Daniel Caton, professor in App State’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, discusses the unexplained phenomenon known as the Brown Mountain Lights.

Trevor McKenzie ’10 ’12, director of App State’s Center for Appalachian Studies, speaks about the “folk revival” of traditional music communities in Western N.C. after Hurricane Helene. Also featured are App State alumni William Ritter ’17 and Leila Weinstein ’07, who both graduated with master’s degrees in Appalachian Studies.

The Charlotte TV station visited Boone to spotlight App State researcher Dr. Jon Davenport, associate professor in the Department of Biology, on Hurricane Helene’s lasting impacts to forests and streams in Western NC. Davenport said his team is collecting data across transformed landscapes to better understand the full scope of the storm’s ecological damage.

App State has been awarded over $1.4 million in federal grant funding to develop and support career pathways that address the shortage of special education teachers in rural Appalachia. More than 100 education professionals from Watauga, Caldwell and Catawba counties are taking part in the program this fall.

The Greensboro newspaper features App State’s Bachelor of Science in health care management as a top online program in North Carolina for health care degrees. The article highlights the program’s academic rigor, real-world experience and flexibility for working professionals, transfer students and others entering the field.

Dr. Shaleeah Smith, associate director of campus activities at App State, and other experts discuss factors to consider before joining a college Greek life organization. Smith oversees fraternity and sorority life at the university — a community of more than 30 chapters and over 2,000 students.

App State alumnus and paleontologist Jared Voris ’16 has discovered a dinosaur closely related to — or possibly the direct ancestor of — all tyrannosaurs. Voris and his colleagues named the new species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, after the Mongolian words for “prince” and “dragon.” Voris graduated from App State in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in geology.