Five years ago, Appalachian State was initiating its transition to the FBS level. Now, as of this week, the Mountaineers (5-1, 3-0 Sun Belt Conference) are among the top teams in Division-I football.

Fifteen Appalachian State University students in Scott Ludwig’s Relief Printmaking course hand-printed, engraved and painted wood blocks to display along the Beech Tree Trail, an easy 1-mile loop within Elk Knob State Park in Todd, N.C. The project is part of a revitalization of the Elk Knob Community Heritage Organization’s Art Plan to promote sustainability of the Elk Knob communities’ culture, heritage and natural resources.

Colleges often go about recruiting rural students in the wrong way, admissions experts say. But they can commit to better practices if they recognize "rurality is different everywhere." Colleges need to be engaged in communities in ways that are responsive to their needs, said Rachel Fried, program coordinator at GEAR UP, a federally funded college access program at Appalachian State University.

Preventing an extra single degree of heat could make a life-or-death difference in the next few decades for multitudes of people and ecosystems on this fast-warming planet, an international panel of scientists reported Sunday. But they provide little hope the world will rise to the challenge.

Flooding from Hurricane Florence that submerged a Duke Energy coal ash storage area in Wilmington did not contaminate the Cape Fear River, according to the NC Department of Environmental Quality. Environmentalists disagree.

Cara Hagan, assistant professor of dance studies at Appalachian, visited Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. for a week to work with the dance program. Hagan has had guest residencies teaching dance everywhere from Thirak, India to James Madison University.

“If this storm had come through two weeks later, it would have had a bigger impact. So, my forecast is that we're still in pretty good shape,” said Howard Neufeld in an Asheville Citizen-Times story. Neufeld is known as the “Fall Color Guy” and is a professor of biology at Appalachian State University in Boone.

This year, Appalachian State University is celebrating 50 years of women’s varsity sports. Appalachian student newspapers from the time show that the university had impressive and competitive female club and intramural teams for quite a few years before the women’s field hockey team in 1968 became the first-ever women’s intercollegiate sport in Black and Gold history.

Appalachian State University is in its fourth week of school at a state-mandated laboratory school it launched in Winston-Salem this year. The Academy at Middle Fork is a public school and partnership between the Reich College of Education at ASU and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools that serves kindergarten through fifth grades.