“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.

For North Carolina native and Appalachian alumnus Brock Long ’97 ’99, Hurricane Florence is personal. Long, who grew up in Newton, was 14 in 1989 the night Hurricane Hugo swept in, toppling trees and damaging buildings.

For a short time Thursday afternoon, Appalachian State University Chancellor Sheri Everts returned to a familiar scene: a K-12 classroom. Everts stopped by each classroom at Appalachian State University Academy at Middle Fork, handing out books for every student to take home with them. Her visit was meant to be both an opportunity to increase literacy options for students, as well as show the university’s support to those in the elementary school.

Appalachian State University’s freshman class welcomed the mother of a 1998 hate crime victim with a standing ovation at the Aug. 20 Black and Gold Convocation. The new freshman class gathered at the George M. Holmes Convocation Center before the start of the 2018-19 school year — where Judy Shepard served as the event’s keynote speaker.

At the end of her freshman year of college at Appalachian, Kyra Patel became a suicide loss survivor. She knew then she wanted to dedicate her life to helping others, especially college students, so they would know that no matter what they're going through, they are not alone. After graduating from the University of Kentucky College of Public Health in May 2018 with a master's in public health and a graduate certificate in biostatistics, Patel is now back where her passion for student health and wellness began, working as the coordinator of student social wellness at Appalachian State University.

After over two years of construction, the 203,000-square-foot Leon Levine Hall of Health Sciences is on schedule to open for the first day of Appalachian State’s classes Aug. 22.

Last weekend, the weather in Boone was just was it was supposed to be — 10 degrees cooler than Winston-Salem. So some Winston-Salemites headed up U.S. 421 to cool down and enjoy a few of the awesome offerings at Appalachian Summer Festival.