News

This fall, Appalachian is launching a new minor in American Sign Language (ASL) and expanding its existing offerings of ASL courses.

The six Gilman Scholars are the most Appalachian students to be recognized in a single Gilman award cycle. Each will receive up to $5,000 to study or intern abroad during 2021, with additional funding available for the study of critical languages overseas.

A collaboration between AppalCART and Appalachian State University has secured more than $1 million in grant funding to be used toward the purchase of an electric bus and charging station for AppalCART. The funding was awarded through the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Appalachian alumni Jenny S. Lanier ’01 and Kameron L. Radford ’08 are among 216 music educators recognized nationally as quarterfinalists for the 2021 Music Educator Award, presented by the Recording Academy and Grammy Museum.

Appalachian professors Dr. Howard Neufeld and Dr. Megen Culpepper, recipients of the Office of Student Research’s 2020 Undergraduate Research Mentorship Excellence Award, share the rewards of student mentoring.

Dr. Conrad E. “Ozzie” Ostwalt, professor of religious studies at Appalachian, has been appointed interim director of the university’s Center for Appalachian Studies and Appalachian studies academic program. Ostwalt assumed his new role July 1.

By working with speech-language pathologists in Appalachian’s Communication Disorders Clinic, a 3-year-old child diagnosed with severe childhood apraxia of speech is learning to communicate. The speech therapy has given him the ability to call his mother “mama” for the first time.

Appalachian art professor Dr. Mira Rai Waits has been named a 2020 American Council of Learned Societies Fellow for her book project “Colonial Carcerality: The Birth of the Modern Prison in India,” which explores the spatial history of British colonial prisons in India.

Lamont A. Sellers, the former senior diversity officer at the University of South Dakota, is the new director of intercultural student affairs at Appalachian State University as of July 1.