ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 1996 TAG: 9610230025
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
RADFORD UNIVERSITY
The State Council of Higher Education of Virginia recently awarded a $65,000 grant to Owen Watkins for the Virginia Student Recruitment and Retention Program. Watkins is director of diversity services at Radford University. The grant will be used for a project that will assist 25 minority students who qualify for admission to the university, yet have identifiable academic deficiencies.
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Karma Castleberry was awarded a $45,000 grant from the Helene Fuld Foundation to expand technical resources and equipment in the Waldron College of Nursing and Health Services. Castleberry is a professor in the college.
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Librarian Linda Farynk has been appointed to a three-year term on the board of directors of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. The coalition is a new statewide alliance dedicated to protecting and expanding citizen access to public information.
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History professor Linda Killen recently published her fourth book of local history, "'These People Lived in a Pleasant Valley:' A History of Slaves and Freedman in Nineteenth Century Pulaski County." Killen bases the history on her research of church and court records, cemeteries, national censuses, collections of private letters, interviews and other sources.
VIRGINIA TECH
Gregory Brown, dean of the College of Forestry and Wildlife Resources, has been named chairman of the Powell River Project board of directors. The Powell River Project is a cooperative program among Virginia Tech, industry and other educational institutions. The project sponsors research and education programs to benefit Southwest Virginia's coal-producing counties.
Brown was appointed to the board by Virginia Tech President Paul Torgersen. Brown has been at the university since 1992. His background is in forest biology and environment stress.
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Rebecca Ross, a former biology teacher at Cave Spring High School in Roanoke, will head the outreach efforts of Tech's Fralin Biotechnology Center. Ross holds a doctorate in biology and science education from the university. In 1995 the National Association of Biology Teachers presented her with its 1995 "Outstanding Biology Teacher Award" for Virginia.
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Simone Poirier-Bures recently was awarded the 1995 Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Award for "That Shining Place." The story is a memoir of a winter sojourn in Crete during the winter of 1966-67. Poirier-Bures teaches English at Tech.
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Lynn Nystrom recently was installed as president of the Virginia Press Women. Nystrom is director of news and external relations for the College of Engineering. Mary Ann H. Johnson, a writer and editor at Virginia Tech, will serve as secretary of the VPW.
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