Sarah Frye and Nakayla Elliott both earned their Master of Arts in Counseling in Clinical Mental Health from the College of Education and Professional Development.
During their graduate school experience, Sarah and Nakayla served as interns and graduate students in the West Virginia Autism Training Center (WV ATC) at Marshall.
The WV ATC is a statewide, community-based agency aimed at supporting individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) as they work toward a fulfilling, meaningful life.
Sarah and Nakayla presented at the West Virginia Licensed Professional Counselors Association conference in the April, WV ATC Coordinator of Campus Based Services Nate Hensley and Mental Health Counselor Shelby Babbington.
Their 90-minute presentation provided continuing education credits to about 100 licensed professional counselors (LPCs) in attendance.
“I was shocked when I was asked to present,” Nakayla said. “But it made me realize, I really do know this material. I’ve lived it through my internship and work here.”
Creative techniques in ASD therapies can look like encouraging pretend play, adding visual supports, art therapy, sensory-based activities and more. Using creative techniques in therapy can help establish rapport to help build the therapeutic relationship—games, interactive sessions and nontraditional approaches—can open the door to trust and connection.
“When you’re playing a game like UNO, you’re building skills like communication, active listening, turn taking, and that sets the scene for opening up about your day, and it makes vulnerability a little bit easier,” Shelby said.… Read More
Most people ask you to think big, but Chemistry Chair and Professor Derrick Kolling is asking students to think small—semi-microscopic, actually.
Tardigrades, colloquially known as water bears, are eight-legged invertebrates that can be found almost anywhere on Earth and can adapt to survive extreme conditions. These fascinating creatures even make an appearance in Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp.
“If there’s an extreme stress, they can go into a suspended animation,” Kolling said. “It’s quite like hibernation but not completely, and in some of those instances, they expel all the water in their bodies, and they shrink.”
The Kolling Lab at Marshall University began researching tardigrades in 2022 through a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in collaboration with Marshall Chemistry Alumna Dr. Leslie Hicks at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Logo for the Tardigrade Trading Post, featuring a cartoon tardigrade (water bear) One outcome of the NSF grant is the “Tardigrade Trading Post,” an outreach project encouraging K-12 students to conduct experiments with and discover water bears in their own backyards.
The lab’s primary focus is understanding why tardigrades enter a hibernation-like state, called a “tun,” and how this state allows them to survive extreme conditions.… Read More
West Virginia native Sam Kinnear is turning her challenges into change.
Community Vision Canvas from Sam’s workshops Sam started attending Marshall full time in August 2021 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in spring 2024.
“Right now, I’m working on starting my own business, so having the community support for that has taken off a lot faster than I thought that it would. I’ve had a lot of encouragement that I didn’t expect,” Sam said.
Sam’s business idea is for a nonprofit housing program designed to help individuals pursue homeownership. Her own experience inspired the idea to help people ensure they have stable housing while they are working, attending school or pursuing their dreams.
“I always wanted to go to school for psychology and I did classes here and there, and I just kept dropping out. Not because I wanted to, but because the money wasn’t there. The time that I needed to put into it wasn’t there, and a lot of that was because I kept having to change houses every couple of years when rent went up,” Sam said.
Her long-term goal is to create a sustainable housing program in Huntington and make it possible for other communities to replicate.
Recently, Sam participated in a 12-week cohort through Dress for Success, where she pitched her business idea as a finalist in Richmond, Virginia, and secured $1,000 for seed funding.… Read More
Autumn Starcher-Patton first came to Marshall as an environmental science and environmental chemistry student in 2007. As a first generation-student from Ripley, West Virginia, Starcher-Patton did a soil remediation project at Flint Group Pigments in Huntington—helping her discover her passion for soil science.
Starcher-Patton returned to Marshall in 2019 as an instructor and helped develop the undergraduate Specialty Agriculture program that launched in the fall 2022 semester. She now works as an assistant professor in the program.
A market research report was done on students in a 100-mile radius of Marshall’s Huntington campus, indicating a growth in labor demand for specialty agriculture.
Autumn Starcher-Patton The program is designed to teach about high-yield agriculture that can be economically sustainable in mountainous regions and small land areas like we see in Appalachia. The program will not only benefit the graduates, but also the region as better agricultural practices can lead to the development of a healthy, sustainable food supply for the region.
“The focus with many of our classes is based on what’s going to work here regionally, because the whole idea was what best serves our students,” Starcher-Patton said.
Although the program is housed in the College of Science, students benefit from courses taught in a variety of academic colleges and departments, including education and business.
Marshall’s commercial composter at the University Heights location In 2023, Marshall opened the first commercial composting facility in the state of West Virginia, which is a great feat, considering Marshall is a non-land-grant institution.… Read More
Huntington native David LeGrow’s path to Marshall wasn’t a straight line, he’s a non-traditional student, a veteran, and a father who found his passion for cybersecurity while working various odd jobs.
It wasn’t until he took an online cybersecurity course through Google that something clicked.
“I was like, ‘This is really interesting. I love this,’ ” David said.
His passion led him to search for cybersecurity programs, when he discovered Marshall’s Cyber Forensics and Security program was one of the top-ranked programs in the country.
It’s a real gift when an excellent program in the field you’re passionate about and your family legacy school are right in your backyard.
David’s father, Chris LeGrow, has been a professor at Marshall for 25 years, and David’s sister, brother and mom all attended Marshall.
Now a junior in Marshall’s cybersecurity program, David has found the perfect blend of academic challenge and real-world application. “The program is fantastic. It’s definitely got a practitioner’s mindset,” David said. “There are lectures, but then you get to immediately apply what you learn, which helps solidify both types of learning.”
In addition to his coursework, David’s engaged in hands-on research, analyzing cyber threats related to global events and large-scale ransomware attacks.… Read More
When Ashleigh Reedy graduated from Marshall University with her bachelor’s degree in social work in 2016, she felt she reached a significant milestone. She quickly joined the workforce, working at Prestera Health Services as a case manager. However, she began to realize her educational journey wasn’t finished.
“I’d been working in the field for a few years,” she said. “But then, in late 2022 and early 2023, some of the girls I worked with started encouraging me to go back to school to get my master’s. They really stressed how much more opportunity there is with a master’s degree in this field. I thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to do it.’”
Ashleigh lives and works in rural Clay County, West Virginia, and going back to school for her master’s degree in social work (MSW) came with logistical challenges.
“I work full time, and life is busy. Driving to campus wasn’t really feasible, but Marshall’s MSW program is completely online.” - Ashleigh Reedy “I work full time, and life is busy. Driving to campus wasn’t really feasible, but Marshall’s MSW program is completely online,” she said.
The program allowed her to qualify for the advanced standing option, meaning she could fast-track her degree and finish her master’s degree in three semesters.
Though her return to academics came after several years working in the field, Ashleigh found the transition a bit intimidating.… Read More
The Umbrella Galaxy (NGC 4651): Stellar Tidal Streams in Spiral Galaxies of the Local Volume: A Pilot Survey with Modest Aperture Telescopes
It’s the summer of 1969. Richard Nixon is president, Sesame Street debuts, and the Space Race is in full swing.
On the evening of July 20, in Nitro, West Virginia, a young R. Jay GaBany grabbed a 2.5-inch telescope to try to catch a glimpse of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon from his backyard.
GaBany’s academic pursuits would lead him to study just down the road at Marshall University, where his uncle worked as a history professor.
After he graduated in 1977, GaBany started a career in business, and he could finally afford his interest of astronomy. GaBany purchased a telescope just to view space and then had an idea.
“I want to try to take a picture through it and the whole thing was just really intimidating and it took some time for me to figure it out,” GaBany said. “I think was the hardest thing I ever learned in my life.”
GaBany said his undergraduate years at Marshall taught him patience—a necessary skill in astrophotography when you’re trying to take photos of galaxies millions of light years away.… Read More
About 100 miles from Marshall’s Huntington campus is Oak Hill, West Virginia, where Marshall freshman elementary education major Danielle Bailey was born and raised.
“I came from a low-income community where the teachers put in a lot of effort to make a safe, fun and creative environment for each of their students,” Bailey said. “Just like many of the teachers in my elementary school, I knew I wanted to make sure every child had the same space that I did.”
Bailey is one of 24 students selected for this year’s Underwood-Smith Teaching Scholars through the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.
“I was unsure if I was going to be able to come to Marshall, but receiving the scholarship gave me the financial stability to continue my education where my dreams can come true.” - Danielle Bailey “I was unsure if I was going to be able to come to Marshall, but receiving the scholarship gave me the financial stability to continue my education where my dreams can come true,” Bailey said.
During her junior year of high school, she joined a program called Grow Your Own Pathway to Teaching, offered through the West Virginia Department of Education.
The Grow Your Own Pathway program allows high school students to start college early through dual-credit courses in their home county schools.… Read More
In the 1996 football season, Marshall won the NCAA Division I-AA National Championship against Montana 49-29.
Marshall was in the national spotlight—and caught the attention of a young Jeff Tessier from outside of Providence, Rhode Island.
So, as a 17-year-old in the summer of 1998, Tessier came to Huntington for orientation as a sports management and marketing major. He then reached out to the athletic department to see if they had any internship opportunities.
In the fall, Tessier moved south to Huntington and started as a football equipment manager.
“It was a very popular job, and it was a little intense, but it was fun to work, and you learned a lot and you met a lot of great people along the way,” Tessier said.
During Tessier’s tenure at Marshall he saw two Heisman candidate campaigns, five bowl games, the 13-0 undefeated season of 1999, and Marshall football being ranked 10th in the nation.
“I enjoyed every minute of it,” Tessier said.
For a few years after Marshall, Tessier worked in the equipment room at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Then he received a call from another Marshall alum, who was a few years older than him in school, Alex Ferguson, to return home to New England to work in the Ivy League.… Read More
For Marshall University alumnus Andrew Ely, videography and photography had always been hobbies. Picking up a new lens here, trying a new style there, shooting a friend’s wedding on the weekend, he never imagined this side hustle would eventually lead him to the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Ely currently lives in Katowice, Poland, with his wife, Emily and their almost 3-year-old daughter, Kit. He works for a nonprofit that started working on content for the Olympics by building videos in about 12 languages challenging athletes and fans to think about the concept of their identity.
“Ultimately, the Olympics are a competition with immense pressure of various kinds: national, personal, monetary, honor, responsibility, public perception, and more. These pressures inflate with failure or, even in victory, the reality that the Olympic journey has ended,” Ely said. “We realize that identity, in every culture, has become shaky ground as people have no enduring answer. We want to show compassion in these conversations about identity.”
This multi-language engagement project includes building digital advertisements, a website, and a virtual-reality platform.
“I thought working digitally with the Olympic project would be the full extent of my involvement, however, when the call came to participate in-person as a photographer and videographer, my family and my friends made it possible for me to catch late-night planes and trains to make it to Paris in time,” Ely said. “I am incredibly thankful that they sacrificed to enable this dream experience for me.”… Read More
