Here’s a round-up of news briefs from around Southwest and Southside. Send yours for possible inclusion to news@cardinalnews.org.

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LewisGale to open stand-alone emergency room in Bonsack

LewisGale Regional Health System will open a stand-alone emergency room in the Bonsack section of Roanoke County on July 19.

The LewisGale Medical Center Blue Hills ER will be located at 1423 West Ruritan Road.

Scheduled speakers including Alan Fabian, market president, LewisGale Regional Health System; Phil North, supervisor, Roanoke County; Puneet Chopra, MD, Medical Director of Emergency Services, LewisGale Medical Center; Jim McAden, board chairman, LewisGale Medical Center, and Joyce Waugh, president, Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce.  

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Virginia Tech becomes affiliate member of DC-area university group

Virginia Tech has become an affiliate member of the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area, an organization founded to foster collaboration for higher education across the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. 

Other affiliate members are the Smithsonian Institute and Johns Hopkins University.

Virginia Tech has had a presence in the Washington area since 1969. The university’s current presence in the area includes more than 40 graduate programs and research centers in the District of Columbia, Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas, and Middleburg, according to a release from the school.

In 2018, Virginia Tech announced the launch of the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria’s Potomac Yard District. The Innovation Campus will triple Virginia Tech’s footprint in the region. The first building will open in 2024 and will include 300,000 square feet of academic space and cutting-edge research and development facilities.

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Calfee Center in Pulaski wins grant

The Calfee Community & Cultural Center in Pulaski County is one of 12 inaugural recipients to receive a grant from the Virginia Museum History & Culture’s Commonwealth History Fund. The Calfee CCC has been awarded $50,000.

The Commonwealth History Fund is made possible by funding from Dominion Energy and is administered in partnership with Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources. It was established to provide grants annually to history organizations and projects across the state of Virginia. Key selection criteria include: the significance of the project or resource as well as its impact on its community and the Commonwealth; the emphasis of the project on historically underrepresented topics and communities; as well as the need for funding and the urgency of the project. This year $402,500 was awarded to 12 organizations, and the VMHC plans to give nearly $2,000,000 over the first five years. 

The grant will support the research and design for a museum exhibit entitled “Quiet Courage: Chauncey Harmon, Percy Corbin, and the Fight for Equality.”  The exhibit, which will be featured in the African American Heritage Center at Calfee, will tell the dramatic storytheir joint struggle for educational equity in the years before Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). 

More information on The Commonwealth History Fund can be found at VirginiaHistory.org/HistoryFund.

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