Here’s a round-up of education briefs. Want more education news? There’s no full-time education reporter west of Richmond. You can help change that. Help us fund this position.
* * *
Three Liberty nursing students recognized for helping wreck victims
Three Liberty University School of Nursing students recently put the skills they’re learning to use.
Driving through rain on a rural road after a Sunday trip to Natural Bridge earlier this month, junior Gabby Cain rounded a corner and came onto the scene of a car wreck that had occurred only a moment earlier, according to a release from Liberty University. One car had come to a stop perpendicular to the road and the other was in a ditch on the side of the road.
Two people were sitting on the ground, and a man was standing, still in shock, with blood running down his face.
“The first thing I did was pull over, and I had a clinical that morning, so I still had my nursing bag with me with my pen light, stethoscope, and everything else,” Cain said in a statement. “I knew there were going to be injuries, but I didn’t know the extent of it. I’ve always been the type of person who wants to run to help whenever I see something wrong.”
As Cain helped the man lie down to stabilize his head and neck in case of injury to his spinal cord or brain, her friends and fellow juniors Ella Miranda and Tyler Wilson arrived in another car and ran to join her. Wilson, a trained EMT, took charge and started doing neurological assessment on the man while Miranda checked his pulse and legs. The man was responsive while still in shock; the other two people involved in the accident had lesser injuries, so the students focused on him while they waited for paramedics to arrive.
The students were recognized for their actions this week during the School of Nursing’s all-faculty meeting, where they were presented with special honor coins as part of a monthly tradition highlighting students who have exhibited outstanding acts of service.
* * *
Students selected for Roanoke’s first undergraduate biomedical research cohort
Twenty Virginia Tech undergraduates are enrolled in a pilot program to integrate undergraduate students with the biomedical and health research taking place at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.
They were chosen from among more than 70 applicants, primarily from the College of Science.
“While several hundred Virginia Tech undergraduates have carried out research under the mentorship of Fralin Biomedical Research Institute faculty for over a decade, other than the more structured summer … programs, these have largely been individual arrangements between a student and faculty member,” said Michael Friedlander, Virginia Tech’s vice president for health sciences and technology and executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, in a statement. “IHSR [Integrated Health Science Research] represents an entirely new more structured program for Virginia Tech undergraduates interested in participating in leading edge biomedical and health sciences research, including an immersive experience on the Health Sciences and Technology campus in Roanoke.”
* * *
Researcher will speak Thursday at Tech science lecture series
The Virginia Tech College of Science’s J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture Series will host its first live, in-person talk since fall 2019 on Thursday, Sept. 29.
The lecture will feature Ron Vale, vice president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and executive director of its Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. Vale will discuss “The World’s Smallest Machines,” an inside look at how the cells found in every living creature have incredibly intricate moving parts that operate similarly to robots. Vale also is a professor emeritus of the University of California, San Francisco, Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology.
The talk will be presented at 7:30 p.m. at the Holtzman Alumni Center Auditorium on the Blacksburg campus and via Zoom webinar. Registration is required. It is free and open to the public.
Vale received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University in 1985, was a staff fellow with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, stationed at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, from 1985-86. He began his faculty appointment in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, in 1987.
He has worked collaboratively with many people and organizations to make science more easily accessible to the broader scientific community as well as the public, Cimini said.
Vale founded iBiology, a nonprofit organization that produces videos of scientific talks by leading scientists and makes them freely available to the public. Vale also founded XBio (The Explorer’s Guide to Biology), a new type of learning resource of undergraduate biology. He also founded ASAPbio, a nonprofit organization, to improve scientific publishing in the life sciences.
Additionally, he co-founded the biotech companies Cytokinetics, Faze, and Myeloid Therapeutics.
Other ventures he started include IndiaBioscience, a networking organization for the life sciences in India, and the annual Young Investigator Meeting for young Indian scientists. He previously co-directed the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Physiology Course for five years and founded/directed the Bangalore Microscopy Course.