March 14, 2025

Two winners from last weekend’s 34th annual Blue Ridge Highlands Regional Science Fair from the Southwest Virginia Governors School and Blacksburg High School will receive a scholarship to Radford University.

A field of 29 champion spellers from schools across Southwest Virginia will compete on the Artis Center for Adaptive Innovation and Creativity Main Stage when Radford University hosts the regional competition in the Scripps National Spelling Bee for the second consecutive year on Saturday, March 22, at 10 a.m.

This year’s spellers include last year’s Radford regional bee winner, Audrey Lee of Andrew Lewis Middle School in Salem. Radford University will sponsor the champion to compete in the Scripps National Bee on May 27-29 in Washington, D.C.

Last year’s regional spelling bee winner, Audrey Lee (center) of Andrew Lewis Middle School in Salem, who returns to compete this year.

The bee is staffed and organized by university faculty and staff members, including emcee David Horton, pronouncer Stirling Barfield and judges Neils Christensen, Tamara Wallace, Katie Clouse and Brian Kitts.

Help us roll out the tartan carpet for our region’s most talented students.

As a reminder, all faculty, staff and students are invited to attend and participate in next week’s Radford University 2026-31 Strategic Plan Town Halls, which will be held on the main campus and in Roanoke.

Committee co-chairs Angela Joyner and Sharon Roger Hepburn will present the current status of planning efforts and the next steps while inviting questions and feedback from attendees.

You are welcome to join in person or virtually. Webinar links for the town halls will be sent out on Monday, March 17. For those attending virtually, you may submit questions in advance to Karen Casteele, Office of the President.

As Radford University prepares to welcome students back from spring break, we also celebrate the return of our beloved ospreys as they continue a tradition of nesting on our main campus this time of year.

Thanks to a collaborative effort between the Departments of Biology and Geology, University Advancement, Facilities Management, Information Technology Services and Marketing and Communication, and with the support of CMG Leasing, Radford community members can watch the birds of prey in their nesting habitat via a YouTube feed.

A screenshot of the YouTube livestream featuring the ospreys. The pair are nesting near the main campus in Radford.

Learn more about these remarkable birds in a news story published last year, featuring their long-distance migrations, their declining population and conservation measures underway to help them flourish again, as well as how we can respect and protect them during their seasonal stay. (Please note that the video link embedded below last year’s news story is no longer active.)

As part of a presidential initiative for 2025-26, we need your help to increase student employment support for our students.

All vice presidents, associate vice presidents, deans and directors received an e-mail on March 4 from President Bret Danilowicz seeking responses and position descriptions for student employees.

Responses are requested by the close of business on Monday, March 24.

Thank you for your help in supporting Radford University’s students.

The Radford University Office of Marketing and Communication (Marcom) is committed to helping our internal clients meet their own needs for certain communication deliverables. Based on feedback from the templates survey we sent to employees earlier this year, we are in the process of creating self-serve templates to achieve this objective. These include digital screen slide templates, which are now available for download on the new Self-Serve Templates webpage.

Also available on that webpage, you can view the Best Practices [PDF] presentation for help in using the digital screen slides.

Marcom continues to evaluate the results of the templates survey to help us determine additional self-serve templates we will create to meet our clients’ needs.

Wishing our incredible faculty and staff a lucky and joyful St. Patrick’s Day. May your days be filled with good fortune, great company and maybe even a little bit of gold (or at least some well-earned rest). And don’t forget to wear green.