This year’s incoming freshman class at West Virginia University represents one of the largest ever at WVU — around 5,400. According to WVU enrollment officials, that number is up 7.6 percent from last year. More often than not, those first-time Mountaineers do not know or have any desire of visiting or learning about the area, including neighboring Preston County.
But thanks to a new university initiative, all first-year students will have an opportunity to participate in area community service projects — some of which took place right here.
Dozens of students spent many hours working on two projects. The first was at Coopers Rock. Students began working on various projects on Sunday, August 7th, through this past Tuesday, August 16th. The work was coordinated by the Coopers Rock Foundation, West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and Adventure WV. The work accomplished included general repair and clean-up efforts at the park.
Adventure WV is mainly an Outdoor Orientation Program for incoming WVU first-year students that has expanded to include an outdoor recreation center, climbing wall, outdoor education center, challenge course, zip canopy tour, international study abroad programs, leadership training opportunities, and many other outdoor and experiential education programs.
Adventure WV provides new Mountaineers a comprehensive development of adventure education programming for students of all levels, supporting adjustment to college life, retention, and career success by assisting student development in self-knowledge, teamwork, and leadership skills.
The second and much more ambitious community service effort was with the Friends of the Cheat organization and its continuing effort to protect the waters in and around the Cheat River.
On Tuesday, August 16, 25 WVU students helped the Friends of the Cheat with its stream monitoring effort. The student volunteers were broken into five groups who traveled to different sampling sites in the Sovern Run watershed.
The Sovern Run watershed is a sub-watershed of the Big Sandy Creek watershed, which is part of the Cheat River watershed. Because acid mine drainage from abandoned coal mines has impaired the Sovern Run watershed, it needs to be consistently monitored.
According to FOC Director Amanda Pitzer, each group paddled the Cheat Narrows with Cheat River Outfitters and worked with FOC staff. The restoration of Sovern Run has been one of the FOC’s biggest successes.
Both service projects were certainly a giant help to the folks who work and support Coopers Rock State Park and, of course, the exceptional staff with the Friends of the Cheat. The initiative also gave a good number of WVU’s newest and brightest the chance to learn a little about Preston County and at the same time meet some great people.
We commend WVU for this outstanding community-centric initiative and sincerely hope those students who spent some time here decide to head back to enjoy the sights, events, tastes and people that make our beloved Preston County such a wonderful place.