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Focus Forward

Focus Forward

A student veteran and graduate student in business administration is in elite company as one of only 18 women chosen for a fellowship designed to support military-connected females.

Amanda Valentine, who is also working on a graduate certificate in forensic accounting and fraud examination, earned the 2022 Focus Forward Fellowship, a prestigious year-long mentoring program.

A U.S. Air Force veteran, Valentine went back to school to enter the MBA program at WVU after retiring from the military. She hopes to finish her degree and certificate in summer 2023. Read more about Valentine here.

Need help? Just AeSC!

The Becker Academic Engagement Success Center (AeSC) – named after alumni W. Marston “Marty” and Katherine Becker – supports students through peer-assisted tutoring, mentoring and career coaching, equipping them with real-world professional soft and hard skills so they have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

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First Pitch

Supported by Silicon Valley CEO Ray Zinn, the first ZinnStarter Pitch Competition, hosted by the LaunchLab, gave aspiring collegiate entrepreneurs an opportunity to win cash to build their ideas into the next groundbreaking product or business. Winners included: First place ($2,500): Emma Adams, WVU animal and nutritional sciences major, and her business idea PetRecord, which provides universal medical records for pets in emergency situations; second place ($1,500): Cameron Keefe, global supply chain management major, and her idea ThermoRoller, which combines physical massage with temperature control to relieve sore muscle pain; and third place ($1,000) to the team of Austin Davis, Anne Byer and Emily Thomas, from the University of Charleston, and their idea Second Chance, a program that helps give active control back to people with quadriplegia and paraplegia. 

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I Scream, You Scream

Move over cones and milkshakes, there is a new way to enjoy ice cream – rolled! Marketing student and Morgantown native Tyler Lalka is bringing rolled ice cream to the hills of Morgantown and nearby cities with his business Rolling Hills Ice Cream. Lalka originally saw the concept being done in larger cities and thought to himself, “Mountaineers need this,” and opened his ice cream truck in April 2021. Not only is the ice cream mixed with toppings on top of a negative-five degree plate and rolled into pieces, but his truck also allows him to roll to birthday parties, weddings, farmer’s markets, fairs, office gatherings and more. “It was a dream of mine to bring this to Morgantown and I decided to go mobile because it would give me the opportunity to meet my customers where they are,” he said. The signature menu (which ice cream lovers can get any time) includes salted caramel pretzel, Oreo, peanut butter cup, s'mores and Nutella banana. On top of those flavors, individuals can add other sweet or savory ingredients. Lalka will graduate with a degree in marketing in December 2022. 

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Clothes-Minded

“The future is unpredictable so I focus on the ‘how’ and not the ‘what.'’”

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The Gavel Strikes 20

2023 marks the 20th year of law firm Steptoe & Johnson’s participation in the FAFE (Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination) graduate program’s Moot Court exercise. This capstone experience puts students’ skills to the test by having them investigate mock cases based on real-world financial crimes, culminating in a trial where they must testify as to their findings.  

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