Stories

Each February, women’s basketball teams around the country don the ubiquitous pink T-shirts and shoes and have a “Play 4Kay” game to raise money for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. At Appalachian, the fight against breast cancer includes one of their own – Hall of Fame player and current high school coach Valorie Whiteside ’89. The Mountaineers’ all-time leading scorer and one of just two players to have their number retired, Whiteside began her fight against the disease in 2011. 

On Dec. 14, 2012, Athletics Director Charlie Cobb announced former standout player and coach Scott Satterfield ’96 would take the reigns of the Mountaineer football program from longtime head coach Jerry Moore. The 20th head coach in the program’s history.

In April 2003 Aldridge walked away from a promising career with Gap and signed on as an unpaid intern for Betsey Johnson, an American fashion diva known as much for her runway cartwheels as for her whimsical, feminine designs.

Five individuals with close ties to the university received the Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa degree.

This commission was no conventional wedding reception or cute pet portrait. To bring the wild to Appalachian State University’s Plemmons Student Union, photographer Katie Langley ’01 hiked to Western North Carolina’s most sublime natural areas in pre-dawn and post-sunset darkness. Laden with up to 60 pounds of gear, she often ascended 1,000 to 2,000 feet. Langley, a wedding and portrait photographer based in Boone, took 20,000 photos of heavenly vistas in every direction. Shot over a year’s time, the dramatic large-scale, wide-angle photographs, at once serene and stimulating, resemble paintings and reflect Mother Nature’s many moods in changing skies and seasons.

I envision an exciting future with opportunities for entrepreneurship at Appalachian State University as we continue to emphasize and build programs focused on global opportunities, cross-disciplinary collaboration, social and sustainable entrepreneurship, industry engagement and experiential learning.