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������������̳ held Spring Commencement ceremonies May 3-4, 2024, awarding degrees to 1,398 undergraduate and graduate students.

Every two weeks, Highlander Highlights shares with readers some of the extraordinary research and accomplishments happening on and off campus through the tireless work and curiosity of our students and faculty. 

A runaway pingpong ball back in 2020 led to a chance meeting between freshmen Rachel Garrison and Patrick Keplinger. As their relationship blossomed, their academic focus turned to business. Today, on the cusp of their commencements, the pair has evolved into something of a power couple, Davis College-style. 

Two hundred and fifty students participated in Radford’s most recent Wicked Festival, held on April 11, 2024. Students showed their work through elaborate posters while also engaging in conversations about their extensive research with fellow students, faculty, university administrators and others who walked through the event in Kyle Hall.

“It’s been a journey,” said Rieder, a New Columbia, Pennsylvania, native who suffered devastating injuries in a car crash while in high school, but recovered and went on to study finance and accounting. Rieder will graduate from Radford next month. 

United States Sen. Mark Warner hosted members of the ������������̳ community, local elected officials and regional business leaders for a luncheon and discussion of economic development, infrastructure, community partnerships and entrepreneurship in the New River Valley at The Highlander Hotel Radford.

“By the end of this year, we will become a $4 billion company,” Smith, the president and CFO of K-VA-T Food Stores, told the crowd at the April 4 event in Kyle Hall. In the face of such success, however, he maintains a humble designation for himself: “I'm a second-generation grocer."

This week in Highlanders in the News: Professor of Physics Rhett Herman marks 18 years of student research trips to Utqiagvik, Alaska, some 300 miles above the Arctic Circle; three of the Traylor-Walker siblings – Ashlyn, Pa’Shence and Adelyn – give a roundtable interview about playing Highlander basketball as a set of sisters; and Assistant Professor of Management Zachary Collier has tips on chips.

The research project, spearheaded by Richard Gruss of the Davis College of Business and Economics, examines some of the elements that make one sales pitch succeed over another. Gruss recently drafted four acting students from the College of Visual and Performing Arts to present fictional pitches, which were used to help gather data.