Our Highlanders are using their education to do extraordinary things. Every other week, we’ll highlight some notable mentions from local, regional, national and international news media. Whether our students, alumni, faculty and staff are featured as subject matter experts in high-profile stories or simply helping make the world a better place, we’ll feature their stories.
Flowers on the wall
As the manager of arts in health care for VCU Health, Alexis Shockley ’07, M.F.A. ’09, curates more than 3,000 pieces within the system’s fine art collection.
But she’s also responsible for helping to create spaces within that organization’s facilities that encourage warmth, welcome and healing.
To that end, Shockley recently tapped artist Nico Cathcart to create a mural to fill a concrete wall near the entrance of the VCU Massey Cancer Center in Richmond, Virginia. That painting and its creation were featured in a Jan. 19 piece in Richmond magazine.
Cathcart, who survived a bout with cancer herself, finished work on the 12-by-30-foot mural in November, and it depicts a bird that clutches a purple ribbon in its beak as it glides above a field of flowers.
“It’s my subtle attempt of bringing a positive message of upward motion to those who are looking at it,” the artist told the magazine. Her work also adorns additional spaces around Richmond, as well as in Alexandria, Williamsburg, Portsmouth and other parts of Virginia and beyond.
Shockley said in the article that the mural’s ribbon symbolizes cancer and that she finds the work “vibrant and hopeful,” praising Cathcart.
“She is enthusiastic, fun and hardworking. I love her work because it’s so personal to her,” Shockley said.
Flying coach
A fairly new guard and forward for Radford women’s basketball is about to get an alternate perspective on the game.
Graduate student Adriana Shipp-Davis, who started with the team in November, has been selected to participate in the “So You Want to Be a Coach” program, a two-day workshop held in early April during the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) convention in Tampa, Florida.
According to its website, the program, now in its 22nd year, “assists female collegiate basketball players who are interested in pursuing a career in coaching women’s basketball by providing them with professional development and career advancement through education, skills enhancement, networking and exposure opportunities.”
Shipp-Davis will be the third Highlander to take part in the program during Women’s Head Coach Mike McGuire’s tenure, following alumnae Aisha Foy ’16 and Destinee Walker ’19.
"Applying for something like this is outside of my comfort zone, but Coach McGuire pushed me into giving it a chance,” Shipp-Davis told Radford Athletics. “For me, having a coach that believes in me enough to suggest a program like this means the world. Being around this much coaching experience is going to be something I won't forget."
“A teacher and a leader”
A U.S. Army veteran and a German instructor for more than 30 years, Kyle Remppies ’87 recently received a warm shout-out from a source close to home – the Cavalier Chronicle, the student newspaper at Midlothian, Virginia’s Clover Hill High School, where he teaches.
A profile of Remppies that ran in the Jan. 21, 2025 edition of the school’s Chronicle reports that he attended Radford, where he was in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), from 1983 to 1987. Following his graduation, he served in the army until 2006 – and commanded a reserve unit out of Salem – but he has also taught German to high schoolers since 1991.
The article, written by Clover Hill sophomore Mercy Jenkins, notes that Remppies was among a number of the school’s faculty members recognized on Veterans Day for their service.
“I was an officer in the military, and I was kind of like a teacher, too, a teacher and a leader, so they were kind of close in a lot of ways,” Remppies told Jenkins.