And just like the world outside of Morgantown, West Virginia University alumni are sprinkled throughout our staff and faculty, representing to the students they encounter that the foundation built here can construct a career that gives back to the University and the state.
Greater Reach
Just like many people around the world, Damien Clement (MS, ’05, MA ’07, Ph.D., ’08), who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, knew someone in West Virginia. His aunt lived in Charleston, so he headed there for an undergraduate degree in sports medicine/athletic training and to run track at the University of Charleston. That degree program offered a football rotation at West Virginia State, where a sideline conversation sparked an interest in sport psychology—the study of how psychological factors influence physical performance and vice versa.
A few books on the topic later and Clement was ready to continue his education, and the nearest sport psychology doctoral program was some three hours north in Morgantown, where on an annual basis more than 60 other aspiring students were vying for approximately three slots. Clement gained his first exposure to the program as a result of being invited to a colloquium for minority doctoral students at West Virginia University for a day-and-a-half campus experience.
“I came back (to Charleston) motivated,” Clement said. “It was the only program I applied to; I didn’t even have a backup plan.”
He explains the study of sport psychology to be the inextricable combination of healthy mind to healthy body. “We work with athletes to help them understand the psychological aspects that could enhance their performance to make it more consistent,” he said.
The psychology of sport injury is a subset of those studies and requires a different approach to the same healthy mind, healthy body goal. “A lot of the work that I did was focused on helping injured athletes maximize their psychological skills with regard to injury rehabilitation to get them back to the field,” he continued. Clement said sport psychology skills and techniques can be used to build confidence, manage emotions and help injured athletes better cope with physical and social changes when they aren’t currently active in their sport. “Sport psychology professionals work through each of these areas to get them back to the field of play as soon as possible, or to help with the transition from being an active athlete to someone who can’t actively participate in that sport anymore.”
His original doctoral program is still exclusive, but Clement is no longer teaching or conducting research in the College of Applied Human Sciences. Now the associate dean of the Honors College, he oversees the first-year Honors students’ experience, which includes oversight of the Honors Foundations Program, mentoring and tutoring program and the Honors College Living-Learning Community, as well as admissions and records.
As an international and a minority student on WVU’s campus, he found a robust community of others who came from his own country and others, but doctoral studies left little time for extracurricular activities. His time as an assistant professor, though, opened up another world of entertainment for him in addition to running and playing soccer. Clement sang in a reggae band called Island Vibes, which played gigs around Morgantown.
That fun experience and the opportunity to teach and conduct research in both his areas of expertise kept him close to WVU. And even though Clement is no longer in a classroom, he is still regularly in touch with students.
“I really enjoy doing what I do right now; I’m working with some really highly motivated, conscientious students,” Clement said. “It’s unfortunate I don’t get to form in-depth relationships as I would in a classroom, but my reach is a lot greater.”
Bringing W. Va. to the world
Amber Brugnoli (BS, ’01, Law, ’04, Ph.D. ’17) might have had every intention of leaving West Virginia when she was a high school student in Beckley, and indeed, life did take her as far away as Iraq. But home often calls those who have traveled away, and West Virginia University brought her back in almost the exact place she started.
Brugnoli was on a three-year ROTC scholarship, and it was reasonable for her to think that if she didn’t like Morgantown, she could transfer. About six weeks into her first year, her mom asked her if she might still want to look at other schools and Brugnoli’s answer was quick and emphatic.
“Oh, no. This place is awesome.”
So awesome that it inspired her to become an RA and a tour guide every year for Orientation, telling students about her own experience as a freshman, that she’d met the man who would become her husband, and the woman who would be the maid of honor at her wedding. Life did take her away from Morgantown for a while and put her in a place that was not on her bucket list.
After law school, she entered active duty and was assigned to places all over the world. Her first hitch was in Japan, and the learning curve for the travel alone was a lot. How much to pack, how to get through customs, how to see their community concerns as global problems to which everyone on any continent can relate. Food deserts. Healthcare. Clean water.
“These are international problems and how can we work together to solve them?” she asked. “I think it helps our domestic students, especially those from rural areas, to talk to someone who speaks a little differently, but has the same problem in Zimbabwe or Kenya or Ghana; it’s not just local to West Virginia. That’s what I love about my job.”
As for what she loves about WVU, that’s an easy one. For Brugnoli, who said she was not at the top of either her high school or her college class, it’s the open access students have to a quality education.
“We may have to network a little more than someone from Harvard or Yale, but the alumni network is really strong,” Brugnoli said. “I’ve served alongside people who went to Ivy League schools who had all the Senate internships or U.S. Supreme Court internships, and you know what? I’d put my education up against any one of them.”
Awesome Service
Coming to WVU for Shirley Robinson (Regents, ’06) was little more than crossing the street. The Morgantown native and Morgantown High School’s number-one tennis player was familiar with life in a university town.
Robinson didn’t immediately hit the tennis courts or even expect to try out for an NCAA tennis, but someone made the suggestion and with a bit of a “well, okay” attitude, she did. Never having formal training, she would watch tennis on television and try to adapt her game to the professionals. She became the first African American female tennis player in WVU’s history. That’s not why she tried out, though.
“I did it because that’s my passion,” she said. She combined that passion for athletics in her major, which was physical education and safety. Robinson left school after three years because her grandfather was ill, and like many West Virginians, did what she had to do to help out her family in caring for him. Years later, she decided to make a return to campus as an employee and a nontraditional student.
Her passion, by then, had changed. She was able to combine the hours she’d earned with her experience and discovered she needed only 21 hours to graduate. It was just another short walk across the street for a job with the University where she’s been for the last 36 years. Now in the Office of the Provost, Robinson works in undergraduate education, initiates the approval process for helping out-of-state students navigate getting into programs through the Graduate Academic Common Market that aren’t offered in their home state, process all graduate tuition waivers, process undergraduate course overloads, assist in preparing the Academic Calendar and monitor students in the Ohio Reciprocity and Garrett College Reciprocity to make sure they are accessed correctly when there is a major change. Robinson is the current chair of the Classified Staff and the representative on the Board of Governors and is an advocate for better working conditions and better pay for hourly workers.
She is also a local pastor at Destiny Deliverance Ministries in Westover, a calling she felt long
ago. She has always had a heart for people and their concerns. She continued to serve in ministry and the door was open for her to become the pastor of her home local church. She believes that to become a good leader, you have to be a good follower. This is something she does not take lightly, and you must have a caring and loving heart. When the previous pastor left, the door was open and the call she felt took her to the pulpit.
The pandemic in 2020 brought about many challenges for many churches, but Robinson’s congregation faced potential devastation.
She was visiting friends on a Saturday morning when she got the call her church was on fire. She thought, “Are people saying that her church was on fire because they were known for praising the Lord or is it literally on fire?” It was the latter because it was intentionally set on fire. By the time she arrived, the building was completely engulfed in smoke and the flames had been extinguished, but even in that moment, Robinson was able to find a blessing. Whoever had tossed accelerant into one of the church’s classrooms had chosen the one where the gas line was located. Seemingly by divine intervention, the fire was extinguished before an explosion occurred and the church had what Robinson described as “a whole lot of smoke damage.” Beyond that, though, there was water damage, electrical work damage and holes cut in the sanctuary floor by firefighters who were making sure the fire did not spread there.
Three young men were caught setting fire to the church on the security camera of a nearby business. They faced criminal charges and possible jail time, but when Robinson found out one of them had contracting experience, she asked the judge to sentence them to repair the damage they’d caused.
Robinson is not one to confine her ministry to a building; she began a Bible study for unsheltered people, and she volunteers her time every Saturday in Morgantown to help feed the hungry.
She sums her work with undergrad students at WVU, her leadership on Staff Council, her ministry at Destiny Deliverance and her work feeding the souls and hungry stomachs of people who are unhoused in one blanket statement.
“I have a heart for all people.”
Good Work
College was not in Nicolas Zegre’s (Forestry, ’00) future plans when he graduated from high school in northwestern New Jersey. The younger brother of two sisters who were high achievers thought that he wasn’t a good enough student.
Also, he’d been told that he was a “square block being forced into a round hole” by his high school principal.
“I always struggled. I felt like I never was really taught the language of learning—of how to learn, how to study,” he said. “Everything for me was experimental. I was looking for a way of doing well enough to be left alone.”
He enlisted in the Army where he became a nuclear biological and chemical warfare specialist, a trade he believed would provide a good income without a degree.
“I became water literate,” Zegre said. “My job required me to understand water and water resources. At 18-years-old I was looking over topographic maps of desert regions and trying to find water sources that are necessary for decontamination. It was during that time that I kind of built this lens of seeing the world through water, because it was the primary ingredient for operational readiness.”
And while he learned about the job that would require him to find water for decontamination purposes in an area essentially devoid of surface water, Zegre also discovered he is an experiential learner. Combined with a military downsizing just before his hitch was up, what he learned about how he learned gave him the idea that he could go to college. In the search for the place that he could learn more about water, his stepfather suggested West Virginia University.
Zegre began in forestry because of its relationship to water and, he said, the transition was pretty fluid without a trace of a pun.
“I was trained to look for water based on reading the landscape and reading the topography and understanding the geology, so doing work here in West Virginia was just part of that continuum of ‘What’s the organization of our landscape? What’s that structure? How much precipitation do we get? Where is water going to flow?’ all built on understanding what controlled water and how water got to where it was.”
Former professor Stan Tajchman, who was a forest meteorologist, introduced Zegre to research—and what professors do, a combination of experiential and experimental learning. A job with the U.S. Forest Service took him to western North Carolina and a master’s degree in hydrology from Virginia Tech.
Another job took him to Oregon and a Ph.D. He was in the midst of defending his dissertation when a job at his original alma mater opened in 2009.
“I never thought I would get the job because I didn’t have a post-doc,” he said. “WVU took a chance on me as an academic. Most academics get hired in a tenure track position with a robust publishing record and demonstrated fundraising. I didn’t have any of that. A lot of universities wouldn’t have taken that chance.”
His teaching position allows for work in his area of expertise, focusing on field-based river conservation and management and leadership, which he puts firmly in the hands of those who live and work along watersheds. His current project is on the Cheat River in two Preston County towns affected by the Flood of ’85, which ravaged major portions of the entire state. In studying the river and the people who live along it, management sounds, well, difficult.
But for Zegre, who emphasizes that sustainable management is about living with the river and the knowledge of what it can do, it’s about meeting the needs of both the water and the people rather than trying to channel either.
“West Virginia has an abundance of water, but we know that water isn’t necessarily needed at the right time and the right place; sometimes it’s too much, sometimes it’s too little. When the river is healthy, the community is healthy and the economy is healthy,” he said.
“How do we meet the needs of a growing economy while meeting the needs of the people, while ensuring that the environment is healthy to provide us with everything we need to have?”
The answers don’t lie in textbooks, or even a professor’s knowledge of water resources; they come from the people’s lived experience with the water and the land. The experiment and the experience, a coalescence of learning that benefits communities and students.
His own learning style informs his teaching style, perhaps encouraging and inspiring his students to see futures they might not have known they could achieve.
“I will always be grateful that WVU took a chance on a really nascent and somewhat oblivious academic. I feel like we’re doing good work and helping to move West Virginia forward.”
