New River Community College has announced the appointment of three new faculty members this week.

David Filer of Botetourt will teach technical training. He is a former chair of computer science at Southern Ohio University.

Mark Gilbert of Boone's Mill will teach welding. He previously taught at Virginia Western Community College.

John Somervell of Parrott is teaching in the machine technology program. He is a Virginia Tech alumnus with 16 years experience in the machining industry.

Tech adds certificate in homeland security

Virginia Tech's Center for Public Administration and Policy, School of Public and International Affairs, College of Architecture and Urban Studies and Center for Technology, Security and Policy will offer a joint graduate certificate program beginning this fall to National Capital Region students.

The program, called Homeland Security Policy, is designed for government and private sector employees, state and local officials and advanced degree students, according to a news release from the university.

It focuses on issues relating to homeland security strategy, policy formulation, administrative and organizational challenges and planning and operations.

Radford University earns education funds

Radford University's College of Education and Human Development has received a $33,573 grant for funding of "Teach for Achievement: Data-based decision-making for content area reading instruction," part of the No Child Left Behind state grants funded through the U.S. Department of Education.

Stimulus funds continue to roll in

As of this week, Virginia Tech researchers had received 45 grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act totaling $20.3 million.

Projects funded range from determining the cause of cell defects to planning for a program that will facilitate graduate study by veterans.

Computer science expert to speak

Frances Allen, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the first woman to be named an IBM Fellow, will speak at Virginia Tech

Allen's speech is set to begin at 11:15 a.m. Sept. 11 in Squires Student Center's Haymarket Theatre.

Her talk, "High Performance Computers and Compilers: A Personal Perspective," will describe a sequence of projects including some early projects that influenced the field, her perspective of what worked and what did not and the lessons learned.

Allen was the 2006 recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery's Turing Award, computer science's version of the Nobel Prize.