Keri Brown

Hearn Plaza at Wake Forest University will soon be filled with young children donning colorful Halloween costumes as part of Project Pumpkin. This year’s event will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 24 from 3-6 p.m. The student-led program will welcome more than 500 children to campus who attend Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools or afterschool programs at nonprofit organizations, including the Salvation Army and Latino Community Services. Children will visit dozens of activity booths organized by Wake Forest University student groups and departments. This year’s theme is Under The Sea.

Wake Forest University’s Hit The Bricks raised a record-breaking $301,722.22 for cancer research during this year’s event. The grand total was announced during the closing ceremony on Thursday, Oct. 5. It was an emotional moment for many participants, as the fundraising amount was shared with the crowd. The steps of Wait Chapel were lined with luminaries honoring cancer survivors and those impacted by the disease. More than 1,700 students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends ran or walked laps around Hearn Plaza during the eight-hour relay race. The student-led fundraising event at Wake Forest University began in 2003.

More than 1,700 Wake Forest students, faculty, staff and friends of the University will run laps around Hearn Plaza on Thursday, Oct. 5, for Hit the Bricks. The event will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The eight-hour relay race raises money for cancer research in honor of Brian Piccolo. The Brian Piccolo Cancer Fund Drive was started by students in 1980 in memory of the Wake Forest All-American football player, who passed away at age 26 from cancer during his career with the Bears.  

Wake Forest University’s URECA student research day is held in the fall each year during Family Weekend. It began nearly 20 years ago and has grown. This year, 140 undergraduate students and more than 120 faculty mentors participated in the event. It provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to present their recently completed and ongoing research projects in both poster format and in oral presentations.

NASA recently awarded graduate student David Carchipulla-Morales the prestigious "Future Investigators NASA Earth and Space Science Technology" grant. Only about 100 proposals were selected for the grant out of nearly a thousand applications.