Wake Forest Magazine, March 2007 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

A R O U N D T H E Q U A DUniversity extends sympathy,support to Virginia TechWAKE FOREST JOINEDUNIVERSITIES across thecountry in offering sympathyand support to Virginia Techfollowing the shootings thereApril 16. Among the thirty-twokilled was a professor with tiesto the School of Medicine throughthe joint VirginiaTech-Wake ForestUniversity School of BiomedicalEngineering and Sciences.Kevin Granata, 45, a professorin the Department of EngineeringScience and Mechanics atVirginia Tech who taught in thejoint program, was among thosekilled in Norris Hall. The program’sdirector, Wally Grant, aVirginia Tech engineering professor,was among those injured.The joint program, which beganin 2003, has sixty-five students,twenty-two of whom are based atWake Forest. The students takeclasses on each campus and byvideo conferencing, but no WakeForest students were on the VirginiaTech campus the day of theshootings.Granata, who came to VirginiaTech in 2003 from the Universityof Virginia, was described bycolleagues as a gifted scientist.His research focused on muscleand reflex response and robotics,including control of lower backpain and computer simulationof walking and running. Hisdepartment chair described himas one of the top five biomechanicsresearchers in the countryworking on movement dynamicsin cerebral palsy. Granata is survivedby his wife, Linda, and threeyoung children.At a memorial service inWait Chapel two nights afterthe tragedy, President NathanO. Hatch said, “The authorJoan Didion in her bookThe Year of Magical Thinkingreminds us that ‘Lifechanges in the instant.The ordinary instant.’ Itis, perhaps, our familiaritywith the ordinary day ona university campus thatmakes this week’s tragedyat Virginia Tech intenselypersonal for each of us…On a university campus,where open doors andopen minds are honoredas powerful forces forStudents at a memorial serviceon Hearn Plazagood, we mourn the recognitionthat each event of this magnitudeerodes our freedom in ways bothsubtle and overt.”Hatch offered to send counselingfaculty and staff to VirginiaTech, and three counselingprofessors—Sam Gladding (’67,MAEd ’71), Laura Veach (’79,MAEd ’82), and Donna Henderson—spent two days on the VirginiaTech campus, beginning April 23when classes there resumed.In the hours immediately afterthe shootings, Wake Forest officialsbegan reviewing campussecurity measures. Wake Foresthas a crisis management plan thatis regularly updated. Through theyears, the University has takenvarious measures to enhancesecurity, including the additionof gates at the three entrances tothe Reynolda Campus; at night,one entrance is closed, while theother two are staffed by securityofficers.8 WAKE FOREST MAGAZINE