WV Italian Heritage Festival to honor Fairmont State’s Dr. Rosemarie Igbo as Woman of the Year

Fairmont State University’s director of global engagement, Dr. Rosemarie Igbo, will receive the Honorary Woman of the Year Award for the 47th annual West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival. Each year, the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival is held on the streets of downtown Clarksburg to celebrate its rich Italian culture and the Italian-Americans in the state. Igbo will receive the award at the annual Honorees Award Ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, with the festival to follow on the weekend of Sept. 4-6, 2026.

Igbo said, “I am extremely honored to receive the Honorary Woman of the Year award. North Central West Virginia maintains some of the deepest and most enduring Italian-American roots in the state, with many families tracing their ancestry to Calabria and Southern Italy.”

Igbo lives in Bridgeport and holds a Ph.D. in international psychology and a master’s degree in adult and continuing education. Before joining Fairmont State, she served as deputy director of the Center for Global Engagement at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and director of the Office of International Student and Faculty Services at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Her international experience also includes roles with the Embassy of Nigeria to the Holy See in Vatican City and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. Igbo also speaks several languages, including Italian and Spanish.

During the fall 2026 semester, Igbo will teach an Italian studies course at Fairmont State University. The course is an opportunity for Fairmont State students to engage with Italian heritage in an academic context, learn more about the multiculturalism of their local region and expand their global curriculum. She reflected, “Communities throughout the region, particularly in and around Clarksburg, continue to celebrate these ties through civic organizations, family networks, and longstanding cultural traditions. This history is an important part of the cultural fabric of our region.”

The course will also serve as a strategic foundation for strengthening study abroad opportunities in Calabria, Italy, where Fairmont State University has an existing institutional partnership with the University of Calabria. Being able to link classroom learning with experiential opportunities abroad through this course will function as a pipeline that prepares students academically, culturally and globally.

Because of work done in the Office of Global Engagement, Fairmont State University can provide grounded educational experiences at home and abroad. The Office of Global Engagement provides students with travel opportunities, as well as place-based learning experiences and engagement with their cultural heritage and history at home.

To learn more about Fairmont State University’s Office of Global Engagement, visit fairmontstate.edu/epics.