Highlanders in the News: Week of April 13, 2026

Our Highlanders are using their education to do extraordinary things. In this column, we highlight some notable mentions from local, regional, national and international news media. Whether our students, alumni, faculty and staff are featured as subject matter experts in high-profile stories or simply helping make the world a better place, we'll feature their stories.

Filling the gaps

Given that we're now in the second half of April, here's a timely Phrase of the Day: "Tax gap."

That's the term for the difference between the amount of taxes owed to the government and the total that was paid.

A study published April 7 by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that in 2022, for example, U.S. taxpayers owed about $5.3 trillion but only shelled out $4.6 trillion, leaving an initial gap of roughly $700 billion.

While the Internal Revenue Service expects ultimately to collect another $90 to $100 billion of that figure, Pew said that still means "taxpayers will have paid only about $7 out of every $8 they owed the government."

Smaller tax gaps, Pew notes, would provide revenue that states could use to fill budget holes, bypass tax increases or avoid cuts to core services.

That's not exactly shocking - more taxes collected generally means more money for localities - but Pew got an enhanced perspective from Radford Assistant Professor of Accounting Rob Warren, a retired IRS criminal investigation special agent, who told them that tax shortfalls often go unchecked.

While still an agent in 2020 and 2021, Warren conducted a survey to see how the discrepancies were being addressed across the country, and his findings were surprising, particularly for anyone who's ever raced to meet the annual April 15 IRS deadline.

"The problem is that states are ignoring their tax gaps," Warren told Pew, and indeed, his research showed that, since 1992, only eight of 50 states, or about 16% of the country, have even determined the size of those financial divides.

But while the IRS may be using AI to root out scofflaws, technology can only go so far.

"Knocking on someone's door and saying, 'You owe a million bucks,' that has to be done by a person," he said.

Other outlets that republished the story or repurposed its findings include The Republic Monitor (Perryville, Missouri) and KOTA-TV (Rapid City, South Dakota).

Thinking by "Design"

It's been 15 years since Pum Lefebure '97 last appeared on the "Design Matters with Debbie Millman" podcast, but on April 13, she was back for another chat.

Lefebure is the co-founder and chief creative officer of a studio called Design Army, which has served clients ranging from Bloomingdale's to the Hong Kong Ballet.

She mentions that she came to the U.S. from Thailand and says that, while at Radford, she was studying design while also learning to speak English.

Across the hourlong conversation, Lefebure also talks about how she uses every design project she tackles as a "calling card" to build business. She explains her take on creative leadership, shares her perspective on how artificial intelligence fits together with human creativity and shares her philosophy on how she keeps Design Army fresh.

"I want to be like Gen Z … I want to think like them," Lefebure explained. "I want to work like a startup ... I want this army to think like a startup every single day coming to work."

You can access the episode through Apple Podcasts as well as on YouTube, or via Millman's show's website.

'The simple, absorbing joy of play'

The 2026 Franklin U.S. Open Pickleball Championships is underway this week, and one of the sport's most ardent supporters is Carter Turner, associate professor of Religious Studies.

"We will sweat, strain, suffer, leave everything on the court and more than likely come away without a medal," Turner wrote in an April 4 opinion piece in the Naples Daily News in Naples, Florida, the site of the tournament.

"But we'll be there for the same reason so many of us have unexpectedly embraced this game: it's a lot of fun to play."

The game has grown immensely popular over the past decade, and Turner's piece offers several explanations for the phenomenon - it's inexpensive, easy to learn and play and spans a wide range of ages and abilities - but his piece also examines a more intrinsic appeal.

"At its heart, pickleball offers adults something many have lost: the simple, absorbing joy of play - reminiscent of the games they knew as children," he writes. "For the duration of the match, the chaos of ordinary life is replaced by a clearly defined world understood by all participants."

Turner co-owns the Roanoke Shine, a professional pickleball team, and is a U.S. ambassador for the sport. His piece cites such authorities as Dutch historian Johan Huizinga and Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

It's a persuasive argument and you can read it in full here, but one of Turner's conclusions neatly sums up his perspective on the game: "Ultimately, the power of pickleball - and of play more broadly - lies in its ability to transport people out of their daily routines and into a world of structure, attention, challenge, and shared joy."

The 2026 Franklin U.S. Open Pickleball Championships runs through April 18.