The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference is a collegiate athletic conference whose full members are black colleges and universities in the Southeastern and the Mid-Atlantic United States. It participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I, in football, in the Football Championship Subdivision; the MEAC has automatic qualifying bids for NCAA postseason play in baseball, men's basketball, women's basketball, softball and women's tennis, volleyball. Bowling was sanctioned as a MEAC governed sport in 1999. Before that season, the MEAC was the first conference to secure NCAA sanctioning for women's bowling by adopting the club sport prior to the 1996–97 school year. In 1969, a group, whose members were long associated with interscholastic athletics, met in Durham, North Carolina with the purpose of discussing the organization of a new conference. After the formulation of a committee, their research reported, seven institutions: Delaware State University, Howard University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Morgan State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University and South Carolina State College agreed to become the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.

South Carolina State had been a longtime member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, while the other charter members had been longtime members of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association. The conference's main goals were to establish and supervise an intercollegiate athletic program among a group of educational institutions that shared the same academic standards and philosophy of co-curricular activities and seek status as a Division I conference for all of its sports; the conference was confirmed in 1970, had its first season of competition in football in 1971. The MEAC has had to three full-time commissioners. In 1978, the MEAC selected its first full-time commissioner, Kenneth A. Free, who served as Commissioner until he resigned in 1995, he was succeeded by Charles S. Harris, who served at the position until 2002. On September 1, 2002, Dennis E. Thomas became the conference's commissioner; the MEAC experienced its first expansion in 1979 when Bethune–Cookman College and Florida A&M University were admitted as new members.

That same year, founding members Morgan State University, North Carolina Central University and University of Maryland Eastern Shore withdrew from the conference. All three schools returned to the conference. On June 8, 1978, the MEAC was classified as a Division I conference by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Prior to that year, the league operated as a Division II conference; the following month the MEAC received an automatic qualification to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship. In 1984, membership in the MEAC again changed; the university would return to the conference two years later. Coppin State College, now Coppin State University, joined the conference in 1985; the MEAC would find stability in membership with the addition of two HBCUs in Virginia, Hampton University and Norfolk State University in 1995 and 1997 respectively. For the next 10 years, the MEAC would remain an 11-member conference. In 2007, former CIAA member Winston-Salem State University was granted membership, but announced on September 11, 2009 that it would return to Division II at the end of 2009–2010 and apply to return to the CIAA before becoming a full member of the MEAC.

North Carolina Central University rejoined the conference effective July 1, 2010. NCCU was one of seven founding member institutions of the MEAC, but withdrew from the conference in 1979, opting to remain a Division II member when the conference reclassified to Division I. Savannah State University was announced as the newest member of the MEAC on March 10, 2010. Savannah State applied for membership into the MEAC in 2006 but faced an NCAA probationary period soon after. Membership was deferred until the completion of the imposed probation period, which ended in May 2009. Savannah State resubmitted their application for membership again in 2009 and was granted probationary membership status. On September 8, 2011, the university was confirmed as a full MEAC member. While the MEAC has had no new full members since the conference added an associate member in 2014 when Augusta University known as Georgia Regents University, a Division II institution with Division I programs in men's and women's golf, joined for men's golf.

Augusta became first non-HBCU with any type of membership. The conference has since added two more non-HBCU associate members, with Monmouth University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham joining for bowling in 2018. In April 2017, Savannah State announced that it would drop to Division II effective with the 2019–20 school year. In November 2017, Hampton announced they would leave the MEAC to join the Big South Conference beginning with the 2018–19 season. North Carolina A&T will join the Big South Conference. Winston-Salem State University was a transitional member and never attained full membership in the MEAC or NCAA Division I before returning to Division II and the CIAA after the 2009–2010 school year, they were scheduled to begin full membership and gain access to NCAA tournaments in 2011. Full members Full members Associate members Other Conference Other Conference Maryland Eastern Shore was a founding member of the MEAC in 1970 and left after

Kalanchoe, or kal-un-KOH-ee, or kal-un-kee written Kalanchöe or Kalanchoë, is a genus of about 125 species of tropical, succulent flowering plants in the family Crassulaceae native to Madagascar and tropical Africa. Kalanchoe was one of the first plants to be sent into space, sent on a resupply to the Soviet Salyut 1 space station in 1971. Most are shrubs or perennial herbaceous plants; the largest, Kalanchoe beharensis from Madagascar, can reach 6 m tall, but most species are less than 1 m tall. Kalanchoes are characterized by opening their flowers by growing new cells on the inner surface of the petals to force them outwards, on the outside of the petals to close them. Kalanchoe flowers are divided into 4 sections with 8 stamens; the petals are fused in a similar way to some related genera such as Cotyledon. The genus was first described by the botanist Michel Adanson in 1763. Kamel's species was most Kalanchoe ceratophylla as he describes the plant as having divided leaves. Kalanchoe ceratophylla and Kalanchoe laciniata are both called 伽蓝菜 in China.

In Mandarin Chinese, it does not seem close in pronunciation, but the Cantonese gālàahm choi is closer. The genus Bryophyllum was described by Salisbury in 1806 and the genus Kitchingia was created by Baker in 1881. Kitchingia is now regarded as a synonym for Kalanchoe, while Bryophyllum has been treated as a separate genus, since species of Bryophyllum appear to be nested within Kalanchoe on molecular phylogenetic analysis, Bryophyllum is considered as a section of the former, dividing the genus into three sections, Kitchingia and Eukalanchoe; these were formalised as subgenera by Figueiredo. Adanson cited Georg Joseph Kamel as his source for the name; the name came from the Cantonese name "Kalanchauhuy", 伽藍菜. The genus is predominantly native to the Old World. Only one species of this genus originates from the Americas, 56 from southern and eastern Africa and 60 species in Madagascar, it is found in south-eastern Asia and China. These plants are the food plant of the caterpillars of Red Pierrot butterfly.

The butterfly lays its eggs on phylloclades, after hatching, caterpillars burrow into phylloclades and eat their inside cells. These plants are cultivated as ornamental houseplants and succulent garden plants, they are popular because of their ease of propagation, low water requirements, wide variety of flower colors borne in clusters well above the phylloclades. The section Bryophyllum—formerly an independent genus—contains species such as the "air-plant" Kalanchoe pinnata. In these plants, new individuals develop vegetatively as plantlets known as bulbils or gemmae, at indentations in phylloclade margins; these young plants drop off and take root. No males have been found of one species of this genus which does flower and produce seeds, it is called the mother of thousands: Kalanchoe daigremontiana is thus an example of asexual reproduction; the cultivars ‘Tessa’ and ‘Wendy’ have gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit. In common with other Crassulaceae, some Kalanchoe species contain bufadienolide cardiac glycosides which can cause cardiac poisoning in grazing animals.

This is a particular problem in the native range of many Kalanchoe species in the Karoo region of South Africa, where the resulting animal disease is known as krimpsiekte or as cotyledonosis. Similar poisonings have occurred in Australia. In traditional medicine, Kalanchoe species have been used to treat ailments such as infections and inflammation. Kalanchoe extracts have immunosuppressive effects. Kalanchoe pinnata has been recorded in Trinidad and Tobago as being used as a traditional treatment for hypertension. A variety of bufadienolide compounds have been isolated from various Kalanchoe species. Five different bufadienolides have been isolated from Kalanchoe daigremontiana. Two of these and bersaldegenin 1,3,5-orthoacetate, have been shown to have a pronounced sedative effect, they have the strong positive inotropic effect associated with cardiac glycosides, with greater doses an increasing effect on the central nervous system. Bufadienolide compounds isolated from Kalanchoe pinnata include bryophillin A which showed strong anti-tumor promoting activity, bersaldegenin-3-acetate and bryophillin C which were less active.

Bryophillin C showed insecticidal properties. Media related to Kalanchoe at Wikimedia Commons Data related to Kalanchoe at Wikispecies

Vincent "Vince" Welch is an American radio and television personality, employed by Fox Sports. He is the primary lap-by-lap announcer for the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series on FS1. From 1998 to March 2007, he was the sports program director at WIBC in Indiana. Prior to that job, he worked as a sports reporter at WISH-TV and as sports director for WNDY, both in Indianapolis. In the late 1980s Welch was a sports personality at WKBV Radio in Indiana. Welch worked as a pit reporter for ABC Sports and ESPN during broadcasts of the Indy Racing League and Indianapolis 500 as well as occasional stints on ESPN2's coverage of the NASCAR Nationwide Series, was pit reporter for ABC/ESPN for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series telecasts, he was a college football sideline reporter for ESPN/ABC. Welch is the television voice of the Ball State Cardinals and a Ball State University graduate. After ESPN lost the rights to NASCAR coverage at the end of the 2014 season, Welch moved to Fox Sports, where he is assigned to various NASCAR and college basketball commitments NASCAR pit reporter duties.

After the death of Truck Series lead broadcaster Steve Byrnes during Welch's first season in 2015, Welch was moved up to the lead role in the Truck Series. Vince and son Dillon have worked various NASCAR races together, with Vince on television and Dillon on radio. Welch is the first son combination to have worked Indianapolis 500 broadcasts. Http://www.wibc.com/bios/vincewelch.aspx