Matthew Hanna is a rising fourth-year student from Atlanta, majoring in mechanical engineering with a minor in engineering business. This summer, he is participating in the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Science and Technology Policy Internship Program, which places student interns with policymaking organizations at home and abroad. Hanna is working in Paris with the National Science Foundation’s Europe Office and with the U.S. embassy, and has agreed to send back regular reports for the UVA Today News Blog.
June 14-20: I absolutely love Paris and the endless flow of events and sights that living here provides — though occasionally avoiding the weekend tourist influx and seeing other parts of the country has been very rewarding.
This week started with a day trip to Fontainebleau, a former escape for the French royalty nestled in the middle of one of the area’s largest protected forests, just outside of Paris. The chateau’s gardens are a testament to the level of grandeur attainable when building out of royal coffers!
Today’s UVA Today features an update on the story of Joey Katona, a U.Va. student from a prosperous Jewish family in Los Angeles who is following through on his vow to raise funds to pay for the college education of his friend, Omar Dreidi. The twist: Dreidi is a Palestinian Arab, whom Katona met in 2004 at the “Seeds of Peace” camp in Maine.
We first reported on Katona’s effort back in February 2007, when both students were in the first years — Katona at U.Va. and Dreidi at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. Katona explained that he found it uncomfortable that he had easy access to higher education, while finances would likely bar Dreidi from attending college.
(Here’s a 2007 video of Joey Katona telling his story.)
Now both students are heading into their final undergraduate years.
Katona estimates that he’ll need to raise a total of $90,000 to satisfy Dreidi’s obligations to Earlham; so far, he has raised about $53,000. Earlham has been pretty flexible for the last three years, Katona said, but sent an ominous letter recently threatening to block Dreidi’s registration until his accounts are brought up to date.
Check out the new episode of the UVA Today Radio Show, a weekly five minute segment on WTJU radio. Look for new editions of the show every Wednesday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU. Afterward, all of the segments will be posted on UVA Today.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
Thus we take you back to 1980, when U.Va. was just beginning to discover big-time college athletics (thanks to a certain 7-foot-4 basketball player from Harrisonburg), and big-time college athletics was somewhat flummoxed to discover U.Va. To help the rest of America understand the uniqueness that is Mister Jefferson’s University, Sports Illustrated magazine published an explanatory feature, available through its online “Vault.”
To appreciate how The University got to such a pretty pass in athletics, it is necessary to understand that Mister Jefferson’s “Academical Village,” as he styled it, has been perhaps the most unusual public institution in America, flourishing with contradictions to the point of schizophrenia.
It’s worth a read, if for no other reason to compare what has changed since then — and what has not.
From the Law School’s news site comes a dispatch from John Stephens, who is spending the summer working for the AIDS Law Project in Johannesburg, South Africa through the Law School’s Class of 1957 South Africa Human Rights Summer Fellowship.
His work focuses on realizing South Africans’ constitutionally guaranteed right to adequate food and nutrition.
“These are enumerated rights in the South African constitution; part of my job is to research school feeding programs in connection with the realization of them,” Stephens writes. “My other major assignment has to do with formula for feeding infants.”
An excerpt:
I have been challenged in all of the astonishing and aching ways I hoped to be. The change is multifold: new country, new culture, new job, new friends, new skills and a new city — a very big one. I have lots of questions: Can I turn left on red? Am I lost? Are they honking at me? Should I eat that? Is this a sickness, or just a discomfort? Is he angry or is this funny? Could this be the good fight? Is this the struggle? Can I even ask this question?
A great David Teel column in the Newport News Daily Press highlights “Operation Hardwood,” in which seven college basketball coaches — including four with U.Va. ties — recently visited American troops stationed in Bagram, Afghanistan.
The University of Virginia matched its best finish in the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup race, placing eighth among Division I schools. The Cavalier program also took eighth in 1999.
Stanford won the all-sports competition for the 15th consecutive year, with North Carolina second. After Virginia, two other ACC teams placed in the top 20: Florida State (15th) and Duke (17th).
While Tech will be leaving one job unfilled, UVa will be leaving 14 unfilled. UVa also will be reducing the size of the travel parties for some teams’ road games. Media guides might have fewer pages. Renovations to facilities might be delayed. Teams might be traveling via bus instead of plane on certain trips, or take commercial flights instead of charters. The length of some road trips will be shortened. Foreign travel will be limited.
The U.Va. athletics site has a wrap-up of the baseball season that saw the Cavaliers advance to the College World Series for the first time. The 2009 team broke six offensive school records and 11 overall in is historic run to Omaha, including wins (49), runs scored (507), hits (767) and opponents struck out (593).
The Roanoke Times painted a similarly rosy picture of the baseball program in an article posted Friday that also included information about planned enhancement projects at Davenport Field.
Perhaps the best news of all: with almost every contributor returning — including All-Americans Jarrett Parker and Danny Hultzen, and shortstop Tyler Cannon, who made the All-College World Series team — and the addition of another talented recruiting class, Virginia baseball looks loaded for next season.
June 26, 2009 — In the past month, we’ve learned about vermiculture composting, waste vegetable oil centrifuge filtration, lacto-fermentation pickling, and woodworking. We’ve hung out at mechanic shops, waited for hours in DMV lines, spent late nights with good friends and power tools, and gotten up to our elbows in fresh dirt — and it’s all part of an art project.
We are Emily Nelson and Graham Evans, the Nourish(meant) project leaders. Emily is a rising fourth-year in the studio art Distinguished Majors Program, and Graham graduated from U.Va. in May with a degree in American studies. Nourish(meant) is a lot of things, but essentially it is a bus, running on waste vegetable oil, with a garden planted on top and a kitchen inside. It’s the idea that our food system needs a major overhaul, but the belief that food can be good for us, for the world and for our relationships.
The Heritage Theatre Festival is under way at U.Va.’s Culbreth Theater. The first show is “Oliver!,” which, at its best, highlights a large cast of talented youngsters. If this video (captured by a new “stage mom,” Public Affairs’ very own Nancy Tramontin) from the cast party is any indication, this may be “Oliver” at its best. (You can buy tickets here.)
Check this piece out from the New York Times. It’s a beautifully and somewhat whimsically illustrated (yet serious) treatment of Thomas Jefferson, through the eyes and experience of Maira Kalman and her recent visit to Monticello.
(For more on Maira Kalman, check out her Web site.)
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