The May online edition of the University of Virginia Magazine is out, with features on the demographics of world population growth (no, all 7 billion people won’t be on the Lawn Sunday — it will just seem like that) and how one University dean is joining forces with Lady Gaga for a good cause.
She didn’t wear a white coat or wield a tongue depressor, but President Teresa Sullivan did what’s called “Grand Rounds” Wednesday – a sort of annual report – at the School of Medicine’s McKim Hall. There, she offered a succinct diagnosis of what makes up a U.Va. education.
In a word: value.
Type “value of college education” into a Google search and you get 19 million results, she said. “Everyone seems to be talking and writing about the value of a college education, or the value of a college degree,” she said.
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. and every Friday at 3:55 p.m. on WTJU. Afterward, all of the segments will be posted on iTunesU.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
• A New Procedure Uses Sound Waves to Treat Essential Tremors (Dr. Jeffrey Elias)
• IBM, U.Va. Launch Computing for Sustainable Water Project (Gerry Learmonth)
• A New Book Offers Advice for 20-Somethings (Meg Jay)
• Air Date: 5/16/2012
To download mp3, click here.
The end of an academic year seems to be a natural time to make a break from the University. Chances are, those who are retiring this year have probably already made their plans, but if retirement is a little further on the horizon for others of you, U.Va. Human Resources held a Retirement & Financial Planning Fair on April 24.
What good does that do you now? Well, they tapped some of the presentations, and they are now available on the University’s YouTube channel. Here are links to some of the most popular presentations:
If you have questions about retirement or other concerns, contact University Human Resources at AskHR@virginia.edu or 982-0123.
Give someone a tour of the Grounds, and inevitably the question comes up: “What’s with all the Zs?”
Somehow, it always catches me off-guard. Wahoos tend to take the “Zs,” “7s,” and “IMPs” for granted. They’s part of the landscape.
Among the latest to ask was Aric S. Queen, a blogger at National Geographic, who filed this recent post on his “The Good Traveler” blog.
Aric, if you’re reading this, U.Va. Magazine ran a long feature on the secret societies back in March.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama with U.Va. fourth-year student Alysha Tierney
Media Relations student writer Lisa Littman, a fourth-year who will take her U.Va. degree Sunday in English and Spanish, tells us about a classmate:
Alysha Tierney, a fourth-year foreign affairs and history student in the College of Arts & Sciences, was lucky enough to snag a photo with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama when the president began his re-election campaign in Richmond on May 5. She even got a handshake from the president and a hug from the first lady.
Tierney was a bit too awestruck to have an in-depth conversation with the Obamas.
“I was not able to come up with anything intelligent to say other than, ‘Wow, this is amazing,’” she recalled.
With Tierney, however, that’s the exception, not the rule. This fall, she co-founded ‘Hoos for Obama at U.Va. The group hosts voter registration drives and phone banks, and plans to resume these activities in full force when students return in the fall.
The president is the reason Tierney became involved with the Democratic Party, she said. “He’s done so much for students over the past four years – doubling the funding of Pell Grants, cutting out banks as the middle man between me and my federal student loans, and allowing so many students and recent graduates to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26 years old.”
After graduation, she will head to Nashua, N.H., to work as a field organizer with Obama’s re-election campaign.
Looking for a good reason to spend a blissful, long summer weekend on the Grounds of the University?
I’m told there are still a few spaces left in the U.Va. Office of Engagement‘s annual Summer Jefferson Symposium (modeled after the successful “Summer on the Lawn” series that was formerly run by the School of Continuing and Professional Studies), to be held June 21-24. “Jefferson’s Love of the Written Word” features Jefferson experts, including U.Va. history professor Peter Onuf, and U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan. There are lectures, tours, meals and receptions, and participants have the option of staying on Grounds at Brown College. (You can read the whole schedule here, and register here.)
The event is part of the Office of Engagement’s Lifetime Learning program, so if the Jefferson Symposium doesn’t work for you, you may want to check out some of the other options.
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. and every Friday at 3:55 p.m. on WTJU. Afterward, all of the segments will be posted on iTunesU.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
• New Book Examines the Culture of Spanish Theater (David Gies)
• U.Va.’s Annual Venture Summit Builds Local ‘Ecosystem’ for Entrepreneurs (Mike Lenox)
• Vietnam Ambassador Discusses Hanoi’s View of the World (Vietnam’s Ambassador to the U.S., Nguyen Quoc Cuong)
• Air Date: 5/9/2012
To download mp3, click here.
Together with the former owner and winemaking team at Screaming Eagle Winery in Napa Valley, Calif., who are currently working together on a new project called Cultivate Wines, the U.Va. Alumni Association has created perhaps the perfect graduation gift: 1819 Red Wine, which commemorates U.Va.’s upcoming 200th anniversary.
The offering is the first in a 10-vintage series, according to the Cultivate Wines website. A quarter of each bottle’s $55 sales price will go toward the purchaser’s choice of either the Rotunda Restoration Project or the AccessUVA financial aid program. Each shipment includes a note from U.Va. architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson.
Wilson also will choose the label art for each of the annual vintages, “to create a unique pictorial history of the University,” according to Cultivate’s description.
1819 Red is described as “a rich blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from Napa Valley. In the glass, this deeply colored wine offers dusty aromas of cedar and loam over a core of blackberry and dark plum. The palate has a weighty entry that carries through to a balanced finish.
“At the table, this wine will pair well with roasted meats and rich stews. The quality of the fruit combined with the characteristics of the 2009 vintage promise great drinking both now and over the long term.”
So, what happens if a young, somewhat handsome and scruffy young man acts like a celebrity at a local mall? Can he get other folks to believe him?
That’s that premise of a Web video recently produced by Lance Lemon and Justin Black, both 2011 graduates of the College of Arts & Sciences. With a third friend, Thomas Cramer, they launched Chill Hill Media, which they describe as “an online-based social website where we focus on making Web videos, Web shorts, photography, music, production and overall art.”
The video, “Celebrity for a Day” (below), posted April 9, has received almost 1.3 million views.
HBO’s acclaimed “Hard Knocks” series, which goes behind the scenes with a pro football team each year, is all the rage in sports TV circles. Giving fans an insiders’ glimpse into their favorite teams builds interest in the team and probably helps sell tickets. On the college level, it probably doesn’t hurt recruiting, either. The U.Va. football team even participated in something similar a couple of years ago.
So it’s not surprising that the defending national champion U.Va. men’s lacrosse will get its turn in the spotlight Tuesday and Wednesday with “There and Back,” a two-part series airing on ESPNU. Both 30-minute segments will air at 6:30 p.m., and will be repeated periodically on ESPNU during the upcoming NCAA Tournament.
Behind the project is producer and director Jay Jalbert, a former Cavalier lacrosse star. His family-owned Jalbert Productions joined forces with Little Brother of War Entertainment, described in a press release as “an entity dedicated to revealing the sport of lacrosse at its core,” to produce the show. (View the three-minute trailer here.)
“Cameras followed the Virginia men’s lacrosse program periodically throughout this season and the show will provide an in-depth look into what life is like as a student-athlete at the University of Virginia and within the men’s lacrosse program,” the press release says. “Highlighted by in-depth interviews with Starsia and a personal look into his life, filming included exclusive interviews with coaches, student-athletes and staff members, who shared their perspective and role within the UVa men’s lacrosse program.”
Perhaps inspired by the background of this year’s speaker, former U.Va. basketball star and founding WNBA president Valerie Ackerman, students have put together a fun video to promote attendance at Valedictory Exercises, scheduled for May 19 at 11 a.m. in the Lawn.
As we roll out our profiles of the Class of 2012 — always an inspiring, and somewhat humbling task — we stumbled across the story of a recent grad who is out to change the world.
He is Alexander Mark, founder and principal of OneHundred, an organization that melds Mark’s fashion design interests with a serious goal: “to bring 100% clean water to 100% of the world.” (He’s pretty serious about it; his website has both a mission and a story.)
So if you’re into socially conscious fashion, check it out. (And here’s the shirt I just ordered.)
UVA Today’s Matt Kelly reports:
U.S. Navy Capt. Edward A. Davis was remembered recently as a friend, a mentor, a hero and an optimistic man.
Davis, who died in 2006 of pancreatic cancer, had been a prisoner of war in the “Hanoi Hilton,” and after he was released, he came to U.Va. to complete his graduate work in international relations. While he was a student, he also served as an associate professor and executive officer at the Naval ROTC program, where he taught leadership to fourth-year students from 1976 to 1979.
Now, Connor Watkins, 17, son of Tim Watkins, the recently former commanding officer at the Naval ROTC program, has crafted a memorial to Davis, a display case in the corner of the naval wardroom in Maury Hall with items marking Davis’ life. Watkins, a student at Monticello High School, put together the memorial as an Eagle Scout project.
The U.Va. Library has posted on Facebook an interesting series of “then and now” photos from around Grounds. The artistic premise is something you have probably seen elsewhere recently: take an old picture — in this case, something from the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library‘s extensive Holsinger Studio Collection – and hold it up in front of the modern version of the same setting, so that the old picture “fits” into the modern scene.
(For the half-dozen or so of you who remain Facebook holdouts, we’re endeavoring to find out if these are posted somewhere more accessible.)
