What if you spent a long, long time producing a 40-minute video of one of the University’s many Martin Luther King observances, and then only nine people watched it? Surely there must be more interest than that in the remarks of Sarita Brown, the founding president of Excelencia in Education, who spoke at the University recently about Latino student success.
The video is posted on the University’s YouTube channel, which you should definitely check out if you have not been there before. I’m fairly certain there will be even more MLK material posted there in the coming days.
To make it easier for you, and to help assuage the hurt feelings of our brilliant UVA Today video production team, the Brown video is embedded below:
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 oniTunesU.
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Since then, we’ve been keeping tabs on her progress, and there are two pieces of happy news to report.
First of all, she has apparently landed a regular gig on ABC’s long-running soap, “General Hospital,” where she has become the fourth actress to portray “Maxie Jones.” (The Roanoke Times has the story of how she landed the temporary role, which has since been extended to “for the foreseeable future,” according to a recent email from our budding starlet).
Second, she played a major role in helping land “The Artist” 10 Oscar nominations this morning, including “Best Picture.” Well, maybe not a major role — she is officially credited as “onlooker” — but there are no small parts, only small actors, right? How many of us can say we appeared in an Oscar-nominated film? Congratulations are most definitely in order.
Students met Jane Canning, a 101-year-old resident of St.Kitts-Nevis
Not all education happens in the classroom, especially compared to going abroad, second-year University of Virginia student Jeffrey Roberson said he learned when he took the international January-term course, “Disaster Preparedness in the West Indies” with 26 other students, led by Dr. Marcus Martin, vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity and former chair of the Health System’s Department of Emergency Medicine.
The group spent the first two weeks of January studying the fundamentals of emergency care and disaster preparedness in St. Kitts-Nevis. The small two-island nation is about one-and-a-half times the size of Washington, D.C.
From dancing in the streets during Carnival, celebrated for 10 days after Christmas, to learning about the small nation’s universal health care, Roberson said his experiences there showed him the importance of a strong community.
We at UVA Today headquarters love notes from proud moms, especially when they have their facts together and take great photos.
We got this message from Liz Schad of Toronto, a “double-’Hoo” herself (Engineering ’77 and Darden ’79) and the mother of a first-year. With only a little editing:
The U.Va. men’s snowboarding team swept the top three spots on Jan 16th in the U.S. Collegiate Ski & Snowboard Association’s Southeast Men’s Snowboard Giant Slalom at Sugar Mountain, N.C.
Mitchell Oliver (right) won with a combined time of 1:20.35. Chris McElaney was second with a combined time of 1:20.55 and first-year engineering student Michael Schad took third with a combined time of 1:21.98.
The Virginia team defeated teams from Appalachian State, Duke, East Carolina, James Madison, North Carolina State, Tennessee and North Carolina and are now ranked No. 1 in the Southeastern Conference — Collegiate Ski Racing in the Southeast U.S.
The U.Va. team will compete again this weekend at Beech Mountain, N.C. in both a giant slalom and a boardercross event.
Photo: Dave Woody; courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the Marc Pachter Commissioning Fund as part of the first prize, Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009
Dave Woody, a visiting professor of photography in the College of Arts & Sciences, will have a rare privilege on Friday: His photographic portrait of Alice Waters (above), a champion of the “Slow Food” movement, will be formally installed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
The museum’s director, Martin E. Sullivan, said, “In this compelling photograph, Woody captures Alice Waters’ commitment to local, organic food. The Portrait Gallery recognizes Waters for changing the way the nation thinks about how people are connected to food and the environment. We expect the event to be a lively celebration of this relatively new conversation in American culture.”
To read more about Woody, Waters and the gallery, click here.
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 oniTunesU.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
Photo credit: Reggie Jackson, U.Va. Center for Politics
The Commonwealth of Virginia holds the distinction of producing the most presidents of any state in the Union, narrowly beating out Ohio as the “Mother of Presidents.” The benefits of such a distinction are legion, although students in a January term class that focuses on the Commonwealth’s political history benefited from a lesser-known perk: a plethora of presidential gastronomy.
On their last day of class, students from University of Virginia Center for Politics Associate Director Ken Stroupe’s Virginia Government and Politics course were treated to a lunch featuring some of the favorite foods of Virginia’s eight native-born presidents. Dishes included Virginia ham (a favorite of James Madison), macaroni and cheese (Thomas Jefferson), spoon bread with honey and butter (James Monroe), roasted duck (John Tyler), Creole roasted okra (pictured above, a favorite of Zachary Taylor) peach cobbler (Woodrow Wilson) and wedding cake (George Washington). Continue reading…
Welcome back, students and faculty! We here at UVA Today headquarters have missed you all. It gets pretty quiet in Charlottesville over the holidays. Not that we’re complaining, of course — it’s nice to be able to find parking spots all over town. But the energy level was definitely lower.
A few things still happen even without students being in town, and we wanted to let you know that at least some good came of U.Va.’s appearance in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. A few days before Christmas, the Department of Athletics announced that $50,000 from the University’s bowl proceeds will be applied to AccessUVa, the University’s financial aid program. Additionally, and quite remarkably, head football coach Mike London pledged to make his own gift to match that amount.
So while the trip to Atlanta was not an on-the-scoreboard success, the University still came out a winner, and London provided even more evidence that the Cavaliers have the right man running the program — a fact that the University recognized by extending London’s contract.
The dawn of 2012 brings to the University of Virginia a new January Term, an intensive two-week academic session that includes courses taught both on Grounds and internationally. One of the study-abroad options is “System Case Studies,” a joint offering of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the McIntire School of Commerce. Led by engineering professor Reid Bailey and commerce professor Ryan Nelson, two dozen students venture to Mendoza, Argentina to work on consulting projects at two local wineries. Part of the class assignment is to write daily journal entries, which the UVA Today News Blog will post as they come in. To see all the posts from Argentina, click here.
By Ryan Nelson
Jan. 14, 2012 — Our final full day in Mendoza, Argentina started off with numerous toasts, thank yous and gift exchanges that lasted from around mid-night until 2 a.m. Of course, the closing ceremony could not be officially considered closed without a hearty rendition of the “Good Ol’
Song,” which our Argentine guests thoroughly enjoyed. Afterward, many students made their way out to the local dance clubs that only begin to get crowded around 3 a.m.!
10:45 a.m. came quite early, as Carlos (our bus driver) picked us up for a trip to the Zuccardi winery. Zuccardi is one of the largest wineries in Argentina and it was a perfect venue to spend our final day. The visit began with an in-depth tour of the massive wine production facility, followed by our last formal wine tasting, and then an incredible gourmet picnic lunch complete with wine pairings, while surrounded by ripening grapes!
The dawn of 2012 brings to the University of Virginia a new January Term, an intensive two-week academic session that includes courses taught both on Grounds and internationally. One of the study-abroad options is “System Case Studies,” a joint offering of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the McIntire School of Commerce. Led by engineering professor Reid Bailey and commerce professor Ryan Nelson, two dozen students venture to Mendoza, Argentina to work on consulting projects at two local wineries. Part of the class assignment is to write daily journal entries, which the UVA Today News Blog will post as they come in. To see all the posts from Argentina, click here.
By Kate Pierce, Ben Robbins, Shelby Sutton
January 13, 2012 — T.S. Eliot once said, “We shall not cease from exploration; And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”
Today, we reached the end and gave presentations to our clients. We have spent the past two weeks exploring Argentine culture, but today we finished what we started: our projects at Bodega Trivento and Bodega Vistandes, the two wineries who have graciously allowed us to work for them during our time here.
The dawn of 2012 brings to the University of Virginia a new January Term, an intensive two-week academic session that includes courses taught both on Grounds and internationally. One of the study-abroad options is “System Case Studies,” a joint offering of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the McIntire School of Commerce. Led by engineering professor Reid Bailey and commerce professor Ryan Nelson, two dozen students venture to Mendoza, Argentina to work on consulting projects at two local wineries. Part of the class assignment is to write daily journal entries, which the UVA Today News Blog will post as they come in. To see all the posts from Argentina, click here.
By Mark Paddrik
January 12, 2012 – After the hard push to finish the majority of the papers the day before, you could feel that the group was more relaxed after accomplishing the task of constructing a professional report (ranging from 20 to 40 pages!) that they would be giving their clients the next day. Yet like any project what makes or breaks your efforts is how well you can present your ideas to your client and convince them that your recommendations are sound, practical and effective. Today was presentation construction day.
We came across a rather interesting blog the other day. Grace Muth is taking a “gap year” before joining the incoming class of Echols Scholars in the fall. She’s spending the time engaged in real service — first, teaching young students in Tanzania for three months, now working for two months in New Delhi in the organization founded by Mother Teresa, and later heading to Bangkok to teach conversational English to Buddhist monks.
She’s blogging about her adventures; her writing is often an evocative series of vivid images, described originally. Here are some of her thoughts in anticipation of making the transition from her gap-year life to life on Grounds:
I try to imagine college, with designer bracelets and designer clothes and groomed people and essays and textbooks, and hot dorms and cold dorms and sororities and rush and living in America.
Where will I fall, when the cliche pieces topple from the Himalayas into the little town of Charlottesville, from the dirty traffic whizzing three inches from my elbow. From the wide and wise sky of Africa, from the tomb standing for thousands of years watching the birth of an overpopulated nation building tiny fires at her base, into buildings of brick and columns, into art studios with track lighting, into manicured lawns.
Where will I land?
I haven’t read all of her posts, but I commend the blog to your attention.
(And yes, for close readers, Grace is the daughter of Parke Muth, associate dean of admissions.)
The dawn of 2012 brings to the University of Virginia a new January Term, an intensive two-week academic session that includes courses taught both on Grounds and internationally. One of the study-abroad options is “System Case Studies,” a joint offering of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the McIntire School of Commerce. Led by engineering professor Reid Bailey and commerce professor Ryan Nelson, two dozen students venture to Mendoza, Argentina to work on consulting projects at two local wineries. Part of the class assignment is to write daily journal entries, which the UVA Today News Blog will post as they come in. To see all the posts from Argentina, click here.
By Abhishek Jain & Luke Brennan
Jan. 11, 2012 — Tuesday began with our last four-hour work sessions with our clients at the Vistandes and Trivento wineries before we return on Friday to present the projects that we have been working on for the past week and a half. This was our final chance to clarify details and discuss proposals with the clients, and hard work was required by all so that we could be in a position to prepare our reports and presentations on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Of course, in keeping with Argentine tradition, both wineries made sure to give us adequate breaks throughout the morning. First, teams took turns throughout the morning visiting the respective wine shops to purchase gifts for friends and family at a discount. Additionally, the morning ended with a chance to try a few more of the wines in the final official tasting of the trip, especially the “Malbec” which is the grape varietal most closely tied to Mendoza.
Back in May, 
