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 oniTunesU.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
Health care professionals joined forces with dancers, musicians and other artists on Saturday at Washington Park as part of the 21st annual African-American Cultural Arts Festival. The University of Virginia’s Office of the Vice President and Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity and the U.Va. Health System worked with Martha Jefferson Hospital, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Health Department and the Quality Community Council to offer a range of health screenings. The 80 or so volunteers provided 55 sports physicals for youth, 13 mammograms, 50 checks for peripheral artery disease and more. They conducted screenings and gave information on Alzheimer’s, AIDS, cancer, nutrition and healthy weight and high blood pressure.
Marcus Martin, U.Va.’s interim vp and chief officer for diversity and equity, sent a shout-out to the ODE team, which orchestrated the fair. “I am so proud of the team effort,” he said. “The community benefitted in a very positive way.” Besides the screenings, folks were treated to juice, bagels and coffee. “I was exhausted at the end of the day but really pleased to have such a great ODE team,” Martin said.
Today’s funeral service for civil rights icon Dorothy Height has a U.Va. tie: Holly Shulman, editor of the Dolley Madison Digital Edition, research professor in the Studies in Women & Gender program and director of documentary editions for the Virginia Center for Digital History, was to read a piece of Old Testament scripture.
Shulman is essentially representing her late mother, Polly Cowan, who died in 1976. Cowan volunteered with Height’s organization, the National Council of Negro Women, and by the time of her death was a member of its board of directors.
Cowan and Height co-founded “Wednesdays in Mississippi,” which Shulman later memorialized with a fascinating web exhibit through the Virginia Center for Digital History. The site describes the WIMS program: “Northern women of different races and faiths traveled to Mississippi to develop relationships with their southern peers and to create bridges of understanding across regional, racial, and class lines. By opening communications across societal boundaries, Wednesday’s Women sought to end violence and to cushion the transition towards racial integration.”
(There are rumors out there that clever computer engineers may have hijacked the online balloting. Just sayin.’)
Mattel consulted with the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering to design her outfit,before settling on black knit skinny pants and a T-shirt featuring binary code and a computer/keyboard icon. (For another blogger’s take on five ways to make her look more realistic, click here.)
Barbie’s entry into the computer engineering workforce appears to be welcome news at U.Va.’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, which continues to make gains in female enrollment. And the timing could not be better: This is National Engineers Week, which concludes with an open house for prospective students and the public on Saturday morning.
iTunesU now has 26 tracks of audio from the NAACP 100th Anniversary Symposium, held at U.Va. last month. You must have iTunes on your computer; click here to access the audio.
Gwen Ifill made her name as a network news and public television journalist, but on this video — part of U.Va.’s “Explorations in Black Leadership” series — she’s on the other end of the questions. The interviewer is Julian Bond, a U.Va. history professor and a frequent interviewer in the “Explorations” series.
At a U.Va. Student Council meeting Tuesday night, members of the body’s Diversity Initiatives Committee announced the establishment of a fund to help students with disabilities pay for accommodations and modifications for off-Grounds housing.
U.Va.’s Office of Off-Grounds Housing, Wade Apartments, Woodard Properties and GrandMarc at the Corner each kicked in $500 to help pay for devices or apartment adjustments that may make off-Grounds living a more viable option for disabled students — items like bed shakers, flashing door lights, bathroom rails and modified door frames.
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.
At this afternoon’s opening convocation in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium, Tom Faulders of the Alumni Association announced some pretty astounding numbers:
This is the highest percentage participation in Reunions. Ever.
This is the greatest number of attendees. Ever. 4,230 registered as of Friday morning. (Tom expects the final number will be greater.)
996 volunteers helped with the arrangements, the highest number. Ever.
As of Friday morning, registrations were up 28 percent over last year.
12 percent of all classes are attending: 2,522 alumni.
So far, these reunion classes have made $23.5 million in gifts. (You have until June 30, by the way.) The class of ‘79 got the awards for the largest total ($10 million) and the greatest percentage of participation
During his welcoming remarks, President Casteen noted that — despite the recession — the $3 billion capital campaign has reached 64 percent of goal with 66 percent of the time elapsed. Only about two weeks behind schedule, he said.
Casteen also noted the growth in the AccessUVA program. total need-based aid for undergrads has gone from $37 million in 2003-2004 to $59 million this year. And, the president added, in a tough economy, education is even more important.
Girard College, a private boarding school in Philadelphia, just named Autumn Adkins (a U.Va. graduate who majored in communications) as the school’s first-ever African American woman president in its 160-year history. Here’s a great story on Girard from the Philadelphia Inquirer. I actually became aware of this article via my own high school’s Facebook page, which sent out a nice news alert because Girard was a former faculty member there (Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pa.).
Good article from an Alabama newspaper that will be linked in the soon-to-be-reaching-your-inbox-Daily-Report on a civil rights history tour across Alabama and Georgia being led by U.Va. faculty member and former NAACP chairman Julian Bond:
“The people who participate in this trip are interested in the subject of civil rights. They already know something about it, and they want to know more about it,” said Bond, who also teaches civil rights history at the University of Virginia.
Those taking the tour aren’t just being led through historic sites and museums such as Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Rosa Parks Museum by a man who is one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. They also get to meet some of the other heroes and foot soldiers along the way.
Here’s the link to his interview with Fredericka Whitfield about the Civil Rights tour he is leading this week from Atlanta to Tuskegee, Birmingham, Montgomery.
Shulman is essentially representing her late mother, Polly Cowan, who died in 1976. Cowan volunteered with Height’s organization, the National Council of Negro Women, and by the time of her death was a member of its board of directors.
Keyboards are smoking in the tech world
Today’s UVA Today features 