This just in from UVA Today science correspondent Fariss Samarrai:
University of Virginia alumnus Phil Plait, who earned a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1994, is hosting a new television series that premieres this Sunday at 10 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.
The show, “Phil Plait’s Bad Universe,” examines question related to astronomy, putting assorted claims to the test. The first show is on asteroid impacts.
(More, including a trailer, after the break …)
The Dirt, a publication of the American Society of Landscape Architects, on Tuesday published a long-form interview with Kristina Hill, who chairs the landscape architecture department at U.Va.’s School of Architecture, on her ideas about managing the effects of climate change. It’s an interesting read.
Hill notes that Americans — and by extension, their political leaders — seem to be less concerned about the effects of climate change than Canadians and Europeans, and suggest that preparations to mitigate those effects may be lacking.
The latest edition of the University of Virginia Magazine is out.
The lead story is about Lane DeGregory, a 1989 alumna who won a Pulitzer Prize for a St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times feature story on a 7-year-old girl who was adopted by a new family. (That’s her receiving hugs in the photo above after winning the award.)
The circumstances surrounding the adoption were anything but routine:
“The Girl in the Window” tracks the horrific discovery of a “feral child” in a Plant City, Fla., home, and the child’s eventual adoption and development. When she was discovered by law enforcement officials, 7-year-old Danielle was malnourished and lived in a closet full of insects and her own dirty diapers. She could not speak, let alone interact. She had been denied basic human nurturing, and was deemed feral.
We here at UVA Today headquarters like to take a small sliver of credit for DeGregory’s success. She was once a student intern in our office, then known as University Relations, before going off to bigger and better things.
Today’s edition of Headlines@UVA cites an essay from Darden professor Edward Hess in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, published Thursday, arguing that BP’s “sordid” safety record merits at least a temporary suspension of its right to do business in the U.S.
It’s a provocative thought. Should legal companies be banned for doing business for repeated rules violations? Or would that just punish thousands of its ordinary American employees?
Read the article and drop a comment below.
Seung-Hun Lee, an assistant professor of physics at U.Va., is among the authors of a report that disputes the “official” account of the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan. While the report of the Joint Investigative Group blamed the sinking on a North Korean torpedo, Lee and colleagues say that it could not have happened the way the JIG report described.
You can read a summary of the controversy here. Lee and others held a press conference in Tokyo today to discuss their findings.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council today formally condemned the sinking without naming North Korea directly.
The U.Va. Engineering School’s monthly E-News newsletter posed a question to alumni in June: How has your engineering background helped you to understand the recent oil spill in the Gulf, and what do you see as the most effective preventive and corrective measures?
A sample quote, from a 2007 mechanical engineering grad:
The experience of the Deepwater Horizon should be a reminder to all engineers that, while we may understand a great deal about the devices and technologies that we design and implement, these systems do not operate in the idealized conditions that often simplify our analyses and that they will often fail in ways that we had not foreseen. More pointedly, it is a reminder that the response to engineering disasters will often be governed not by what is technologically feasible, but within the constraints of governmental structures, financial realities, and environmental externalities. Most of us are fortunate to not have such public or catastrophic failures, but that does not mean that we should be any less professional in the exercise of our duties.
You can read many more responses here.
(Photo from the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog.)
U.Va.’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, celebrating its 35th anniversary this year held an event Monday night to honor former Virginia Gov. Linwood Holton, a longtime member of the center’s governing council and foundation board. The event provided a somewhat historic photo opp, as Holton (left) posed with two other former Virginia governors, Tim Kaine (center) and Gerald Baliles (right). (Baliles is the current director of the Miller Center.)
Together, the governors’ terms touched parts of five decades. Holton was the 61st governor, from 1970-74; Baliles the 65th, from 1986-90; and Kaine the 70th, from 2006-10.
Congratulations to former U.Va. assistant soccer coach Bob Bradley, whose U.S. national soccer team just advanced to the round of 16 at the 2010 World Cup, being held in South Africa. The winning goal in the 1-0 defeat of Algeria came in the first minute of stoppage time, ending what had been a frustrating game for the Americans.
To read about Bradley’s U.Va. ties, click here.
We probably should have noted this sooner, but in case you haven’t seen it, the summer issue of U.Va. Magazine is out.
The cover story is a very well-done feature on U.Va. President John T. Casteen III as he prepares to step down Aug. 1 after 20 years in Madison Hall; the online version includes a couple of videos, one a tribute from Virginia Tech and the other a recap of the picnic on the Lawn that honored Casteen and his wife, Betsy, earlier this spring.
If you’ve got no time to read, there’s a humorous pictorial essay of people spelling out “U! V! A!” with their arms all over the world.
If you happen to come across someone who looks a lot like Richard Dreyfuss tomorrow, it might really be Richard Dreyfuss.
The acclaimed Hollywood actor will be at the Darden School of Business on Tuesday to address the annual conference of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground partnership. He’ll be joined by director Ron Maxwell (”Gettysburg,” “Gods and Generals”); both have a keen interest in civics and history education.
Sixth-graders at Sutherland Middle School will have their chance to be discovered, as they will show off history films they produced with the help of the folks at Monticello.
Attendance at the conference is by registration only.
According to the organization’s website, “The Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising national awareness of the unparalleled history in the region, which generally follows the Old Carolina Road (Rt. 15/231) from Gettysburg, through Maryland, to Monticello in Albemarle County.”
UVA Today today is running a Law School story on the retirement of Lillian BeVier, the first tenured female member of the school’s faculty.
If you’ve got about 24 minutes, enjoy the YouTube video of her retirement ceremony. You’ll get a taste of what made her a special member of the law faculty.
There’s an interesting post on the New York Times “City Room” blog today about the former college addresses of famous alumni at various colleges and universities. U.Va. gets a small mention for preserving the room of Edgar Allan Poe at 13 West Range (photo, right), but there’s no further info.
So, readers, ‘Hoo wants to start? Anyone know where famous U.Va. alums lived while in the Hook? Which one was Katie Couric’s Lawn room? How about Ralph Sampson’s?
Click on the tiny little “comment” link at the bottom and leave your thoughts. Maybe we’ll even compile a list and do our own story on UVA Today sometime later.
Robert Pianta, dean of U.Va.’s Curry School of Education, went to Capitol Hill this week to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
If you don’t want to sit through two hours of video or 11 pages of Pianta’s formal testimony, here’s his summary:
The conclusions from any sensible analysis of the extant data are fairly straightforward. First, early educational opportunities in this country are a non-system. Publicly supported early education programs (child care, Head Start, state-funded pre-kindergarten, k-3) encompass such a wide range of funding streams, program models, staff qualifications, curriculum, assessments, and teacher capacities that it cannot be understood as an organized aspect of the public system of support for children. Second, despite stunning variability and fragmentation, there is compelling evidence that early educational experiences can boost development and learning, can close achievement gaps in elementary school, and can have longer-term benefits to children and communities. Third, interactions between teachers and children can be observed and assessed using standardized and scalable approaches. Finally and perhaps most promisingly, teachers’ skills and children’s learning can be improved with specific and focused professional development training and support.
The challenge for policy connecting ESEA and early childhood education is to incent construction and delivery of scalable and effective opportunities for teacher professional development and preparation, using new approaches to credentialing and certification and observational assessments of teachers’ classroom performance. Recent statements by professional organizations reflect an openness to innovation that, paired with demonstrably effective supports for teachers, could pave the way for tremendous positive change in outcomes for teachers serving children from 3-8 and for those children and society.
UVA Today Honcho Marian Anderfuren writes:
The Monday after Final Exercises is reserved for U.Va. athletes who were competing on Sunday. That’s when eight players and two staff members from the men’s lacrosse team and two members of the women’s softball team had their moment in the sun. And clouds. And sun.
This month, I’ve been spending much of my time here at UVA Today headquarters reading the profiles of outstanding members of U.Va.’s Class of 2010 that have been rolling out on UVA Today over the past two weeks. If you have not seen them, you should check them out. (And keep checking them out — the series will continue into next week, even after Sunday’s Final Exercises.)
Gorawara took record-setting courseloads and earned three bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree (and took enough business classes to sit for the CPA exam). But he also sat on the Board of Visitors, was an RA for three years, taught a course, wrote for the Cav Daily and was president of the McIntire Investment Institute. Oh yeah — he’s a workout fanatic who runs marathons, salsa dances and kick-boxes.
He also has figured out how to bend time. (OK, I’m making the up. I think.)
