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.

Is a degree a good value? Yes, Sullivan said, not only in terms of lifetime income, but in the ability to think critically and write clearly and persuasively. “Colleges and universities that offer rigorous academic programs and graduate most of their students are offering a valuable education,” she said, noting that U.Va.’s graduation rate is 93 percent.

And at U.Va., students get a valuable education at a value price, she said. In Kiplinger’s latest “100 Best Values in Public Colleges,” U.Va. held the No. 3 ranking for the sixth time in seven years.

There’s a third kind of value she said: the economic kind. U.Va. boasts 26 startup companies in the last five years, which have obtained $250 million in investments. And based on 2005 data, the most recent available, U.Va. brought $622 million into Virginia through out-of-state tuition and grants, gifts, and graduate fellowships, compared with a state appropriation of $132 million that year.

“If you think of all the colleges and universities in this country, and imagine a continuum of differentiation that winnows the pool of 4,000 into a smaller and smaller group, only a few make it into the group that offers value in all three senses I’ve described,” she said.

But there’s a fourth sense of “value” – a value system.

“Honor, ethics, public service, leadership – these values are ingrained in every aspect of academic and social life at the University,” Sullivan said.

U.Va. is firing on all four “value” cylinders, she concluded. “And that makes us pretty special.”

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.

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:

• Making the Most of Your Social Security
• Planning for a VRS Retirement
• Getting Started in Medicare

If you have questions about retirement or other concerns, contact University Human Resources at AskHR@virginia.edu or 982-0123.

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.

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.

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.”

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.