Among the responses from the University of Virginia in the aftermath of the white supremacist violence that erupted Aug. 11 and 12, 2017 comes a new book of essays by UVA faculty members, “Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity,” edited by Louis P. Nelson and Claudrena N. Harold, published by the University of Virginia Press.

Harold, a professor who holds joint appointments in the history department and in the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies, centers her research on African-American politics. Nelson, a professor of architectural history who has taught about slave life in the Academical Village, also serves as vice provost for academic outreach. He played a central role in organizing the “Dialogues on Race and Inequity” and in related initiatives over the past year.

At a recent public discussion, Harold said part of her interest in editing “Charlottesville 2017” was her desire to continue to address persistent injustices.

claudrena_harold_01_da.jpg

“I think about the world we want to create, and that’s what keeps me going,” she said.

“Charlottesville 2017” rolls out 14 essays from UVA professors in various schools and departments at the University.

Historian John Edwin Mason served as vice chair of Charlottesville’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces that first called for removing the Confederate statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson from the city parks that bore their names. He argues for righting history with more information about African-Americans and African-American-associated places in telling the area’s history. Elizabeth Varon, associate director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, dismantles the myth of the “Lost Cause” and addresses Lee’s legacy in her essay, “The Original False Equivalency.”

louis_nelson_02_da.jpg

In “Where Do We Go From Here?,” School of Law Dean Risa Goluboff, who led the Deans Working Group in response to last summer’s events, uses the title from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to analyze freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. Professor of Religious Studies Willis Jenkins’ essay, “Ethics Under Pressure,” gives his account of “moral trauma” as he stood guard outside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church across from the Rotunda on Aug. 11, 2017. In addition, the book includes a foreword by history professor Grace Elizabeth Hale, who researches the American South and segregation, a chronology by Harold and an introduction by the editors.

UVA Today checked in with Nelson and Harold about their involvement in the book.

Q. How did the book come about? How did you end up working together on this project?

Nelson: This book found its genesis in the “Dialogues on Race and Inequity,” hosted by the Office of the Provost and intended to be held throughout the day on Aug. 12, 2017. Unfortunately, the programming had to be postponed because of the state of emergency, but the entire program was offered about a month later.

These were a wide-ranging series of discussions, lectures, film viewings and performances primarily by UVA faculty and staff, intended to engage the legacy of race and inequity at UVA, in greater Charlottesville and across the commonwealth. More than 30 faculty and staff-led topics ranged widely and included community polarization, local history and the ethical conditions of public institutions, in addition to a series of films: “White Like Me,” “I Am Not Your Negro,” “That World is Gone” and “An Outrage.”

After the program concluded, a lot of folks approached me about collecting some of the presentations together as a volume, but there was no way I could undertake such a heavy lift alone. Claudrena Harold agreed to co-edit it and it was a partnership from that point forward. We both share the conviction that the past shapes our present in difficult and troubling ways. We cannot begin to know the depth of those legacies in the present until we are honest about our past.

Harold: Working with Louis Nelson and the contributors was a pleasure. 

When initially approached with the opportunity to serve as a co-editor of the volume, my thoughts turned to a favorite quote from Armstead Robinson in his book, “Black Studies in the University: A Symposium,” a historian of the Civil War, a pioneer in the field of black studies, and the founding director of UVA’s Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies: 

“Educational institutions in this society have necessary and inherent political and social obligations. As educators you represent financial power, community influence and social prestige. If your function of equipping students to cope successfully with reality is to be fulfilled, then you must not only be responsible, in terms of your educational functions, but you must also be responsive to the communities you supposedly serve.”  

This volume provided me with another vehicle to fulfill this responsibility as part of a collaborative effort. 

Q. How did you decide who would be included?

Nelson: Because of our goal to have a book published before Aug. 12, 2018, we knew we would be on a tight timetable. As a result, it was important for us to draw heavily from the various presentations and lectures that faculty had already prepared for the dialogues. But at the same time, it was clear that many of us had questions about the role and scope of the law in the public sphere, so those few additional essays that we invited were from those with legal expertise. 

Harold: The publication schedule was tight, but the contributors were incredibly gracious in meeting our time constraints. 

It was a deeply humbling experience to work with a community of scholars willing to set aside their precious time to help us facilitate a deeper understanding of the events of Aug. 11 and 12, situate them in a broader historical and political context and offer suggestions for creating a more just world. Their generosity of spirit means a great deal to me, and I am eternally grateful for their contributions. 

Q. Did you ask people to write on a certain aspect of the topic?

Nelson: We invited the authors to speak through the lens of their scholarly expertise. While the burdens of a public university in these kinds of situations are many, one very clear responsibility is to bring scholarly rigor as part of our critical response. It was important to us both that the faculty authors write with accessibility, but also with authority.

Harold: In addition to writing an essay on the history of African-American activism at the University of Virginia, I worked a great deal on the chronology. The publisher wanted to ensure that the readers of the book could put the events of Aug. 11 and 12 in a broader historical and political context, and so it was very important that we have a very detailed timeline. The very act of listing the events of Aug. 11 and 12 – minute by minute – stirred up a variety of emotions. I was not in Charlottesville at the time, so recounting the events engendered a unique sensation within me, a sensation I still struggle to explain.

uc162_1617_connection_c.jpg

With regard to the chronology, there were joyous moments – for example, detailing the incredibly rich and vibrant social and political world Afro-Virginians created in order to turn their freedom dreams into a reality – but there were other moments when enumerating one white supremacist act after another proved emotionally taxing. This was not easy work, but it was necessary.

Q. How did the sections come together? Did you see them after collecting the faculty essays?

Nelson: We struggled with a variety of frameworks for organization, but at the end of the day these four just made sense to us as both framework and process – “Remembering: Historical Considerations,” “Speaking: Political Perspectives,” “Listening: Critical Engagements” and “Responding: Ethical Commitments.”  

Q. How are you spreading the word about the book?

Harold: It is my hope to have additional conversations that include the authors, the larger UVA community and greater Charlottesville. I encourage dialogue, including critical ethical reflection about our responsibilities in this moment.

The University of Virginia’s planned new student health center will be a cutting-edge facility that greatly expands services to students – including a significant wellness component.

The Student Health and Wellness Center is on course to be completed in 2020. Located at the south end of Brandon Avenue, the center will feature four stories, expanded parking and 156,000 gross square feet. It will include spaces for general medicine, gynecology, Counseling and Psychological Services, Student Disability Access Services and Health Promotion.

Dr. Christopher Holstege, the center’s executive director, said the facility has been about five years in the making, with its design shaped by numerous site visits to other top-quality student health centers at universities around the country.

“I truly think we are going to be cutting-edge,” he said.

Earlier this month, UVA’s Board of Visitors approved the facility’s schematic designs. The $100 million project is being funded, in part, by a $40 million gift from an anonymous donor. The University has also committed $30 million and is raising money for the balance.

In addition to new features such as a radiology clinic and retail space for a pharmacy, the design includes beautiful green spaces, large lounge areas for students throughout the building and a spacious student living room on the first floor – final details are still being worked out.

Holstege said one of the drivers for the expansion of the center’s services is simply that UVA has more students, and with that comes the need for a more comprehensive set of services.

The expanded emphasis on wellness is a signature of the new facility’s plans. “There is a large component of medicine now that’s transitioning to preventative care and wellness care,” Holstege said, care that encourages several practices, including getting enough sleep, exercising, eating well and having good relationships. “We are not just a sick-model center; we are also looking at, ‘What can we do for those students who are well?’” he said.

Thus, the new building will include a teaching kitchen to show students how to make healthy meals, meditation spaces and tons of student-run activities – features attributable to heavy student involvement in the creation of the center. The Student Health Advisory Committee has provided diverse student perspectives during the different stages of the project’s development.

“We aim to make the specific hopes and needs of the student population heard and support this project as a new hub for the wellbeing of all UVA students,” said committee co-chair Tyler Gaedecke, a fourth-year student double-majoring in nursing and women, gender and sexuality studies. “We will be advising on the use of space, the development of new programming and more.”

tyler_gaedecke_anjali_kapil_natalie_laroe_da_inline_02.jpg

Gaedecke’s co-chair is Natalie LaRoe, a third-year student majoring in urban and environmental planning and minoring in global sustainability. She said she joined the committee because it is “at the intersection of the built environment and public health. Getting to work on this project and have student perspective and student input is really huge.”

One of last year’s committee co-chairs, Anjali Kapil, is now serving in an advisory role. She brings four years of experience in epidemiological and health administration research she did for the Elson Center as an undergraduate. (She graduated in May with degrees in global public health and sociology.) Kapil, who previously worked directly with Holstege, said much of that research she conducted was for the new building, and she wanted to remain in an advisory role to offer any insights that she could.

The new center also will address another evolution in higher education. More students than ever are studying abroad, so the new facility will expand its traveler’s clinic so students can get, with ease, the proper vaccinations, medications and even education on how to stay healthy and safe wherever they travel.

Research is another component in the new building. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be one of the leaders in student health and wellness research,” Holstege said. “And that’s multidisciplinary and involves all of the schools.”

student_health_wellness_inline_01_1.jpg

He offered a few examples. “There is a researcher studying substance abuse. The School of Nursing has considered the possibility of doing wellness work related to yoga,” he said, “And the School of Architecture was involved in the design of the new building and how [that may] impact wellness.”

Holstege said UVA has been at the forefront of student health since the 19^th century.

“Back in the 1800s, we were really cutting-edge regarding the infirmary that was built” – Varsity Hall, today the home to the Office of the Vice President for Research – “with everything from the water collection to the ventilation,” he said.

The new Student Health and Wellness Center will continue that groundbreaking trend. “Here we are about 160 years later, and we are the lead again in the country, I think, in regard to the building and how we work with our students to make sure they are well,” Holstege said.

“Hopefully, that will then translate in the future to students having really healthy and well-rounded lives when they go and work and find occupations.”

Many terrific, game-changing discoveries and inventions have emanated over the years from the University of Virginia’s creative faculty, so it’s hard to name them all. From brain research to particle physics, from new ways to understand the cosmos to developing innovative treatments for disease and medical devices, UVA has done it all – and is doing more.

Here are a dozen notable examples from the last half-century.

Discovering Brain-Immune System Link

A stunning, textbook-changing, 2015 discovery by UVA neuroscientist Jonathan Kipnis, director of UVA’s Center for Brain Immunology and Glia, found that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist.

brain_immune_inline_01.jpg

The significance of the discovery lies in its ramifications for the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to multiple sclerosis. The discovery was cited as a major scientific breakthrough in lists such as Scientific American’s “Top 10 Science Stories of 2015,” Science Magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year” and the National Institutes of Health’s director Francis Collins’ year-end review. Business Insider highlighted this as the biggest discovery ever made in Virginia.

Discovery of Bacteria as Ulcer Cause

Studies performed in the 1980s at Royal Perth Hospital and at UVA by Dr. Barry Marshall – a UVA School of Medicine research fellow, gastroenterologist and professor of medicine from 1986 to ’96 who returned to his native Australia – led to the identification of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori as a major cause of peptic ulcer disease, gastric carcinomas and mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphomas.

Dr. Marshall won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this breakthrough research, which led to new treatments.

Discovering the Higgs Particle

UVA physicist Brad Cox played an important role in the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at the $3.2 billion Large Hadron Collider in Europe. Considered one of the most significant scientific discoveries in decades, the finding confirmed the existence of the Higgs, the particle that gives mass to all other particles and, therefore, is the glue that holds together everything in the universe, from atoms to people.

In recognition of Cox’s contributions – which included service on several international scientific review committees and leadership at UVA in the design and construction of instruments in use on the Large Hadron Collider – Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the Science Museum of Virginia named him a Virginia Outstanding Scientist for 2014.

Focused Ultrasound

Dr. Jeff Elias, a professor of neurological surgery and neurology, is known in some circles as the “Father of Focused Ultrasound” for the treatment of essential tremor, the most common movement disorder. Elias led an international clinical trial that tested the approach, which uses focused sound waves to disrupt circuits in the brain that cause uncontrollable shaking. It’s brain surgery without a scalpel, as there’s no need to cut into the skull. The procedure has been approved for the treatment of essential tremor by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Elias also is investigating its potential for managing the tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease. The UVA Licensing & Ventures Group this year named Elias the Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year for his pioneering work.

In addition, focused ultrasound is being developed and tested for a variety of medical conditions, from neurological to urological diseases.

A HeRO to Detect Infections in Premature Infants

An innovative monitor invented at the UVA Health System, the HeRO, is used in hospitals across the country as an early warning system to detect deadly infection in tiny, prematurely born infants and for others at serious health risk.

In its early stages, sepsis, a severe bacterial infection, has few distinguishing symptoms, and it can escape diagnosis until too late. The illness accounts for half of the deaths among infants who require intensive care for more than a week.

UVA cardiologist Dr. J. Randall Moorman found that heart rate changes in babies appear 12 or more hours before the infants show clinical signs of illness. Moorman and his colleagues developed mathematical algorithms that analyzed the stream of data generated by the babies’ heart rate monitors, leading to the patented Heart Rate Observation System, or HeRO monitor. Using information already present at the bedside monitor, the algorithms determine the likelihood that an infant is developing illness, allowing for early intervention.

A Home Fertility Test

About 7 million couples in a year have fertility issues that make having a baby difficult. About half of the time, male infertility is the problem. The late John Herr, a professor of cell biology, urology and biomedical engineering who served as director of UVA’s Center for Research in Contraceptive and Reproductive Health, focused his research on reproductive biology and made several breakthroughs toward developing a reversible contraceptive option for men and contraceptive vaccines for women.

His discovery of a sperm protein called SP-10 led to perhaps his best-known and most commonly used patented product, SpermCheck Fertility, a home sperm-count test for men available at drug stores across the country. The test allows users to know within 10 minutes the possible source of a couple’s fertility problems.

Herr also is listed as inventor on 64 issued patents and scores of pending patent applications throughout the world, and his legacy includes promising research shedding light on the fundamental nature of a variety of cancers and possible new routes to treatments.

Clean Water for the Developing World

A water purification tablet called MadiDrop+, developed at UVA and used by tens of thousands of people in 40 countries, is the brainchild of James Smith, a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

madidrop_da_inline_02.jpg

The continuously reusable ceramic tablet – small enough to fit in the palm of your hand – disinfects water by slowly releasing safe pathogen-killing silver ions. MadiDrop+ is designed for easy use; the tablet is simply set in a bucket of contaminated or potentially contaminated water, and within eight hours that water is safe to drink. A single tablet, which is priced for use by people with few financial resources, will treat up to 20 liters per day, enough safe drinking water for a large family. The durable tablet remains effective for daily use for one year.

MadiDrop is produced primarily for charitable organizations that aid people in developing nations and disaster zones.

A Heart Rhythm Solution

The Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center at UVA is one of the world’s premier centers for cardiovascular research. Its namesake, Berne, the late UVA physician and researcher, patented in 1987 a drug called Adenocard, which is used worldwide to treat heart arrhythmia.

Berne and laboratory fellow Luiz Bellardinelli discovered that the naturally occurring molecule adenosine plays a role in controlling blood flow to the heart and regulating heart rhythms. This led to the creation of Adenocard, which restores normal heart rhythm when someone suffers from sudden and potentially fatal arrhythmia.

Under Berne’s leadership, the major portions of the royalties from the patent were returned to UVA, and used to establish and endow the center that bears his name. The early work that led to Adenocard has spurred generations of new researchers and further advances in cardiovascular medicine at the center.

A New Understanding of Star Formation

A process called accretion plays a key role in star formation and contributes to the growth of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. But how does it work?

UVA astronomer John Hawley, Hamilton and VITA Professor, and his colleague, former UVA astronomer Steve Balbus, solved a fundamental problem in astrophysics and transformed the field of accretion disk theory.

They determined that a mechanism called magnetorotational instability accounts for the process of accretion. The finding is so important it is now part of the standard theory of how black hole systems develop. Hawley also is known for work that transformed the use of computer simulations for astrophysics research.

uc162_1617_connection_c.jpg

For their work, Hawley and Balbus shared the 2013 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, Asia’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize. They split a $1 million award and received gold medals for “furthering societal progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching humanity’s spiritual civilization.”

Surveying the Milky Way

Instruments designed and built by UVA astronomers for the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment, known as APOGEE, and installed at major observatories in New Mexico and Chile, are allowing astronomers worldwide to peer through dense cosmic dust scattered through the Milky Way and view stars at the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

Inline caption for APOGEE lab: Instruments designed and built by UVA astronomers are allowing researchers worldwide to view stars at the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

UVA astronomers Steve Majewski and Mike Skrutskie and instrument scientist John Wilson built the infrared-sensitive spectrographs, allowing examination of the chemical composition and motions of hundreds of thousands of stars that otherwise would not be visible optically. Using data from their APOGEE instruments, astronomers are gaining new insights to how the Milky Way formed, how it is evolving, how similar other galaxies formed, and helping to identify potential planets in other solar systems.

Mass Spectrometry

Mass spectrometry is a powerful analytical technique that has led to advances in all fields of science, especially immunology, cell signaling, drug development, epigenetics and immunotherapy of cancer. Donald Hunt, University Professor of Chemistry and Pathology, is a pioneer in the field and is recognized for developing mass spectrometry instrumentation and methods for amino acid sequence analysis of the several hundred thousand proteins in the human body.

While mass spectrometry had its roots in physical chemistry, Hunt demonstrated early in his now half-century career that these tools could also be applied to living matter, and ultimately for biomedical uses, such as diagnosis and treatment of diseases, including cancers.

The winner of numerous awards for his groundbreaking research, Hunt is a co-inventor on more than two dozen patents and patent applications, has published more than 3,500 articles, and ranks among the top most highly cited chemists in the world.

Super Steel

Imagine a steel that is twice as strong as conventional steel and is exceptionally corrosion-resistant. And try to imagine it as amorphous – meaning, unlike most materials, it has a randomized arrangement of atoms and variable characteristics. That is what physics professor Joseph Poon and materials science professor Gary Shiflet invented.

The UVA Patent Foundation has since granted a global top-10 company the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize the amorphous steel, which can be used for making

electronic casings, corrosion-resistant structural coatings, surgical instruments and recreational equipment.

When Mary Yonkman was little, some of her favorite experiences revolved around pancakes.

She remembers making them with her father on weekend mornings. She remembers eating them at her summer camp along the David Branch of Gnaw Bone Creek in southern Indiana. Yonkman even overcame her fear of dogs after meeting a pooch named Pancake.

So when an essay question in the application to the University of Virginia was “What is your favorite word and why?” she responded with – you guessed it – “pancake.”

“If accepted as a student at the University of Virginia, I would coordinate a pancake event on the Lawn,” the then-high school senior wrote. “An invitation would be extended to all, to come by the Rotunda and enjoy delicious pancakes, while experiencing a greater sense of community.”

Yonkman, then Mary McNaught, made good on that promise in 2004 and you won’t believe where her seemingly simple idea has gone.

pancakes_for_parkinsons_2015_da_inline_.jpg

The flapjack juggernaut, now in its 15^th year at UVA, has caught on at schools, towns and community centers around the world and has been embraced by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, founded in 2000 by the actor to help find a cure for Parkinson’s disease. To date, UVA has raised more $500,000 and aims to raise an additional $70,000 Saturday.

This is the history of “Pancakes for Parkinson’s.”

Back to the Future

In addition to a love of pancakes, Yonkman is a huge Marty McFly fan. McFly, you may recall, was the main character in the 1985 Hollywood hit, “Back to the Future.”

rachel_ray_michael_j_fox_mary_yonkman_inline_.jpg

“I loved Michael J. Fox as an actor,” she gushed. “I loved ‘Family Ties.’ I loved ‘Spin City.’ ‘Back to the Future’ was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater.”

There was another connection for Yonkman. Her godmother, Holly, had early-onset Parkinson’s disease, just like Fox did. She began donating to the foundation and received their mailings.

“College is a time of emerging agency as a person,” Yonkman said. “And so I’d get these mailings that were to me. I was helping this cause. So, at some point, the two were married. Pancakes and Parkinson’s had good alliteration.”

Planning the World’s First-Ever Pancakes for Parkinson’s Event

Yonkman had the sense that everyone in her orbit at UVA was super-busy. So her strategy was simple; she wouldn’t have too many meetings and she would only ask people to do things they were already good at, like reaching out to the local community for syrup or pancake mix donations.

“It really was the most scrappy little organization,” she said. In all, not more than 30 students helped that first year (Today, hundreds volunteer to help out.)

The now-defunct Tavern restaurant donated the pancake batter. Walmart gave the syrup and Kroger the orange juice. “It was not nearly the well-oiled machine that it is today, but it worked,” Yonkman said. “What I was going for was this event that made people feel good inside because they were eating pancakes, were together on a morning and raising money for a worthy cause.”

The night before the first event, Hurricane Gaston was barreling toward Charlottesville and Yonkman did not have a rain site or a rain date. “The Friday night before the event, I gathered my executive committee in my apartment and it was raining so loud they could not hear me,” she said.

She remembers her friend, Michael Ehmann, looking at her like she was divorced from reality. “I was like, guys, the sun is going to come out tomorrow! It’s going to be great!”

The griddles posed another problem. Yonkman had envisioned griddles plugged into extension cords trailing out of Old Cabell Hall. Chief Student Affairs Officer Patricia Lampkin and the fire marshal were not thrilled with this idea. The father of one of Yonkman’s roommates saved the day.

“I still don’t know how he did it, especially in the middle of a hurricane, but he got these industrial griddles in Richmond,” she said. To this day, she thinks there should be a “Tommy Gordon Award” at Pancakes for Parkinson’s, “because there is no way we would have gone past the first year, despite all my enthusiasm, had he not arrived with all of those griddles in the middle of a hurricane.”

The following morning, Yonkman arose at 4:30 a.m. to find that it was still raining. But the forecast called for clearing skies. “And I’m not kidding you, 20 minutes before Pancakes for Parkinson’s, the sun came out!” The ground was completely saturated, but the show went on.

first_p4p_inline_align.jpg

In addition to pancakes, there were a cappella groups and several Michael J. Fox-themed “diners” all around the Lawn. There was a Spin City diner, named for the 1990s sitcom Fox starred in. There was a Marty McFly diner, too, complete with students dressed as McFly and his partner in crime, Doc Brown.

“It was so great. It was just amazing,” Yonkman said.

The event raised $6,000, a sum that both impressed and surprised the foundation, which was in its infancy.

Passing the Pancake Baton

Yonkman, who graduated in 2006 with a degree in history, recognized in her third year that she needed a succession plan.

“I quickly realized I had one more year at the University, but I did not stay on as chair because I thought, ‘Then it’s going to leave with me,’” she said. So Yonkman took on in an advisory role that quickly extended to the Fox Foundation, which had recently launched “Team Fox,” its grassroots community fundraising program.

“When they first launched Team Fox, they asked some of the people who had taken an event from soup to nuts to serve as mentors, so I came on board and I did it until I had kids,” she said.

pancakes_for_parkinsons_2010_cg_inline_.jpg

Even after she graduated, the “Pancakes” founder continued to mentor co-chairs at UVA. One of them was Liz Diemer, a 2011 graduate who helped lead the organization in her third and fourth years.

“I love her to death,” Diemer said. “She is one of the most amazing humans I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

UVA Embedded at Fox

Diemer, who studied non-profit arts administration, eventually found her way to the Fox Foundation, where she currently serves as the Director of Team Fox and Community Events and annually supports a global community of over 6,000 fundraising members. (The Foundation’s CEO, Todd Sherer, also earned his Ph.D in neuroscience from UVA.)

“UVA’s Pancakes for Parkinson’s is one of our bigger ones,” Diemer said. “Team Fox has raised over $80 million since 2006, and that has contributed the foundation’s larger fundraising of $800 million since 2000.”

UVA’s event is one of Team Fox’s larger, more successful events, in terms of the funds it raises. “It’s also one of the longest-standing events, and they may be one of fewer than five events that have been able to stay around that long,” Diemer said.

“It’s unbelievably impressive, and I think even more so because the leadership changes every year,” she said. “I’m impressed that they have been able to sustain such a high-caliber event from one year to the next.”

Diemer said that while the average gift at UVA’s Pancakes for Parkinson’s is small in comparison to things like Team Fox galas, “When you see how much they’re able to raise, it’s a beautiful indication of the community that they’ve built.”

Diemer has been in close contact with UVA’s 2018 co-chairs, fourth-year students Caroline Keller and Gabby Beard, and will be in Charlottesville on Saturday for this year’s event.

This Year’s Fundraising Goal

If Keller and Beard get their wish, UVA will raise $70,000 in donations this year.

That’s a lot when you stop to consider that students are pitching in a few dollars each. But students are not their only patrons. Pancakes for Parkinson’s is deliberately scheduled when there is a home football game, so that parents and alumni will also stop by for breakfast and make donations.

caroline_keller_gabby_beard_03_da_inline_.jpg

Keller, who is studying biology and bioethics, said it’s been a pleasure and a privilege working for Pancakes for Parkinson’s. Her grandfather had Parkinson’s disease, and that is what initially drew her to the charity.

“We have the most amazing students who are really passionate and go the extra mile,” she said. “Our fundraising chair sent over 400 emails to corporate sponsors, family members and other members of the community asking for any sort of donation.

“Our chair also Instagram-messaged Katie Couric [a 1979 UVA graduate] and she decided to give a lunch with her in New York as a silent auction item,” Keller said.

Beard, a Spanish major, said she’s most excited about this year’s theme, “All You Need is Pancakes,” inspired by the Beatles’ song, “All You Need is Love.”

“In response to the year anniversary of Aug. 11th and 12th, we wanted to have our event focused on the love and sense of community that can be found in Charlottesville,” she said. “It is an amazing way to foster community and focus on the love around us rather, than the difficulties that surround us at a time where it seems like everything is divided.”

UVA’s new president, Jim Ryan, will attend his first Pancakes for Parkinson’s Saturday and recorded this invitation.

University of Virginia student Sam Johnson created a commemorative design for President Jim Ryan’s formal inauguration on Friday with the president’s three key themes in mind: community, discovery and service.

Johnson, a graduate student in the School of Architecture, explains the design of his small sculpture in the video above.

Ryan will be inaugurated Friday in a public installation ceremony on the Lawn, only the ninth such occasion in the University’s 200-year history.

Several other public events are planned in celebration, including a research symposium showcasing top discoveries at the University, a Community Bridges 5K Run/Walk and Celebration of Service benefitting local nonprofits, and a live storytelling event, Double Take, featuring personal stories from Ryan and other members of the University community.

See a full preview of inauguration events for registration links and parking information.

The University of Virginia moved up a dozen slots to 12^th in the nation for the total number of students studying abroad in credit-bearing activities, according to a new assessment by the Institute of International Education.

In its annual assessment, “Open Doors on International Educational Exchange,” the institute also found that UVA moved from No. 32 to No. 24 among the nation’s doctoral-granting universities for the percentage of students who have an education-abroad experience during their undergraduate careers. UVA also jumped from No. 11 to No. 7 for the number of students in programs of short duration.

The Open Doors assessment is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of State.

The report also found that international students and scholars who are studying at UVA are a major driver of Virginia’s economy. The analysis estimated the annual contribution of international students and scholars to Virginia’s economy to be $711 million, up from $688 million in the previous report.

Stephen Mull, UVA’s vice provost for global affairs, said these strides demonstrate UVA’s increasing international presence, “which in turn will make the University an even more competitive destination for international students, as well as among the growing number of American students who seek out international education as an important, transformative part of their higher education.”

Mull said it is also important to note that UVA continues to thrive in this arena despite an atmosphere in which political rhetoric often discourages global engagement.

“The greater engagement with the world that these statistics signify will contribute to more international research opportunities for UVA, a greater alumni and donor network, and will improve our understanding of the world and the challenges we face,” he said.

For current and prospective students, Mull said the report shows that UVA offers a rich and transformative experience, both through an enhanced international experience abroad as well as contacts with other cultures on Grounds.

“Students with more international experience demonstrably perform higher in intellectual achievement, interpersonal skills and in having an impact on the world,” he said. “Students with more international contacts and experience do better at acquiring education and skills that are necessary for success in an increasingly globalized world.”

Dudley Doane, the director of UVA’s International Studies Office, said several things are helping to grow international experiences for UVA students, and to attract international scholars. “Curriculum integration and the integration of overseas learning opportunities into majors, minors, general education requirements and degree programs are key drivers in UVA students’ rising participation in education abroad,” he said.

Faculty-led programs and faculty and staff dedication to increasing awareness of study-abroad opportunities also drive up numbers, he said.

UVA has recently added attractive new study-abroad options to its inventory, including a fall-semester engineering track in UVA’s popular program in Valencia. The McIntire School of Commerce recently added a collaborative degree program that divides study among the United States, Spain and China. And the School of Architecture has committed to facilitating a global education experience for every student.

“Faculty and staff from across the University work hard to make UVA the school of choice for top students from around the world,” Doane said.

University of Virginia students had plenty of opportunities to prove their creativity this year, and they took full advantage.

All over Grounds – on stages, in practice rooms, in museums, rap labs and classrooms – UVA students and faculty members produced extraordinary work and shared it with the world.

Here are just a few of the highlights.

Georgia O’Keeffe Returned to Grounds

Not in person, but certainly in spirit. Graduate students and faculty members spent untold hours studying the famous artist’s time at UVA to create an exhibition at UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art, “Unexpected O’Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings.”

okeeffe_rotunda_inline_01.jpg

The exhibition, which closes Jan. 27, highlights O’Keeffe’s watercolors of places on Grounds and in Charlottesville and shows how the four summers she spent studying at UVA set the stage for her now-famous career.

Read: The Untold Story of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Time at UVA

Julian Sanchez – and the Rest of the Heritage Theatre Festival Cast – Took a Bow

We followed along as 2018 graduate Julian Sanchez – now a graduate student in the same program that produced actors like Meryl Streep – took the stage at UVA one last time, playing aspiring Broadway actor Paul San Marco in “A Chorus Line” during this summer’s Heritage Theatre Festival.

julian_sanchez_ss_inline_02.jpg

The festival, coming up on its 45^th year, brings professional actors and directors to Charlottesville to work alongside UVA students and faculty members for a series of plays and musicals each summer.

Read: Follow Along as 2018 Grad Julian Sanchez Takes the UVA Stage One Last Time

UVA and Charlottesville Joined Together for an Extraordinary Show

More than 150 musicians, dancers and vocalists from UVA, Charlottesville and beyond came together in October to perform Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” originally created by the famed American composer at the request of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

mass_da_inline_03.jpg

The piece captured what Bernstein saw as a crisis of faith in the 20^th century, particularly after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It calls for a huge variety of performers, making this year’s performance one of the largest UVA’s McIntire Department of Music has ever produced.

Read: Behind the Scenes: UVA, Charlottesville Singers Unite for Stunning Performance

A UVA Student Brought the Joy of Art to Charlottesville’s Homeless

First-year student and Charlottesville native Emma Hitchcock co-founded “Art for the Heart” with her friend Zadie Lacey to provide art workshops for the homeless, a group she worried was too often ignored and denied even basic human connection.

emma_hitchcock_da_inline_04.jpg

Hitchcock and Lacey, who refined their idea in UVA’s iLab, have conducted several winter and summer art workshops at The Haven, a day shelter for the homeless in downtown Charlottesville. The workshops have included painting, drawing and jewelry-making, which has proven a popular option.

Read: Student’s ‘Art for the Heart’ Venture Provides Welcome Respite for the Homeless

Student Novelist Shea Megale Inspired Classmates and Faculty Alike

Shea Megale might not have full use of her arms and legs, but her imagination runs wild. The second-year student, who was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy II, wrote her first novel at 15 and has since written 13 more. Her first professionally published novel, “This is Not a Love Scene,” will be published in May by St. Martin’s Press.

Another book, also coming out next year, is heartbreakingly personal: a memoir of her brother Matt and his fatal struggle with addiction.

shea_megale_da_inline_05.jpg

Even as these two books near publication, and as she continues to cope with her own grief, Megale is building a new life on Grounds, which she navigates with her service dog, Pierre.

Read: Novelist Shea Megale Adds a UVA Chapter to Her Own Extraordinary Story  

Students Created Their Own Version of the American Flag

Art and architecture professor Sanda Iliescu still keeps the small American flag that her mother, a Romanian dissident, waved when welcoming President Nixon to Romania in 1969. Just a few years later, the family fled to the U.S. to pursue the freedom they dreamed of.

flag_painting_ss_inline_06.jpg

In May, Iliescu had students work together to create their own version of the flag, pouring into it everything the country means to them and their families. Scores of students and community members painted a small piece of the larger whole, creating a tapestry-like flag rich with color, texture and meaning.

Read: Public Art Project Explores What the American Flag Means

The ‘Rap Lab’ Produced Powerful Original Music

A group of 14 students in music professor A.D. Carson’s “Composing Mixtapes” course produced a 15-song mixtape for their final exam in the spring. They wrote, performed, recorded and produced the entire album, and coordinated a premiere at Boylan Heights.

ad_carson_rap_lab_miguel_mig_martinez_inline_07.jpg

Students said they enjoyed collaborating with their classmates on lyrics and performances, building confidence on stage and off, and learning the ins and outs of music production.

Read: Students Debut a Mixtape Straight from UVA’s ‘Rap Lab’ in Unusual Final Exam

‘Makers’Were Busy All Over Grounds

All across Grounds, students and faculty members used 3-D printers, robotic arms, laser cutters and many other tools to turn their ideas into reality. They call themselves the “Makers of UVA,” and they can be found in a growing network of “Maker Grounds” spaces across the University.

makergrounds_fab_lab_a_school_da_inline_08.jpg

These labs have produced 3-D printed images of patients’ skulls – enabling UVA doctors to precisely plan surgeries, replicas of William Faulkner’s pipes, robots, racecars, tiny, detailed models of the Rotunda, and much, much more.

Read: Meet the Makers

The ‘Delorme Dome’ Returned Home

In the spring, 15 students in Benjamin Hays’ “History of American Building Technology” course built a replica of the original wooden dome that perished when the Thomas Jefferson-designed Rotunda caught fire in 1895.

rotunda_dome_on_lawn_da_inline_09.jpg

Jefferson’s designs were inspired by the work of 16^th-century French architect Philibert Delorme, who pioneered the technique of using wooden ribs to create beautiful, sturdy domes.

Read: The Wooden ‘Delorme Dome’ Comes Home to Jefferson’s Academical Village

The Ever-Popular Virginia Film Festival Closed Out the Year

The Virginia Film Festival brightened the first weekend of November with a star-studded slate of special guests, Oscar-worthy films, discussions and master classes. This year’s guest list included civil rights activist Martin Luther King III, the eldest son and namesake of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

vff_ss_inline_10.jpg

King visited for the premiere of “Charlottesville,” a new documentary produced in part by UVA’s Center for Politics that focuses on the violent Unite the Right rallies in August 2017. Before the screening, he retraced his father’s footsteps in Old Cabell Hall, where the elder King spoke to more than 900 students and faculty in 1963.

Read: Snapshots of This Weekend’s Virginia Film Festival

The University of Virginia School of Medicine and School of Nursing have each received Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Awards from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, which covers diversity in higher education. The School of Medicine earned the award for the seventh consecutive year; this was the first time the Nursing School was honored. The two UVA schools are among 35 health professions schools nationwide to receive 2018 HEED Awards.

“The Health Professions HEED Award process consists of a comprehensive and rigorous application that includes questions relating to the recruitment and retention of students and employees – and best practices for both; continued leadership support for diversity; and other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion,” Lenore Pearlstein, INSIGHT Into Diversity’s publisher, said.

The School of Medicine supports a range of diversity initiatives. They include a Summer Medical Leadership Program to prepare college undergraduates from underrepresented groups for medical school and leadership roles in medicine, as well as partnerships with community groups to improve access to care for local Latino residents through the Latino Health Initiative.

heed_award_2018_inline_01_align_left.jpg

Over the past year, diversity and inclusion efforts at the Medical School – and across the UVA Health System – have focused on how to respond when health care providers experience prejudice or bigotry while at work.

“We have a duty to take care of people regardless of beliefs, but we have a duty to everyone who works here, and to our other patients, to create an environment that is respectful,” said Dr. Margaret Plews-Ogan, a School of Medicine faculty member who helped form the Committee on Responding to Discriminatory Behavior. The committee includes more than 30 faculty and staff members, medical students and medical residents.

Along with messaging throughout the Health System that reflects the institution’s commitment to inclusion, the committee developed training to help team members respond when they experience or witness acts of prejudice or bigotry. Complementing online training available to all team members, the committee created a 90-minute workshop for faculty, supervisors and managers that included short films based on events experienced by care providers and discussions of how to respond. The workshops began earlier this year in the Department of Medicine and will be conducted throughout the Health System in the next year.

“Our faculty, staff and students work constantly to make the School of Medicine and the Health System a more welcoming and inclusive place for everyone,” School of Medicine Dean Dr. David S. Wilkes said. “Earning the HEED Award for the seventh consecutive year is a testament to the hard work of countless people across the School of Medicine.”

“The HEED Award is truly an honor,” School of Nursing Dean Dorrie K. Fontaine said, “and acknowledges the comprehensive, deliberate and strategic approach our school has taken in this important domain. From admissions to hiring, clinicals to curricula, everything we do is examined through this important lens.”

Since establishing the Initiative on Diversity, Inclusion and Excellence Achievement, or IDEA, in 2014, the Nursing School has shifted its recruitment, admissions and retention strategies to welcome more underrepresented and first-generation applicants, established affinity groups for students of color, initiated expansive diversity training for faculty and staff, and urged professors to incorporate diverse perspectives and inclusive content into their courses.

While faculty and graduate teaching assistants attend trainings across a variety of diversity-related topics, all nursing students also take part in cultural humility training and a plethora of regular activities – from classes, simulations, lectures and other experiential learning opportunities – that drive the message of inclusivity home.

Nearly 100 percent of students across all racial and ethnic group categories graduate from UVA Nursing’s many programs, and a growing array of minority and other students underrepresented in nursing are applying and accepting admission at UVA. For 2018, nearly a third of enrolled students are from groups underrepresented in nursing, and more than 17 percent are male.

The school has also declared the recruitment and retention of faculty members from diverse backgrounds a key priority.

This fall, the Nursing School’s senior leaders took part in an eight-week equity institute delivered by the Center for Race and Equity at the University of Southern California. Through the academic year, those lessons will be shared with the balance of faculty and staff through regular training sessions and equity projects developed in the institute.

“So many individuals deserve praise for their part in transforming the culture of our nursing school,” Susan Kools, associate dean for diversity and inclusion, said. “It truly takes each community member to commit to creating a place of learning where all feel affirmed and respected.”

UVA Architecture Professors Win Architecture Masterprize Award

School of Architecture professors Luis Pancorbo and Inés Martín Robles, through their Madrid-based firm Pancorbo-de Villar-Chacon-Martín Robles, have won the Architecture MasterPrize in the “Cultural Building” category for their design of the Vegas Altas Congress Center, located in Badajoz, Spain.

According to the award’s official citation, “The ‘Vegas Altas’ Center grows in an ambiguous peripheral location, in a land that is both urban and agricultural boundary. The architectural proposal is intended to highlight this timeless condition of a building belonging to the Vega – a free-standing building, floating in the countryside like a giant bale of straw with a flat horizon. The main program is drawn on a half-buried ring that adapts to the terrain and to the boundaries of the plot, but hides its condition to visitors. Only a cubic volume covered with a skin made of ropes rises above ground.”

vegas_altas_inline_02.jpg

[Read more about the project.] 

The winners were selected by a panel of architects, academics and industry experts.

The Architecture MasterPrize was previously known as the American Architectural Prize, established with a mission to advance the appreciation of quality architectural design worldwide. It is the latest of many significant international awards Pancorbo and Robles have won for this project.

Publication: McIntire Marketing Professor Among Top 50 in the Nation

Poets&Quants for Undergraduates, a publication for business students, recently profiled Carrie Heilman, associate professor of marketing in the McIntire School of Commerce, as one of its “Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors.”

carrie_heilman_da_inline_03.jpg

Heilman teaches “Promotions,” a yearlong course focusing on market research and advertising strategy. Students annually participate in the National Student Advertising Competition, and her UVA teams have thrice placed in the top three, including a first-place finish in 2016.

According to the profile, “Student comments revere Heilman for balancing her rigorous standards with very generous guidance that often extends well beyond normal business hours. Because of the special mix of teamwork, real client interaction, and tremendous mentorship that Heilman brings to the experience, students say they leave the class feeling prepared for their careers.”

Rita Dove’s Vita Gets Longer With Three New Awards

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English, has added three more honors to her extensive list of plaudits.

In November, she received the 2018 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. The prize honors careers of extraordinary literary achievement, recognizing writers whose influence and importance have shaped the American literary landscape. It celebrates writers for the courage of their vision, their unparalleled imagination and for the beauty of their art. Previous recipients include Elie Weisel (2012), Louise Erdrich (2009), Margaret Atwood (2007), Seamus Heaney (2004) and Joyce Carol Oates (2003).

rita_dove_ss_inline_04.jpg

In October, Dove – an Akron, Ohio native – received the 2018 Cleveland Arts Prize-Lifetime Achievement Award. The Cleveland Arts Prize has recognized and honored artistic excellence in northeast Ohio for nearly 60 years, and awardees represent the best and most talented artists in the region. Previous recipients include Russell Atkins (2017), Adrienne Kennedy (1990), Toni Morrison (1978) and Robert Wallace (1969).

And in September, Dove was presented with the Alice Dunbar Nelson Award for Literary Achievements at the inaugural Great Lakes Black Authors Expo and Writers Conference, also in Cleveland. The award is named for one of the prominent African-Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance.

Education Historian Derrick Alridge to Lead International Society

Derrick Alridge, a professor in the Curry School of Education and Human Development, was elected president of the History of Education Society at the organization’s annual meeting, held in November in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

derrick_alridge_da_inline_05.jpg

The History of Education Society is an international scholarly society “devoted to promoting and teaching the history of education across institutions.” As president, Alridge will be responsible for leading the society over the next 12 months and will deliver his presidential address at next year’s conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Alridge is the program coordinator for Curry’s Social Foundations in Education program and directs the recently created Center for Race and Public Education in the South. He is the founder and director of Teachers in the Movement, an oral history project that examines the ideas and pedagogy of teachers in the civil rights movement.

Nursing Doctoral Student Receives Major Funding Award

From a national pool of 75 applicants, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing has selected Lourdes Carhuapoma, a doctoral student in UVA’s School of Nursing, as one of six 2019 Nurse Faculty Scholars.

The Nurse Faculty Scholar program – which offers Doctor of Nursing Practice and Ph.D. in Nursing students $18,000 in funding over two years – aims to increase diversity in nursing academia. Carhuapoma, a first-generation college student and the daughter of Cuban immigrants, is one of just 60 such scholars since the program’s inception. She plans to become a nurse researcher, professor and mentor to a new generation of nurses.

lourdes_carhuapoma_inline_06_align_right.jpg

Prior to her arrival at UVA, Carhuapoma worked with critically ill neurological and neurosurgical patients and their families at George Washington University Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital, and taught acute care nurse practitioner students at Georgetown University.

Carhuapoma’s scholarship focuses on end-of-life care, a passion that stemmed from observations made in her own practice.

While “critical care is designed to save lives, many people die in these environments, and there are very few resources for patients and families around end-of-life care. It’s clear to me that we can do better” for patients and families who are facing death, she said.

Carhuapoma’s research aims to provide support to surrogate decision-makers of patients with neurological illness or injuries, a group that’s at high risk for decisional regret and poor mental health outcomes. She’s also energized by her future role as a mentor-scholar.

“It became clear to me that I absolutely needed to be in the academic role,” she said, “mentoring students and honing my research interests, all of which fuel my desire to become a nurse researcher and leader.”

Two Alumni Among ‘New Voices in Science, Engineering and Medicine’ Group

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine have selected two UVA alumni among 18 early- to mid-career scholars in the first cohort of “New Voices in Science, Engineering and Medicine.”

Joel Baumgart, an alumnus who is currently a senior research program officer in UVA’s Office of the Vice President for Research, and Olujimi Ajijola, who received a B.A. from UVA and is an assistant professor in the departments of Medicine-Cardiology and Molecular, Cellular & Integrative Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, were selected for the inaugural group.

According to the announcement, “The initial group of 18 [Science, Engineering and Medicine] early-career leaders will gather over a two-year period with a senior advisory committee to discuss key emerging challenges in science, engineering and medicine, engage nationally with a wider group of young leaders from diverse groups, and attend international events on science policy.”

12 Grad Students Among Finalists for Federal Government Fellowships

A dozen UVA students – including eight from the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy – have been selected as finalists to participate in the Class of 2019 Presidential Management Fellows program, the federal government’s most prestigious fellowship for graduate students entering the federal workforce.

UVA’s 12 finalists are the most of any institution in Virginia.

The Batten students are Kathryn L. Babbin (seeking a fellowship in policy analysis), Ellen B. Beahm (policy analysis), Conor Boyle (policy analysis), Layla A. Bryant (policy analysis), Amy E. Dalrymple (policy analysis), Matthew T. Hensell (public administration), Shea L. Kearns (policy analysis) and Joshua A. Margulies (policy analysis). From other programs are Elizabeth Hoffman (biology/biological sciences), Deborah Luzader (microbiology), Ellen L. Mintz (unspecified) and Rena W. Yuan (statistics).

Nursing, Pediatrics Professor Named Distinguished Fellow

UVA School of Nursing professor Dr. Julie Haizlip, a physician specializing in pediatrics who directs the school’s interprofessional outreach, was named a distinguished fellow of the National Academies of Practice in Medicine. She will be inducted at a ceremony to be held in early March in Pentagon City.

The National Academies of Practice was established in 1981 to advise government bodies on health care issues and systems. Fellows are elected by peers from across 14 different health professions to join the only interprofessional group of health care practitioners and scholars dedicated to the support of affordable, accessible, coordinated quality care for all.

Haizlip’s scholarship focuses on positive psychology, appreciative practice and interprofessional learning and teaching. Currently researching the concept of “mattering” – the perception that one is significant in the lives of others and has an impact in the world – in health care with colleagues at UVA’s Darden School of Business, she is interested in how the presence (and absence) of mattering impacts practice, personal well-being, professional longevity and burnout, especially among physicians and nurses.

julie_haizlip_md_inline_07_align_left.jpg

As the Center for ASPIRE’s co-director and a clinical professor of nursing, Haizlip educates students and faculty to improve their teamwork skills and cohesion when operating within health care teams. The Center for ASPIRE, or Academic Strategic Partnerships for Interprofessional Research and Education, researches and supports the development, implementation and evaluation of educational and clinical programs that train students, faculty and clinicians to deliver safe, high-quality, team-based patient care.

She is also among the core planners of the center’s twice-annual Train-the-Trainer Conference, initially funded by the Macy Foundation and the Center for Interprofessional Learning and Practice, for which she’s developed a host of novel workshops and simulations to engage attendees.

Haizlip also directs UVA’s Center for Appreciative Practice, which organizes regular workshops and lecture series, including the Wisdom & Well-Being lecture series and UVA’s offering of Schwartz Center Rounds, emphasizing compassion and the human connection between professional caregivers and patients. She has written books, chapters and articles on appreciative practice, interprofessional learning and positive psychology.

Professors Appointed to Federal Administrative Review Agency

Professors John Duffy and Michael Livermore of the School of Law have been appointed public members of the Administrative Conference of the United States.

The conference is an independent federal agency charged with convening experts to recommend improvements to administrative processes and procedures.

The Administrative Conference of the United States has adopted more than 250 statements and recommendations – directed to all branches of government, but largely with federal agencies – to improve agency decision-making, promote regulatory oversight and save costs. Its 150 volunteers are drawn from more than 70 federal agencies, as well as academia and private legal practice. The organization currently has 34 public members.

Duffy is the Samuel H. McCoy II Professor of Law and Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Professor of Law. In the field of intellectual property, Duffy has been identified as one of the 25 most influential people in the nation by The American Lawyer and one of the 50 most influential people in the world by the U.K. publication Managing Intellectual Property. In the field of administrative law, Duffy is a past recipient of the Annual Scholarship Award, conferred by the American Bar Association’s Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice for the best piece of scholarship in the year.

Livermore is a professor of law whose research focuses on environmental law, regulation, bureaucratic oversight and the computational analysis of law. He is a leading expert on cost-benefit analysis and regulatory review, and frequently collaborates on interdisciplinary projects with researchers in other academic fields, including economics, computer science and neurology. Prior to joining the faculty in 2013, Livermore was the founding executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

Professor Andrew Vollmer, director of UVA Law’s John W. Glynn Jr. Law & Business Program, is currently serving as an Administrative Conference of the United States public member.

Professor Molly Brady, Alumnus James Nelson Earn Awards for Scholarship

School of Law professor Maureen “Molly” Brady is a co-winner of the 2019 Scholarly Papers Competition, sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools.

Her paper, “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds,” forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, explores the social and legal context surrounding earlier metes and bounds systems and the important role that nonstandardized property can play in stimulating growth. “Metes and bounds” is a method of describing land or real estate that uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe boundaries.

James Nelson, a 2009 UVA Law alumnus and an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, also won for his paper, “Corporate Disestablishment,” forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review.

The competition, in its 34th year, is open to law faculty who have been teaching for five years or fewer. There were 55 entries this year.

The award will be presented in January during the AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans. As winners, Brady and Nelson were invited to serve on the Scholarly Papers selection committee in 2020.

In architecture, the phenomenon is referred to simply as “the missing 32 percent.”

The phrase is shorthand for the drop-off between the percentage of architecture students who are female – about 50 percent – and the percentage of licensed, practicing architects who are female – about 18 percent.

The gap can be attributed to a number of factors, from architecture’s long history as a male-dominated profession to all-consuming workplace cultures that leave little flexibility for women expected to balance work and family. However, many at the University of Virginia – women and men – are working hard to close that gap, through their own achievements and through partnerships among students, alumni, faculty members and practicing architects.

That work started with women like Linda Harris Michael, who graduated from UVA’s School of Architecture in 1959, a full decade before women were generally admitted to the University. Michael, the only woman in her class and the school’s second female graduate, went on to practice architecture for more than 30 years.

After her came women like current School of Architecture Dean Ila Berman, an acclaimed architect who has also led efforts supporting female architects in academia. Berman is the fourth woman to serve as dean, putting UVA near the top of the list for architecture schools with the most female deans.

And now, there are women like Zazu Swistel, a current graduate student and the co-founder of manifestA, a new student organization of female and male students dedicated to helping women advance the discipline, discourse and practice of architecture and design.  

These three – and many more women like them – have changed, and are changing, their chosen profession. Here are their stories.

Linda Harris Michael, Class of 1959

Michael was one of a small group of professors’ daughters admitted to the College of Arts & Sciences before UVA went co-ed in 1970. However, she really wanted to study in the School of Architecture, which required any female students to have two years of academic credit and be at least 20 years of age.

Undeterred, the 17-year-old Harris took 60 credits over the course of one academic year and two summers and joined the Architecture School at age 18, the age requirement waived because of her strong academic record. She was the only woman in her class.

linda_harris_michael_inline_01_align_left.jpg

“I think it was good training for me, living in that male-dominated world, because when I got into the profession, it was still a man’s world,” she said.

For the most part, she said, her classmates were welcoming and became her friends. She recalls one incident of open harassment, when someone left a printed photo of male genitalia on her drafting board – an insult that she quickly swept aside, determined that whoever it was would not see her rattled.

“That was an exception,” she said. “I did not react, and I was very proud of myself for how I handled it.”

Michael, now retired, went on to practice architecture for 30 years, primarily in an Alexandria, Virginia practice she opened with her then-husband, fellow UVA architecture graduate G. Revell Michael Jr. They focused on historic buildings, renovations and remodels.

Along the way, Michael mentored many young architects, including many women, and was an enthusiastic supporter of the women’s rights movement sweeping the country in the 1970s. She hopes her career can provide an example for younger women to follow.

“I tried to leave the door open behind me every time I opened one,” she said.

Ila Berman, Dean of the School of Architecture

Berman, whose design work and installations have been exhibited in public and private galleries and museums around the world, held leadership positions at three other architecture schools before becoming UVA’s dean in 2016.

Among many other projects, she founded and led the URBANbuild program at Tulane University, a two-year program supporting the revitalization of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

ila_berman_ss_inline_02.jpg

Berman has also done extensive scholarly work focused on feminism, architecture and the opportunities and challenges facing women in her profession. She has served on the Women’s Leadership Council, comprising women in leadership positions in architecture schools; and worked on the American Institute of Architects’ “The Missing 32 Percent” campaign, hoping to close the gap between the number of women studying architecture and the number of women practicing it.

In the fall, Berman hosted a “Women in Design” panel discussion with the UVA Club of New York, highlighting several School of Architecture alumnae and discussing the gender gap in the profession.

“In recent years, we had gone from women representing about 5 percent of all architecture students to getting close to 50 percent in the classroom,” she said. “But this gap still exists within the profession, and that is what we are addressing now.”

Correcting that gap, Berman said, will require changing perceptions of architecture as a male-dominated profession, building company cultures that promote flexibility and diversity, encouraging young women through mentorship and other forms of support and highlighting the work and practices of great female architects.

“It will also require addressing the deeper forms of gender bias that underpin the architectural profession in general and the cloning mechanisms that often dominate in hiring practices and the promotion of individuals to leadership positions within firms,” Berman said.

As a young practicing architect, Berman remembers being one of few women, and often the only woman, in any given room. She was one of the only female architects in a firm of about 250 men. Most often, she said, people assumed she was a secretary or someone’s assistant.

“I handled it by opening my mouth and by persisting,” she said. “It’s important to know that you have a place at the table, something that women have had to fight for continuously.”

Today’s UVA students, she said, are extremely interested in gender and social justice issues and improving gender dynamics in the workplace, Berman said – an uptick in interest she noticed both before and after the #MeToo movement addressing sexual harassment at work.

“We are continually making progress. It is not a straight line, but rather an undulation between smaller incremental changes and more significant advances toward equity,” she said. “Today’s students have a different set of expectations than those of the women that proceeded them, simply because of when they started out. … I want them to be aware of all the pioneers whose struggles enabled their opportunities, but I also want to let them lead and write their own material futures, without having to mine the same territory that my generation has.” 

Zazu Swistel, Master’s Student and manifestA Founder

Swistel is a member of that next generation. She calls Berman an influential mentor, and has worked with her to establish manifestA, a student organization focused on women in architecture and design.

Swistel is in the final year of UVA’s Master of Architecture program. She grew up in New York City and came to Charlottesville both for the excellent program and for the milder weather and relative quiet.

zazu_swistel_da_inline_03.jpg

“I happened to come here on a beautiful April day, and I loved it,” she said. “I was taken not just by the weather, but by the environment of the Architecture School – everyone was so friendly.”

After graduation, Swistel hopes to practice public architecture, creating public spaces that are open to and affect large groups of people.

“To design a public library is the ultimate dream,” she said.

First though, she has a few things she wants to see through at UVA. High on that list is manifestA, which she founded this year with fellow graduate student Katie Kelly, who is pursuing a master’s degree in landscape architecture.

“The topic of women in architecture is still a big discussion. Other fields with professional degrees – like law or business – don’t seem to struggle with it quite as much anymore,” she said. “At this point, it is not about educating great women architects; we are doing that. It is about both elevating them in the field and providing opportunities for them to transform the future of the profession.”

The organization, which is open to both women and men, is addressing the issue in multiple ways. Some students are working with faculty to build a syllabus highlighting architecture, design and landscape architecture work and scholarship by women. Some are working on a spring exhibition of work by female alumni of the School of Architecture. Others are building the organization’s outreach – by crafting blog posts and conducting interviews with practicing female architects – or helping students find mentors in the field.

“We are trying to advance the agency of women in architecture, to challenge implicit and explicit biases that have been perpetuated in the discipline,” Swistel said. “There has been a ton of progress, and there is always more to be done.”

“It’s a really exciting time to be at UVA,” says Barbara Wilson, a professor of urban and environmental planning in the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. “We’re at this moment where our university president is really thinking about how the University can be a better neighbor.” 

Wilson makes that declaration in one of 31 new radio spots being broadcast on WTJU, UVA’s radio station.

building_bridges_badge_0.jpg

The audio bytes began airing throughout the station’s broadcast day in mid-December and feature a diverse group of faculty members, many of whom have been engaged in community-related work for decades.

Louis Nelson, UVA’s vice provost for academic outreach, said the new effort is part of “Engaged UVA,” a relatively new program billed as the front door to community partnerships. “Our tag line is ‘Building Bridges with Communities,’” said Nelson, who is also UVA’s primary representative for community engagement.

“UVA faculty have been building bridges with communities for decades,” he said. “Some of these projects are many, many years old, and this is a great opportunity for us to tell the story of the work that we’ve already been doing around building bridges with communities and how we hope to expand this kind of work in the future.”

Nelson and WTJU’s general manager, Nathan Moore, first discussed the radio spots last fall, and before long, members of the faculty were invited to WTJU’s studios to record their pieces. Topics range from how the community is joining UVA to help create a more equitable environment to how Charlottesville and UVA can thoughtfully rebound from the events of Aug. 11 and 12, 2017. “A number of listeners have told me they really enjoy the stories,” Moore said.

See for yourself with this sample of the new audio spots.

Suzanne Moomaw, Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning

Dr. Cameron Webb, Professor of Medicine

Webb discusses the importance of equal access to health care and other community resources.

Melissa Levy, Co-Director, Young Women Leaders Program

Levy talks about the empowerment that comes from youth in the community working with UVA students.

Andrew Kaufman, Russian Literature Scholar

In this clip, listen to Kaufman discuss the role of compassion in building community.

Becca Dillingham, Director, Center for Global Health

Dillingham talks about the important role of good health in nurturing communities, including those surrounding family, school and workplaces.

Vikram Jaswal, Professor of Psychology

In his class, which blends UVA students with college-aged people with autism, Jaswal hosted a discussion about how they can be welcoming to all sorts of people, including refugees, LGBTQ people and those from different races or ethnicities.

Andrew Kahrl, Professor of History

Kahrl talks about the importance of civic engagement to a vibrant, healthy community.

Barbara Wilson, Professor, Urban and Environmental Planning

Wilson discusses how to think about building an environment that “better brings together coalitions of people.”

You can listen to all the spots, or simply tune into WTJU to enjoy the community discussion as well as all of the radio station’s programming.

Among the responses from the University of Virginia in the aftermath of the white supremacist violence that erupted Aug. 11 and 12, 2017 comes a new book of essays by UVA faculty members, “Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity,” edited by Louis P. Nelson and Claudrena N. Harold, published by the University of Virginia Press.

Harold, a professor who holds joint appointments in the history department and in the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies, centers her research on African-American politics. Nelson, a professor of architectural history who has taught about slave life in the Academical Village, also serves as vice provost for academic outreach. He played a central role in organizing the “Dialogues on Race and Inequity” and in related initiatives over the past year.

At a recent public discussion, Harold said part of her interest in editing “Charlottesville 2017” was her desire to continue to address persistent injustices.

claudrena_harold_01_da.jpg

“I think about the world we want to create, and that’s what keeps me going,” she said.

“Charlottesville 2017” rolls out 14 essays from UVA professors in various schools and departments at the University.

Historian John Edwin Mason served as vice chair of Charlottesville’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces that first called for removing the Confederate statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson from the city parks that bore their names. He argues for righting history with more information about African-Americans and African-American-associated places in telling the area’s history. Elizabeth Varon, associate director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, dismantles the myth of the “Lost Cause” and addresses Lee’s legacy in her essay, “The Original False Equivalency.”

louis_nelson_02_da.jpg

In “Where Do We Go From Here?,” School of Law Dean Risa Goluboff, who led the Deans Working Group in response to last summer’s events, uses the title from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to analyze freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. Professor of Religious Studies Willis Jenkins’ essay, “Ethics Under Pressure,” gives his account of “moral trauma” as he stood guard outside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church across from the Rotunda on Aug. 11, 2017. In addition, the book includes a foreword by history professor Grace Elizabeth Hale, who researches the American South and segregation, a chronology by Harold and an introduction by the editors.

UVA Today checked in with Nelson and Harold about their involvement in the book.

Q. How did the book come about? How did you end up working together on this project?

Nelson: This book found its genesis in the “Dialogues on Race and Inequity,” hosted by the Office of the Provost and intended to be held throughout the day on Aug. 12, 2017. Unfortunately, the programming had to be postponed because of the state of emergency, but the entire program was offered about a month later.

These were a wide-ranging series of discussions, lectures, film viewings and performances primarily by UVA faculty and staff, intended to engage the legacy of race and inequity at UVA, in greater Charlottesville and across the commonwealth. More than 30 faculty and staff-led topics ranged widely and included community polarization, local history and the ethical conditions of public institutions, in addition to a series of films: “White Like Me,” “I Am Not Your Negro,” “That World is Gone” and “An Outrage.”

After the program concluded, a lot of folks approached me about collecting some of the presentations together as a volume, but there was no way I could undertake such a heavy lift alone. Claudrena Harold agreed to co-edit it and it was a partnership from that point forward. We both share the conviction that the past shapes our present in difficult and troubling ways. We cannot begin to know the depth of those legacies in the present until we are honest about our past.

Harold: Working with Louis Nelson and the contributors was a pleasure. 

When initially approached with the opportunity to serve as a co-editor of the volume, my thoughts turned to a favorite quote from Armstead Robinson in his book, “Black Studies in the University: A Symposium,” a historian of the Civil War, a pioneer in the field of black studies, and the founding director of UVA’s Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies: 

“Educational institutions in this society have necessary and inherent political and social obligations. As educators you represent financial power, community influence and social prestige. If your function of equipping students to cope successfully with reality is to be fulfilled, then you must not only be responsible, in terms of your educational functions, but you must also be responsive to the communities you supposedly serve.”  

This volume provided me with another vehicle to fulfill this responsibility as part of a collaborative effort. 

Q. How did you decide who would be included?

Nelson: Because of our goal to have a book published before Aug. 12, 2018, we knew we would be on a tight timetable. As a result, it was important for us to draw heavily from the various presentations and lectures that faculty had already prepared for the dialogues. But at the same time, it was clear that many of us had questions about the role and scope of the law in the public sphere, so those few additional essays that we invited were from those with legal expertise. 

Harold: The publication schedule was tight, but the contributors were incredibly gracious in meeting our time constraints. 

It was a deeply humbling experience to work with a community of scholars willing to set aside their precious time to help us facilitate a deeper understanding of the events of Aug. 11 and 12, situate them in a broader historical and political context and offer suggestions for creating a more just world. Their generosity of spirit means a great deal to me, and I am eternally grateful for their contributions. 

Q. Did you ask people to write on a certain aspect of the topic?

Nelson: We invited the authors to speak through the lens of their scholarly expertise. While the burdens of a public university in these kinds of situations are many, one very clear responsibility is to bring scholarly rigor as part of our critical response. It was important to us both that the faculty authors write with accessibility, but also with authority.

Harold: In addition to writing an essay on the history of African-American activism at the University of Virginia, I worked a great deal on the chronology. The publisher wanted to ensure that the readers of the book could put the events of Aug. 11 and 12 in a broader historical and political context, and so it was very important that we have a very detailed timeline. The very act of listing the events of Aug. 11 and 12 – minute by minute – stirred up a variety of emotions. I was not in Charlottesville at the time, so recounting the events engendered a unique sensation within me, a sensation I still struggle to explain.

uc162_1617_connection_c.jpg

With regard to the chronology, there were joyous moments – for example, detailing the incredibly rich and vibrant social and political world Afro-Virginians created in order to turn their freedom dreams into a reality – but there were other moments when enumerating one white supremacist act after another proved emotionally taxing. This was not easy work, but it was necessary.

Q. How did the sections come together? Did you see them after collecting the faculty essays?

Nelson: We struggled with a variety of frameworks for organization, but at the end of the day these four just made sense to us as both framework and process – “Remembering: Historical Considerations,” “Speaking: Political Perspectives,” “Listening: Critical Engagements” and “Responding: Ethical Commitments.”  

Q. How are you spreading the word about the book?

Harold: It is my hope to have additional conversations that include the authors, the larger UVA community and greater Charlottesville. I encourage dialogue, including critical ethical reflection about our responsibilities in this moment.

The University of Virginia’s planned new student health center will be a cutting-edge facility that greatly expands services to students – including a significant wellness component.

The Student Health and Wellness Center is on course to be completed in 2020. Located at the south end of Brandon Avenue, the center will feature four stories, expanded parking and 156,000 gross square feet. It will include spaces for general medicine, gynecology, Counseling and Psychological Services, Student Disability Access Services and Health Promotion.

Dr. Christopher Holstege, the center’s executive director, said the facility has been about five years in the making, with its design shaped by numerous site visits to other top-quality student health centers at universities around the country.

“I truly think we are going to be cutting-edge,” he said.

Earlier this month, UVA’s Board of Visitors approved the facility’s schematic designs. The $100 million project is being funded, in part, by a $40 million gift from an anonymous donor. The University has also committed $30 million and is raising money for the balance.

In addition to new features such as a radiology clinic and retail space for a pharmacy, the design includes beautiful green spaces, large lounge areas for students throughout the building and a spacious student living room on the first floor – final details are still being worked out.

Holstege said one of the drivers for the expansion of the center’s services is simply that UVA has more students, and with that comes the need for a more comprehensive set of services.

The expanded emphasis on wellness is a signature of the new facility’s plans. “There is a large component of medicine now that’s transitioning to preventative care and wellness care,” Holstege said, care that encourages several practices, including getting enough sleep, exercising, eating well and having good relationships. “We are not just a sick-model center; we are also looking at, ‘What can we do for those students who are well?’” he said.

Thus, the new building will include a teaching kitchen to show students how to make healthy meals, meditation spaces and tons of student-run activities – features attributable to heavy student involvement in the creation of the center. The Student Health Advisory Committee has provided diverse student perspectives during the different stages of the project’s development.

“We aim to make the specific hopes and needs of the student population heard and support this project as a new hub for the wellbeing of all UVA students,” said committee co-chair Tyler Gaedecke, a fourth-year student double-majoring in nursing and women, gender and sexuality studies. “We will be advising on the use of space, the development of new programming and more.”

tyler_gaedecke_anjali_kapil_natalie_laroe_da_inline_02.jpg

Gaedecke’s co-chair is Natalie LaRoe, a third-year student majoring in urban and environmental planning and minoring in global sustainability. She said she joined the committee because it is “at the intersection of the built environment and public health. Getting to work on this project and have student perspective and student input is really huge.”

One of last year’s committee co-chairs, Anjali Kapil, is now serving in an advisory role. She brings four years of experience in epidemiological and health administration research she did for the Elson Center as an undergraduate. (She graduated in May with degrees in global public health and sociology.) Kapil, who previously worked directly with Holstege, said much of that research she conducted was for the new building, and she wanted to remain in an advisory role to offer any insights that she could.

The new center also will address another evolution in higher education. More students than ever are studying abroad, so the new facility will expand its traveler’s clinic so students can get, with ease, the proper vaccinations, medications and even education on how to stay healthy and safe wherever they travel.

Research is another component in the new building. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be one of the leaders in student health and wellness research,” Holstege said. “And that’s multidisciplinary and involves all of the schools.”

student_health_wellness_inline_01_1.jpg

He offered a few examples. “There is a researcher studying substance abuse. The School of Nursing has considered the possibility of doing wellness work related to yoga,” he said, “And the School of Architecture was involved in the design of the new building and how [that may] impact wellness.”

Holstege said UVA has been at the forefront of student health since the 19^th century.

“Back in the 1800s, we were really cutting-edge regarding the infirmary that was built” – Varsity Hall, today the home to the Office of the Vice President for Research – “with everything from the water collection to the ventilation,” he said.

The new Student Health and Wellness Center will continue that groundbreaking trend. “Here we are about 160 years later, and we are the lead again in the country, I think, in regard to the building and how we work with our students to make sure they are well,” Holstege said.

“Hopefully, that will then translate in the future to students having really healthy and well-rounded lives when they go and work and find occupations.”

Many terrific, game-changing discoveries and inventions have emanated over the years from the University of Virginia’s creative faculty, so it’s hard to name them all. From brain research to particle physics, from new ways to understand the cosmos to developing innovative treatments for disease and medical devices, UVA has done it all – and is doing more.

Here are a dozen notable examples from the last half-century.

Discovering Brain-Immune System Link

A stunning, textbook-changing, 2015 discovery by UVA neuroscientist Jonathan Kipnis, director of UVA’s Center for Brain Immunology and Glia, found that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist.

brain_immune_inline_01.jpg

The significance of the discovery lies in its ramifications for the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to multiple sclerosis. The discovery was cited as a major scientific breakthrough in lists such as Scientific American’s “Top 10 Science Stories of 2015,” Science Magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year” and the National Institutes of Health’s director Francis Collins’ year-end review. Business Insider highlighted this as the biggest discovery ever made in Virginia.

Discovery of Bacteria as Ulcer Cause

Studies performed in the 1980s at Royal Perth Hospital and at UVA by Dr. Barry Marshall – a UVA School of Medicine research fellow, gastroenterologist and professor of medicine from 1986 to ’96 who returned to his native Australia – led to the identification of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori as a major cause of peptic ulcer disease, gastric carcinomas and mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphomas.

Dr. Marshall won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this breakthrough research, which led to new treatments.

Discovering the Higgs Particle

UVA physicist Brad Cox played an important role in the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at the $3.2 billion Large Hadron Collider in Europe. Considered one of the most significant scientific discoveries in decades, the finding confirmed the existence of the Higgs, the particle that gives mass to all other particles and, therefore, is the glue that holds together everything in the universe, from atoms to people.

In recognition of Cox’s contributions – which included service on several international scientific review committees and leadership at UVA in the design and construction of instruments in use on the Large Hadron Collider – Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the Science Museum of Virginia named him a Virginia Outstanding Scientist for 2014.

Focused Ultrasound

Dr. Jeff Elias, a professor of neurological surgery and neurology, is known in some circles as the “Father of Focused Ultrasound” for the treatment of essential tremor, the most common movement disorder. Elias led an international clinical trial that tested the approach, which uses focused sound waves to disrupt circuits in the brain that cause uncontrollable shaking. It’s brain surgery without a scalpel, as there’s no need to cut into the skull. The procedure has been approved for the treatment of essential tremor by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Elias also is investigating its potential for managing the tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease. The UVA Licensing & Ventures Group this year named Elias the Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year for his pioneering work.

In addition, focused ultrasound is being developed and tested for a variety of medical conditions, from neurological to urological diseases.

A HeRO to Detect Infections in Premature Infants

An innovative monitor invented at the UVA Health System, the HeRO, is used in hospitals across the country as an early warning system to detect deadly infection in tiny, prematurely born infants and for others at serious health risk.

In its early stages, sepsis, a severe bacterial infection, has few distinguishing symptoms, and it can escape diagnosis until too late. The illness accounts for half of the deaths among infants who require intensive care for more than a week.

UVA cardiologist Dr. J. Randall Moorman found that heart rate changes in babies appear 12 or more hours before the infants show clinical signs of illness. Moorman and his colleagues developed mathematical algorithms that analyzed the stream of data generated by the babies’ heart rate monitors, leading to the patented Heart Rate Observation System, or HeRO monitor. Using information already present at the bedside monitor, the algorithms determine the likelihood that an infant is developing illness, allowing for early intervention.

A Home Fertility Test

About 7 million couples in a year have fertility issues that make having a baby difficult. About half of the time, male infertility is the problem. The late John Herr, a professor of cell biology, urology and biomedical engineering who served as director of UVA’s Center for Research in Contraceptive and Reproductive Health, focused his research on reproductive biology and made several breakthroughs toward developing a reversible contraceptive option for men and contraceptive vaccines for women.

His discovery of a sperm protein called SP-10 led to perhaps his best-known and most commonly used patented product, SpermCheck Fertility, a home sperm-count test for men available at drug stores across the country. The test allows users to know within 10 minutes the possible source of a couple’s fertility problems.

Herr also is listed as inventor on 64 issued patents and scores of pending patent applications throughout the world, and his legacy includes promising research shedding light on the fundamental nature of a variety of cancers and possible new routes to treatments.

Bioimaging Breakthroughs

Cassandra Fraser, a professor of chemistry with appointments in biomedical engineering and the School of Architecture, specializes in developing materials that detect oxygen by changing luminescence color. These materials, for which Fraser holds three patents, are effective for imaging tumors, wounds and the brain, as well as for research in immunology, microbiology and tissue engineering.

A cost-effective, portable laptop camera imaging system she developed with collaborators, used in conjunction with the light-emitting nanosensors, allows researchers to make real-time movies of tissue oxygen levels over time, providing new insight into biological processes. The tool also may aid physicians in monitoring healing and treatment responses. 

A major drug company recently licensed the technology, and medical device companies are interested as well. With UVA collaborators in plastic surgery and biomedical engineering, the imaging agents will soon be tested in clinical trials for chronic wound monitoring.

Fraser also holds a patent for luminescent boron dyes that show promise for mechanosensors, self-erasing renewable inks and possible intelligence and forensic applications.  

Children’s Literacy

Marcia Invernizzi, Edmund H. Henderson Professor Emerita of Education, has devoted much of her career to improving the literacy of children. She developed Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening, or PALS, assessments and teaching tools that are used in all 50 states and several countries to identify and provide customized learning experiences for young children at risk of becoming poor readers. In 2013, UVA Innovation named Invernizzi the Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the year for her work.

Developed in 1997 with funding from the Virginia Department of Education, PALS provides a comprehensive assessment of young children’s knowledge of literacy fundamentals that indicate future reading successes, helping teachers capitalize on a window of opportunity to effectively improve the students’ reading skills for a better future. Hundreds of thousands of kindergarten through third-grade students each year are screened using PALS assessments through Virginia’s voluntary Early Intervention Reading Initiative, with pre-kindergarten students served through the Virginia Preschool Initiative.

Invernizzi also is a founder of Book Buddies, a nationally recognized one-on-one reading intervention.

Groundbreaking Pharmacological Research

Two individuals who were members of UVA’s Department of Pharmacology throughout the 1970s, Ferid Murad and Alfred Gilman, conducted seminal studies at UVA that led to separate Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine. Both Murad and Gilman were recruited as new assistant professors by Joseph Larner, who chaired the Department of Pharmacology at the time.

Murad won the 1998 prize with two other researchers. Upon arriving at UVA in the early 1970s, he asked how a very old drug, nitroglycerin, activated an enzyme that causes the relaxation of blood vessels (and thus relief from angina, which is a symptom of heart disease). He demonstrated that nitroglycerin liberates the gas nitrous oxide, which in turn activates enzymes responsible for synthesizing a smooth muscle relaxant called cGMP. Murad and his colleagues were honored because they established that nitrous oxide could serve as a bona fide signaling molecule. Several medicines that affect nitrous oxide signaling were subsequently developed.

Gilman won the prize with one other researcher in 1994. New to UVA in 1970, Gilman asked, and ultimately answered, a fundamental question: How does the hormone adrenalin (a primary “messenger”) stimulate the increase of cAMP (a second messenger) inside cells? Secondary messengers are triggers for such essential cell activities as division and differentiation. Gilman’s investigations revealed a set of proteins, now known as GTP-binding proteins, that transferred the signal from the adrenalin receptor on the cell surface to the enzyme that makes cAMP. These G proteins are known now to function in a variety of signaling cascades, including those activated by many commonly used medicines as well as some drugs of abuse. Our senses of sight, taste and smell are entirely dependent on G protein-mediated signaling.

Using Visible Light for Wireless Communications

Electrical engineering professor Maite Brandt-Pearce has studied optical communications at UVA for 25 years. She is working to develop an innovative alternative to Wi-Fi for wireless communications – Li-Fi, or light fidelity – which uses infrared and visible light (such as from a light bulb) for high-speed data transmission, rather than using radio waves.

Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly cluttered, resulting in a “spectrum crunch.” Li-Fi may soon become a revolutionary substitute, or a replacement, with plenty of personal and commercial applications.

Using light as an access point, only people in a particular room, or under the light, could use it, creating, through that physical limitation, a layer of privacy and security increasingly threatened in overloaded Wi-Fi environments. Li-Fi also would be very fast and more users in a given space could use it.

After four years of research and development in her UVA lab, Brandt-Pearce and her former Ph.D. student, Mohammad Noshad, co-founded in 2013 a company, VLNComm, and are refining the technology for a range of uses and products. The company is the only one in the U.S. offering Li-Fi-enabled products.

Clean Water for the Developing World

A water purification tablet called MadiDrop+, developed at UVA and used by tens of thousands of people in 40 countries, is the brainchild of James Smith, a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

madidrop_da_inline_02.jpg

The continuously reusable ceramic tablet – small enough to fit in the palm of your hand – disinfects water by slowly releasing safe pathogen-killing silver ions. MadiDrop+ is designed for easy use; the tablet is simply set in a bucket of contaminated or potentially contaminated water, and within eight hours that water is safe to drink. A single tablet, which is priced for use by people with few financial resources, will treat up to 20 liters per day, enough safe drinking water for a large family. The durable tablet remains effective for daily use for one year.

MadiDrop is produced primarily for charitable organizations that aid people in developing nations and disaster zones.

A Heart Rhythm Solution

The Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center at UVA is one of the world’s premier centers for cardiovascular research. Its namesake, Berne, the late UVA physician and researcher, patented in 1987 a drug called Adenocard, which is used worldwide to treat heart arrhythmia.

Berne and laboratory fellow Luiz Bellardinelli discovered that the naturally occurring molecule adenosine plays a role in controlling blood flow to the heart and regulating heart rhythms. This led to the creation of Adenocard, which restores normal heart rhythm when someone suffers from sudden and potentially fatal arrhythmia.

Under Berne’s leadership, the major portions of the royalties from the patent were returned to UVA, and used to establish and endow the center that bears his name. The early work that led to Adenocard has spurred generations of new researchers and further advances in cardiovascular medicine at the center.

A New Understanding of Star Formation

A process called accretion plays a key role in star formation and contributes to the growth of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. But how does it work?

UVA astronomer John Hawley, Hamilton and VITA Professor, and his colleague, former UVA astronomer Steve Balbus, solved a fundamental problem in astrophysics and transformed the field of accretion disk theory.

They determined that a mechanism called magnetorotational instability accounts for the process of accretion. The finding is so important it is now part of the standard theory of how black hole systems develop. Hawley also is known for work that transformed the use of computer simulations for astrophysics research.

uc162_1617_connection_c.jpg

For their work, Hawley and Balbus shared the 2013 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, Asia’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize. They split a $1 million award and received gold medals for “furthering societal progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching humanity’s spiritual civilization.”

Surveying the Milky Way

Instruments designed and built by UVA astronomers for the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment, known as APOGEE, and installed at major observatories in New Mexico and Chile, are allowing astronomers worldwide to peer through dense cosmic dust scattered through the Milky Way and view stars at the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

apogee_lab_ss_inline_03.jpg

UVA astronomers Steve Majewski and Mike Skrutskie and instrument scientist John Wilson built the infrared-sensitive spectrographs, allowing examination of the chemical composition and motions of hundreds of thousands of stars that otherwise would not be visible optically. Using data from their APOGEE instruments, astronomers are gaining new insights to how the Milky Way formed, how it is evolving, how similar other galaxies formed, and helping to identify potential planets in other solar systems.

Mass Spectrometry

Mass spectrometry is a powerful analytical technique that has led to advances in all fields of science, especially immunology, cell signaling, drug development, epigenetics and immunotherapy of cancer. Donald Hunt, University Professor of Chemistry and Pathology, is a pioneer in the field and is recognized for developing mass spectrometry instrumentation and methods for amino acid sequence analysis of the several hundred thousand proteins in the human body.

While mass spectrometry had its roots in physical chemistry, Hunt demonstrated early in his now half-century career that these tools could also be applied to living matter, and ultimately for biomedical uses, such as diagnosis and treatment of diseases, including cancers.

The winner of numerous awards for his groundbreaking research, Hunt is a co-inventor on more than two dozen patents and patent applications, has published more than 3,500 articles, and ranks among the top most highly cited chemists in the world.

Super Steel

Imagine a steel that is twice as strong as conventional steel and is exceptionally corrosion-resistant. And try to imagine it as amorphous – meaning, unlike most materials, it has a randomized arrangement of atoms and variable characteristics. That is what physics professor Joseph Poon and materials science professor Gary Shiflet invented.

The UVA Patent Foundation has since granted a global top-10 company the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize the amorphous steel, which can be used for making

electronic casings, corrosion-resistant structural coatings, surgical instruments and recreational equipment.

When Mary Yonkman was little, some of her favorite experiences revolved around pancakes.

She remembers making them with her father on weekend mornings. She remembers eating them at her summer camp along the David Branch of Gnaw Bone Creek in southern Indiana. Yonkman even overcame her fear of dogs after meeting a pooch named Pancake.

So when an essay question in the application to the University of Virginia was “What is your favorite word and why?” she responded with – you guessed it – “pancake.”

“If accepted as a student at the University of Virginia, I would coordinate a pancake event on the Lawn,” the then-high school senior wrote. “An invitation would be extended to all, to come by the Rotunda and enjoy delicious pancakes, while experiencing a greater sense of community.”

Yonkman, then Mary McNaught, made good on that promise in 2004 and you won’t believe where her seemingly simple idea has gone.

pancakes_for_parkinsons_2015_da_inline_.jpg

The flapjack juggernaut, now in its 15^th year at UVA, has caught on at schools, towns and community centers around the world and has been embraced by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, founded in 2000 by the actor to help find a cure for Parkinson’s disease. To date, UVA has raised more $500,000 and aims to raise an additional $70,000 Saturday.

This is the history of “Pancakes for Parkinson’s.”

Back to the Future

In addition to a love of pancakes, Yonkman is a huge Marty McFly fan. McFly, you may recall, was the main character in the 1985 Hollywood hit, “Back to the Future.”

rachel_ray_michael_j_fox_mary_yonkman_inline_.jpg

“I loved Michael J. Fox as an actor,” she gushed. “I loved ‘Family Ties.’ I loved ‘Spin City.’ ‘Back to the Future’ was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater.”

There was another connection for Yonkman. Her godmother, Holly, had early-onset Parkinson’s disease, just like Fox did. She began donating to the foundation and received their mailings.

“College is a time of emerging agency as a person,” Yonkman said. “And so I’d get these mailings that were to me. I was helping this cause. So, at some point, the two were married. Pancakes and Parkinson’s had good alliteration.”

Planning the World’s First-Ever Pancakes for Parkinson’s Event

Yonkman had the sense that everyone in her orbit at UVA was super-busy. So her strategy was simple; she wouldn’t have too many meetings and she would only ask people to do things they were already good at, like reaching out to the local community for syrup or pancake mix donations.

“It really was the most scrappy little organization,” she said. In all, not more than 30 students helped that first year (Today, hundreds volunteer to help out.)

The now-defunct Tavern restaurant donated the pancake batter. Walmart gave the syrup and Kroger the orange juice. “It was not nearly the well-oiled machine that it is today, but it worked,” Yonkman said. “What I was going for was this event that made people feel good inside because they were eating pancakes, were together on a morning and raising money for a worthy cause.”

The night before the first event, Hurricane Gaston was barreling toward Charlottesville and Yonkman did not have a rain site or a rain date. “The Friday night before the event, I gathered my executive committee in my apartment and it was raining so loud they could not hear me,” she said.

She remembers her friend, Michael Ehmann, looking at her like she was divorced from reality. “I was like, guys, the sun is going to come out tomorrow! It’s going to be great!”

The griddles posed another problem. Yonkman had envisioned griddles plugged into extension cords trailing out of Old Cabell Hall. Chief Student Affairs Officer Patricia Lampkin and the fire marshal were not thrilled with this idea. The father of one of Yonkman’s roommates saved the day.

“I still don’t know how he did it, especially in the middle of a hurricane, but he got these industrial griddles in Richmond,” she said. To this day, she thinks there should be a “Tommy Gordon Award” at Pancakes for Parkinson’s, “because there is no way we would have gone past the first year, despite all my enthusiasm, had he not arrived with all of those griddles in the middle of a hurricane.”

The following morning, Yonkman arose at 4:30 a.m. to find that it was still raining. But the forecast called for clearing skies. “And I’m not kidding you, 20 minutes before Pancakes for Parkinson’s, the sun came out!” The ground was completely saturated, but the show went on.

first_p4p_inline_align.jpg

In addition to pancakes, there were a cappella groups and several Michael J. Fox-themed “diners” all around the Lawn. There was a Spin City diner, named for the 1990s sitcom Fox starred in. There was a Marty McFly diner, too, complete with students dressed as McFly and his partner in crime, Doc Brown.

“It was so great. It was just amazing,” Yonkman said.

The event raised $6,000, a sum that both impressed and surprised the foundation, which was in its infancy.

Passing the Pancake Baton

Yonkman, who graduated in 2006 with a degree in history, recognized in her third year that she needed a succession plan.

“I quickly realized I had one more year at the University, but I did not stay on as chair because I thought, ‘Then it’s going to leave with me,’” she said. So Yonkman took on in an advisory role that quickly extended to the Fox Foundation, which had recently launched “Team Fox,” its grassroots community fundraising program.

“When they first launched Team Fox, they asked some of the people who had taken an event from soup to nuts to serve as mentors, so I came on board and I did it until I had kids,” she said.

pancakes_for_parkinsons_2010_cg_inline_.jpg

Even after she graduated, the “Pancakes” founder continued to mentor co-chairs at UVA. One of them was Liz Diemer, a 2011 graduate who helped lead the organization in her third and fourth years.

“I love her to death,” Diemer said. “She is one of the most amazing humans I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

UVA Embedded at Fox

Diemer, who studied non-profit arts administration, eventually found her way to the Fox Foundation, where she currently serves as the Director of Team Fox and Community Events and annually supports a global community of over 6,000 fundraising members. (The Foundation’s CEO, Todd Sherer, also earned his Ph.D in neuroscience from UVA.)

“UVA’s Pancakes for Parkinson’s is one of our bigger ones,” Diemer said. “Team Fox has raised over $80 million since 2006, and that has contributed the foundation’s larger fundraising of $800 million since 2000.”

UVA’s event is one of Team Fox’s larger, more successful events, in terms of the funds it raises. “It’s also one of the longest-standing events, and they may be one of fewer than five events that have been able to stay around that long,” Diemer said.

“It’s unbelievably impressive, and I think even more so because the leadership changes every year,” she said. “I’m impressed that they have been able to sustain such a high-caliber event from one year to the next.”

Diemer said that while the average gift at UVA’s Pancakes for Parkinson’s is small in comparison to things like Team Fox galas, “When you see how much they’re able to raise, it’s a beautiful indication of the community that they’ve built.”

Diemer has been in close contact with UVA’s 2018 co-chairs, fourth-year students Caroline Keller and Gabby Beard, and will be in Charlottesville on Saturday for this year’s event.

This Year’s Fundraising Goal

If Keller and Beard get their wish, UVA will raise $70,000 in donations this year.

That’s a lot when you stop to consider that students are pitching in a few dollars each. But students are not their only patrons. Pancakes for Parkinson’s is deliberately scheduled when there is a home football game, so that parents and alumni will also stop by for breakfast and make donations.

caroline_keller_gabby_beard_03_da_inline_.jpg

Keller, who is studying biology and bioethics, said it’s been a pleasure and a privilege working for Pancakes for Parkinson’s. Her grandfather had Parkinson’s disease, and that is what initially drew her to the charity.

“We have the most amazing students who are really passionate and go the extra mile,” she said. “Our fundraising chair sent over 400 emails to corporate sponsors, family members and other members of the community asking for any sort of donation.

“Our chair also Instagram-messaged Katie Couric [a 1979 UVA graduate] and she decided to give a lunch with her in New York as a silent auction item,” Keller said.

Beard, a Spanish major, said she’s most excited about this year’s theme, “All You Need is Pancakes,” inspired by the Beatles’ song, “All You Need is Love.”

“In response to the year anniversary of Aug. 11th and 12th, we wanted to have our event focused on the love and sense of community that can be found in Charlottesville,” she said. “It is an amazing way to foster community and focus on the love around us rather, than the difficulties that surround us at a time where it seems like everything is divided.”

UVA’s new president, Jim Ryan, will attend his first Pancakes for Parkinson’s Saturday and recorded this invitation.

University of Virginia student Sam Johnson created a commemorative design for President Jim Ryan’s formal inauguration on Friday with the president’s three key themes in mind: community, discovery and service.

Johnson, a graduate student in the School of Architecture, explains the design of his small sculpture in the video above.

Ryan will be inaugurated Friday in a public installation ceremony on the Lawn, only the ninth such occasion in the University’s 200-year history.

Several other public events are planned in celebration, including a research symposium showcasing top discoveries at the University, a Community Bridges 5K Run/Walk and Celebration of Service benefitting local nonprofits, and a live storytelling event, Double Take, featuring personal stories from Ryan and other members of the University community.

See a full preview of inauguration events for registration links and parking information.

Let Us Know You're Coming

The University of Virginia moved up a dozen slots to 12^th in the nation for the total number of students studying abroad in credit-bearing activities, according to a new assessment by the Institute of International Education.

In its annual assessment, “Open Doors on International Educational Exchange,” the institute also found that UVA moved from No. 32 to No. 24 among the nation’s doctoral-granting universities for the percentage of students who have an education-abroad experience during their undergraduate careers. UVA also jumped from No. 11 to No. 7 for the number of students in programs of short duration.

The Open Doors assessment is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of State.

The report also found that international students and scholars who are studying at UVA are a major driver of Virginia’s economy. The analysis estimated the annual contribution of international students and scholars to Virginia’s economy to be $711 million, up from $688 million in the previous report.

Stephen Mull, UVA’s vice provost for global affairs, said these strides demonstrate UVA’s increasing international presence, “which in turn will make the University an even more competitive destination for international students, as well as among the growing number of American students who seek out international education as an important, transformative part of their higher education.”

Mull said it is also important to note that UVA continues to thrive in this arena despite an atmosphere in which political rhetoric often discourages global engagement.

“The greater engagement with the world that these statistics signify will contribute to more international research opportunities for UVA, a greater alumni and donor network, and will improve our understanding of the world and the challenges we face,” he said.

For current and prospective students, Mull said the report shows that UVA offers a rich and transformative experience, both through an enhanced international experience abroad as well as contacts with other cultures on Grounds.

“Students with more international experience demonstrably perform higher in intellectual achievement, interpersonal skills and in having an impact on the world,” he said. “Students with more international contacts and experience do better at acquiring education and skills that are necessary for success in an increasingly globalized world.”

Dudley Doane, the director of UVA’s International Studies Office, said several things are helping to grow international experiences for UVA students, and to attract international scholars. “Curriculum integration and the integration of overseas learning opportunities into majors, minors, general education requirements and degree programs are key drivers in UVA students’ rising participation in education abroad,” he said.

Faculty-led programs and faculty and staff dedication to increasing awareness of study-abroad opportunities also drive up numbers, he said.

UVA has recently added attractive new study-abroad options to its inventory, including a fall-semester engineering track in UVA’s popular program in Valencia. The McIntire School of Commerce recently added a collaborative degree program that divides study among the United States, Spain and China. And the School of Architecture has committed to facilitating a global education experience for every student.

“Faculty and staff from across the University work hard to make UVA the school of choice for top students from around the world,” Doane said.

University of Virginia students had plenty of opportunities to prove their creativity this year, and they took full advantage.

All over Grounds – on stages, in practice rooms, in museums, rap labs and classrooms – UVA students and faculty members produced extraordinary work and shared it with the world.

Here are just a few of the highlights.

Georgia O’Keeffe Returned to Grounds

Not in person, but certainly in spirit. Graduate students and faculty members spent untold hours studying the famous artist’s time at UVA to create an exhibition at UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art, “Unexpected O’Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings.”

okeeffe_rotunda_inline_01.jpg

The exhibition, which closes Jan. 27, highlights O’Keeffe’s watercolors of places on Grounds and in Charlottesville and shows how the four summers she spent studying at UVA set the stage for her now-famous career.

Read: The Untold Story of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Time at UVA

Julian Sanchez – and the Rest of the Heritage Theatre Festival Cast – Took a Bow

We followed along as 2018 graduate Julian Sanchez – now a graduate student in the same program that produced actors like Meryl Streep – took the stage at UVA one last time, playing aspiring Broadway actor Paul San Marco in “A Chorus Line” during this summer’s Heritage Theatre Festival.

julian_sanchez_ss_inline_02.jpg

The festival, coming up on its 45^th year, brings professional actors and directors to Charlottesville to work alongside UVA students and faculty members for a series of plays and musicals each summer.

Read: Follow Along as 2018 Grad Julian Sanchez Takes the UVA Stage One Last Time

UVA and Charlottesville Joined Together for an Extraordinary Show

More than 150 musicians, dancers and vocalists from UVA, Charlottesville and beyond came together in October to perform Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” originally created by the famed American composer at the request of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

mass_da_inline_03.jpg

The piece captured what Bernstein saw as a crisis of faith in the 20^th century, particularly after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It calls for a huge variety of performers, making this year’s performance one of the largest UVA’s McIntire Department of Music has ever produced.

Read: Behind the Scenes: UVA, Charlottesville Singers Unite for Stunning Performance

A UVA Student Brought the Joy of Art to Charlottesville’s Homeless

First-year student and Charlottesville native Emma Hitchcock co-founded “Art for the Heart” with her friend Zadie Lacey to provide art workshops for the homeless, a group she worried was too often ignored and denied even basic human connection.

emma_hitchcock_da_inline_04.jpg

Hitchcock and Lacey, who refined their idea in UVA’s iLab, have conducted several winter and summer art workshops at The Haven, a day shelter for the homeless in downtown Charlottesville. The workshops have included painting, drawing and jewelry-making, which has proven a popular option.

Read: Student’s ‘Art for the Heart’ Venture Provides Welcome Respite for the Homeless

Student Novelist Shea Megale Inspired Classmates and Faculty Alike

Shea Megale might not have full use of her arms and legs, but her imagination runs wild. The second-year student, who was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy II, wrote her first novel at 15 and has since written 13 more. Her first professionally published novel, “This is Not a Love Scene,” will be published in May by St. Martin’s Press.

Another book, also coming out next year, is heartbreakingly personal: a memoir of her brother Matt and his fatal struggle with addiction.

shea_megale_da_inline_05.jpg

Even as these two books near publication, and as she continues to cope with her own grief, Megale is building a new life on Grounds, which she navigates with her service dog, Pierre.

Read: Novelist Shea Megale Adds a UVA Chapter to Her Own Extraordinary Story  

Students Created Their Own Version of the American Flag

Art and architecture professor Sanda Iliescu still keeps the small American flag that her mother, a Romanian dissident, waved when welcoming President Nixon to Romania in 1969. Just a few years later, the family fled to the U.S. to pursue the freedom they dreamed of.

flag_painting_ss_inline_06.jpg

In May, Iliescu had students work together to create their own version of the flag, pouring into it everything the country means to them and their families. Scores of students and community members painted a small piece of the larger whole, creating a tapestry-like flag rich with color, texture and meaning.

Read: Public Art Project Explores What the American Flag Means

The ‘Rap Lab’ Produced Powerful Original Music

A group of 14 students in music professor A.D. Carson’s “Composing Mixtapes” course produced a 15-song mixtape for their final exam in the spring. They wrote, performed, recorded and produced the entire album, and coordinated a premiere at Boylan Heights.

ad_carson_rap_lab_miguel_mig_martinez_inline_07.jpg

Students said they enjoyed collaborating with their classmates on lyrics and performances, building confidence on stage and off, and learning the ins and outs of music production.

Read: Students Debut a Mixtape Straight from UVA’s ‘Rap Lab’ in Unusual Final Exam

‘Makers’Were Busy All Over Grounds

All across Grounds, students and faculty members used 3-D printers, robotic arms, laser cutters and many other tools to turn their ideas into reality. They call themselves the “Makers of UVA,” and they can be found in a growing network of “Maker Grounds” spaces across the University.

makergrounds_fab_lab_a_school_da_inline_08.jpg

These labs have produced 3-D printed images of patients’ skulls – enabling UVA doctors to precisely plan surgeries, replicas of William Faulkner’s pipes, robots, racecars, tiny, detailed models of the Rotunda, and much, much more.

Read: Meet the Makers

The ‘Delorme Dome’ Returned Home

In the spring, 15 students in Benjamin Hays’ “History of American Building Technology” course built a replica of the original wooden dome that perished when the Thomas Jefferson-designed Rotunda caught fire in 1895.

rotunda_dome_on_lawn_da_inline_09.jpg

Jefferson’s designs were inspired by the work of 16^th-century French architect Philibert Delorme, who pioneered the technique of using wooden ribs to create beautiful, sturdy domes.

Read: The Wooden ‘Delorme Dome’ Comes Home to Jefferson’s Academical Village

The Ever-Popular Virginia Film Festival Closed Out the Year

The Virginia Film Festival brightened the first weekend of November with a star-studded slate of special guests, Oscar-worthy films, discussions and master classes. This year’s guest list included civil rights activist Martin Luther King III, the eldest son and namesake of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

vff_ss_inline_10.jpg

King visited for the premiere of “Charlottesville,” a new documentary produced in part by UVA’s Center for Politics that focuses on the violent Unite the Right rallies in August 2017. Before the screening, he retraced his father’s footsteps in Old Cabell Hall, where the elder King spoke to more than 900 students and faculty in 1963.

Read: Snapshots of This Weekend’s Virginia Film Festival

The University of Virginia School of Medicine and School of Nursing have each received Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Awards from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, which covers diversity in higher education. The School of Medicine earned the award for the seventh consecutive year; this was the first time the Nursing School was honored. The two UVA schools are among 35 health professions schools nationwide to receive 2018 HEED Awards.

“The Health Professions HEED Award process consists of a comprehensive and rigorous application that includes questions relating to the recruitment and retention of students and employees – and best practices for both; continued leadership support for diversity; and other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion,” Lenore Pearlstein, INSIGHT Into Diversity’s publisher, said.

The School of Medicine supports a range of diversity initiatives. They include a Summer Medical Leadership Program to prepare college undergraduates from underrepresented groups for medical school and leadership roles in medicine, as well as partnerships with community groups to improve access to care for local Latino residents through the Latino Health Initiative.

heed_award_2018_inline_01_align_left.jpg

Over the past year, diversity and inclusion efforts at the Medical School – and across the UVA Health System – have focused on how to respond when health care providers experience prejudice or bigotry while at work.

“We have a duty to take care of people regardless of beliefs, but we have a duty to everyone who works here, and to our other patients, to create an environment that is respectful,” said Dr. Margaret Plews-Ogan, a School of Medicine faculty member who helped form the Committee on Responding to Discriminatory Behavior. The committee includes more than 30 faculty and staff members, medical students and medical residents.

Along with messaging throughout the Health System that reflects the institution’s commitment to inclusion, the committee developed training to help team members respond when they experience or witness acts of prejudice or bigotry. Complementing online training available to all team members, the committee created a 90-minute workshop for faculty, supervisors and managers that included short films based on events experienced by care providers and discussions of how to respond. The workshops began earlier this year in the Department of Medicine and will be conducted throughout the Health System in the next year.

“Our faculty, staff and students work constantly to make the School of Medicine and the Health System a more welcoming and inclusive place for everyone,” School of Medicine Dean Dr. David S. Wilkes said. “Earning the HEED Award for the seventh consecutive year is a testament to the hard work of countless people across the School of Medicine.”

“The HEED Award is truly an honor,” School of Nursing Dean Dorrie K. Fontaine said, “and acknowledges the comprehensive, deliberate and strategic approach our school has taken in this important domain. From admissions to hiring, clinicals to curricula, everything we do is examined through this important lens.”

Since establishing the Initiative on Diversity, Inclusion and Excellence Achievement, or IDEA, in 2014, the Nursing School has shifted its recruitment, admissions and retention strategies to welcome more underrepresented and first-generation applicants, established affinity groups for students of color, initiated expansive diversity training for faculty and staff, and urged professors to incorporate diverse perspectives and inclusive content into their courses.

While faculty and graduate teaching assistants attend trainings across a variety of diversity-related topics, all nursing students also take part in cultural humility training and a plethora of regular activities – from classes, simulations, lectures and other experiential learning opportunities – that drive the message of inclusivity home.

Nearly 100 percent of students across all racial and ethnic group categories graduate from UVA Nursing’s many programs, and a growing array of minority and other students underrepresented in nursing are applying and accepting admission at UVA. For 2018, nearly a third of enrolled students are from groups underrepresented in nursing, and more than 17 percent are male.

The school has also declared the recruitment and retention of faculty members from diverse backgrounds a key priority.

This fall, the Nursing School’s senior leaders took part in an eight-week equity institute delivered by the Center for Race and Equity at the University of Southern California. Through the academic year, those lessons will be shared with the balance of faculty and staff through regular training sessions and equity projects developed in the institute.

“So many individuals deserve praise for their part in transforming the culture of our nursing school,” Susan Kools, associate dean for diversity and inclusion, said. “It truly takes each community member to commit to creating a place of learning where all feel affirmed and respected.”

UVA Architecture Professors Win Architecture Masterprize Award

School of Architecture professors Luis Pancorbo and Inés Martín Robles, through their Madrid-based firm Pancorbo-de Villar-Chacon-Martín Robles, have won the Architecture MasterPrize in the “Cultural Building” category for their design of the Vegas Altas Congress Center, located in Badajoz, Spain.

According to the award’s official citation, “The ‘Vegas Altas’ Center grows in an ambiguous peripheral location, in a land that is both urban and agricultural boundary. The architectural proposal is intended to highlight this timeless condition of a building belonging to the Vega – a free-standing building, floating in the countryside like a giant bale of straw with a flat horizon. The main program is drawn on a half-buried ring that adapts to the terrain and to the boundaries of the plot, but hides its condition to visitors. Only a cubic volume covered with a skin made of ropes rises above ground.”

vegas_altas_inline_02.jpg

[Read more about the project.] 

The winners were selected by a panel of architects, academics and industry experts.

The Architecture MasterPrize was previously known as the American Architectural Prize, established with a mission to advance the appreciation of quality architectural design worldwide. It is the latest of many significant international awards Pancorbo and Robles have won for this project.

Publication: McIntire Marketing Professor Among Top 50 in the Nation

Poets&Quants for Undergraduates, a publication for business students, recently profiled Carrie Heilman, associate professor of marketing in the McIntire School of Commerce, as one of its “Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors.”

carrie_heilman_da_inline_03.jpg

Heilman teaches “Promotions,” a yearlong course focusing on market research and advertising strategy. Students annually participate in the National Student Advertising Competition, and her UVA teams have thrice placed in the top three, including a first-place finish in 2016.

According to the profile, “Student comments revere Heilman for balancing her rigorous standards with very generous guidance that often extends well beyond normal business hours. Because of the special mix of teamwork, real client interaction, and tremendous mentorship that Heilman brings to the experience, students say they leave the class feeling prepared for their careers.”

Rita Dove’s Vita Gets Longer With Three New Awards

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English, has added three more honors to her extensive list of plaudits.

In November, she received the 2018 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. The prize honors careers of extraordinary literary achievement, recognizing writers whose influence and importance have shaped the American literary landscape. It celebrates writers for the courage of their vision, their unparalleled imagination and for the beauty of their art. Previous recipients include Elie Weisel (2012), Louise Erdrich (2009), Margaret Atwood (2007), Seamus Heaney (2004) and Joyce Carol Oates (2003).

rita_dove_ss_inline_04.jpg

In October, Dove – an Akron, Ohio native – received the 2018 Cleveland Arts Prize-Lifetime Achievement Award. The Cleveland Arts Prize has recognized and honored artistic excellence in northeast Ohio for nearly 60 years, and awardees represent the best and most talented artists in the region. Previous recipients include Russell Atkins (2017), Adrienne Kennedy (1990), Toni Morrison (1978) and Robert Wallace (1969).

And in September, Dove was presented with the Alice Dunbar Nelson Award for Literary Achievements at the inaugural Great Lakes Black Authors Expo and Writers Conference, also in Cleveland. The award is named for one of the prominent African-Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance.

Education Historian Derrick Alridge to Lead International Society

Derrick Alridge, a professor in the Curry School of Education and Human Development, was elected president of the History of Education Society at the organization’s annual meeting, held in November in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

derrick_alridge_da_inline_05.jpg

The History of Education Society is an international scholarly society “devoted to promoting and teaching the history of education across institutions.” As president, Alridge will be responsible for leading the society over the next 12 months and will deliver his presidential address at next year’s conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Alridge is the program coordinator for Curry’s Social Foundations in Education program and directs the recently created Center for Race and Public Education in the South. He is the founder and director of Teachers in the Movement, an oral history project that examines the ideas and pedagogy of teachers in the civil rights movement.

Nursing Doctoral Student Receives Major Funding Award

From a national pool of 75 applicants, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing has selected Lourdes Carhuapoma, a doctoral student in UVA’s School of Nursing, as one of six 2019 Nurse Faculty Scholars.

The Nurse Faculty Scholar program – which offers Doctor of Nursing Practice and Ph.D. in Nursing students $18,000 in funding over two years – aims to increase diversity in nursing academia. Carhuapoma, a first-generation college student and the daughter of Cuban immigrants, is one of just 60 such scholars since the program’s inception. She plans to become a nurse researcher, professor and mentor to a new generation of nurses.

lourdes_carhuapoma_inline_06_align_right.jpg

Prior to her arrival at UVA, Carhuapoma worked with critically ill neurological and neurosurgical patients and their families at George Washington University Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital, and taught acute care nurse practitioner students at Georgetown University.

Carhuapoma’s scholarship focuses on end-of-life care, a passion that stemmed from observations made in her own practice.

While “critical care is designed to save lives, many people die in these environments, and there are very few resources for patients and families around end-of-life care. It’s clear to me that we can do better” for patients and families who are facing death, she said.

Carhuapoma’s research aims to provide support to surrogate decision-makers of patients with neurological illness or injuries, a group that’s at high risk for decisional regret and poor mental health outcomes. She’s also energized by her future role as a mentor-scholar.

“It became clear to me that I absolutely needed to be in the academic role,” she said, “mentoring students and honing my research interests, all of which fuel my desire to become a nurse researcher and leader.”

Two Alumni Among ‘New Voices in Science, Engineering and Medicine’ Group

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine have selected two UVA alumni among 18 early- to mid-career scholars in the first cohort of “New Voices in Science, Engineering and Medicine.”

Joel Baumgart, an alumnus who is currently a senior research program officer in UVA’s Office of the Vice President for Research, and Olujimi Ajijola, who received a B.A. from UVA and is an assistant professor in the departments of Medicine-Cardiology and Molecular, Cellular & Integrative Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, were selected for the inaugural group.

According to the announcement, “The initial group of 18 [Science, Engineering and Medicine] early-career leaders will gather over a two-year period with a senior advisory committee to discuss key emerging challenges in science, engineering and medicine, engage nationally with a wider group of young leaders from diverse groups, and attend international events on science policy.”

12 Grad Students Among Finalists for Federal Government Fellowships

A dozen UVA students – including eight from the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy – have been selected as finalists to participate in the Class of 2019 Presidential Management Fellows program, the federal government’s most prestigious fellowship for graduate students entering the federal workforce.

UVA’s 12 finalists are the most of any institution in Virginia.

The Batten students are Kathryn L. Babbin (seeking a fellowship in policy analysis), Ellen B. Beahm (policy analysis), Conor Boyle (policy analysis), Layla A. Bryant (policy analysis), Amy E. Dalrymple (policy analysis), Matthew T. Hensell (public administration), Shea L. Kearns (policy analysis) and Joshua A. Margulies (policy analysis). From other programs are Elizabeth Hoffman (biology/biological sciences), Deborah Luzader (microbiology), Ellen L. Mintz (unspecified) and Rena W. Yuan (statistics).

Nursing, Pediatrics Professor Named Distinguished Fellow

UVA School of Nursing professor Dr. Julie Haizlip, a physician specializing in pediatrics who directs the school’s interprofessional outreach, was named a distinguished fellow of the National Academies of Practice in Medicine. She will be inducted at a ceremony to be held in early March in Pentagon City.

The National Academies of Practice was established in 1981 to advise government bodies on health care issues and systems. Fellows are elected by peers from across 14 different health professions to join the only interprofessional group of health care practitioners and scholars dedicated to the support of affordable, accessible, coordinated quality care for all.

Haizlip’s scholarship focuses on positive psychology, appreciative practice and interprofessional learning and teaching. Currently researching the concept of “mattering” – the perception that one is significant in the lives of others and has an impact in the world – in health care with colleagues at UVA’s Darden School of Business, she is interested in how the presence (and absence) of mattering impacts practice, personal well-being, professional longevity and burnout, especially among physicians and nurses.

julie_haizlip_md_inline_07_align_left.jpg

As the Center for ASPIRE’s co-director and a clinical professor of nursing, Haizlip educates students and faculty to improve their teamwork skills and cohesion when operating within health care teams. The Center for ASPIRE, or Academic Strategic Partnerships for Interprofessional Research and Education, researches and supports the development, implementation and evaluation of educational and clinical programs that train students, faculty and clinicians to deliver safe, high-quality, team-based patient care.

She is also among the core planners of the center’s twice-annual Train-the-Trainer Conference, initially funded by the Macy Foundation and the Center for Interprofessional Learning and Practice, for which she’s developed a host of novel workshops and simulations to engage attendees.

Haizlip also directs UVA’s Center for Appreciative Practice, which organizes regular workshops and lecture series, including the Wisdom & Well-Being lecture series and UVA’s offering of Schwartz Center Rounds, emphasizing compassion and the human connection between professional caregivers and patients. She has written books, chapters and articles on appreciative practice, interprofessional learning and positive psychology.

Professors Appointed to Federal Administrative Review Agency

Professors John Duffy and Michael Livermore of the School of Law have been appointed public members of the Administrative Conference of the United States.

The conference is an independent federal agency charged with convening experts to recommend improvements to administrative processes and procedures.

The Administrative Conference of the United States has adopted more than 250 statements and recommendations – directed to all branches of government, but largely with federal agencies – to improve agency decision-making, promote regulatory oversight and save costs. Its 150 volunteers are drawn from more than 70 federal agencies, as well as academia and private legal practice. The organization currently has 34 public members.

Duffy is the Samuel H. McCoy II Professor of Law and Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Professor of Law. In the field of intellectual property, Duffy has been identified as one of the 25 most influential people in the nation by The American Lawyer and one of the 50 most influential people in the world by the U.K. publication Managing Intellectual Property. In the field of administrative law, Duffy is a past recipient of the Annual Scholarship Award, conferred by the American Bar Association’s Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice for the best piece of scholarship in the year.

Livermore is a professor of law whose research focuses on environmental law, regulation, bureaucratic oversight and the computational analysis of law. He is a leading expert on cost-benefit analysis and regulatory review, and frequently collaborates on interdisciplinary projects with researchers in other academic fields, including economics, computer science and neurology. Prior to joining the faculty in 2013, Livermore was the founding executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

Professor Andrew Vollmer, director of UVA Law’s John W. Glynn Jr. Law & Business Program, is currently serving as an Administrative Conference of the United States public member.

Professor Molly Brady, Alumnus James Nelson Earn Awards for Scholarship

School of Law professor Maureen “Molly” Brady is a co-winner of the 2019 Scholarly Papers Competition, sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools.

Her paper, “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds,” forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, explores the social and legal context surrounding earlier metes and bounds systems and the important role that nonstandardized property can play in stimulating growth. “Metes and bounds” is a method of describing land or real estate that uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe boundaries.

James Nelson, a 2009 UVA Law alumnus and an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, also won for his paper, “Corporate Disestablishment,” forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review.

The competition, in its 34th year, is open to law faculty who have been teaching for five years or fewer. There were 55 entries this year.

The award will be presented in January during the AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans. As winners, Brady and Nelson were invited to serve on the Scholarly Papers selection committee in 2020.

In architecture, the phenomenon is referred to simply as “the missing 32 percent.”

The phrase is shorthand for the drop-off between the percentage of architecture students who are female – about 50 percent – and the percentage of licensed, practicing architects who are female – about 18 percent.

The gap can be attributed to a number of factors, from architecture’s long history as a male-dominated profession to all-consuming workplace cultures that leave little flexibility for women expected to balance work and family. However, many at the University of Virginia – women and men – are working hard to close that gap, through their own achievements and through partnerships among students, alumni, faculty members and practicing architects.

That work started with women like Linda Harris Michael, who graduated from UVA’s School of Architecture in 1959, a full decade before women were generally admitted to the University. Michael, the only woman in her class and the school’s second female graduate, went on to practice architecture for more than 30 years.

After her came women like current School of Architecture Dean Ila Berman, an acclaimed architect who has also led efforts supporting female architects in academia. Berman is the fourth woman to serve as dean, putting UVA near the top of the list for architecture schools with the most female deans.

And now, there are women like Zazu Swistel, a current graduate student and the co-founder of manifestA, a new student organization of female and male students dedicated to helping women advance the discipline, discourse and practice of architecture and design.  

These three – and many more women like them – have changed, and are changing, their chosen profession. Here are their stories.

Linda Harris Michael, Class of 1959

Michael was one of a small group of professors’ daughters admitted to the College of Arts & Sciences before UVA went co-ed in 1970. However, she really wanted to study in the School of Architecture, which required any female students to have two years of academic credit and be at least 20 years of age.

Undeterred, the 17-year-old Harris took 60 credits over the course of one academic year and two summers and joined the Architecture School at age 18, the age requirement waived because of her strong academic record. She was the only woman in her class.

linda_harris_michael_inline_01_align_left.jpg

“I think it was good training for me, living in that male-dominated world, because when I got into the profession, it was still a man’s world,” she said.

For the most part, she said, her classmates were welcoming and became her friends. She recalls one incident of open harassment, when someone left a printed photo of male genitalia on her drafting board – an insult that she quickly swept aside, determined that whoever it was would not see her rattled.

“That was an exception,” she said. “I did not react, and I was very proud of myself for how I handled it.”

Michael, now retired, went on to practice architecture for 30 years, primarily in an Alexandria, Virginia practice she opened with her then-husband, fellow UVA architecture graduate G. Revell Michael Jr. They focused on historic buildings, renovations and remodels.

Along the way, Michael mentored many young architects, including many women, and was an enthusiastic supporter of the women’s rights movement sweeping the country in the 1970s. She hopes her career can provide an example for younger women to follow.

“I tried to leave the door open behind me every time I opened one,” she said.

Ila Berman, Dean of the School of Architecture

Berman, whose design work and installations have been exhibited in public and private galleries and museums around the world, held leadership positions at three other architecture schools before becoming UVA’s dean in 2016.

Among many other projects, she founded and led the URBANbuild program at Tulane University, a two-year program supporting the revitalization of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

ila_berman_ss_inline_02.jpg

Berman has also done extensive scholarly work focused on feminism, architecture and the opportunities and challenges facing women in her profession. She has served on the Women’s Leadership Council, comprising women in leadership positions in architecture schools; and worked on the American Institute of Architects’ “The Missing 32 Percent” campaign, hoping to close the gap between the number of women studying architecture and the number of women practicing it.

In the fall, Berman hosted a “Women in Design” panel discussion with the UVA Club of New York, highlighting several School of Architecture alumnae and discussing the gender gap in the profession.

“In recent years, we had gone from women representing about 5 percent of all architecture students to getting close to 50 percent in the classroom,” she said. “But this gap still exists within the profession, and that is what we are addressing now.”

Correcting that gap, Berman said, will require changing perceptions of architecture as a male-dominated profession, building company cultures that promote flexibility and diversity, encouraging young women through mentorship and other forms of support and highlighting the work and practices of great female architects.

“It will also require addressing the deeper forms of gender bias that underpin the architectural profession in general and the cloning mechanisms that often dominate in hiring practices and the promotion of individuals to leadership positions within firms,” Berman said.

As a young practicing architect, Berman remembers being one of few women, and often the only woman, in any given room. She was one of the only female architects in a firm of about 250 men. Most often, she said, people assumed she was a secretary or someone’s assistant.

“I handled it by opening my mouth and by persisting,” she said. “It’s important to know that you have a place at the table, something that women have had to fight for continuously.”

Today’s UVA students, she said, are extremely interested in gender and social justice issues and improving gender dynamics in the workplace, Berman said – an uptick in interest she noticed both before and after the #MeToo movement addressing sexual harassment at work.

“We are continually making progress. It is not a straight line, but rather an undulation between smaller incremental changes and more significant advances toward equity,” she said. “Today’s students have a different set of expectations than those of the women that proceeded them, simply because of when they started out. … I want them to be aware of all the pioneers whose struggles enabled their opportunities, but I also want to let them lead and write their own material futures, without having to mine the same territory that my generation has.” 

Zazu Swistel, Master’s Student and manifestA Founder

Swistel is a member of that next generation. She calls Berman an influential mentor, and has worked with her to establish manifestA, a student organization focused on women in architecture and design.

Swistel is in the final year of UVA’s Master of Architecture program. She grew up in New York City and came to Charlottesville both for the excellent program and for the milder weather and relative quiet.

zazu_swistel_da_inline_03.jpg

“I happened to come here on a beautiful April day, and I loved it,” she said. “I was taken not just by the weather, but by the environment of the Architecture School – everyone was so friendly.”

After graduation, Swistel hopes to practice public architecture, creating public spaces that are open to and affect large groups of people.

“To design a public library is the ultimate dream,” she said.

First though, she has a few things she wants to see through at UVA. High on that list is manifestA, which she founded this year with fellow graduate student Katie Kelly, who is pursuing a master’s degree in landscape architecture.

“The topic of women in architecture is still a big discussion. Other fields with professional degrees – like law or business – don’t seem to struggle with it quite as much anymore,” she said. “At this point, it is not about educating great women architects; we are doing that. It is about both elevating them in the field and providing opportunities for them to transform the future of the profession.”

The organization, which is open to both women and men, is addressing the issue in multiple ways. Some students are working with faculty to build a syllabus highlighting architecture, design and landscape architecture work and scholarship by women. Some are working on a spring exhibition of work by female alumni of the School of Architecture. Others are building the organization’s outreach – by crafting blog posts and conducting interviews with practicing female architects – or helping students find mentors in the field.

“We are trying to advance the agency of women in architecture, to challenge implicit and explicit biases that have been perpetuated in the discipline,” Swistel said. “There has been a ton of progress, and there is always more to be done.”

“It’s a really exciting time to be at UVA,” says Barbara Wilson, a professor of urban and environmental planning in the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. “We’re at this moment where our university president is really thinking about how the University can be a better neighbor.” 

Wilson makes that declaration in one of 31 new radio spots being broadcast on WTJU, UVA’s radio station.

building_bridges_badge_0.jpg

The audio bytes began airing throughout the station’s broadcast day in mid-December and feature a diverse group of faculty members, many of whom have been engaged in community-related work for decades.

Louis Nelson, UVA’s vice provost for academic outreach, said the new effort is part of “Engaged UVA,” a relatively new program billed as the front door to community partnerships. “Our tag line is ‘Building Bridges with Communities,’” said Nelson, who is also UVA’s primary representative for community engagement.

“UVA faculty have been building bridges with communities for decades,” he said. “Some of these projects are many, many years old, and this is a great opportunity for us to tell the story of the work that we’ve already been doing around building bridges with communities and how we hope to expand this kind of work in the future.”

Nelson and WTJU’s general manager, Nathan Moore, first discussed the radio spots last fall, and before long, members of the faculty were invited to WTJU’s studios to record their pieces. Topics range from how the community is joining UVA to help create a more equitable environment to how Charlottesville and UVA can thoughtfully rebound from the events of Aug. 11 and 12, 2017. “A number of listeners have told me they really enjoy the stories,” Moore said.

See for yourself with this sample of the new audio spots.

Suzanne Moomaw, Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning

Dr. Cameron Webb, Professor of Medicine

Webb discusses the importance of equal access to health care and other community resources.

Melissa Levy, Co-Director, Young Women Leaders Program, Assistant Professor and Program Area Director of Youth and Social Innovation 

Levy talks about the empowerment that comes from youth in the community working with UVA students.

Andrew Kaufman, Russian Literature Scholar

In this clip, listen to Kaufman discuss the role of compassion in building community.

Becca Dillingham, Director, Center for Global Health

Dillingham talks about the important role of good health in nurturing communities, including those surrounding family, school and workplaces.

Vikram Jaswal, Professor of Psychology

In his class, which blends UVA students with college-aged people with autism, Jaswal hosted a discussion about how they can be welcoming to all sorts of people, including refugees, LGBTQ people and those from different races or ethnicities.

Andrew Kahrl, Professor of History

Kahrl talks about the importance of civic engagement to a vibrant, healthy community.

Barbara Wilson, Professor, Urban and Environmental Planning

Wilson discusses how to think about building an environment that “better brings together coalitions of people.”

You can listen to all the spots, or simply tune into WTJU to enjoy the community discussion as well as all of the radio station’s programming.