From telehealth networks to start-up incubators, state parks to downtown revitalization, the University of Virginia and UVA’s College at Wise are finding new ways to engage in university-based economic development in Southwest Virginia.

Since 2007, UVA and UVA-Wise have collaborated on a university-community-industry partnership known as the Appalachian Prosperity Project, or APP. Its mission is to advance health, education and economic prosperity in southwest Virginia. Focused efforts in telemedicine, public health, research, education and entrepreneurship apply the strengths and capabilities of UVA and UVA-Wise to the challenges of the region for maximum impact.

“APP’s progress is a testament to the power of intentional partnerships and a reminder that by working together we can effect meaningful change for citizens across Virginia,” said Pace Lochte, assistant vice president for economic development at UVA.

Shannon Blevins, associate vice chancellor for economic development and engagement at UVA-Wise, agreed. “Everything we do involves partnerships, and the partnership we have with our colleagues at UVA through the Appalachian Prosperity Project has been one of the most impactful,” she said. “Leveraging the expertise and resources of each of our institutions enables us to have a greater impact on some very complex challenges facing Southwest Virginia and rural Virginia overall.”

Although APP was launched relatively recently, UVA faculty and staff have been involved in the region for many years – in some cases, decades – working closely with colleagues at UVA-Wise:

• Dr. Karen Rheuban, a professor of pediatrics, senior associate dean at the School of Medicine and co-founder and director of the Karen S. RheubanCenter for Telehealth, has devoted a significant part of her career to building out a telehealth network that has yielded better health outcomes for patients, health professionals, hospital systems and communities in the region.

Over the past 20 years, the Center for Telehealth facilitated almost 100,000 patient encounters and 4,500 e-consults. More recently, the center is partnering with the Healthy Appalachia Institute at UVA-Wise to launch the Appalachian Telemental Health Network. The project will establish a behavioral/mental health network to the underserved Appalachian counties of Virginia via telehealth, connecting providers and patients to resources and behavioral/mental health services.

• Frank Dukes and other faculty from the School of Architecture’s Institute for Environmental Negotiation helped convene and facilitate civic conversations about promoting place-based economic development in far Southwest Virginia, leveraging natural assets through the Clinch River Valley Initiative. This community-led effort has produced results including the establishment of a linear state park along the Clinch River, downtown revitalization initiatives and tourism marketing campaigns.
• Sean Carr, executive director of the Batten Institute at the Darden School of Business, and Blevins are continuing to find ways to leverage UVA’s Top 10-ranked entrepreneurship programs to bring best practices to Southwest Virginia. UVA-Wise students participate in many of these programs at UVA, including competing for the Entrepreneurship Cup. These efforts helped build the foundation for the creation of “The Nest” at UVA-Wise, an incubator where students can bring their start-up ideas.

• UVA biology professor Michael Timko partnered with UVA-Wise assistant professor of biology Ryan Huish on a project aimed at creating varieties of industrial hemp suited for traditional tobacco-growing regions. The biologists planted test plots of industrial hemp on 10 acres of reclaimed surface-mined land in Wise. They are analyzing the impact of changing state regulations on the rapidly evolving industrial hemp industry.
• Joy Pugh, director of the Virginia College Advising Corps, and the UVA-Wise Office of Admissions continue to help first-generation college students matriculate to postsecondary education institutions, offering advising and mentorship to high school seniors in the region. Recent UVA-Wise graduates have served as college advisers in several high schools in Wise and Norton, increasing access to higher education.

As part of its mission, APP will hold a symposium at UVA Monday and Tuesday. “Profiles in Partnership” will showcase the work that is addressing today’s most pressing challenges through partnering to build capacity, build healthy communities and spur sustainable economic development, entrepreneurship and innovation.

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UVA College at Wise Chancellor Donna Price Henry will deliver the keynote address, where she will share more about the challenges and opportunities in Southwest Virginia. Faculty, students and staff from both schools will have an opportunity to discuss their interests together and gain an understanding of assets and resources available at both institutions.

“We are excited to provide a platform for UVA-Wise faculty to share some of their work with faculty here in Charlottesville,” Lochte said. “For example, the UVA-Wise Department of Natural Sciences is putting together an inventory of unique, natural assets that exist in Southwest Virginia, such as the Clinch River, the most bio-diverse of all rivers in the Northern Hemisphere. There is potential for meaningful collaborations yet to be discovered that could lead to research grant opportunities and new student experiences.”

To support further partnerships, APP is offering two $5,000 fellowships so that faculty from UVA and UVA-Wise can explore opportunities to address challenges facing Southwest Virginia.

“UVA faculty members are interested in issues facing rural areas, and particularly those in the commonwealth, but haven’t determined how to make connections in Southwest Virginia,” Lochte said. “This program, led by the provost offices at each school, is designed to drive better faculty engagement between UVA and UVA-Wise.”

The APP Symposium is supported by the University’s Bicentennial with funding from the UVA Alumni Board of Trustees. The Bicentennial’s sponsorship included support for travel expenses for partners attending from UVA-Wise.

The symposium will feature lightning-round presentations and interactive discussions during separate sessions focused on capacity-building, health and economic development.

The first session will explore the Virginia College Advising Corps, the UVA-Wise Emerging Leaders Program, the Friends of Appalachia student CIO and activities at the UVA Weldon Cooper Center. The second session will explore a broad array of health challenges and solutions, including treatment and continuum care around four priority areas in the region: black lung, opioid addiction, cancer and HIV/hepatitis C. The third session will explore the UVA-Wise natural asset inventory and Oxbow Field Station, the Clinch River Valley Initiative, industrial hemp, entrepreneurship and innovation opportunities through the state’s GO Virginia initiative and the UVA-Wise innovation ecosystem.

This event is free and open to the UVA and UVA-Wise communities. Registration is required.

“Attendees will learn about Appalachia as a precious resource and will spend the day exploring the realm of the possible,” Lochte said. “We hope to improve the quality of academic and social exchange between UVA, UVA-Wise and rural communities. APP is a great example of bridge-building for greater community, discovery and service, and aligns with President Ryan’s encouragement ‘to be both great and good.’”

Politics has been a part of James Roebuck’s life for as long as he can remember. Now a state representative in Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia native grew up in a politically active church, volunteered with the NAACP and served as student council president at his undergraduate institution, Virginia Union University in Richmond.

He saw no reason for that to change when he began pursuing his doctorate at the University of Virginia, concentrating on American history.

In fact, Roebuck’s political legacy only grew on Grounds. He served as president of the UVA Student Council during the 1969-70 academic year, becoming the first African American student elected to that role. He led students through a year of tumult and change, including the “May Days” Vietnam War protests that erupted after the Kent State shootings in May 1970, preparations for the University’s first fully coeducational entering class the following fall, and student demands including a living wage for University employees.

Despite these achievements, Roebuck was surprised to find that his presidency remained prominent in UVA lore 50 years later.

“I am surprised at the degree to which my election has become a marker point in UVA history, and that current students know about me or have studied me,” he said on a recent trip back to Grounds for a symposium focused on educational equity and community engagement, both at the University and beyond.

“That shocked me a bit, but I am pleased to know that I had an impact, that my time here produced a good result. That is very important to me.”

Roebuck was the keynote speaker at the symposium, called “Engagement From Experience: A Fifty Year Look.” It is part of a series of events around the University focused on educational equity and inclusion. 

“We need opportunities and spaces to address equity at UVA and in the country,” said associate professor of urban and environmental planning Suzanne Morse Moomaw, director of the Community Design Research Center, who organized the symposium.

“Dr. Roebuck’s visit and reflections provide a context and history for re-imaging our university, our role with the community and the work that must be done,” she said. ‘His experience on these issues is invaluable.”

We sat down with Roebuck when he returned to Grounds to hear more about his memories of UVA and his career since then.

A Historic Election

When Roebuck moved from Richmond to Charlottesville to pursue his Ph.D., he quickly got involved in UVA’s Student Council, eventually becoming vice president and then, in 1970, president.

He was aware of the historic nature of his election, but said he was more focused on how he could shape UVA’s future.

“I certainly thought about it, but I always say that I didn’t just want to be the first African American student in that role; I wanted to be the first of many,” he said. “There was not another African American president for 20 years after me, and that has always struck me as a big gap. I would have hoped there would have been someone much sooner.”

That thought struck a chord with Alex Cintron, the outgoing Student Council president and the first Latino student elected to his position.

“Dr. Roebuck was a reminder that I was not the first ‘first,’ and that was helpful,” said the fourth-year student, who met Roebuck on Grounds and studied him in a course.

Citing student efforts like the Latinx Leadership Institute and the Our University to Shape proposal produced by the Latinx Student Alliance, Cintron said he was “hopeful that there will be another Latinx Student Council president and that more Latinx students will feel empowered after this year to pursue any leadership position.”

“Dr. Roebuck was a reminder that things get better for marginalized communities,” he said.

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At the time, Roebuck said he experienced little backlash to his election on Grounds. He did, however, remember the lingering effects of Jim Crow laws throughout the South, especially when he traveled.

Speaking at the symposium in March, he recalled a trip to an NAACP state convention in Petersburg, when a group of five friends – four black men and one white man – went to get dinner. When they sat down, the waitress brought four glasses of water, four menus and four sets of silverware.

“We told her there were five of us, and she just looked at us and said, ‘President Johnson makes us serve you, but we won’t serve him,’” referring to the white man in the group, who she did not think should be sitting with black men.

“We got up and walked out, and eventually found an alternative restaurant,” Roebuck said. That restaurant seated all five men in the “colored” area in the back of the restaurant.

“All of those vestiges of segregation were still very much in evidence,” Roebuck said.

May Days

As president, Roebuck presided over the usual concerns of Student Council and handled the variety of events and issues that come up at a large university

One series of events, however, stood above the rest. During the first week of May 1970 –after members of the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four student protestors at Kent State University – hundreds of students protested at UVA, marching on the Lawn and Carr’s Hill and at points blocking traffic on U.S. 250 and U.S. 29. Nationally, many more universities faced strikes and protests from students and faculty members. Some were forced to temporarily close in the face of protests and violence.

“The Kent State shooting was the spark that lit the fire, just the shock of having that happen on a college campus,” Roebuck said.

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At UVA, that issue became entwined with a host of other student concerns, ranging from the ongoing Vietnam War to student demands for improved recruitment of African American students and full coeducation on Grounds.

“All of these issues became patched together in this protest that had a momentum of its own,” he said.

Throughout the tumultuous week, Roebuck served as a go-between for students and the office of President Edgar F. Shannon Jr. and the UVA administration. He worked to keep things peaceful and productive – and to keep the University open – while also fighting for what students were demanding.

“We tried very hard to avoid any violence and maintain a degree of decorum,” he said.

The protestors were largely peaceful, although eventually State Police were called in to address blocked traffic. Officers swept from University Avenue across Grounds and made several arrests. After that, Roebuck said, Shannon realized more had to be done to calm the situation.

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The UVA president delivered an address to thousands on the Lawn the next day, acknowledging student demands, suggesting areas of action and putting together an anti-war delegation to Washington, which included Roebuck.

“The president did a good job of defusing anger after police were called in and responding to student complaints,” Roebuck said. “We were able to take some of those petitions and concerns to Washington as well.”

The whole episode, Roebuck said, was very much a departure from the norm and an inflection point for student activism at the University.

“It was very different from what UVA had been; the University had never quite responded to social action in that way,” he said.

Co-Education

Roebuck’s presidency marked another important transition in the history of the University: in the fall of 1970, right after his term concluded, UVA became fully co-educational, thanks to a lawsuit brought by prospective students Jo Anne Kirstein, Virginia Scott, Nancy Anderson and Nancy Jaffe and local attorney and UVA alumnus John Lowe. 

It was, Roebuck said, a long-awaited and needed move that nonetheless did not go over well with some.

“I honestly believe there were men at UVA in 1970 who would have been happy to admit black men to UVA, but did not want to admit women,” he said. “They wanted to keep it a men’s university.”

For Roebuck, it was an easy decision.

“I cannot conceive of a state university being single-sex,” he said.

Along with other students, both male and female, Roebuck worked to bring women into the daily life of the University. Visiting Grounds this spring, he said he loved seeing how those and other efforts paid off for the students he met.

“I think we have successfully integrated women into UVA,” he said. “In general, I was struck by how very bright today’s students are, very well-engaged, concerned about civic events and the ways they can make society better. There is a stronger African American presence here, a stronger Latino presence and just a much more diverse population of students. That’s great.”

More Work to Be Done

There is also, he said, much work yet to be done at UVA.

Addressing students, faculty, staff and community members at the March symposium on education, equity and community engagement, Roebuck highlighted ongoing concerns, including race relations locally and nationally and workers’ rights at UVA. (The University announced a $15 living wage for full-time, benefits-eligible employees in March, and is still working on a plan to extend a similar raise to those employed by contractors.)

“I am surprised to find that the demands, many of which we made 50 years ago, for the rights of workers at a state university are still on the table, still being resolved,” he said. “There is still work to be done.”

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Roebuck works on similar issues as a Democratic state legislator in Pennsylvania. He is the minority chair of the House’s education committee, and also serves on committees and caucuses for hunger, LGBT equality, women’s health, arts and culture, biotechnology and diabetes, among other issues.

“I like to help people,” he said simply. “I am passionate about education, I am a strong environmentalist, and right now I am also focused on unjust incarceration, working on a bill to get crimes expunged from the records of those who have been proven innocent.”

He had some words of wisdom for students hoping to follow in his footsteps, at UVA and beyond.

“If you believe in something, you fight for it,” he said. “Your job is to fight in a way that you broaden your base of support and build a majority. I focus on things I believe in and that are important to bring about change, and that is what I think every student ought to do.”

The “Engagement From Experience: A Fifty Year Look” symposium was sponsored by the Office of the President, the UVA Bicentennial Commission, UVA Student Council, the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, Office of the Vice President and Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity, the School of Architecture, the Community Design Research Center and the Cavalier Daily.

Last summer, Adriana Giorgis and two of her University of Virginia classmates piled into a car and drove between 35 coastal villas dotted along the coast of Tuscany.

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It sounds like a dream roadtrip, and in many ways it was. But it was the dream of an academic and architectural historian, not a tourist. And the villas weren’t just any villas; they were first-century Roman ruins, many of them in extreme disrepair.

Giorgis, who grew up in Rome and Milan, has been visiting the area and observing the villas since she was a child – captivated by their beauty, but also troubled by the degradation, looting and deterioration that took away from them.

Now, those villas are the focus of her two-year thesis project and a key part of the two degrees the fourth-year student will earn this weekend, one in architecture and one through a Distinguished Major Program in interdisciplinary studies, combining arts administration, historic preservation and art and architectural history.

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“It turned into this two-year-long thesis,” she said, gesturing to the thick, newly printed booklets stacked on the table in front of her. “It’s a bit rare to have such an extensive project, and it has been very special.”

Giorgis’ work focuses on the ruins of one villa in particular, the first-century home of bankers working for the Roman emperor Nero. It was likely their third home, used mostly for entertaining.

“In Roman times, wealthy families had a dwelling in the city, a countryside home that sustained them financially and, if they were very wealthy, another villa on the ocean, like this one,” Giorgis said.

The owners were very wealthy and politically connected, she said, but were more peripheral characters in Roman politics, rather than primary actors. “Their names come up in primary sources, but not necessarily in active ways.”

In addition to researching the history of the site, Giorgis used modern technology to develop a plan for its preservation. Over the summer, she and her two classmates – Alison Amos and Michael Tucker – used drone photography to capture multiple views of the ruins and laser scanners to carefully build a 3-D digital reconstruction that will accurately preserve them in the digital world, even as they continue to deteriorate in the real one.

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“I wanted to save it exactly as it is right now for future generations,” she said. “It is inevitable that things will be looted and will deteriorate, so the question becomes how you deal with that.”

Indeed, the Italian government recently erected a fence on the site to deter would-be looters. Giorgis’ thesis proposes other interventions she believes would be helpful, including building a small museum on the site to explain more about its history and combining other ruins on the island – there are dozens – into one itinerary and ticket.

“I propose that the government view these sites as one cultural landscape, in which they can invest resources,” she said. A general itinerary and general ticket covering all of the villa ruins on the island could promote tourism and also encourage visitors to learn about the history and culture of seaside villas in the Roman empire, she said.

“I think part of the significance of Adriana’s research is studying one site in depth, while also placing it in context as part of a larger cultural landscape, by looking at villas up and down the coast,” said Andrew Johnston, director of UVA’s program in historic preservation and Giorgis’ adviser. “That context is so valuable, and she has done an extraordinary amount of work to position herself to make contact with government agencies and make recommendations, backed up by extensive documentation.”

It was also, Johnston points out, quite a logistical undertaking. Giorgis did a lot of behind-the-scenes work applying for grants and securing funding, reaching out to faculty members and government agencies and recruiting classmates to her project.

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“Adriana is extremely self-motivated and she was ready and willing to meet the people, make the phone calls and do the work that would make all of this happen,” he said. “She pulled together quite a community to support this research.”

Her double major, combining architecture with an interdisciplinary course of study she created herself to encompass arts administration – focused on the management of arts businesses – historic preservation and art history, offered a valuable combination of skills.

“The double-major option really allowed Adriana to shape her own studies, and to make her project what it was,” Johnston said. “For students willing to take on the work, that flexibility has great value and I am glad that UVA supports it.”

When she wasn’t researching Italian villas, Giorgis spent a lot of time researching a very different, but equally intriguing landscape: the Arctic.

Giorgis was a research assistant for assistant professor Matthew Jull, who co-directs the Arctic Design Group with fellow faculty member Leena Cho, looking at the challenges and possibilities of designing for a harsh, rapidly changing environment that could see more development in the coming decades.

Giorgis helped Jull build an interactive installation, “Arctic Portals,” that is now on display in an Anchorage, Alaska museum, teaching visitors about various aspects of the Arctic environment.

Such work consumes a lot of time, and Giorgis said that her architecture classmates have become some of her closest friends at UVA.

“We spend a lot of mornings and late nights here, and it creates a tight bond,” she said. Fellow European students also served as a sort of “family” when she first came to UVA from a boarding school in England. It was a big, but ultimately rewarding transition.

“The States is a cultural shock in so many ways,” she said. “From the outside, you think of the different states as very similar, but then you dive in and realize just how different everything is.”

Four years later, she feels more comfortable in her adopted culture and plans to stay for at least a few more years, using the remaining year of her visa to work in New York City and then returning to graduate school.

“I have learned a lot,” she said. “The other day, I was laughing at a movie and realized that, even a year ago, I might not have gotten the jokes.”

Third-year University of Virginia architecture student Taylor Thompson is spending his summer working with Habitat for Humanity’s Government Relations and Advocacy Office in Washington, D.C., thanks to a grant from UVA’s Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center.

The Beth Garrett Memorial Grant provides $2,000 to a student who has the opportunity to serve as an unpaid intern in the field of public policy.

“This grant is making this all possible, and there are not sufficient words to express my gratitude,” Thompson said.

His duties include preparing project examples and stories of Habitat for Humanity homeowners for federal officials considering funding for the organization, and creating templates for other advocacy efforts at the state and local level.

“We want lawmakers to have faces to put to the numbers, so that they understand the real lives they are affecting through the dollars they are advocating,” Thompson said. 

It’s a topic the UVA student is very familiar with and passionate about. Thompson has served with Habitat since the age of 16, when he raised $85,000 and volunteered to build a Habitat home in his mom's memory. Maureen Thompson, an architect who inspired her son to pursue the same field, died in 2014 after an 11-year battle with breast cancer. 

Throughout his teens, Thompson’s involvement with Habitat and with the discipline of architecture grew deeper and deeper. His work with Habitat to date has included volunteering on home sites in the Austin, Texas, area where he grew up; a Habitat Global Village Build trip to build homes in Thailand; and three Carter Work Projects, special weeklong Habitat for Humanity builds led by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

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Thompson also participated in a University of Texas summer program in architecture for high school students before enrolling in UVA’s School of Architecture, where he has brought a new level of energy to the University’s student Habitat chapter. 

His dedication to Habitat has given him the opportunity to see firsthand the work of professional leaders at all levels of the organization, including spending time on Capitol Hill with Dan Rosensweig, CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville, during Habitat’s annual advocacy conference, and meeting Habitat CEO Jonathan Reckford at a Carter Work Project in Memphis, Tennessee. 

According to Thompson, his summer internship offers a chance to become better-versed in the relationship that exists between design and public policy, as a way to address affordable housing domestically and internationally.

“Serving in this role over the summer will provide me with the opportunity to understand the complexities and interactions of federal, state and local governments by attending the upcoming House [of Representatives] budget meetings, interacting with different offices’ legislative assistants and researching recent advocacy successes within the ministry after the launch of ‘Cost of Home,’ [Habitat for Humanity International’s] national advocacy campaign,” Thompson wrote in applying for the Garrett grant.

Advocacy is a bit outside of his comfort zone as well, as he is not working directly on architecture projects. but rather on the government policies that affect those projects.

“That was probably the hardest thing the first few weeks. There was just a big learning curve,” he said. “It has been really interesting to see a different side of Habitat that I had never really understood before.”

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With support from the School of Law, the Women’s Center established the Garrett grant last year to honor UVA’s 2016 Distinguished Alumna, Beth Garrett. A 1988 alumna of the School of Law, Garrett built a successful career in public policy and service and was serving as the president of Cornell University when she was selected for the alumna award. Sadly, she died of colon cancer before the award could be formally bestowed. She was 52.

The inaugural Beth Garrett Memorial Internship Grant went to alumnus Shaun Khurana, who interned with Equality Virginia in 2018. He graduated from UVA’s College of Arts & Sciences with a philosophy major and is currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration degree at the John Glenn School of Public Policy at The Ohio State University. 

Four biomedical research projects to improve the health of Virginians will be funded by the integrated Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia, or iTHRIV, a Clinical Translational Science Award Hub.

“iTHRIV is excited to partner with the National Institutes of Health in supporting our community nonprofit and governmental organizations, who are collaborating with academic researchers to address important health needs across Virginia,” said iTHRIV Director Karen Johnston, the University of Virginia’s associate vice president for clinical and translational research. “It is our hope that these pilot grant projects will benefit underserved communities and improve research partnerships.”

The projects address autism spectrum disorder, improved access to colorectal cancer screening, postpartum depression, and the benefits of walking in cities. Community organizations will be involved in the efforts, working with teams of physicians and researchers from UVA and Virginia Tech.

“Our unique approach to community engagement through regional iTHRIV advisory boards in Northern, Central and Southwest/Southside Virginia ensures that we foster collaborative research among community, clinical and academic organizations and institutions to serve diverse communities across the majority of the commonwealth,” said associate professor Kathy Hosig, director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Public Health Practice and Research. “The opportunity to involve our community partners in research that is a priority for them is extremely rewarding.”

The four teams will be awarded a total of $80,000 in funding. 

Improving Access to Care for Autism Spectrum Disorder in Rural Southwest Virginia

Parents and their children affected by autism spectrum disorder in rural communities often have difficulty accessing care. The iTHRIV seed grant funding will address barriers to accessing specialty services in Southwest Virginia, including diagnostic assessments and case management.

A partnership between K.J. Holbrook from the Mount Rogers Community Services Board and Angela Scarpa, a professor of psychology at Virginia Tech, will provide information on the best ways to provide education and support for underserved communities about autism spectrum disorder care.

The Impact of Urban Walking on Public Health

A 2017 Community Health Assessment undertaken in Richmond found a need to improve city-wide physical activity by increasing walking. It is important to understand the optimal conditions for these walks, taking into account the benefits of some spaces over others on personal outcomes such as mood and cognition and environmental outcomes such as air quality and temperature.

Led by Jeremy Hoffman from the Science Museum of Virginia; Jenny Roe, director of UVA’s Center for Design and Health; Chris Neale from UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy; and Julia Gohlke, an associate professor of population health sciences at Virginia Tech, this research will help address the issue of understanding the benefits of walking in cities.

Improving Effectiveness of Colorectal Cancer Screening Through a Community Health Center Partnership

Rural and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups have lower colorectal cancer screening rates and higher mortality rates. Community health centers are ideal organizations to improve colorectal cancer screening for these groups. This research, led by Michelle Brauns from the Community Health Center of the New River Valley and Jamie Zoellner from UVA’s Department of Public Health Sciences, seeks to develop sustainable cancer prevention and detection programs in the New River Valley and test a scalable, low-cost colorectal cancer screening intervention.

Addressing Postpartum Depression and Other Mood and Anxiety Disorders in Childbearing Women in Charlottesville

Postpartum depression and other perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are the most common complications of pregnancy and childbirth, affecting one in five mothers. At least 700 women in the greater Charlottesville area will experience perinatal mood and anxiety disorders each year, affecting an additional 2,400 family members. Untreated perinatal mood and anxiety disorders can have long-term impact on the mother, baby and society.

The project team, led by Adrienne Griffen from Postpartum Support Virginia and Sharon Veith from UVA’s School of Nursing, seeks to educate local stakeholders about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, establish additional resources for recovery and ensure that all childbearing women are educated about, screened for and receive treatment for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders from conception through one year after giving birth.

About iTHRIV

iTHRIV is a cross-state translational research institute supported by a five-year, $23 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Partnering institutions include Virginia Tech, Carilion Clinic, the University of Virginia and Inova Health System. The mission of the iTHRIV partnership and the national Clinical Translational Science Award programs is to promote interdisciplinary research that translates basic research findings into clinical applications, clinical research into community practice, and improves the process of research. A major goal of iTHRIV is to implement research that will benefit underserved populations.

This content was supported in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award No. UL1TR003015.

A community of more than 100 faculty from eight schools at the University of Virginia – the College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Engineering, the School of Medicine, the School of Law, the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, the School of Architecture, the McIntire School of Commerce and the forthcoming School of Data Science – have initiated new and growing collaborations in an emerging field of science and technology: synthetic biology, or “synbio” for short.

Synthetic biology – the engineering of new and better materials from cells for a range of uses, from medicines to agriculture – is an area of growing strength at UVA. The goal of the community (visit SynBio@UVA) is to deliver better health, security and products to society through ethical research and innovation. Recently the group organized and hosted a Mid-Atlantic Synthetic Biology Symposium that brought researchers to UVA from universities, government and industry organizations throughout the region.

Two leaders in the collaboration, Keith Kozminski, a professor of biology and cell biology, and Mark Kester, a professor of pharmacology, molecular physiology and biomedical engineering, explain.

Q. Please give us a few examples of synthetic biology in use in our world today.

Kozminski: I think it is important for people to know in general terms what synthetic biology is.

Biologists have traditionally asked the question, “How does an organism or cell work?” A synthetic biologist turns the question 180 degrees and asks the question, “How can I get a cell to work for me?” In other words, how can we use cells, or the products they produce, as building materials, medicines, sensors, storage and computing devices, recyclers, or fuel sources?

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Most often this requires redesigning cells utilizing the principles of engineering and the talents of biologists, chemists, computational modelers, as well as computer and data scientists, along with experts in the field to which the biological device will be applied – such as physicians, if the application is medicinal.

Synthetic biology is used in many fields, from medicine to agriculture to computer science to civil engineering. As an example, before synthetic biology, the anti-malarial drug artemisinin could only be isolated from a specific plant. With synthetic biology, this drug can now be produced rapidly, on demand, in biopharmaceutical facilities using yeast, the kind we find in many common food products.

Another example of synbio in use is self-healing concrete, in which microbes within the concrete seal micro-fractures, improving infrastructure durability and safety while reducing costs in the long term.

Q. What is UVA doing, through synbio, in research and development?

Kester: Thematically speaking, synbio research at UVA is centered around four research themes: living architecture (using cells as building material), microbes for health and defense (cells acting as delivery vehicles and sensors), synthetic phyto-solutions (using plants as molecular factories), and bio-focused technologies (technologies that enable synbio).

In more tangible terms, this research includes, for example, chemical engineering professor Bryan Berger using microbes to create unique inorganic materials such as high-efficiency quantum dots for use in electronics; biology professor Michael Timko using plants to produce immunity-supportive molecules needed for the production of synthetic breast milk; pediatrics professor Dr. Steven Zeichner re-engineering bacteria to optimize vaccines; and chemistry professor Linda Columbus, microbiology and immunology professor Alison Criss and colleagues in the Global Infectious Disease Institute using microbes as delivery vehicles for therapeutics against infectious diseases.

I also have to mention our exceptional science and engineering undergraduates, who, in our iGEM (international Genetically-Engineered Machines) program, compete annually as a team in an international synthetic biology innovation competition.

Specifically as it relates to entrepreneurial undergrads, I would like to highlight two innovative former biomedical engineering students, Ameer Shakeel and Payam Pothiheri, who took an iGEM-inspired synthetic biology idea and turned it into a successful company, employing seven people in Charlottesville. The company, Agrospheres, engineers bacteria as agricultural bio-controls for the green economy [safely degrading pesticides, for example]. Their revolutionary synbio concept has won multiple national competitions, including the eCUP in Charlottesville; the ACC challenge; and the Collegiate Inventors Competition, sponsored by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

It is impossible to mention all of the innovative synthetic biology projects at UVA, but; I encourage people to visit the SynBio@UVA website to find out more.

Q. Are there any ethical concerns regarding the use of synthetic biology?

Kozminski: The use of any research, especially in the form of new technologies, has an ethical dimension. Ethical concerns are particularly acute with respect to synthetic biology.

This is a relatively young and rapidly moving field of research that both uses and generates disruptive technologies that can transform society. Thinking of the start of the information age, with the invention of computers, we can now see how many ethical, safety and privacy issues can arise with the advent of new, disruptive technologies.

This experience, as well as human subject research in the 20th century that lacked an ethical framework, primed people – in a positive way – to think about the ethics of research, with respect to its goals and how it is conducted.

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What is discussed less are the deliverables of synthetic biology. Here we must ask the questions, “Who will benefit from this new technology, either by using the technology or by providing the means to manifest it?” and “Who will be participating in the decision-making process?”

All of these ethical concerns are not necessarily unique to the use of synthetic biology; however, the futuristic aura of synthetic biology illuminates these concerns.

The good news is that the synthetic biology research community, at least every synthetic biologist that comes to mind – definitely those at UVA – is strongly and proactively committed to ethical research. From what I have observed, ethics in this field is not a dressing applied post-project for public relations. Ethics have been part of synthetic biology research from its earliest days and it is something that we drill into our students at UVA. On Grounds, we call it “LEaP”: law, ethics and policy. We are not playing catch-up as a field or as a university.

Kester: The same goes for government. Although the law often trails technological development, governments have had at least the initial ethical debates to develop frameworks for the development and use of synthetic biology.

Two outstanding examples are the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues report in 2010, and the various addenda to the international Convention on Biological Diversity. What needs to be recognized is that the field of synthetic biology, and many societies that use synthetic biology, are not marching toward the 22^nd century ethically blind; we follow a core set of bioethical principles.

Certainly however, as technology emerges, ethics will need to be addressed further. It is in this arena that UVA can emerge as a leader, because juxtaposed to its natural science, data science and engineering disciplines is a tradition of expertise in ethics, social science, law and public policy.

Q. Imagine for us the future, near-term and longer-term, and how synthetic biology will change lives for the better.

Kozminski: Synthetic biology will bring us better health, better security and better products.

In some cases, “better” means completely novel tools, making science fiction become reality. In other cases, “better” means improved beyond the current state-of-art, with respect to cost, accessibility, safety, ease of production, green-ness or efficacy. As the 21^st century progresses, biology will be integrated into our daily routines and built environments much like digital devices are now. As with any technology, improvement of our lives will depend upon judicious use.

UVA is leading the way for synbio research, education and workforce development; we coordinated this past June the first Mid-Atlantic Synthetic Biology Conference, featuring innovative research and technologies from Maryland down to Georgia.

Q. What drew you to this field?

Kozminski: I saw the future and I wanted to be part of it. The field demands interdisciplinary collaboration among technical experts in the natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, medicine and data science, and non-technical experts in law, ethics, policy and social science. I found that exciting personally, both from a research and teaching perspective.

I also saw how much UVA had, or could aspire to, distinguish itself as a national or global leader in this field. This is important because it is clear that many European universities are committed to capitalizing on synthetic biology directly, or using it as a vehicle to modernize STEM curricula.

Kester: Like many scientists or engineers utilizing synthetic biology “solutions,” I am not a trained synthetic biologist. In fact, I am a lipid biochemist who develops nontoxic drug delivery vehicles that are being tested in FDA-approved clinical trials as cancer treatments.

I realized several years ago that synthetic biology can be utilized or exploited to create nanoscale particles for targeted drug delivery. This vision culminated in companies like Agrospheres, as well as in projects that investigate bacterial delivery systems for chemotherapeutics and accelerated vaccine development.

On Tuesday, the National Building Museum awarded University of Virginia landscape architecture professor Elizabeth K. Meyer its prestigious Vincent Scully Prize, honoring her contributions in both practice and education.

Meyer, the Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture and founding director of UVA’s Center for Cultural Landscapes, has assisted with the research, interpretation, planning and design of major projects and historic sites both close to home (UVA’s Academical Village) and around the U.S., including Bryant Park in New York City, the Gateway Arch grounds in St. Louis and the Wellesley College campus outside of Boston.

She worked on former first lady Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden, leading a team of UVA faculty and students who planned and designed renovations in 2016, and has shaped important landscapes in the nation’s capital through her service on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012.

The commission advises the government on designs for landmarks, memorials, public buildings and landscapes in Washington, D.C. Among many other projects, Meyer and her fellow commissioners reviewed architecture and landscape designs for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, which Meyer called “the most rewarding project” of her four years on the commission.

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, chair of the jury that selected the prize, said Meyer “embodies the very spirit of Vincent Scully as a master lecturer who inspired generations of practitioners. … Integrating research and writing with professional, administrative and civic responsibilities, Meyer has produced an influential body of theory, interpretation and criticism, on landscape topics related to aesthetics, sustainability, culture and social impact.”

Scully, a professor emeritus at Yale University, received one of UVA’s highest external honors, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, in 1982. Meyer, who said she was surprised and delighted by the award, notes that he was particularly known for teaching students in both architecture and other disciplines, something she hopes to continue doing at UVA.

“I love my architecture students, but I have also really enjoyed working with students outside of the Architecture School who are interested in the built environment and want those immersive experiences,” she said.  

This fall, Meyer will teach a Pavilion seminar on Central Park and use funding from the Jefferson Trust to take students to New York City over fall break, where they will meet with leaders of the Central Park Conservancy, talk with the people who have made the park what it is, and experience America’s most famous park firsthand.

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“Students love the combination of immersive learning on the site with archival work at UVA’s Special Collections Library – where we have an amazing collection of landscape history material – and the reading and writing of a seminar,” Meyer said. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

University Executive Vice President and Provost Liz Magill praised Meyer’s work at UVA and beyond.

“Beth’s contributions to architecture, the University, and to significant memorials and landscapes throughout the United States are a testament to her talent and vision,” she said. “This prestigious honor is well-deserved, and clearly demonstrates how Beth’s career embodies the University’s emphasis on serving the public good through research, teaching and creative expression.”

A longtime UVA professor, Meyer earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in landscape architecture from the University and previously served as the School of Architecture’s dean. In addition to her ongoing work in the classroom and the field, she is writing a book, “The Margins of Modernity: Practices of Modern Landscape Architecture.”

She will accept the Vincent Scully Prize Oct. 30 during a public program at the National Building Museum in Washington, where she will discuss contemporary topics in landscape architecture and public space design with Thaisa Way. Way, program director of garden and landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Center and a professor at the University of Washington, is also a UVA alumna.

Noting that students who attend the public colleges and universities on its “America’s Top Colleges” list, released in August, spend nearly $30,000 less annually than those who attend private institutions, Forbes magazine issued a separate ranking of public universities.

The University of Virginia ranked No. 5, behind the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the U.S. Naval Academy; and the U.S. Military Academy.

Forbes wrote: “Although public colleges do not dominate the Forbes America’s Top Colleges List – only a quarter of schools in the top 100 are public and less than half of the overall list is made of public institutions – public schools provide some of the most accessible and high-quality education in the country.”

In its individual profile of UVA, Forbes noted the University’s placement in several of the magazine’s other lists, including No. 33 among top colleges overall, No. 24 among research universities, No. 4 in the South, No. 31 in best-value colleges, No. 100 in best employers, No. 54 for best employers for diversity, and inclusion in the unranked list of best employers by state.

Rounding out the top 10 publics were the University of California, Los Angeles; the U.S. Air Force Academy; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the College of William & Mary; and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

Black Faculty and Staff Group Awards Inspirational Leaders

UVA’s Black Faculty & Staff Employee Resource Group gave its top faculty and staff awards to Elgin Cleckley and NyShae’ Carter, respectively.

Cleckley, assistant professor of architecture and design thinking, won the group’s Armstead Robinson Faculty Award, given to a current faculty member who has “achieved a sustainable impact on the Black experience at the University of Virginia, actively and enthusiastically seeks to bring greater diversity to the University community [and] demonstrates a commitment to mentoring and advising students and colleagues,” according to the award’s criteria.

Cleckley arrived at UVA less than a year before August 2017’s violent “Unite the Right” white supremacist rallies, part of a cluster of faculty to teach in the schools of Architecture, Nursing and the Curry School of Education and Human Development. He wasted no time becoming involved with the University and Charlottesville communities.

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As “one of the strongest voices for inclusion, diversity and equity at the School of Architecture,” according to Dean Ila Berman, Cleckley chairs the school’s Equity + Inclusion Committee, advises the school’s chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students and is leading a racial equity assessment of the Architecture School with the Racial Equity Institute.

He has worked with UVA’s Meriwether Lewis Leadership program, and lectures in design thinking to nursing and Curry students. Students give rave reviews to his inspirational teaching.

“Elgin has introduced many students and teachers at UVA and in community schools to the concept of design thinking, a methodology for people-centered problem-solving, a creative process to solve problems through empathy,” wrote former School of Nursing Dean Dorrie K. Fontaine, one of his nominators. “He has taken this approach to addressing some of our community’s thorniest challenges, including race relations on Grounds and in the community.”

He has been involved with the New Vinegar Hill Project, seeking to build bridges between the community and University, with a project that “provided high school and University students with opportunities to reach out to community members, and to listen to ideas for development of a vibrant and economically thriving mixed-income neighborhood,” Fontaine wrote.

Cleckley also won Jefferson Trust funding for a course that seeks to reinterpret James Monroe’s Highland plantation within the contest of race and class.

Carter, administrative assistant for CFO and programs at the Center for Politics, won the Lincoln Lewis Staff Award, given to a current staff member who “actively and enthusiastically seeks to promote greater diversity to the UVA community [and] demonstrates a record of promoting forward thinking and new ideas.”

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As chair of the Black Faculty & Staff Employee Resource Group’s communications committee, Carter revamped the organization’s communications platforms, “creat[ing] four social media channels, a newsletter, business cards, brochures, thank-you notes and two updated websites within a matter of months,” according to one nominator.

She is also a member of the Staff Senate, and outside the University, serves as president of the board of directors for Piedmont House, a local nonprofit organization that provides services to men who have recently been released from incarceration and want to better their lives.

“NyShae’ is incredibly focused and innovation,” wrote another nominator. “Her service to our community is inspiring and our group has the potential for greatness with NyShae’ helping to lead the charge.”

UVA-Led Consortium on Legacy of Slavery Receives Recognition

The Society of American Archivists Council recently honored Universities Studying Slavery, a consortium that UVA’s President’s Commission on Slavery and the University established in 2015, for the group’s “important work in providing a forum for academic institutions to critically examine their histories.” 

Universities Studying Slavery first focused on Virginia colleges and universities, in order to promote cross-institutional collaboration on research and other efforts to address slavery in academic history. But after about a year, those involved realized there was wider interest; the organization now comprises 56 universities and colleges, including two in Canada and five in Europe, with more in the process of joining.

The mission shared by all members is dedicated to “truth-telling, meaningful community engagement, and implementing reparative justice initiatives,” Ashley Schmidt wrote recently. Schmidt serves as an academic program officer for UVA’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation, which is taking up where the previous commission on slavery leaves off.

Members of the consortium meet regularly; they convened at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg in the spring, and this October, the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University will co-host the next conference.

The Society of American Archivists Council presented a resolution at its national meeting in Austin earlier this month, where Schmidt received the award. The council noted that the Universities Studying Slavery consortium “serves as a vital hub for participating institutions to work together as they address both historical and contemporary issues dealing with race and inequality in higher education and in university communities, as well as the complicated legacies of slavery in modern American society.”

Time Magazine Honors ‘BackStory’ History Podcast

TIME magazine named “BackStory,” a history podcast, produced by Virginia Humanities, one of 17 “Best History Podcasts to Listen to Right Now” in a July 31 article.

The podcast – which originated more than a decade ago as a syndicated public radio program featuring current and former UVA historians – offers historical perspectives on current events. A recent edition focuses on the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of the first African slaves in Virginia.

TIME wrote: “Plenty of history podcasts are made by curious, diligent lay-people. This one comes directly from academics, which means it’s especially accurate, thorough and reliable. But don’t mistake academic for tedious – it’s also entertaining. U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh, Nathan Connolly and Joanne Freeman of Virginia Humanities endeavor to look at today’s headlines through the lens of American history. They assure their listeners that these are the stories they ‘want to learn,’ not the ones they ‘had to learn’ in history class.”

Energy Department Recognizes University for Progress Toward Energy Goals

The U.S. Department of Energy recognized UVA’s Clark Hall refitting as part of its Better Buildings Challenge program, which highlights “leading businesses, manufacturers, cities, states, universities, and school districts, [that] commit to improving the energy efficiency of their portfolio of buildings by at least 20% over 10 years and share their strategies and results.”

Department of Energy representatives toured Clark Hall to review the building’s energy and water upgrades. The Division of Facilities Management’s “Delta Force” team implemented a combination of energy and water conservation upgrades, converting all 5,000 interior and exterior fixtures from fluorescent lamps to LED, installing low-flow toilets and faucet aerators, recalibrating air handling units, and upgrading HVAC controls.

As a result, Clark Hall achieved an annual energy savings of $750,000, or 65%, along with an annual water savings of $22,000, or 79%, relative to their pre-retrofit baseline.

Clark Hall is a mixed-use academic building that opened in 1932 to house the UVA School of Law, and currently houses the University’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Charles L. Brown Science & Engineering Library. It is home to classrooms, office space, a library, a café, laboratories, exhibits, lecture halls and a “wet lab.”

Law Weekly Three-Peats as Best Law-School Newspaper

The American Bar Association’s Law Student Division recently named the Virginia Law Weekly at the School of Law as the “Best Newspaper” in its annual Law Student Division Awards – the third straight year the paper has earned the recognition.

The Virginia Law Weekly has published weekly during the academic year – usually 12 times per semester – since 1948. It distributed between 325 and 350 copies for free each week. Its 32-member, all-volunteer staff research, report, photograph, write, edit and produce each issue.

In the 2018-19 academic year, the staff covered Sixth Circuit Judge Amul Thapar’s visit to UVA and was cited by SCOTUSblog in its profile. It ran stories on the school’s changes to the student printing policy and changes to the membership policies of the Virginia Law Review.

The Law Weekly also reported on visits by retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Judge Carlton Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi and U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

The winners were recognized Aug. 10 at the ABA’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Mathematician Earns NSF Early Career Award

The National Science Foundation has awarded Sara Maloni, an assistant professor of mathematics, with an Early Career Development award. The five-year, $450,000 CAREER award is “the highest distinction that the NSF can provide to junior researchers in the mathematical sciences,” according to the organization’s website.

This is an honor awarded to only three early-career scientists in topology this year and about 40 scientists in the mathematical sciences.

From the grant’s abstract: “In his Erlanger program of 1872, Felix Klein defined geometry to be the study of properties of a space which are invariant under its group of symmetries. It was Charles Ehresmann in 1935 who started the study of deformation spaces of geometric structures, asking which ‘shapes’ can be ‘locally modeled’ on a certain geometry. In 1982 William Thurston’s Geometrization Conjecture, now a theorem, thanks to Grigori Perelman, renewed the interest in locally homogeneous spaces, that is spaces that look the same at each point. [Maloni] proposes to study families of structures on manifolds and how they change when one perturbs them, focusing in particular on geometric and dynamical aspects.”

The grant also funds future collaborations with, and outreaches to, undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs and fellow early-career mathematicians.

Professional Society Recognizes Pathologist Among ‘40 Under Forty’

Dr. Joseph Wiencek, assistant professor of pathology and associate director of clinical chemistry at the UVA Health System, has been named to the 2019 ASCP “40 Under Forty” list of “high-achieving pathologists, pathology residents and medical laboratory professionals under age 40 … who have made significant contributions to the profession and stand out as the future of laboratory leadership.”

The 40 honorees received discounted registration to the ASCP 2019 Annual Meeting in Phoenix and complimentary enrollment in the essential Lab Management University Core Competencies package, part of a collaborative educational initiative of ASCP and the American Pathology Foundation.

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Applicants submitted a résumé and answered questions about how they are functioning as an innovator in health care, or how they are contributing to leading innovations within the profession. A committee of ASCP pathologists, laboratory professional and resident members, including three 2018 40 Under Forty honorees, evaluated candidates based on their accomplishments, experience, leadership skills and dedication to innovation in the field of laboratory medicine and pathology.

Wiencek earned his B.A. in chemistry from The Ohio State University in 2008 and his Ph.D. in clinical/bioanalytical chemistry from Cleveland State University in 2015. During his doctoral work, he completed a two-year internship in the Clinical Biochemistry Laboratory at the Cleveland Clinic’s Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute in 2015.

Wiencek then went on to complete his postdoctoral training in clinical chemistry at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, in 2017. His research interests include preanalytical variation in laboratory testing, diagnostic stewardship and medical education.

Founded in 1922 in Chicago, ASCP is the world’s largest professional membership organization for pathologists and laboratory professionals.

Keim-Malpass is First Nurse Named ‘Cost of Care’ Fellow

Associate professor Jessica Keim-Malpass has been named a fellow of Costs of Care, the first nurse ever to assume such a role. Costs of Care is a non-governmental organization focused on the reduction of health care costs by eliminating waste and redundancy and ensuring that patients receive care that is safe, dignified and affordable. It curates, sources and disseminates knowledge from patients and frontline clinicians to help health systems deliver better care at a lower cost.

In her early research, Keim-Malpass – a pediatric and oncology nurse and researcher who teaches in both the schools of Nursing and Medicine – studied how and why young people with advanced cancer shared their stories on social media.

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At the heart of their stories, she noted, lurked health care costs.

“Many in my study ranked their financial toxicity worse than their symptom experience with cancer treatment,” Keim-Malpass said. “I remember stories of women at the end of life considering divorce so they wouldn’t be left with the medical debt. I also became acutely aware of the information imbalance and lack of transparency in costs, and how infrequently the topic would come up during clinical consultations.

“Additionally, I began to understand the cumulative stress of financial uncertainty in shared medical decision-making. [As an oncology nurse], I felt helpless when I could not provide patients adequate responses to straightforward questions like, ‘What will this surgery cost me?’”

As a member of the Costs of Care team, Keim-Malpass will develop educational materials, establish implementation frameworks and lead workshops that aim to improve care and reduce costs.

Kluge-Ruhe-Commissioned Bark Painting Wins Art Prize

A bark painting commissioned by UVA’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection has won a prestigious Australian art award, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin City announced in August. 

The painting, in natural pigments on eucalyptus bark, titled “Journey to America,” depicts Aboriginal artist Djambawa Marawili’s clan design connecting the Coat of Arms of Australia with the Statue of Liberty.

Kluge-Ruhe commissioned a painting by Marawili for its upcoming exhibition, “Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala.” Kluge-Ruhe Director Margo Smith said the resulting painting deviates from Marawili’s past work in surprising ways.

“This astonishing painting symbolizes Marawili’s experience visiting the United States and the historical and contemporary connections that Yolngu people have created overseas through their art,” she said.

Marawili undertook an artist residency at Kluge-Ruhe in 2015, during which time he examined Yolngu bark paintings in the collection and at the Smithsonian Natural Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Seeing designs related to sacred knowledge, or “madayin,” in bark paintings at these museums ignited his desire to work with Kluge-Ruhe to develop a major exhibition of Yolngu bark paintings spanning eight decades. He said, “I came to America and I found my madayin, and now I want to share it with the world."

To develop this exhibition, Marawili and other Yolngu artists and knowledge-holders have returned to Kluge-Ruhe repeatedly beginning in 2017. Curator Henry Skerritt, who has collaborated with Yolngu throughout the project, said, “Djambawa’s award-winning painting is a masterpiece, but it is far more than just a beautiful painting. It is a statement about Yolngu ownership over a project that he initiated during his time at Kluge-Ruhe.”

Marawili’s bark painting took the grand prize at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in Darwin. An acclaimed artist and principal ceremonial leader of the Madarrpa clan of northeast Arnhem Land, Marawili has pioneered a new aesthetic movement among Yolngu artists. In 1996, he won the Bark Painting category of the Telstra awards for a work commissioned by John W. Kluge that is part of the Kluge-Ruhe Collection.

An anonymous bequest of $20 million will mark the 100th anniversary of the University of Virginia School of Architecture and benefit primarily the school’s Department of Architectural History. The gift will enhance excellence in scholarship and expand opportunities for global learning experiences.

Once realized, the bequest will create three endowed funds to support an international travel program, two professorships in architectural history – one with a focus on European studies and another centered on Asian studies – and fellowships for Ph.D. and graduate students.

“As the School of Architecture prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary, I want to thank these donors for helping us make the next 100 years even better,” UVA President Jim Ryan said. “This gift will build bridges between UVA and other countries, help unlock discoveries in architectural history, and make it easier for more talented students to study here. On behalf of everyone who will benefit from this gift, I am extremely grateful.”

The School of Architecture has offered courses in architectural history since its establishment in 1919, when it was led by Sidney Fiske Kimball. The school’s first graduating class in 1922 consisted of three students, who were awarded Bachelor of Science in Architecture degrees.

Today, the School of Architecture includes an enrollment of more than 600 students and offers undergraduate degrees in architecture, urban and environmental planning and architectural history, as well as a Ph.D. in the Constructed Environment and four master’s degree programs: Master of Architectural History, Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban and Environmental Planning.

“We are sincerely grateful for this tremendous gift to the Architecture School and the incredible generosity, kindness and thoughtfulness of the donors,” Dean and Edward Elson Professor of the School of Architecture Ila Berman said. “Their bequest will ensure we continue building on the school’s legacy of scholarship and teaching, as well as enabling students to expand their intellectual horizons. This gift will be truly transformational in advancing our mission to deepen our pursuit of knowledge and inspire students to create a more just, courageous and compelling future for all.”

Celebrations for the School of Architecture’s 100-year anniversary will begin Friday. The weekend of festivities and events in Campbell Hall and on Grounds will include tours, open houses, panel discussions, exhibitions, receptions and more to commemorate the Architecture School’s history and celebrate its future.

Earlier this month, Richmond City Council allocated $15 million for a participatory budgeting project that will allow residents to suggest, plan and vote on community improvement projects using that money.

For University of Virginia graduate student Matthew Slaats, the vote was a long time coming – more than five years, really. That’s how long Slaats, a Ph.D. student in the School of Architecture’s Constructed Environment program, has been working to bring participatory budgeting to Virginia.

Though new to Richmond, participatory budgeting is used by more than 3,000 cities around the world, including major U.S. cities like New York City, Boston and Chicago. Launched in Brazil in the 1990s as a new way to manage public funds, the multi-stage process allows residents to brainstorm uses for public dollars, work with city staff to develop specific project proposals, and vote on proposals to implement.

In Richmond, the funding – $3 million per year for five years – will come from the city’s Capital Improvement Program budget, which funds improvement projects like sidewalks or community center renovations.

Slaats, whose graduate school work focuses on grassroots community change, has spent his career working with community organizations in the U.S. and abroad. He has worked on community engagement projects in New York, as well as a pilot arts-based participatory budgeting project in Charlottesville, and will serve as a project lead, in partnership with a group of community leaders, during the Richmond project. Right now, it’s all on a volunteer basis, driven by Slaats’ firm belief that strong community relationships are essential to a healthy, functioning democracy.

“I have spent most of my 15-plus-year professional career focused on community engagement and community empowerment, seeing a lack of commitment and the development of infrastructure to have rich, deep relationship with communities,” he said. “We have to reinforce our values of democracy in order to achieve them. My desire to pursue participatory budgeting is not just about volunteering, but it's a commitment to creating spaces and processes that accomplish those objectives.”

We spoke with him last week to find out more.

Q. How did you help bring participatory budgeting to Richmond?

A. There have been conversations around this for about four years that picked up over the summer when [First District City Councilman] Andreas Addison expressed interest. In collaboration with community leaders Ebony Walden, Ryan Rinn, Albert Walker and Daniel Wagner, we developed a proposal and built support from within City Council, spending August and September educating City Council and getting their feedback. This produced a resolution in early September that was unanimously approved.  

Now we are in the process of working with many community organizations, the mayor’s office and city staff to design the project.

Q. How will it work?

A. The project will be a citywide initiative, which means that all Richmond residents can participate. It will likely be organized by council member districts, with citizens in those districts coming together to brainstorm ideas, collaboratively develop project proposals, present those proposals to their peers and, ultimately, vote. Right now, we are in the planning phase, and we hope to officially launch the project phase in fall 2020.

Additionally, in that time, we are talking to community leaders, UVA systems engineering students and Virginia Commonwealth University urban planning students to develop an equity index. This will help us understand and set goals for how this process can respond to long-term disparities in the Richmond area. Next spring, we plan to work with these partners to build a system that will define what equity means for Richmond, parse a significant amount of data – health data, educational data, crime data – and define specific metrics to make sure the project achieves these outcomes.

Q. In your experience, why does participatory budgeting work?

A. Participatory budgeting is a new paradigm for how community engagement happens in a city. When we hear from community members that they distrust city government, it is often because they don’t feel like they are involved in setting a vision for the future. Participatory budgeting gives residents direct access to their tax dollars, and allows them to guide and envision where that money will go, as opposed to participating in a survey that then disappears behind closed doors. This process forefronts transparency and accountability.

Of course, one goal is for residents to see that they can have an idea for improving their neighborhood, get it approved and see it happen. But participatory budgeting also opens the city budgeting process, allowing residents to better understand how it works. This is especially important for young residents, who get a seat at the table in participatory budgeting and build their ability to see themselves as visionaries in their own neighborhoods.

Q. What are some of the best things you have seen come out of the process?

A. I led a pilot project in Charlottesville a few years ago that resulted in a community garden at South First Street public housing, and one of the residents, Janet Mitchell, led and advocated for that project. What was so special about this, more than any one project, was it showed the ability of residents to take action in their communities and set a vision for the future.

Right now, we are working with city leaders to see this project grow in Charlottesville, and I am hopeful we can continue these efforts in the near future.

Q. How does this fit into your Ph.D. work at UVA?

A. My Ph.D. work in general focuses on how grassroots community groups create change in their cities. While interested in how this happens globally, my focus is centered on Durham, North Carolina, and Jackson, Mississippi, where movements are building consciousness and developing initiatives, like participatory budgeting, to realize more resilient and democratic communities.

Q. You are working with Richmond as a volunteer. What drives you to dedicate your time and energy to this?

A. Having lived in Charlottesville with my family for about seven years, and starting at UVA in the fall of 2017 – right after the “Unite the Right” violence – I have experienced what it meant for a community to be in a state of crisis and then begin the long-term work to respond to that trauma.

As someone who is building roots in Charlottesville, I am very committed to supporting Charlottesville in finding ways to respond to both the short-term and long-term causes that led to those events. While not the only answer, participatory budgeting is something I really believe can help us build a different future – for Charlottesville, for Richmond and for Virginia.

For me, these efforts are all about listening to the vision that people have for their cities. During the pilot project in Charlottesville, we went door-to-door as a way of meeting people where they are. When you sit down with someone and ask them how they would improve their neighborhood, they start to open up and all of these amazing ideas come out. Through these and other projects, I have learned to value the knowledge and experience that resides in every neighborhood, and to see participatory budgeting as way to share and hear that knowledge in new ways.

Central Park is the most visited urban park in the U.S., one of the most filmed locales in the world and a green oasis for New Yorkers and tourists alike.

This fall, it was also a University of Virginia classroom, at least for a weekend.

Students in landscape architecture professor Elizabeth Meyer’s pavilion seminar visited the park over fall break in October as part of their semester-long study of its past, present and future. The trip was fully funded by the Jefferson Trust and an Andrew Mellon Foundation grant.

The course, “Central Park: Public Space as Conceived, Perceived and Lived,” is one of several pavilion seminars offered by the College of Arts & Sciences and held in classrooms on the Lawn. Offered to third- and fourth-year students each year, the seminars take on big topics that are relevant across disciplines. In Meyer’s case, Central Park was the perfect anchor for exploring urban landscape studies, public space, social history and more. 

“At 150 years old, Central Park is an index of every change the public and the city of New York have experienced,” she said.

When Meyer’s students visited Central Park in October, they met with many of the people who help it thrive, including Lane Addonizio, the Central Park Conservancy’s vice president for planning, design and construction; historian Sara Cedar Miller; and several landscape architects and planners working on the revitalization of the Harlem Meer, a lake at the northeast corner of the park, and Lasker Rink in the northern part of the park.

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They took a walk through the wooded Ramble with the woodland gardeners who manage and regenerate nature in the middle of New York, and even visited Central Park Conservancy founder Elizabeth Barlow Rogers in her Central Park West apartment, where she showed students her collection of rare books related to the park.

“She was so generous and that was such a special experience,” said Meyer, who also hosted Rogers at UVA earlier in the semester.

“Each person had different experiences within the park, whether it was walking along the paths, examining each tree and bird or helping lay the path for the future of the park,” fourth-year media studies student Sierra Ruiz said.

In all, Meyer said, the students walked more than 30 miles in three days, covering many different facets of the park they spent the semester studying.

“It was a great mix of field work and hearing from experts, and the following Friday back at UVA, I could immediately tell it had been a successful,” she said. “Their conversations in class after the trip were extraordinary. They knew the park so well, and they could see how public space theory played out in the park in ways that are not possible if only reading about it.”

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“While we were walking in the park, I enjoyed hearing the soundscape change,” Ruiz said. “When you walk down the Mall to Bethesda Terrace, it is serene and open with small conversations happening. Once you walk into Bethesda Terrace, the volume raises because there are people playing music, performing and many more people are talking. On the other hand, in the Ramble, it is very, very quiet because the trees hang low, and it makes the space more personal.”

Classmate Hannah Russell-Hunter said the seminar’s readings and discussions gave her a new perspective on one of America’s most famous parks.

“I came into the class with an interest in the history of Central Park, especially its changing uses and policing of public space,” the fourth-year American studies and studio art student said. “I enjoyed being able to move through the park with new knowledge of theories of use of public space and the historical background on the locations I was visiting.”

Working in teams of five, students will use the photos, video and audio they collected to create digital exhibits about three different sections of the park: The Mall/Bethesda Terrace/Rambles promenade and gathering space; the recently restored North Woods and Ravine; and the park’s boundaries, where its landscape meets New York City blocks.

In addition to learning through their field immersion in Central Park, the students are spending time with archival materials from UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, which holds the park’s annual reports dating to the 19^th century, among other unique materials such as stereoscopic photo viewers, tourist guide books and historic maps. Instruction librarian Krystal Appiah and UVA Landscape Studies Initiative project manager Allison James assisted with the seminar workshop in the Special Collections Library.

Experts in UVA’s Scholars’ Lab, including geographic information system mapping specialists Chris Gist and Drew MacQueen, are helping students with the technical aspects of their digital exhibits. Once complete, these projects will contribute to open-source digital resources for teaching landscape history created by the Landscape Studies Initiative within the UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes. The Mellon Foundation funded the planning and pilot phase of this digital platform built around Rogers’ textbook, “Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History.”

Meyer is excited to see the seminar’s final projects, especially because her 15 students have such varied academic interests.

“Many upper-level seminars include mostly students in one major, but this one has students with very different expertise and interests, and everyone brings something different to the table,” she said. “One student grew up in Bologna [Italy]; he has lived public space in a way that many Americans have not.” Other students, she noted, are studying fields as varied as economics, media studies, politics, American studies and kinesiology.

Ruiz loved the format of the pavilion seminar – both the interdisciplinary focus and the historic location.

“I wanted to learn things outside of the College [of Arts & Sciences] and also embrace Jefferson’s original vision of the Rotunda and the Lawn,” she said. “When the University was created, all classes took place on the Lawn and in the Rotunda, so the pavilion seminar really helps me experience that originality.”

The University of Virginia School of Architecture’s graduate programs in architecture and landscape architecture rose in this year’s DesignIntelligence rankings of “Most Admired Schools” – with architecture moving up to No. 11 (from No. 18 last year) and landscape architecture jumping up from No. 7 last year to No. 5 for 2019-20.

In addition, the graduate programs earned accolades for launching students into the workforce. Both UVA’s architecture and landscape architecture programs were ranked No. 2 this year (from No. 13 last year for architecture) among peer schools with a similar number of graduates for “Most Hired-From Architecture Schools” and “Most Hired-From Landscape Architecture Schools” – behind No. 1 Yale University (architecture) and No. 1 Louisiana State University (landscape architecture), respectively.

Despite identifying as a small program in comparison to other peers, UVA’s landscape architecture program also ranked especially high in specific focus areas: design theory and practice (No. 3), research (No. 3), interdisciplinary studies (No. 4) and sustainable built environments/adaptive design/resilient design (No. 4).

In addition to the graduate program rankings, each year, DesignIntelligence honors excellence in architecture and design education, and education administration, by naming outstanding professionals from these fields. “The Most Admired Educators” are selected by DesignIntelligence staff with input from thousands of design professionals, academic department heads and deans, and students.

Two professors, landscape architecture professor Elizabeth Meyer and architecture professor Peter Waldman, were among those honored.

Waldman was described as, “... [a truly] inspiring, great man. He is an adviser, teacher and friend.” Meyer was selected for her “commitment to academic rigor, devotion to theory, history of practical application ... [and for being a] great teacher.”

“The School of Architecture has always been committed to excellence and to truly making design that matters, that makes a difference in the world,” Dean Ila Berman said. “Our professional graduate programs in architecture and landscape architecture are among the very best in the nation. This year, we’re also particularly pleased to have two of our faculty, Peter Waldman and Beth Meyer, honored and recognized among the list of most admired educators in our fields.”

DesignIntelligence’s annual rankings, reported by Architectural Record, are based on survey responses from current students, alumni and hundreds of leaders at architecture and design firms who have had direct experience hiring and judging the performance of recent graduates in architecture, landscape architecture and interior design.

Participants are asked which schools they most admire for a combination of faculty, programs, culture and student preparation.

The surveys also compile more nuanced rankings based on focus areas and career preparation. For the “Most Hired-From Architecture Schools” and “Most Hired-From Landscape Architecture Schools” rankings, schools were grouped into size categories based on the average number of graduates in their programs.

Felipe Correa, Vincent and Eleanor Shea Professor and chair of the Department of Architecture, attributed the success to the program’s focus on addressing major 21^st-century issues through design.

“The most recent DesignIntelligence rankings reflect the commitment of the department and the alumni of the M.Arch program to how and why thoughtful design is integral in addressing the most pressing issues of the 21^st century and improving quality of life in the built environment,” Correa said.

Bradley Cantrell, professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, said the department was, “happy to be recognized for the longstanding commitment to excellence displayed by our students and faculty that allow us to rank so highly, even as a relatively small program compared to our peers.”

“As a department our gains in the rankings show our competence in many core areas and the relevance of our recent graduates in the job market,” he said, also noting Meyer’s “outstanding” contributions. “Thank you to all of our faculty, students, and alumni who helped us achieve this significant recognition.”

Berman added, “Both the rankings and the specific recognition of our dedicated and distinguished faculty are a positive reflection of UVA School of Architecture’s excellence among our peer schools across the nation, and a testament to our talented students, committed faculty and exemplary graduates.”

On Monday night in the Rotunda, University of Virginia President Jim Ryan awarded 13 staff members “Hoos Building Bridges” Awards, honoring them for fulfilling his vision of a year ago, when he first asked new students at Opening Convocation to “build bridges” between fellow students, members of the faculty and staff, and the broader Charlottesville community.

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“Building bridges” has become a common refrain during Ryan’s first two years in office, and the division of Human Resources established the Hoos Building Bridges Award to recognize Academic Division and Medical Center staff who collaborated across units, departments and schools.

This year’s 13 honorees represent many different parts of the University, from the Medical Center to the art department and UVA Career Center. They fulfill many different roles at UVA, but all share at least one thing in common – a desire to partner with others around Grounds to make the University better.

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“A community is only as strong as the connections within it, and all of us grow by making connections with others,” Ryan said at Monday’s reception, noting that he particularly wanted the award to focus on staff members, who he called “the beating heart” of UVA.

“I really appreciate all that you do,” he said. “One of the most enjoyable parts of creating an award is reading about what the recipients are doing. It has been a joy to me to become familiar with what you are doing. I hope this will help people understand the difference you are making and inspire others to continue building bridges.”

Each award winner was presented with a monetary award and a framed certificate. Nominations for the next round of the biannual Hoos Building Bridges Awards will open in January.

Meet this year’s honorees, including three individual awards and three team awards.

Kate Bidwell Horton

Kate Bidwell Horton, the medication use policy coordinator in UVA’s Department of Pharmacy Services, was nominated for her work addressing drug shortages, a national problem that the UVA Medical Center must constantly monitor.

Her coordination of drug shortage strategies, nominator Scott Anderson wrote, “has been unprecedented and unequalled at UVA,” helping UVA Health manage an increasing number of drug shortages nationally and minimize impact on patient care.

Horton created a Drug Shortage Task Force that brings people together across medical disciplines for weekly meetings to monitor the availability of certain drugs and manage inventory. She also led the creation of a UVA intranet database accessible to team members involved in patient care.

“These strategies have helped UVA manage shortages at a remarkably high level, with minimal disruption to patient care,” Anderson said.

Vibha J. Buckingham

Vibha J. Buckingham, the associate director of Educational & General Custodial Services in UVA’s Facilities Management Division, was recognized for helping many colleagues advance in their jobs and make connections at the University.

“She takes those who feel ‘invisible’ and develops them into strong, independent and contributing professionals,” nominator Sandra Ann Smith wrote, calling Buckingham “an unrecognized leader who tirelessly and passionately supports those facing challenging life circumstances – whether they are in UVA or outside UVA in the greater Charlottesville community.”

Buckingham came to UVA in 2011 and quickly built up training programs in her division. Smith noted that she has mentored and motivated many frontline staff, enabling six to rise to supervisor, one to advance to a management position and many others to reach top performer status for the first time in their careers. Buckingham also collaborates extensively with other university and K-12 colleagues who seek her expertise, and mentors refugees as they begin their lives in Charlottesville and the U.S.

“Vibha is a motivating force at the University to virtually everyone with whom she comes in contact,” Smith concluded. “For those especially lacking in life’s advantages, Vibha assesses their needs and gives them the tools, mentoring, education and motivation to be more tomorrow than they are today. Only someone who truly lives inclusion can make this happen.”

Victoria Valdes

Victoria Valdes is the assistant director of the Visual Resources Collection in UVA’s McIntire Department of Art. She was nominated for forging connections between the art department and the Department of Drama, especially around the management of UVA’s extensive prop collection.

Valdes worked with Christine “Sam” Flippo in the drama department to photograph and catalog props in the Culbreth Theater collection, helping make props accessible even when Flippo – previously the only person able to locate many of the props – was unavailable.

Valdes used her expertise in “Artstor,” the database and cataloging system she manages for the art department, and worked with several students to create a similar system for props. The result is a fully interactive database available not only to students, faculty and staff across Grounds, but to other universities, colleges and theater groups.

Already, Valdes, Flippo and students have photographed and edited more than 1,200 photos and uploaded 530 to Artstor’s catalog.

“Sam and Victoria anticipate that fully cataloging and publishing the extensive props collection may take up to three years total, but by completion we will have created a fully interactive photographic catalog that will be accessible to borrowers across numerous institutions,” nominator Daniel Steven Weiss wrote.

Melissa Goldman and Rachel Kiliany

Melissa Goldman is the fabrication facilities manager in the School of Architecture, and Rachel Kiliany is the program coordinator for prevention at UVA Student Health.

They were nominated for their work with the Staff Senate, where they serve as co-directors of University Partnerships and created from scratch a “Chairs Summit” that regularly brings together leaders from the Staff Senate, Faculty Senate, General Faculty Council, Student Council, Graduate and Professional Council and the Medical Center Team Members Council.

They also developed “Constituency Corner,” a dedicated time in Staff Senate meetings for senators to share feedback, questions and concerns raised by staff members in their areas.

Nominator Michael Wayne Phillips, co-chair of the Staff Senate, said Goldman and Kiliany worked hard to keep everyone organized and in touch, and to keep each group informed of what the other was doing.

“They are both wonderful people individually, and as a team they have accomplished more than I ever could have imagined,” Phillips said.

“Their efforts will continue to reap benefits and build more bridges over time as these two initiatives continue to grow,” co-nominator and staff senator Kristie Smeltzer said.

Susan Jackiewicz and Paul Muddiman

Susan Jackiewicz is the administrator for UVA’s Neurosciences & Behavioral Health Center, and Paul Muddiman is the manager of the Contact Center at UVA Health. They were nominated for their work creating and co-chairing the Situational and Violent Events Committee, something they voluntarily took on in addition to their daily duties.

Part of UVA Health’s BeSafe initiative, the SAVE Committee reviews safety issues flagged by employees and works on techniques and policies to prevent future problems.

The committee consists of both frontline staff and leadership. They use events reported through the BeSafe system and testimonies from frontline staff to identify where intervention is needed and what will help keep everyone safe.

“Both Susan and Paul put in a lot of hours on top of their duties in order to create a safer place for anyone here at UVA,” nominator Kelli Huffer wrote. “They saw a need and stepped up when no one asked them to.”

Kim Sauerwein, Rebecca Coulter, Chris Joly, Dr. Chris Holstege, Dr. Heather Borek and Dr. Meredith Hayden

Kim Sauerwein, Rebecca Coulter and Chris Joly work in the UVA Career Center, while Dr. Chris Holstege and Dr. Heather Borek work in the Medical Center and Dr. Meredith Hayden works in Student Health.

Together, they are creating “Observe,” an initiative that is making it easier for undergraduate students interested in health care to shadow UVA clinicians, something nominator Everette Fortner called “a longstanding need within the pre-health community.”

“Clinical observation allows student exposure to the daily routine of a clinician, fosters relationships with health care professionals and serves as an opportunity for students to reflect on service as it relates to their future career as a clinician,” Fortner said. “This program seeks to build bridges between pre-health undergraduate students and clinicians at UVA Medical Center, aiding students in the exploration, reflection and validation of their future health care career.”

The Career Center will oversee publicity for the program and recruit first- and second-year students, while Holstege, Hayden and Borek will facilitate recruitment of their colleagues and work with various Medical Center departments to help students find shadowing opportunities.

Four biomedical research projects to improve the health of Virginians will be funded by the integrated Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia, or iTHRIV, a Clinical Translational Science Award Hub.

“iTHRIV is excited to partner with the National Institutes of Health in supporting our community nonprofit and governmental organizations, who are collaborating with academic researchers to address important health needs across Virginia,” said iTHRIV Director Karen Johnston, the University of Virginia’s associate vice president for clinical and translational research. “It is our hope that these pilot grant projects will benefit underserved communities and improve research partnerships.”

The projects address autism spectrum disorder, improved access to colorectal cancer screening, postpartum depression, and the benefits of walking in cities. Community organizations will be involved in the efforts, working with teams of physicians and researchers from UVA and Virginia Tech.

“Our unique approach to community engagement through regional iTHRIV advisory boards in Northern, Central and Southwest/Southside Virginia ensures that we foster collaborative research among community, clinical and academic organizations and institutions to serve diverse communities across the majority of the commonwealth,” said associate professor Kathy Hosig, director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Public Health Practice and Research. “The opportunity to involve our community partners in research that is a priority for them is extremely rewarding.”

The four teams will be awarded a total of $80,000 in funding. 

Improving Access to Care for Autism Spectrum Disorder in Rural Southwest Virginia

Parents and their children affected by autism spectrum disorder in rural communities often have difficulty accessing care. The iTHRIV seed grant funding will address barriers to accessing specialty services in Southwest Virginia, including diagnostic assessments and case management.

A partnership between K.J. Holbrook from the Mount Rogers Community Services Board and Angela Scarpa, a professor of psychology at Virginia Tech, will provide information on the best ways to provide education and support for underserved communities about autism spectrum disorder care.

The Impact of Urban Walking on Public Health

A 2017 Community Health Assessment undertaken in Richmond found a need to improve city-wide physical activity by increasing walking. It is important to understand the optimal conditions for these walks, taking into account the benefits of some spaces over others on personal outcomes such as mood and cognition and environmental outcomes such as air quality and temperature.

Led by Jeremy Hoffman from the Science Museum of Virginia; Jenny Roe, director of UVA’s Center for Design and Health; Chris Neale from UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy; and Julia Gohlke, an associate professor of population health sciences at Virginia Tech, this research will help address the issue of understanding the benefits of walking in cities.

Improving Effectiveness of Colorectal Cancer Screening Through a Community Health Center Partnership

Rural and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups have lower colorectal cancer screening rates and higher mortality rates. Community health centers are ideal organizations to improve colorectal cancer screening for these groups. This research, led by Michelle Brauns from the Community Health Center of the New River Valley and Jamie Zoellner from UVA’s Department of Public Health Sciences, seeks to develop sustainable cancer prevention and detection programs in the New River Valley and test a scalable, low-cost colorectal cancer screening intervention.

Addressing Postpartum Depression and Other Mood and Anxiety Disorders in Childbearing Women in Charlottesville

Postpartum depression and other perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are the most common complications of pregnancy and childbirth, affecting one in five mothers. At least 700 women in the greater Charlottesville area will experience perinatal mood and anxiety disorders each year, affecting an additional 2,400 family members. Untreated perinatal mood and anxiety disorders can have long-term impact on the mother, baby and society.

The project team, led by Adrienne Griffen from Postpartum Support Virginia and Sharon Veith from UVA’s School of Nursing, seeks to educate local stakeholders about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, establish additional resources for recovery and ensure that all childbearing women are educated about, screened for and receive treatment for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders from conception through one year after giving birth.

About iTHRIV

iTHRIV is a cross-state translational research institute supported by a five-year, $23 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Partnering institutions include Virginia Tech, Carilion Clinic, the University of Virginia and Inova Health System. The mission of the iTHRIV partnership and the national Clinical Translational Science Award programs is to promote interdisciplinary research that translates basic research findings into clinical applications, clinical research into community practice, and improves the process of research. A major goal of iTHRIV is to implement research that will benefit underserved populations.

This content was supported in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award No. UL1TR003015.

A community of more than 100 faculty from eight schools at the University of Virginia – the College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Engineering, the School of Medicine, the School of Law, the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, the School of Architecture, the McIntire School of Commerce and the forthcoming School of Data Science – have initiated new and growing collaborations in an emerging field of science and technology: synthetic biology, or “synbio” for short.

Synthetic biology – the engineering of new and better materials from cells for a range of uses, from medicines to agriculture – is an area of growing strength at UVA. The goal of the community (visit SynBio@UVA) is to deliver better health, security and products to society through ethical research and innovation. Recently the group organized and hosted a Mid-Atlantic Synthetic Biology Symposium that brought researchers to UVA from universities, government and industry organizations throughout the region.

Two leaders in the collaboration, Keith Kozminski, a professor of biology and cell biology, and Mark Kester, a professor of pharmacology, molecular physiology and biomedical engineering, explain.

Q. Please give us a few examples of synthetic biology in use in our world today.

Kozminski: I think it is important for people to know in general terms what synthetic biology is.

Biologists have traditionally asked the question, “How does an organism or cell work?” A synthetic biologist turns the question 180 degrees and asks the question, “How can I get a cell to work for me?” In other words, how can we use cells, or the products they produce, as building materials, medicines, sensors, storage and computing devices, recyclers, or fuel sources?

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Most often this requires redesigning cells utilizing the principles of engineering and the talents of biologists, chemists, computational modelers, as well as computer and data scientists, along with experts in the field to which the biological device will be applied – such as physicians, if the application is medicinal.

Synthetic biology is used in many fields, from medicine to agriculture to computer science to civil engineering. As an example, before synthetic biology, the anti-malarial drug artemisinin could only be isolated from a specific plant. With synthetic biology, this drug can now be produced rapidly, on demand, in biopharmaceutical facilities using yeast, the kind we find in many common food products.

Another example of synbio in use is self-healing concrete, in which microbes within the concrete seal micro-fractures, improving infrastructure durability and safety while reducing costs in the long term.

Q. What is UVA doing, through synbio, in research and development?

Kester: Thematically speaking, synbio research at UVA is centered around four research themes: living architecture (using cells as building material), microbes for health and defense (cells acting as delivery vehicles and sensors), synthetic phyto-solutions (using plants as molecular factories), and bio-focused technologies (technologies that enable synbio).

In more tangible terms, this research includes, for example, chemical engineering professor Bryan Berger using microbes to create unique inorganic materials such as high-efficiency quantum dots for use in electronics; biology professor Michael Timko using plants to produce immunity-supportive molecules needed for the production of synthetic breast milk; pediatrics professor Dr. Steven Zeichner re-engineering bacteria to optimize vaccines; and chemistry professor Linda Columbus, microbiology and immunology professor Alison Criss and colleagues in the Global Infectious Disease Institute using microbes as delivery vehicles for therapeutics against infectious diseases.

I also have to mention our exceptional science and engineering undergraduates, who, in our iGEM (international Genetically-Engineered Machines) program, compete annually as a team in an international synthetic biology innovation competition.

Specifically as it relates to entrepreneurial undergrads, I would like to highlight two innovative former biomedical engineering students, Ameer Shakeel and Payam Pothiheri, who took an iGEM-inspired synthetic biology idea and turned it into a successful company, employing seven people in Charlottesville. The company, Agrospheres, engineers bacteria as agricultural bio-controls for the green economy [safely degrading pesticides, for example]. Their revolutionary synbio concept has won multiple national competitions, including the eCUP in Charlottesville; the ACC challenge; and the Collegiate Inventors Competition, sponsored by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

It is impossible to mention all of the innovative synthetic biology projects at UVA, but; I encourage people to visit the SynBio@UVA website to find out more.

Q. Are there any ethical concerns regarding the use of synthetic biology?

Kozminski: The use of any research, especially in the form of new technologies, has an ethical dimension. Ethical concerns are particularly acute with respect to synthetic biology.

This is a relatively young and rapidly moving field of research that both uses and generates disruptive technologies that can transform society. Thinking of the start of the information age, with the invention of computers, we can now see how many ethical, safety and privacy issues can arise with the advent of new, disruptive technologies.

This experience, as well as human subject research in the 20th century that lacked an ethical framework, primed people – in a positive way – to think about the ethics of research, with respect to its goals and how it is conducted.

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What is discussed less are the deliverables of synthetic biology. Here we must ask the questions, “Who will benefit from this new technology, either by using the technology or by providing the means to manifest it?” and “Who will be participating in the decision-making process?”

All of these ethical concerns are not necessarily unique to the use of synthetic biology; however, the futuristic aura of synthetic biology illuminates these concerns.

The good news is that the synthetic biology research community, at least every synthetic biologist that comes to mind – definitely those at UVA – is strongly and proactively committed to ethical research. From what I have observed, ethics in this field is not a dressing applied post-project for public relations. Ethics have been part of synthetic biology research from its earliest days and it is something that we drill into our students at UVA. On Grounds, we call it “LEaP”: law, ethics and policy. We are not playing catch-up as a field or as a university.

Kester: The same goes for government. Although the law often trails technological development, governments have had at least the initial ethical debates to develop frameworks for the development and use of synthetic biology.

Two outstanding examples are the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues report in 2010, and the various addenda to the international Convention on Biological Diversity. What needs to be recognized is that the field of synthetic biology, and many societies that use synthetic biology, are not marching toward the 22^nd century ethically blind; we follow a core set of bioethical principles.

Certainly however, as technology emerges, ethics will need to be addressed further. It is in this arena that UVA can emerge as a leader, because juxtaposed to its natural science, data science and engineering disciplines is a tradition of expertise in ethics, social science, law and public policy.

Q. Imagine for us the future, near-term and longer-term, and how synthetic biology will change lives for the better.

Kozminski: Synthetic biology will bring us better health, better security and better products.

In some cases, “better” means completely novel tools, making science fiction become reality. In other cases, “better” means improved beyond the current state-of-art, with respect to cost, accessibility, safety, ease of production, green-ness or efficacy. As the 21^st century progresses, biology will be integrated into our daily routines and built environments much like digital devices are now. As with any technology, improvement of our lives will depend upon judicious use.

UVA is leading the way for synbio research, education and workforce development; we coordinated this past June the first Mid-Atlantic Synthetic Biology Conference, featuring innovative research and technologies from Maryland down to Georgia.

Q. What drew you to this field?

Kozminski: I saw the future and I wanted to be part of it. The field demands interdisciplinary collaboration among technical experts in the natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, medicine and data science, and non-technical experts in law, ethics, policy and social science. I found that exciting personally, both from a research and teaching perspective.

I also saw how much UVA had, or could aspire to, distinguish itself as a national or global leader in this field. This is important because it is clear that many European universities are committed to capitalizing on synthetic biology directly, or using it as a vehicle to modernize STEM curricula.

Kester: Like many scientists or engineers utilizing synthetic biology “solutions,” I am not a trained synthetic biologist. In fact, I am a lipid biochemist who develops nontoxic drug delivery vehicles that are being tested in FDA-approved clinical trials as cancer treatments.

I realized several years ago that synthetic biology can be utilized or exploited to create nanoscale particles for targeted drug delivery. This vision culminated in companies like Agrospheres, as well as in projects that investigate bacterial delivery systems for chemotherapeutics and accelerated vaccine development.

On Tuesday, the National Building Museum awarded University of Virginia landscape architecture professor Elizabeth K. Meyer its prestigious Vincent Scully Prize, honoring her contributions in both practice and education.

Meyer, the Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture and founding director of UVA’s Center for Cultural Landscapes, has assisted with the research, interpretation, planning and design of major projects and historic sites both close to home (UVA’s Academical Village) and around the U.S., including Bryant Park in New York City, the Gateway Arch grounds in St. Louis and the Wellesley College campus outside of Boston.

She worked on former first lady Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden, leading a team of UVA faculty and students who planned and designed renovations in 2016, and has shaped important landscapes in the nation’s capital through her service on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012.

The commission advises the government on designs for landmarks, memorials, public buildings and landscapes in Washington, D.C. Among many other projects, Meyer and her fellow commissioners reviewed architecture and landscape designs for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, which Meyer called “the most rewarding project” of her four years on the commission.

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, chair of the jury that selected the prize, said Meyer “embodies the very spirit of Vincent Scully as a master lecturer who inspired generations of practitioners. … Integrating research and writing with professional, administrative and civic responsibilities, Meyer has produced an influential body of theory, interpretation and criticism, on landscape topics related to aesthetics, sustainability, culture and social impact.”

Scully, a professor emeritus at Yale University, received one of UVA’s highest external honors, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, in 1982. Meyer, who said she was surprised and delighted by the award, notes that he was particularly known for teaching students in both architecture and other disciplines, something she hopes to continue doing at UVA.

“I love my architecture students, but I have also really enjoyed working with students outside of the Architecture School who are interested in the built environment and want those immersive experiences,” she said.  

This fall, Meyer will teach a Pavilion seminar on Central Park and use funding from the Jefferson Trust to take students to New York City over fall break, where they will meet with leaders of the Central Park Conservancy, talk with the people who have made the park what it is, and experience America’s most famous park firsthand.

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“Students love the combination of immersive learning on the site with archival work at UVA’s Special Collections Library – where we have an amazing collection of landscape history material – and the reading and writing of a seminar,” Meyer said. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

University Executive Vice President and Provost Liz Magill praised Meyer’s work at UVA and beyond.

“Beth’s contributions to architecture, the University, and to significant memorials and landscapes throughout the United States are a testament to her talent and vision,” she said. “This prestigious honor is well-deserved, and clearly demonstrates how Beth’s career embodies the University’s emphasis on serving the public good through research, teaching and creative expression.”

A longtime UVA professor, Meyer earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in landscape architecture from the University and previously served as the School of Architecture’s dean. In addition to her ongoing work in the classroom and the field, she is writing a book, “The Margins of Modernity: Practices of Modern Landscape Architecture.”

She will accept the Vincent Scully Prize Oct. 30 during a public program at the National Building Museum in Washington, where she will discuss contemporary topics in landscape architecture and public space design with Thaisa Way. Way, program director of garden and landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Center and a professor at the University of Washington, is also a UVA alumna.

Noting that students who attend the public colleges and universities on its “America’s Top Colleges” list, released in August, spend nearly $30,000 less annually than those who attend private institutions, Forbes magazine issued a separate ranking of public universities.

The University of Virginia ranked No. 5, behind the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the U.S. Naval Academy; and the U.S. Military Academy.

Forbes wrote: “Although public colleges do not dominate the Forbes America’s Top Colleges List – only a quarter of schools in the top 100 are public and less than half of the overall list is made of public institutions – public schools provide some of the most accessible and high-quality education in the country.”

In its individual profile of UVA, Forbes noted the University’s placement in several of the magazine’s other lists, including No. 33 among top colleges overall, No. 24 among research universities, No. 4 in the South, No. 31 in best-value colleges, No. 100 in best employers, No. 54 for best employers for diversity, and inclusion in the unranked list of best employers by state.

Rounding out the top 10 publics were the University of California, Los Angeles; the U.S. Air Force Academy; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the College of William & Mary; and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

Black Faculty and Staff Group Awards Inspirational Leaders

UVA’s Black Faculty & Staff Employee Resource Group gave its top faculty and staff awards to Elgin Cleckley and NyShae’ Carter, respectively.

Cleckley, assistant professor of architecture and design thinking, won the group’s Armstead Robinson Faculty Award, given to a current faculty member who has “achieved a sustainable impact on the Black experience at the University of Virginia, actively and enthusiastically seeks to bring greater diversity to the University community [and] demonstrates a commitment to mentoring and advising students and colleagues,” according to the award’s criteria.

Cleckley arrived at UVA less than a year before August 2017’s violent “Unite the Right” white supremacist rallies, part of a cluster of faculty to teach in the schools of Architecture, Nursing and the Curry School of Education and Human Development. He wasted no time becoming involved with the University and Charlottesville communities.

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As “one of the strongest voices for inclusion, diversity and equity at the School of Architecture,” according to Dean Ila Berman, Cleckley chairs the school’s Equity + Inclusion Committee, advises the school’s chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students and is leading a racial equity assessment of the Architecture School with the Racial Equity Institute.

He has worked with UVA’s Meriwether Lewis Leadership program, and lectures in design thinking to nursing and Curry students. Students give rave reviews to his inspirational teaching.

“Elgin has introduced many students and teachers at UVA and in community schools to the concept of design thinking, a methodology for people-centered problem-solving, a creative process to solve problems through empathy,” wrote former School of Nursing Dean Dorrie K. Fontaine, one of his nominators. “He has taken this approach to addressing some of our community’s thorniest challenges, including race relations on Grounds and in the community.”

He has been involved with the New Vinegar Hill Project, seeking to build bridges between the community and University, with a project that “provided high school and University students with opportunities to reach out to community members, and to listen to ideas for development of a vibrant and economically thriving mixed-income neighborhood,” Fontaine wrote.

Cleckley also won Jefferson Trust funding for a course that seeks to reinterpret James Monroe’s Highland plantation within the contest of race and class.

Carter, administrative assistant for CFO and programs at the Center for Politics, won the Lincoln Lewis Staff Award, given to a current staff member who “actively and enthusiastically seeks to promote greater diversity to the UVA community [and] demonstrates a record of promoting forward thinking and new ideas.”

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As chair of the Black Faculty & Staff Employee Resource Group’s communications committee, Carter revamped the organization’s communications platforms, “creat[ing] four social media channels, a newsletter, business cards, brochures, thank-you notes and two updated websites within a matter of months,” according to one nominator.

She is also a member of the Staff Senate, and outside the University, serves as president of the board of directors for Piedmont House, a local nonprofit organization that provides services to men who have recently been released from incarceration and want to better their lives.

“NyShae’ is incredibly focused and innovation,” wrote another nominator. “Her service to our community is inspiring and our group has the potential for greatness with NyShae’ helping to lead the charge.”

UVA-Led Consortium on Legacy of Slavery Receives Recognition

The Society of American Archivists Council recently honored Universities Studying Slavery, a consortium that UVA’s President’s Commission on Slavery and the University established in 2015, for the group’s “important work in providing a forum for academic institutions to critically examine their histories.” 

Universities Studying Slavery first focused on Virginia colleges and universities, in order to promote cross-institutional collaboration on research and other efforts to address slavery in academic history. But after about a year, those involved realized there was wider interest; the organization now comprises 56 universities and colleges, including two in Canada and five in Europe, with more in the process of joining.

The mission shared by all members is dedicated to “truth-telling, meaningful community engagement, and implementing reparative justice initiatives,” Ashley Schmidt wrote recently. Schmidt serves as an academic program officer for UVA’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation, which is taking up where the previous commission on slavery leaves off.

Members of the consortium meet regularly; they convened at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg in the spring, and this October, the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University will co-host the next conference.

The Society of American Archivists Council presented a resolution at its national meeting in Austin earlier this month, where Schmidt received the award. The council noted that the Universities Studying Slavery consortium “serves as a vital hub for participating institutions to work together as they address both historical and contemporary issues dealing with race and inequality in higher education and in university communities, as well as the complicated legacies of slavery in modern American society.”

Time Magazine Honors ‘BackStory’ History Podcast

TIME magazine named “BackStory,” a history podcast, produced by Virginia Humanities, one of 17 “Best History Podcasts to Listen to Right Now” in a July 31 article.

The podcast – which originated more than a decade ago as a syndicated public radio program featuring current and former UVA historians – offers historical perspectives on current events. A recent edition focuses on the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of the first African slaves in Virginia.

TIME wrote: “Plenty of history podcasts are made by curious, diligent lay-people. This one comes directly from academics, which means it’s especially accurate, thorough and reliable. But don’t mistake academic for tedious – it’s also entertaining. U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh, Nathan Connolly and Joanne Freeman of Virginia Humanities endeavor to look at today’s headlines through the lens of American history. They assure their listeners that these are the stories they ‘want to learn,’ not the ones they ‘had to learn’ in history class.”

Energy Department Recognizes University for Progress Toward Energy Goals

The U.S. Department of Energy recognized UVA’s Clark Hall refitting as part of its Better Buildings Challenge program, which highlights “leading businesses, manufacturers, cities, states, universities, and school districts, [that] commit to improving the energy efficiency of their portfolio of buildings by at least 20% over 10 years and share their strategies and results.”

Department of Energy representatives toured Clark Hall to review the building’s energy and water upgrades. The Division of Facilities Management’s “Delta Force” team implemented a combination of energy and water conservation upgrades, converting all 5,000 interior and exterior fixtures from fluorescent lamps to LED, installing low-flow toilets and faucet aerators, recalibrating air handling units, and upgrading HVAC controls.

As a result, Clark Hall achieved an annual energy savings of $750,000, or 65%, along with an annual water savings of $22,000, or 79%, relative to their pre-retrofit baseline.

Clark Hall is a mixed-use academic building that opened in 1932 to house the UVA School of Law, and currently houses the University’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Charles L. Brown Science & Engineering Library. It is home to classrooms, office space, a library, a café, laboratories, exhibits, lecture halls and a “wet lab.”

Law Weekly Three-Peats as Best Law-School Newspaper

The American Bar Association’s Law Student Division recently named the Virginia Law Weekly at the School of Law as the “Best Newspaper” in its annual Law Student Division Awards – the third straight year the paper has earned the recognition.

The Virginia Law Weekly has published weekly during the academic year – usually 12 times per semester – since 1948. It distributed between 325 and 350 copies for free each week. Its 32-member, all-volunteer staff research, report, photograph, write, edit and produce each issue.

In the 2018-19 academic year, the staff covered Sixth Circuit Judge Amul Thapar’s visit to UVA and was cited by SCOTUSblog in its profile. It ran stories on the school’s changes to the student printing policy and changes to the membership policies of the Virginia Law Review.

The Law Weekly also reported on visits by retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Judge Carlton Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi and U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

The winners were recognized Aug. 10 at the ABA’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Mathematician Earns NSF Early Career Award

The National Science Foundation has awarded Sara Maloni, an assistant professor of mathematics, with an Early Career Development award. The five-year, $450,000 CAREER award is “the highest distinction that the NSF can provide to junior researchers in the mathematical sciences,” according to the organization’s website.

This is an honor awarded to only three early-career scientists in topology this year and about 40 scientists in the mathematical sciences.

From the grant’s abstract: “In his Erlanger program of 1872, Felix Klein defined geometry to be the study of properties of a space which are invariant under its group of symmetries. It was Charles Ehresmann in 1935 who started the study of deformation spaces of geometric structures, asking which ‘shapes’ can be ‘locally modeled’ on a certain geometry. In 1982 William Thurston’s Geometrization Conjecture, now a theorem, thanks to Grigori Perelman, renewed the interest in locally homogeneous spaces, that is spaces that look the same at each point. [Maloni] proposes to study families of structures on manifolds and how they change when one perturbs them, focusing in particular on geometric and dynamical aspects.”

The grant also funds future collaborations with, and outreaches to, undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs and fellow early-career mathematicians.

Professional Society Recognizes Pathologist Among ‘40 Under Forty’

Dr. Joseph Wiencek, assistant professor of pathology and associate director of clinical chemistry at the UVA Health System, has been named to the 2019 ASCP “40 Under Forty” list of “high-achieving pathologists, pathology residents and medical laboratory professionals under age 40 … who have made significant contributions to the profession and stand out as the future of laboratory leadership.”

The 40 honorees received discounted registration to the ASCP 2019 Annual Meeting in Phoenix and complimentary enrollment in the essential Lab Management University Core Competencies package, part of a collaborative educational initiative of ASCP and the American Pathology Foundation.

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Applicants submitted a résumé and answered questions about how they are functioning as an innovator in health care, or how they are contributing to leading innovations within the profession. A committee of ASCP pathologists, laboratory professional and resident members, including three 2018 40 Under Forty honorees, evaluated candidates based on their accomplishments, experience, leadership skills and dedication to innovation in the field of laboratory medicine and pathology.

Wiencek earned his B.A. in chemistry from The Ohio State University in 2008 and his Ph.D. in clinical/bioanalytical chemistry from Cleveland State University in 2015. During his doctoral work, he completed a two-year internship in the Clinical Biochemistry Laboratory at the Cleveland Clinic’s Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute in 2015.

Wiencek then went on to complete his postdoctoral training in clinical chemistry at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, in 2017. His research interests include preanalytical variation in laboratory testing, diagnostic stewardship and medical education.

Founded in 1922 in Chicago, ASCP is the world’s largest professional membership organization for pathologists and laboratory professionals.

Keim-Malpass is First Nurse Named ‘Cost of Care’ Fellow

Associate professor Jessica Keim-Malpass has been named a fellow of Costs of Care, the first nurse ever to assume such a role. Costs of Care is a non-governmental organization focused on the reduction of health care costs by eliminating waste and redundancy and ensuring that patients receive care that is safe, dignified and affordable. It curates, sources and disseminates knowledge from patients and frontline clinicians to help health systems deliver better care at a lower cost.

In her early research, Keim-Malpass – a pediatric and oncology nurse and researcher who teaches in both the schools of Nursing and Medicine – studied how and why young people with advanced cancer shared their stories on social media.

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At the heart of their stories, she noted, lurked health care costs.

“Many in my study ranked their financial toxicity worse than their symptom experience with cancer treatment,” Keim-Malpass said. “I remember stories of women at the end of life considering divorce so they wouldn’t be left with the medical debt. I also became acutely aware of the information imbalance and lack of transparency in costs, and how infrequently the topic would come up during clinical consultations.

“Additionally, I began to understand the cumulative stress of financial uncertainty in shared medical decision-making. [As an oncology nurse], I felt helpless when I could not provide patients adequate responses to straightforward questions like, ‘What will this surgery cost me?’”

As a member of the Costs of Care team, Keim-Malpass will develop educational materials, establish implementation frameworks and lead workshops that aim to improve care and reduce costs.

Kluge-Ruhe-Commissioned Bark Painting Wins Art Prize

A bark painting commissioned by UVA’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection has won a prestigious Australian art award, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin City announced in August. 

The painting, in natural pigments on eucalyptus bark, titled “Journey to America,” depicts Aboriginal artist Djambawa Marawili’s clan design connecting the Coat of Arms of Australia with the Statue of Liberty.

Kluge-Ruhe commissioned a painting by Marawili for its upcoming exhibition, “Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala.” Kluge-Ruhe Director Margo Smith said the resulting painting deviates from Marawili’s past work in surprising ways.

“This astonishing painting symbolizes Marawili’s experience visiting the United States and the historical and contemporary connections that Yolngu people have created overseas through their art,” she said.

Marawili undertook an artist residency at Kluge-Ruhe in 2015, during which time he examined Yolngu bark paintings in the collection and at the Smithsonian Natural Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Seeing designs related to sacred knowledge, or “madayin,” in bark paintings at these museums ignited his desire to work with Kluge-Ruhe to develop a major exhibition of Yolngu bark paintings spanning eight decades. He said, “I came to America and I found my madayin, and now I want to share it with the world."

To develop this exhibition, Marawili and other Yolngu artists and knowledge-holders have returned to Kluge-Ruhe repeatedly beginning in 2017. Curator Henry Skerritt, who has collaborated with Yolngu throughout the project, said, “Djambawa’s award-winning painting is a masterpiece, but it is far more than just a beautiful painting. It is a statement about Yolngu ownership over a project that he initiated during his time at Kluge-Ruhe.”

Marawili’s bark painting took the grand prize at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in Darwin. An acclaimed artist and principal ceremonial leader of the Madarrpa clan of northeast Arnhem Land, Marawili has pioneered a new aesthetic movement among Yolngu artists. In 1996, he won the Bark Painting category of the Telstra awards for a work commissioned by John W. Kluge that is part of the Kluge-Ruhe Collection.

An anonymous bequest of $20 million will mark the 100th anniversary of the University of Virginia School of Architecture and benefit primarily the school’s Department of Architectural History. The gift will enhance excellence in scholarship and expand opportunities for global learning experiences.

Once realized, the bequest will create three endowed funds to support an international travel program, two professorships in architectural history – one with a focus on European studies and another centered on Asian studies – and fellowships for Ph.D. and graduate students.

“As the School of Architecture prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary, I want to thank these donors for helping us make the next 100 years even better,” UVA President Jim Ryan said. “This gift will build bridges between UVA and other countries, help unlock discoveries in architectural history, and make it easier for more talented students to study here. On behalf of everyone who will benefit from this gift, I am extremely grateful.”

The School of Architecture has offered courses in architectural history since its establishment in 1919, when it was led by Sidney Fiske Kimball. The school’s first graduating class in 1922 consisted of three students, who were awarded Bachelor of Science in Architecture degrees.

Today, the School of Architecture includes an enrollment of more than 600 students and offers undergraduate degrees in architecture, urban and environmental planning and architectural history, as well as a Ph.D. in the Constructed Environment and four master’s degree programs: Master of Architectural History, Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban and Environmental Planning.

“We are sincerely grateful for this tremendous gift to the Architecture School and the incredible generosity, kindness and thoughtfulness of the donors,” Dean and Edward Elson Professor of the School of Architecture Ila Berman said. “Their bequest will ensure we continue building on the school’s legacy of scholarship and teaching, as well as enabling students to expand their intellectual horizons. This gift will be truly transformational in advancing our mission to deepen our pursuit of knowledge and inspire students to create a more just, courageous and compelling future for all.”

Celebrations for the School of Architecture’s 100-year anniversary will begin Friday. The weekend of festivities and events in Campbell Hall and on Grounds will include tours, open houses, panel discussions, exhibitions, receptions and more to commemorate the Architecture School’s history and celebrate its future.

Earlier this month, Richmond City Council allocated $15 million for a participatory budgeting project that will allow residents to suggest, plan and vote on community improvement projects using that money.

For University of Virginia graduate student Matthew Slaats, the vote was a long time coming – more than five years, really. That’s how long Slaats, a Ph.D. student in the School of Architecture’s Constructed Environment program, has been working to bring participatory budgeting to Virginia.

Though new to Richmond, participatory budgeting is used by more than 3,000 cities around the world, including major U.S. cities like New York City, Boston and Chicago. Launched in Brazil in the 1990s as a new way to manage public funds, the multi-stage process allows residents to brainstorm uses for public dollars, work with city staff to develop specific project proposals, and vote on proposals to implement.

In Richmond, the funding – $3 million per year for five years – will come from the city’s Capital Improvement Program budget, which funds improvement projects like sidewalks or community center renovations.

Slaats, whose graduate school work focuses on grassroots community change, has spent his career working with community organizations in the U.S. and abroad. He has worked on community engagement projects in New York, as well as a pilot arts-based participatory budgeting project in Charlottesville, and will serve as a project lead, in partnership with a group of community leaders, during the Richmond project. Right now, it’s all on a volunteer basis, driven by Slaats’ firm belief that strong community relationships are essential to a healthy, functioning democracy.

“I have spent most of my 15-plus-year professional career focused on community engagement and community empowerment, seeing a lack of commitment and the development of infrastructure to have rich, deep relationship with communities,” he said. “We have to reinforce our values of democracy in order to achieve them. My desire to pursue participatory budgeting is not just about volunteering, but it's a commitment to creating spaces and processes that accomplish those objectives.”

We spoke with him last week to find out more.

Q. How did you help bring participatory budgeting to Richmond?

A. There have been conversations around this for about four years that picked up over the summer when [First District City Councilman] Andreas Addison expressed interest. In collaboration with community leaders Ebony Walden, Ryan Rinn, Albert Walker and Daniel Wagner, we developed a proposal and built support from within City Council, spending August and September educating City Council and getting their feedback. This produced a resolution in early September that was unanimously approved.  

Now we are in the process of working with many community organizations, the mayor’s office and city staff to design the project.

Q. How will it work?

A. The project will be a citywide initiative, which means that all Richmond residents can participate. It will likely be organized by council member districts, with citizens in those districts coming together to brainstorm ideas, collaboratively develop project proposals, present those proposals to their peers and, ultimately, vote. Right now, we are in the planning phase, and we hope to officially launch the project phase in fall 2020.

Additionally, in that time, we are talking to community leaders, UVA systems engineering students and Virginia Commonwealth University urban planning students to develop an equity index. This will help us understand and set goals for how this process can respond to long-term disparities in the Richmond area. Next spring, we plan to work with these partners to build a system that will define what equity means for Richmond, parse a significant amount of data – health data, educational data, crime data – and define specific metrics to make sure the project achieves these outcomes.

Q. In your experience, why does participatory budgeting work?

A. Participatory budgeting is a new paradigm for how community engagement happens in a city. When we hear from community members that they distrust city government, it is often because they don’t feel like they are involved in setting a vision for the future. Participatory budgeting gives residents direct access to their tax dollars, and allows them to guide and envision where that money will go, as opposed to participating in a survey that then disappears behind closed doors. This process forefronts transparency and accountability.

Of course, one goal is for residents to see that they can have an idea for improving their neighborhood, get it approved and see it happen. But participatory budgeting also opens the city budgeting process, allowing residents to better understand how it works. This is especially important for young residents, who get a seat at the table in participatory budgeting and build their ability to see themselves as visionaries in their own neighborhoods.

Q. What are some of the best things you have seen come out of the process?

A. I led a pilot project in Charlottesville a few years ago that resulted in a community garden at South First Street public housing, and one of the residents, Janet Mitchell, led and advocated for that project. What was so special about this, more than any one project, was it showed the ability of residents to take action in their communities and set a vision for the future.

Right now, we are working with city leaders to see this project grow in Charlottesville, and I am hopeful we can continue these efforts in the near future.

Q. How does this fit into your Ph.D. work at UVA?

A. My Ph.D. work in general focuses on how grassroots community groups create change in their cities. While interested in how this happens globally, my focus is centered on Durham, North Carolina, and Jackson, Mississippi, where movements are building consciousness and developing initiatives, like participatory budgeting, to realize more resilient and democratic communities.

Q. You are working with Richmond as a volunteer. What drives you to dedicate your time and energy to this?

A. Having lived in Charlottesville with my family for about seven years, and starting at UVA in the fall of 2017 – right after the “Unite the Right” violence – I have experienced what it meant for a community to be in a state of crisis and then begin the long-term work to respond to that trauma.

As someone who is building roots in Charlottesville, I am very committed to supporting Charlottesville in finding ways to respond to both the short-term and long-term causes that led to those events. While not the only answer, participatory budgeting is something I really believe can help us build a different future – for Charlottesville, for Richmond and for Virginia.

For me, these efforts are all about listening to the vision that people have for their cities. During the pilot project in Charlottesville, we went door-to-door as a way of meeting people where they are. When you sit down with someone and ask them how they would improve their neighborhood, they start to open up and all of these amazing ideas come out. Through these and other projects, I have learned to value the knowledge and experience that resides in every neighborhood, and to see participatory budgeting as way to share and hear that knowledge in new ways.