The University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences has published a major multimedia presentation called “Thesis: A Report from Arts & Sciences.”

The online report offers an in-depth look at a few of the major activities and initiatives in the College in recent years and the changes taking place today that will shape its future direction, according to an introductory email from Dean Meredith Jung-en Woo.

The report highlights:                                                                  

• New undergraduate seminar series on broad-ranging topics, from China’s development and the November U.S. elections to cancer, nutrition and the worldwide use and abuse of water, plus other curriculum enhancements.
• The conversion of natural gas to fuel, breakthroughs in physicists’ hunt for the Higgs particle, a seaweed project impacting the health of local bays (with much wider implications) and big data-driven social and political science research, among other path-breaking work being undertaken jointly by faculty and students.
• New partnerships in East Asia; Delhi, India; Berlin and beyond that are reinvigorating the humanities and arts and creating wholly new learning experiences.
• Top-caliber graduate students like Ashley Hurst, who draws on her legal and religion backgrounds in her bioethics teaching and studies, and Carlee Beth Hawkins, who studies and teaches on “the science of the unconscious” – embodiments of the motivation for the College’s targeted new investments in its graduate programs.
• $66.5 million in new gifts and pledges last fiscal year, the second consecutive year of record growth in new commitments to the College.
• Recent and upcoming changes to the College’s physical landscape that will affect its long-term success.

The report is formatted for the iPad, mobile devices and the Web.