Simulations are a growing part of both undergraduate and graduate nursing students’ experiences. Thanks to a $2 million capital expansion project, part of Joanne and Bill Conway’s record-setting $20 million gift to the Nursing School in 2020, the lab’s capacity grew from 7,200 square feet to more than 13,100 square feet. Today’s sim lab boasts three times its previous student capacity, with three new medical/surgical simulation rooms, debriefing rooms and work stations.
Its high-tech spaces also include all the bells and whistles of a typical hospital room; a phalanx of more than one dozen programmable mannequins, including several premature infants and several adults; a wearable birthing simulator; and several infection-control spaces where students practice safety procedures. More than 35 cameras throughout the lab assess students’ skills for review by their professors and peers during post-simulation briefings.
“We rely on our sim lab to provide students with rich, meaningful, applicable clinical experiences that prepare them to think on their feet when transitioning to care for real patients and across real scenarios,” Nursing School Dean Marianne Baernholdt said. “While that’s always been the case, Ryne and his team’s consistent creative approach to simulation has really upped UVA’s clinical game in a moment when nursing and medical schools increasingly rely on simulation to ready a generation of care professionals for the realities of today’s clinical environments.”
VBA Honors Professor With Highest Award
School of Law professor A.E. Dick Howard, a scholar who helped draft Virginia’s current constitution, has received the Virginia Bar Association’s top award.

A.E. Dick Howard, the School of Law’s longest-tenured professor, won the Virginia State Bar Association’s highest award. (Photo by Ian Bradshaw)
The Gerald L. Baliles Distinguished Service Award, renamed in 2008 for the former governor and 1967 UVA Law graduate, recognizes and appreciates exceptional service and contributions to the bar and public at large, according to the VBA.
Howard is the Warner-Booker Distinguished Professor of International Law and an expert in the fields of constitutional law, comparative constitutionalism and the U.S. Supreme Court, where he clerked for Justice Hugo L. Black.
Howard was executive director of the commission that wrote Virginia’s current constitution and directed the successful referendum campaign for its ratification. He has been counsel to the General Assembly and a consultant to state and federal bodies, including the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. From 1982 to 1986, he served as counselor to the governor of Virginia, and he chaired Virginia’s Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution.
The state bar’s annual award recipients were recognized Jan. 20 during the association’s annual meeting in Williamsburg.
“It could not be more fitting than to honor professor Dick Howard in this manner,” UVA Rector Whittington W. Clement said. “His writing of the 1971 Virginia constitution and his commentaries about the document over the years have had a profound influence upon the legislature, state judges, lawyers and millions of Virginians.”
In his acceptance speech, Howard lauded the lawyers he worked with throughout his career, including Black and Virginia’s constitutional commissioners. He also thanked and celebrated the students he has taught and collaborated with in 60 years of teaching.
“My students have gone on to be Supreme Court law clerks, governors, appellate court judges, ambassadors, academic stars,” Howard said. “I do not take credit for their accomplishments. But I thank them for reminding me why I love the classroom – why teaching is at the heart of my professional life.”
In January 1994, Washingtonian magazine named Howard one of the most respected educators in the nation. In 2007, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Library of Virginia included Howard on their list of the “greatest Virginians” of the 20th century.
In 2013, UVA recognized Howard with its Thomas Jefferson Award – the highest honor given to faculty members at the University.
After his experience with Virginia’s constitution, Howard was often consulted by constitutional draftsmen in other states and abroad. He has compared notes with revisers at work on new constitutions in Brazil, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Albania, Malawi and South Africa.
Professor Chosen as One of Six to Present Art Installations on the National Mall
Ashon Crawley, an associate professor of religious studies and African American and African studies, joined the UVA faculty in 2017 with a scholarly focus on Black religious and sacred performance practices. Along with that, he embarked on new paths in creative writing and art.

Ashon Crawley has been invited to create an original art installation to be displayed later this year on the National Mall in Washington. (Contributed photo)
Now, as one of six artists chosen nationwide, Crawley will create an art installation for the National Mall in Washington, D.C., as part of an initiative, “Beyond Granite,” to explore what is commemorated in the public space marked by monuments.
The Trust for the National Mall, with funding from the Mellon Foundation, is partnering with the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Park Service to present “Beyond Granite,” including exhibits, performances and programs, later this year. This inaugural project seeks to promote “a more inclusive, equitable and representative process for commemoration” in the nation’s capital city.
Although the individual works are going through an approval process, Crawley said this project builds on previous installations he has done and will be part of a larger project he is working on that includes two books, one fiction and the other nonfiction.
Crawley described his work as “exploring the intersection of performance, Blackness, queerness and spirituality.” He uses audio, visual and choreographic methods, clapping his hands with paint and dancing on paper and canvases, in creating his art.
Founder of the Otherwise Arts Lab, an integrative arts practice and space, he has held several art fellowships, including at the Dumbarton Oaks Museum and Library, Yaddo artists’ retreat and the MacDowell arts organization. His audiovisual art has been featured locally at Second Street Gallery and in the California African American Museum, among other places.
UVA Professor Named Among Top 1% of Computing, IT Peers
The Association for Computing Machinery has chosen 57 of its members for its most recent class of ACM Fellows, a program that recognizes the top 1% of ACM members for their accomplishments in computing and information technology. Sebastian Elbaum, UVA’s Anita Jones Faculty Fellow and Professor of Computer Science, received this elevation “for contributions to the analysis and testing of evolving systems and robotic systems.”