The University of Virginia held a virtual commencement ceremony for its graduates on Saturday after the coronavirus pandemic stopped their original plan for Final Exercises on the Lawn.
On the grounds Saturday afternoon, there was an event that was totally unique. An assortment of University of Virginia deans announced how many degrees they were going to award this spring to students who had completed their degree requirements. There were no colorful balloons or laughter on The Lawn. The Wahoos in the Class of 2020 class were monitoring the ceremony elsewhere on their computers.
Few if any other architects worked as closely with former Charleston Mayor Joe Riley during his four decades in office as did Jaquelin Robertson, and few have left as large a mark on the city. Mr. Robertson’s legacy also is intertwined with Mayor Riley’s in the creation of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, which continues to this day and has advised more than 1,200 U.S. mayors on specific building and planning issues in their cities. In its experimental early years, Mr. Robertson, then dean of the University of Virginia’s architecture school, was able to attract top talent to counsel the m...
University of Virginia fourth-years across the nation celebrated Final Exercises virtually. With the pandemic preventing an in-person commencement, many are doing the best they can to honor this milestone in a positive way.
Two green building programs are being honored by the Virginia Energy Efficiency Council for their innovative efforts to drive energy efficiency in schools, libraries, university construction and government buildings. The programs, which are led by Henrico County and the University of Virginia, received VAEEC’s fifth Virginia Energy Efficiency Leadership Awards on May 14 at the VAEEC Spring Forum.
The College of William & Mary announced Monday that A. Benjamin Spencer, a civil procedure and federal courts scholar who teaches law at the University of Virginia, is the new dean of the Williamsburg university’s law school. Spencer is the first African American dean of any school at William & Mary, a spokesman said.
At UVA’s Darden School of Business, 22 different faculty filmed personal videos of congratulations and encouragement to the 336 graduates who completed the school’s full-time MBA program. One prof strummed a guitar and sang Elton John’s “Rocketman”; another pair belted out an a capella verse of the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have To Do Is Dream.”
Privacy and surveillance around testing and “passports” are also challenges, more than many people may realize, said Jarrett Zigon, who directs UVA’s bioethics program and also studies technology and justice. “Think back to Sept 11, 2001. We as a country, and as a government, were quite quick to give up certain rights and privacy,” he said. “Now here we are again.”
Dr. William Petri at UVA Medical Center says when the vaccine for polio was finally created in the 1950s, it was a major victory for science. Now, he believes the impact of past vaccines is helping to lay the groundwork for a possible COVID-19 vaccine in the not-too-distant future.
On the surface, percent positivity is fairly straightforward, said Dr. William Petri, a UVA infectious disease specialist. “That’s the easiest part of the equation,” he continued. “It’s just the number of tests that have been performed versus the percent that come back positive.”
So where does Virginia land on the scale? According to an analysis done by WalletHub, the commonwealth is the 43rd-most federally dependent state. “There is no ‘fairest’ way to redistribute resources among states and localities,” said William Shobe, director of UVA’s Center for Economic & Policy Studies. “We have to ask what outcome we hope to achieve by redistributing resources. The key to redistribution is that it makes the opportunity to thrive more equal.”
Our editor Joanne Kenen recently talked coronavirus antibody status and so-called immunity passports with Jarrett Zigon, an anthropologist who directs the University of Virginia Bioethics Program and the Center for Data Ethics and Justice. Zigon said he's quite concerned that we’re rushing to surrender privacy in an emergency, much like he said we did after Sept. 11, 2001.
UVA’s Final Exercises would have been held this weekend, but in its place, a virtual celebration and conferral of degrees will be livestreamed in honor of the class of 2020 on May 16 at 1 p.m.
Henrico County and the University of Virginia received the Virginia Energy Efficiency Council’s fifth Virginia Energy Efficiency Leadership Awards today at the VAEEC Spring Forum. UVA’s Delta Force Program is responsible for achieving energy efficiency and savings across the university’s nearly 18 million square feet of building space. Since 2009, UVA has invested $17.4 million in energy projects, for a savings of $28.7 million in energy costs and 180,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
Vice President Mike Pence last week held a call with 14 college and university leaders – including UVA President Jim Ryan – on the subject of “best practices to get students back to school in the fall” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
A vast majority of Central Virginians surveyed say they have not been tested for COVID-19 and have no symptoms, but a third of them say they have friends or family members who have tested positive for the disease, according to a recent survey by UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
“Nothing is without risk,” said Dr. William Petri, a professor of infectious diseases at the UVA School of Medicine. “But you can weigh the risks. … It’s going to be a series of judgment calls people will make every day.”
The University of Virginia’s College at Wise says it plans to begin the upcoming fall semester on its campus.
Deferred-enrollment policies and deadlines vary from school to school. The University of Virginia usually grants about 60 requests a year from admitted students who accept offers but want to defer enrollment. So far, the volume of deferral requests for this time in May is normal, officials said.
In 1980, Robertson became dean of UVA’s School of Architecture. In 1982, he brought together a diverse group of 25 leading and emerging architects, including Paul Rudolph, Léon Krier, Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas, for a symposium that later became a book entitled “The Charlottesville Tapes.” While in Virginia, Robertson wrote a significant two-part treatise applying Thomas Jefferson’s architectural principles to 20th-century problems.