In The News

The University of Virginia climbed in the rankings to No. 56, with just under $400 million in research expenditures.

One or two of the kids coming of the bus today at Southwood today might be attending St. Anne’s-Belfield in August, thanks to the generosity of one of the school’s most proud alumni, Eagles defensive end Chris Long. Also a UVA graduate, Long promised at the beginning of the season that he would donate his first six game checks to fund scholarships for two deserving kids that would take them from sixth grade through high school graduation.

Back in October, Carla Williams became the first African-American woman to be an athletic director among the 64 schools that make up the Power Five conferences, and the fifth active female athletics director at that level in the country when she took over at the University of Virginia.

Catholics are called to "open our hearts to how we understand white supremacy and racial justice," said Nichole Flores, a UVA assistant professor of religious studies who teaches Catholic theology and ethics. 

In the waning days of 2017, UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Affairs released a population trends study of the commonwealth that uncovered some troubling demographic statistics. 

Lee’s acceptance of slavery was comparable to his Southern contemporaries, and he denounced abolitionists from the North, according to research by Gary W. Gallagher, UVA’s John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War and director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced funding for Virginia Tech’s research on electrotherapy, a process that attacks brain cancer and tumors associated with Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. More than $1.1 million was approved by the Virginia Research Investment Committee to support the applied research and development needed to treat brain cancer and progress this innovative technology toward commercial products. The award is in partnership with Virginia Tech, University of Virginia associate professor Wilson Miller and Blacksburg-based start-up company VoltMed Inc.

Nearly one-third of undergraduates who have declared a major changed that major at least once within three years of initial enrollment, according to a recent National Center for Education Statistics study of 25,000 students. The data is challenging for higher ed administrators to assess, says Josipa Roksa, a UVA professor of sociology and education. “If students change majors because they are struggling academically in prerequisite or major classes, it would imply the need for stronger preparation in K-12 education as well as more attention to academic readiness in college,” says Roksa.

For 12 years, Dr. Adam Goldfarb’s UVA lab has studied the causes of iron-restricted anemia. Now, a discovery in Goldfarb’s lab is helping to shed light on how red blood cells are created and how anemia can be treated.

Fast-growing Prince William County has leapfrogged Virginia Beach to become the second-most-populous jurisdiction in Virginia, further cementing the dominance within the commonwealth of its Washington suburbs. Three out of four of the state’s largest jurisdictions are now in Northern Virginia, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. 

UVA’s Rotunda has received a Silver LEED Certification. LEED, an international review system, stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

In the sunny library at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, it’s easy to imagine the third U.S. president (and renowned bibliophile) pouring over books at the ingenious adjustable reading table. Jefferson put his smarty pants ideas to work down the hill in Charlottesville, too, where the University of Virginia’s Academical Village includes a domed Rotunda and dorms surrounding a bucolic lawn. It’s due both to the high number of college grads – and bookstores – that the city ranks as the most literate in our survey.

There's a different feeling around the Virginia swim team this season. "It’s just being around the new staff and the excitement of UVA swimming," said senior swimmer Luke Georgiadis, "and the new program is ... it’s just made things a lot more fun and its made the hard things a lot easier."

One prisoner who maintains her innocence is Trudy Munoz, a legal immigrant from Peru. Gov. Terry McAuliffe took no action on this case, so her only hope rests with the newly elected governor, Ralph Northam. The Innocence Project at the University of Virginia is asking him to pardon Munoz, allowing her to begin a new life here.  

Let’s talk about the presidents’ health – not only the one we’ve got now, but all of them. "There's a huge gulf between how we look at medicine now and in, say, the 1950s," UVA history professor William Hitchcock said. "Then, when a doctor, a figure of authority, said the president's going to be all right, it was the end of discussion." 

A former senior government official shares the view that Birnbaum’s editorial probably didn’t constitute lobbying. The Anti-Lobbying Act “is really aimed at Congress” and preventing advocacy for specific pieces of legislation, says attorney Chris Lu, who served as deputy secretary of labor under former President Barack Obama and is now at UVA’s Miller Center. The committee’s letter “in my mind is more broadly an attack on science and evidence,” he says.

MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid is interviewed by Douglas Blackmon, director of public programs at UVA’s Miller Center and executive producer of “American Forum” during an event commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Paramount Theater.

Two neighboring states have parts of the Alabama cocktail but lack all the ingredients. Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who was the last statewide Democratic officeholder, is a formidable candidate. “There’s no reason to think Tennessee can’t be at least competitive,” says Geoffrey Skelley of UVA’s Center for Politics. But he still rates it as a likely Republican hold. Tennessee has a smaller proportion of black voters, and the GOP front-runner is Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a solid candidate – though she has not been through the crucible of a statewide race.

A new discovery about how the body makes red blood cells could lead to improved treatments for anemia. Researchers at the UVA School of Medicine made the discovery while investigating why the body fails to make enough red blood cells in iron-restricted anemias.

The first professor at VA’s Darden School of Business died Friday at the age of 107. John D. Forbes was invited to help form Darden in 1954, and he taught at the school from its first semester in fall 1955 until his retirement in 1980. He then taught an art history class through the Division of Continuing Education until 2003, retiring with more than 60 years of university teaching.