(By Barbara A. Perry, Gerald L. Baliles Professor and director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center) When Robert F. Kennedy died 50 years ago today, the victim of assassination like his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Edward Kennedy received word of the unfathomable historical repetition while completing a campaign swing through northern California. Just when they had achieved victory in the Golden State’s 1968 Democratic presidential primary, the Kennedys’ world collapsed, as it had on that horrific November day in 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of President John F. Kennedy who graduated from the UVA School of Law and mounted a presidential campaign, died 50 years ago Wednesday. He is remembered today as a peace candidate who tried to bridge racial and economic divisions during a troubled decade.
UVA psychology professor Brian Nosek is gearing up for his upcoming talk on "understanding implicit bias,” to be held Monday at 6 p.m. at the MLK Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School.
UVA law professor Saikrishna Prakash discusses the history of presidential pardons as well as the political nature of impeachment in the context of today's political climate.
A recent call was led by two early-career professionals who focused the conversation on the ways landscape history is taught in landscape architecture schools. In sharing some notes from this conversation with two teaching landscape historians, Elizabeth K. Meyer and Thaïsa Way, I received no disagreement on the points raised, though each of them did cite entrenched realities that limit the academy’s ability to build up non-European perspectives in landscape history courses. Meyer, at the University of Virginia, said she thinks the accreditation standards for landscape architecture degree prog...
Some studies have shown that global temperatures have risen by about two degrees Celsius in the past 100 years, and without intervention (for example, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving the environment) temperatures are expected to rise in the next 15 years with more pronounced negative effects. A study released by the University of Virginia in early May indicated that East Africans will experience heat stress later this century as temperatures hit new highs buoyed by greenhouse gases.
UVA’s College at Wise: The budget earmarks $46.44 million in 2018-19, an increase of about $2.53 million compared to the current-year budget, and $47.95 million in 2019-20. Education and general program funds go up in the second year by almost $1.69 million; that reflects a roughly $2 million increase for instruction and a $200,000-plus decrease in plant operation and maintenance.
School district leaders in Aurora are proposing to spend almost half a million dollars next school year to train more principals in leadership skills that have helped some of the district’s low-performing schools improve. After a $1.6 million experiment with three leadership programs – of which more than half was covered by grant money – district administrators have recommended one, the University of Virginia’s School Turnaround Program.
"You’ve got a possible basis for constitutional protection, but there’s some uncertainty about it," said Douglas Laycock, a UVA law professor and expert on religious liberty who won a Supreme Court case in 2015 establishing Muslim prisoner's right to grow a beard. "It does not create a simple across-the-board right to conscientious objection."
Doug Harnsberger first saw the sketch in 2012 while searching through Thomas Jefferson’s papers: a thumbnail drawing of a circle with spokes radiating outwards. For 200 years, the sketch was mislabeled as a skylight at UVA’s Rotunda. But the sketch was the first plans for the Rotunda’s dome, he realized, setting off a years-long effort to recreate Jefferson’s original vision.
(Commentary) Our central finding is that top colleges are more affordable than many people realize – not only for poor students, but also for those from the middle class. Here is the full breakdown of costs, for each of six representative families, at each of the 32 colleges – including UVA – that participate in the MyIntuition online calculator.
Gregory B. Fairchild, the Isidore Horween Research Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, was given the added duties as the inaugural director of Northern Virginia operations for the university.
A UVA School of Medicine professor will continue working in Gov. Ralph Northam’s Cabinet as the state’s chief health czar. Dr. M. Norman Oliver had been serving as acting state health commissioner since April.
With President Donald Trump’s approval ratings below 50 percent and control of the U.S. House at stake, Republicans are being forced to spend money and time trying to hold two Ohio seats they normally would not have to worry about. “If the Democrats netted a seat in Ohio, it probably is suggestive they are winning the House,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of a major political website at UVA’s Center for Politics.
Today two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN announced a discovery that finally links the two heaviest known particles: the top quark and the Higgs boson. “We looked at many different decay modes of Higgs bosons,” says Chris Neu, a UVA physicist who worked on the CMS analysis. “This process is so rare that we needed to combine results from different Higgs signatures to maximize our sensitivity and establish the top-Higgs signal.”
In an initiative led by the Fralin Museum of Art at UVA, the Charlottesville Office of Human Rights and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, local artists will design posters and billboards to educate citizens about the history of slavery and ongoing racism in the city, and also hold public art-making sessions and conversations.
Moving to a new town or even a new neighborhood is stressful at any age, but a new study shows that frequent relocations in childhood are related to poorer well-being in adulthood, especially among people who are more introverted or neurotic. The researchers tested the relation between the number of childhood moves and well-being in a sample of 7,108 American adults who were followed for 10 years. “We know that children who move frequently are more likely to perform poorly in school and have more behavioral problems,” said the study’s lead author, Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia....
The U.S. Farm Bill of 2014 allowed state departments of agriculture and colleges to cultivate hemp for research purposes. UVA, Virginia Tech, Virginia State University and James Madison University all have research in progress.
Alderman, the university’s main library, opened in 1938 when it only had to serve 3,000 students, and is in dire need of repair. The first phase of the $160 million project, set to begin in 2020, would demolish the Old and New Stacks, replacing them in 2023 with compact shelves that meet fire code. Safe stacks are necessary, staff, students and faculty agree. But the question is how to ensure that the library’s books remain readily available.
The National Institutes of Health invests nearly $37.3 billion annually in medical research. More than 80 percent of the funding is awarded through nearly 50,000 competitive grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions in every U.S. state and around the world. At No. 46, UVA received $66,907,817 toward 155 awards.