Driving the president’s push to reopen even as COVID-19 virus infections continue to rise is a deep-seated instinct that he has no choice, says UVA political scientist Larry Sabato. “The economy either recovers substantially or he’s a one-term president,” Sabato said.
Since 2013, different chapters of the Little Sisters have fought the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage mandate in courts around the United States. Each legal battle rests on the argument that the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law intended to ensure that “interests in religious freedom are protected.” ... “When your exercise of religious liberty harms other people, then it faces a constitutional limit,” said UVA law professor Micah Schwartzman, who joined a friend of the court brief in support of the states fighting the exemption.
The counter-intuitive finding here is that Virginia’s most prestigious institutions may be at greatest risk of revenue loss because they are the very same institutions with the greatest number of out-of-state students. The University of Virginia has even more dollars at risk — $368 million, a truly massive sum.
The University of Virginia will hold a virtual ceremony on May 16 to confer degrees. Tentative plans are being made for in-person final exercises on the Lawn for the Class of 2020 on Oct. 9-11.
The Thomas Jefferson Health District and the Charlottesville-UVA-Albemarle Emergency Operations Center are hosting a virtual COVIDconvo town hall on Friday. The town hall, set for 3 to 4 p.m., aims to provide answers to commonly asked questions regarding local COVID-19 cases and investigations and reopening businesses and to provide an open forum for other community questions.
UVA is deploying one of its most famous faces to spread joy around Charlottesville and beyond. Cav Man, the University’s mascot, is taking requests to perform random acts of kindness.
Cav Man made a visit to a first-grade teacher at Venable Elementary School, but it was anything but random. Megan Greenwood was nominated for a surprise visit from the famous mascot through “Random Acts of Cav Man.”
(Commentary by Andrew Kaufman, associate professor and assistant director of UVA’s Center for Teaching Excellence) How can teachers best support students in this process? Or parents their children, health care workers their patients, all of us one another? The answers to these questions are more similar than we might think.
UVA Health is working on increasing access to both inpatient and outpatient care with safety measures to protect the health of patients and team members.
Dr. William Petri, a UVA professor of infectious disease, and five other scientists had been working on a vaccine to treat amoebic dysentery, an infection that damages the intestines. The vaccine causes robust production of antibodies in the gut – lined with a mucosal membrane similar to the lining of our lungs – the first target of the new coronavirus.
Transitions: U. of North Carolina at Charlotte Selects New Chancellor; 2020 Guggenheim Fellows Named
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced this year's fellows. Of the 175 fellows named this year, 124 are in academe. Among them are Lawrie Balfour, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, "Imagining Freedom: Toni Morrison and the Work of Words."
Hundreds of colleges and universities have pushed back decision deadlines to June 1. Some prestigious schools that held to May 1 nevertheless gave more time to those who asked. Greg W. Roberts, dean of admissions at the University of Virginia, said the school gave about 100 extensions. “We were very accommodating,” he said.
Healio Primary Care spoke with Dr. Randolph Canterbury, the senior associate dean for education at the UVA School of Medicine, and Patrick A. Carr, assistant dean for medical curriculum at the University of North Dakota’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, to learn more about how institutions are adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two UVA researchers have been recognized with one of the highest honors for a scientist. According to a release, James N. Galloway, Sidman P. Poole Professor of Environmental Sciences, and Timothy D. Wilson, Sherrell J. Aston Professor of Psychology, have been elected to the National Academy of Science.
“I live in Powhatan and commute to Charlottesville, three days a week, for 12-hour shifts. I wear a mask now 24/7 [at work]. Working in the ER is stressful in itself. [With the coronavirus], it adds another component – especially with my family and children. I’m always terrified that I could be exposed and bring it home. I think everyone in health care feels that way,” says Cameron Walker, a nurse in the Emergency Room at the University of Virginia.
We Understand Why We Have to Miss Commencement. But Here's What We Lost in the Abrupt End to College
(Commentary) While virtual commencements are all many of us can have in this time, watching these moments through two-dimensional screens, thousands of miles apart will be different. Postponed ceremonies will be different, too. We won’t all be in the same era of our lives: excited, scared, hopeful during the bittersweet end of college. But that doesn’t mean they won’t mean anything. “For some campuses like ours, students were away on spring break,” UVA President James Ryan said. “They didn’t have four or five days to say goodbye. So, for many of them, this will be the first time they’ve seen e...
“I wish I could say that the Facebook review board was cosmetic, but I’m not even sure that it’s that deep,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a UVA professor of media studies and author of a book on Facebook. “If Facebook really wanted to take outside criticism seriously at any point in the past decade, it could have taken human rights activists seriously about problems in Myanmar; it could have taken journalists seriously about problems in the Philippines; it could have taken legal scholars seriously about the way it deals with harassment; and it could have taken social media scholars seriously about...
The University of Virginia announced Wednesday that Nicole Thorne Jenkins will be the dean of the McIntire School of Commerce, effective July 1. Jenkins is currently vice dean of the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky, where she is also the Von Allmen chaired professor of accountancy.
(Commentary by Barbara Perry, Gerald L. Baliles Professor and Presidential Studies director at UVA’s Miller Center) Presidential campaigns, as we know them up to the current pandemic, are primarily 20th-century phenomena. Before that, few candidates or, heaven forbid, incumbent presidents, sullied themselves by rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi. But as presidents and aspirants for the office realized that their power could be augmented by direct appeals and outreach to the electorate, they embraced in-person campaigns. Nationwide train, and then plane, travel made them possible.
An event the aims to honor the work of some UVA students looked very different on Wednesday night. Interim Director of Bands Andrew Koch hosted a virtual spring banquet for Cavalier Marching Band members and their families.