Two Southwest Virginia students at The University of Virginia in Charlottesville will be among 36 undergraduates selected to pursue 36 grant funded research projects this summer. Tyler Robbins, 20, of Keokee, a third year cognitive science and statistics double major, is researching how birds learn to recognize songs and potential applications to computer models for brain systems.Ty Vanover, 21, of Clintwood, a third year art history major, will research nationalistic art in Budapest created by students who trained at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna during the latter half of the 19th century.
New MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is predictably making plenty of headlines in the early days of his tenure and on a variety of issues, such as pace of play and expanded instant replay. Behind the scenes, Chris Marinak is playing a key role in making those and many other initiatives happen. A former pitcher at the University of Virginia and with degrees in computer engineering and business administration, Marinak is among a select group of MLB staffers who regularly interact with both on-field personnel and club owners, and he’s been widely praised for his ability to communicate with both...
Last week, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana signed into law the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Almost immediately, an uproar ensued, claiming that the law was discriminatory — that it provided a license for businesses to discriminate against gay and lesbian customers. University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, an expert in free-exercise law, stated the issue well: “The hysteria over this law is so unjustified. It’s not about discriminating against gays in general or across the board. It’s about not being involved in a ceremony that you b...
A group of thirty students from the University of Virginia were among the first Americans to visit Cuba after President Obama announced plans to normalize relations with the island nation. The group from UVA’s Darden School of Business made some surprising discoveries. Professor Greg Fairchild has been to plenty of Third World countries, and arriving at their airports can produce culture shock. “Something I was accustomed to and prepared for is we would land, and they would know we were Americans, and we’d be swarmed with an effort to get money or deliver us or something.&nbs...
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence decried an "avalanche of intolerance" directed at his state Sunday after he signed a law that he says protects the religious freedom of Hoosiers. Critics, however, say it is Pence and Republican lawmakers who are promoting intolerance, with civil rights advocates and business leaders of Apple and Indiana-based organizations such as the NCAA and Angie’s List wary of the state’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act opening the door for discrimination against gays and lesbians based on religious belief. Further, all three laws contain the "...
Dr. Lynn Sanders, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, told CBS News ahead of the 2000 election that expressing the right to vote improves mental and physical health. In a study she conducted, she found voting eased stress and the other mental health problems that stemmed from economic, political, and social disadvantages. What’s more is that voting and being engaged in the political process can also reduce the risk of future mental health problems, mainly among those with a history of depression. That’s not to say casting a vote automatically lowers canc...
(By Christopher J. Scalia, an associate professor of English at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise)Dismissing the liberal arts seems to have become a litmus test for conservative politicians. This is an unfortunate trend. Conservatives should be among the strongest defenders of the liberal arts, for at least two reasons: one economic, the other philosophical and political.
A Virginia lab could be on the verge of a breakthrough in cancer treatment. Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine say they are closing in on a new way to target leukemia cells that could be more effective and less toxic for patients than therapies currently in use. “In order to get away from that class of drugs, we need to develop drugs that very specifically target the proteins that are causative of the disease,” says John Bushweller, the U.Va. professor who is leading the research team.
From examining the genes in the monkey flower, to exploring the Rev. Martin Luther King’s political, social and theological beliefs, to epilepsy therapies, to sustainable tourism, 38 University of Virginia undergraduates will pursue 36 grant-funded research projects this summer. Thirty-five of the proposals received Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards and another student has had his research underwritten by the Stull family of Dallas. This marks the 16th year of the program, which helps further a key component of the U.Va. student experience: hands-on research.
The disparity between the percentage of women students at American colleges and universities and the percentage of women in senior leadership roles at these institutions has been noted many times in recent years. Clinch Valley College of the University of Virginia, today's UVa-Wise, was a two-year institution from its start in 1954 until 1976. Its original mission was to serve first-generation students in rural Southwest Virginia, and while the four-year campus -- led today by a woman Chancellor -- has grown to enroll over 2000 students, the focus on this historically underserved popu...
(By George Martin, the University of Virginia’s rector, and President Teresa Sullivan) We are pleased to announce the University of Virginia’s new Affordable Excellence program, which will offer many benefits to Virginia residents who attend U.Va.Affordable Excellence provides a sustainable model for addressing strategic investments in the quality of the U.Va. educational experience, continuing to offer more enrollment opportunities for in-state students at below-cost tuition rates, and reducing the student loan debt burden on low- and middle-income Virginia families.
For all the recent cutbacks in state funding of higher education, and the tuition increases that followed, in-state tuition at a flagship institution such as the University of Maryland or the University of Virginia remains one of the few bargains available to students and their families. There’s only one problem, and it’s not a minor one, even though most states don’t like to discuss it: The benefits of this bargain accrue disproportionately to upper-income families.
For someone who started his career in the computer business, William H. Goodwin Jr. has done some important business deals the really old-fashioned way: scribbled on a napkin. Goodwin, who got an engineering degree from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, started his career selling computer systems for IBM in the 1960s. The Goodwins also have been generous philanthropists, donating tens of millions to support education and health care. They promised $150 million to help build a free-standing, independent children’s hospital in the R...
November’s Rolling Stone article about sexual assault at the University of Virginia took another hit last week as Charlottesville police announced there was no evidence to support the gang rape described in graphic detail by writer Sabrina Ruben Erdely. But the debate over how to deal with sexual misconduct at UVa is still very much alive. The administration under President Teresa Sullivan has commissioned working groups — composed of students, staff, faculty and alumni — to find ways to better deal with the problem at every level.
On grounds at the University of Virginia, the Native American Student Union held its first ever Pow Wow. They are Native American people's way of meeting together to join in dancing and singing and renew Native American culture and to preserve the rich heritage of American Indians. As people watched on grounds, they recognized veterans of all ethnicity.
Independent investigation by Charlottesville police found no “substantive basis” to support the Rolling Stone account of an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. That announcement by Police Chief Timothy J. Longo pretty much completes the debunking of the already discredited article; still to come is a postmortem commissioned by the magazine and perhaps a lawsuit from a fraternity unfairly maligned in the article.
The Environmental Protection Agency has refined its interpretation of a problematic amendment added to the Clean Air Act in 1990 as it prepares to defend the proposed Clean Power Plan from a coal company lawsuit seeking to block the rule before it is finalized. There are many, many ways to interpret a statute. At the end of the day, what's going to really ultimately matter is whether a court is going to take an all-things-considered view of what the agency has done here,” Michael Livermore, an associate law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, told Bloomberg BNA.
In 1995 America had the highest graduation rate in the OECD. Now it lags behind seven other countries. President Barack Obama has set a target for his country to return to the top of the graduation league by 2020, but it is unlikely to be met. Young American graduates are below the OECD average in numeracy (see chart 5) and literacy, and are doing relatively worse than older ones. Some of the explanation lies with the poor performance of America’s schools, but the most expensive tertiary-education system in the OECD might be expected to help students catch up.Recent work by American acad...
U.S. President Barack Obama has nominated Atul Keshap, a former Indian-American official at its Embassy in New Delhi, as the next US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives. Obama on Thursday announced the nomination of Atul Keshap, a career foreign service official, as the next U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives. Keshap, a graduate of University of Virginia, studied economics, international relations, diplomacy, and religious studies, as well as French.
Scientists working in a little-known branch of psychology called perceptual learning have shown that it is possible to fast-forward a person’s gut instincts both in physical fields, like flying an airplane, and more academic ones, like deciphering advanced chemical notation. The idea is to train specific visual skills, usually with computer-game-like modules that require split-second decisions. In a recent experiment at the University of Virginia, researchers used a perceptual-learning module to train medical students about gallbladder removal. In the past, doctors removed gallbladders b...