Yvonne Edwards faced her fears, including anxiety about the unknown, and she’s likely alive today because of her strength. Now, she’s encouraging others to do the same. Edwards is one of several people speaking out for a special Cancer Center Without Walls campaign. The center, an outreach of the UVA Cancer Center, works to address cancer throughout the commonwealth by partnering with community members to identify and meet needs.
Now that Charlottesville can take down its Confederate monuments, what happens next? Researchers, authors and activists say we should look to Germany for answers. The Memory Project of UVA’s Democracy Initiative held a webinar with Dr. Susan Neiman – an author, philosopher, and German history expert – to learn how post-war Germany redressed the trauma and violence perpetrated by the Third Reich.
New research has shown that defense rebuttal experts can have a significant impact on juror perceptions. A study published this month by law professors from UVA and Duke University looked at how mock jurors viewed fingerprint evidence after watching a video of a fingerprint expert for the prosecution. Jurors were far less likely to support a conviction if they also watched a presentation from a defense expert who explained that the evidence was inconclusive or exonerating.
The success of these women, and the thousands of others at NASA, shows what women can accomplish when given the chance. But they might not have had the opportunity if not for one woman who fought for the right to attend the University of Virginia’s engineering program more than 80 years ago. Kitty Joyner, born Kitty O’Brien in Charlottesville in 1916, was the daughter of an engineer. Inspired by her father, Joyner hoped to get into the engineering program at UVA. But UVA’s engineering program was still an all-male bastion in 1935.
When restaurateurs Warren Thompson and Ron Jordan saw an opportunity to open a new restaurant in Charlottesville, they knew it had to be something special. An alum of the University of Virginia, Thompson wanted to pay homage to the late Walter Ridley who was the University’s first Black graduate and the first African-American to receive a doctorate degree from an historically white, Southern university. So he and Jordan decided that in addition to serving high-caliber seafood, The Ridley would also be a community-driven establishment that encouraged people from all walks of life to come togeth...
(Commentary) On Friday, President Biden announced his intent to nominate Doug Parker, the current chief occupational safety and health regulator in California, to serve as the Department of Labor’s assistant secretary for occupational safety and health. Parker, a 1997 University of Virginia law school graduate, in a series of different job positions over his career, has consistently focused on the advancement of three priorities: (i) Democratic Party politics, (ii) organized labor, and (iii) occupational safety and health.
The committee discussed the large mural in Jackson Memorial Hall that depicts the charge of the corps of cadets during the Civil War Battle of New Market. Col. Keith Gibson, executive director of VMI’s museum system, said, “You see here [up close]: courage, sacrifice, Brother Rat-hood … [But] if you just stand back, and you see a 23- by 18-foot painting, it’s a bunch of guys dressed in gray charging across a field.” “There’s no way that I look at that painting, as a Black man, and get past what is in that picture,” committee member and alumnus Lester Johnson said. “There’s no way for me to pee...
Former governors tend to introduce and co-sponsor more bipartisan legislation, focusing on fewer bills that go further. “It appears these former governors are pursuing a tighter but more aggressive agenda,” says Craig Volden with the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. “In other words, governors appear to put great effort into a focused set of legislative priorities.”
(Podcast) One of the most amazing things about the human mind is its ability to imagine events that haven’t happened yet. To make a decision about something new – trying a new dish, picking a show to watch, and choosing a career – you have to mentally construct the experience and then predict how pleasant or unpleasant it will be. But this simulation, say psychologists, is often distorted. Our predictions tend to exaggerate how happy or sad we’ll feel, and for how long. “No doubt good things make us happy and bad things make us sad,” says Tim Wilson, a UVA social psychologist. “But as a rule, ...
(Commentary) I asked W. Bradford Wilcox, a conservative professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, for his assessment of the conflict between big business and Republicans. His reply suggested that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s defiant stance will resonate among Republican voters. “The decades-long marriage between the G.O.P. and big business is clearly on the rocks. This is especially true because the G.O.P. is increasingly drawn to a pugnacious and populist cultural style that has more appeal to the working class, and Big Business is increasingly inclined to support the progressive cul...
UVA’s Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese will present its fourth annual SIP FilmFest as a free virtual event from Sunday through April 25.
A local film festival is going virtual this weekend. UVA’s Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese will be hosting the fourth annual SIP FilmFest beginning on April 18.
A composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music at the University of Virginia has won second prize at the prestigious Iannis Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition. Leah Reid, an assistant professor of composition, was honored for “Reverie,” which premiered at last year’s Technosonics Festival at UVA. The work also won second prize in the XIII International Destellos Competition 2020.
UVA Health has been recognized for its treatment of a condition that can cause seizures, paralysis and bleeding in the brain. Tthe Angioma Alliance has given the health system its highest designation as a Center of Excellence for its care of cerebral cavernous malformations, which are irregular collections of blood vessels in the brain.
Six million dollars a year. That was supposed to be how much money would have gone to UVA’s College at Wise after discontinuing two coal tax credits that subsidized production and employment. Instead of going to mining companies, Gov. Ralph Northam wanted the money to go toward new course offerings in renewable energy and data science. But the House and Senate both rejected the governor's amendment.
There's already a huge number of known biases that mess up our decision making, but researchers at the University of Virginia may have discovered yet another to add to the list. According to a much buzzed-about new study recently published in Nature, humans have a pervasive bias to add things on when searching for solutions--and that's causing us to miss out on a whole lot of great ideas.
(Commentary) The nine most populous states are now home to 51% of us. That's an almost completely different roster than the states that might be considered the homeland for the base of older, whiter and more rural voters: the 17 that joined last fall's Texas lawsuit, which got rejected out of hand by the Supreme Court, seeking to overturn the election. That collection accounts for 17% of the population now. And demographers at UVA’s Weldon Cooper Research Group project that share 20 years from now will be almost the same, 16.5%.
Groups came together at UVA Tuesday for a stop on a national tour to support federal legislation requiring background checks to own firearms. Everytown For Gun Safety is hosting the nationwide road trip and Crozet’s branch of Moms Demand Action and UVA’s Students Demand Action met at the Rotunda.
“I welcome you to join us and share in the experience as we memorialize, as we celebrate, as we commemorate and learn lessons of the contribution of people of color who were enslaved and yet helped to build this university community,” said Mount Zion First African Baptist Church Pastor Alvin Edwards at the opening of last weekend’s virtual dedication ceremony for UVA’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.
UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs is launching a planning group to preserve the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a release, more than two dozen virologists, public health experts, clinicians and former officials have joined four leading charitable foundations to lay the groundwork to discover and maintain these lessons. They have formed the COVID Commission Planning Group to prepare the way for a National COVID Commission that will work to help Americans and the world safeguard the common future.