This year’s ceremony will look very different compared to the past. “It’s very rare for an outgoing president not to attend the inauguration of his successor,” University of Virginia Miller Center Presidential Studies Director Barbara Perry said. It’s tradition in modern times for presidents to welcome their successor into Washington, Perry says. However, President Donald Trump is not expected to be in attendance Wednesday. “I had predicted he wouldn’t attend and he would leave before the Biden inauguration,” Perry said. “So that Trump, in his mind, officially would leave Washington still as p...
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics, said the apparent hardening of views among Democrats and Republicans over the course of four years may reflect a realignment of American politics, after millions of people who voted for President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 crossed party lines to back Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Yet, thanks to Trump, many of the inaugural traditions that are key to reinforcing U.S. democratic norms will be absent, said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Trump “already destroyed that by -- almost two weeks ago now -- fomenting the insurrection against the Capitol,” Perry said. Biden’s administration must now “seize back our constitutional system, seize back our democratic republic, seize back as many of the traditions as they can.”
Also missing will be the small niceties between the outgoing and incoming presidents that have become tradition. “The traditions are such that presidents take it as part of their solemn responsibility to ensure a smooth transition of power,” said Russell Riley, presidential historian at the University of Virginia. “We’re in a very different environment now.”
University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville reported an average daily census for the Jan. 8-14 period of 470.9, 76.7 percent of its 614-bed capacity. The average number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at UVA for the period was 62.7. The average ICU census was 133.4, 74.9 percent of capacity.
In 1985, William Pearson at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and David Lipman at the NCBI introduced FASTP, an algorithm that combined Dayhoff’s matrix with the ability to perform rapid searches.
Down the hall from Kipnis’s former lab at the University of Virginia was another team of researchers who, inspired by his work, began investigating whether lymphatic vessels play a role in concussions. Graduate student Ashley Bolte and immunologist John Lukens worked with mice to see whether a blow to the head affected the rodents’ lymphatic vessels.
On Tuesday morning, the Virginia Department of Health announced the launch of a COVID-19 dashboard dedicated to virus outbreaks at Virginia higher education facilities.
A presentation is coming up on the contents of a time capsule that was found in Court Square back in September. The virtual presentation will be held with Albemarle County staff and people from the University of Virginia Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. It will focus on the recovery and preservation of the materials found inside the 1909 time capsule that had been placed beneath the At Ready statue.
Albemarle County and the University of Virginia's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library will hold a virtual presentation of items found in the time capsule that had been under the county's Confederate statue. The virtual presentation will take place via Zoom at 6 p.m. Jan. 28.
University of Virginia Facilities Management is currently working on a masonry maintenance project for the chapel on UVA Grounds.
Engraved on the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers are the names of enslaved people who were owned by the University of Virginia and its professors. When the memorial was first erected, some members of Myra Anderson’s family weren’t included. “In one way it feels very satisfying to have the names, but in another way, it really feels sad [because] the reason that those names are on the wall,” Anderson said. She spent over a year working to get five names added to the wall.
Thirmston Hern is no longer alone. The slave’s name inscribed on the University of Virginia’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers was joined by five of his family members who also worked, mostly in historical anonymity, to build the university designed by Thomas Jefferson. Davy Hern, Fanny Gillette Hern, Bonnycastle Hern, Lily Hern and Ben Snowden were officially added in a private dedication held Tuesday at the memorial. All six were related to an enslaved family at Jefferson’s home at Monticello and to Charlottesville native Myra Anderson.
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan has outlined some additional steps that students will need to take due to the increase in COVID-19 cases. In a video, Ryan and Dean of Students Allen Groves spoke about the decision to continue with plans to bring students back for the spring semester.
“Travel involves being willing to expose yourself to new situations and to be able to tolerate some uncertainty because you don’t know exactly how it’s going to go,” says Bethany Teachman, a psychology professor and director of clinical training at the University of Virginia. According to Teachman, travel-related anxiety usually fits into one of three categories.
Shortly after she finished college and before she began writing the essays that would form the backbone of her collection “Trick Mirror,” Jia Tolentino bounced a writing idea off one of her professors from the University of Virginia.
Sometimes a simple thank you can go a long way, as a military daughter, Taylor Curro knows this to be true. To show her appreciation, Taylor decided to join in on a challenge in 2020, started by Operation Gratitude. “Just essentially it was challenging people to do something – whatever it was – 2,020 times,” she said. Taylor chose to write 2,020 letters to troops overseas.
W. Nathaniel Howell – Charlottesville resident, John Minor Maury Jr. Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and former U.S. ambassador to Kuwait – whose defiance of Saddam Hussein’s order to close the embassy after Iraq’s 1990 invasion led to the first Gulf War, was laid to rest in Albemarle County on Dec. 23. Howell, 81, died Dec. 17.
Becky Sauerbrunn has already won two World Cups and an Olympic gold medal. The UVA alumna will take a run at another gold medal this summer, and do it with the title of captain of the U.S. women’s national soccer team.
UVA alumna Lindsay Shoop’s competitive spirit culminated in an Olympic gold medal in rowing at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing and later garnered an induction into the National Rowing Hall of Fame. The 39-year-old Charlottesville native turned coach and public speaker added another accolade to her portfolio recently: book author. “Better Great Than Never” outlines Shoop’s struggles with depression and encourages athletes to pursue their dreams.