The Virginia Cavaliers are getting a sweet addition to the football team, and it's not just a new football coach. Over the past month, the owner of My Chocolate Shoppe on the Downtown Mall has been constructing a life-sized sculpture of a football player, made of chocolate. Store owner Mary Schellhammer says she wanted to show some football spirit and gear up for 'Paint the Town Orange.'
Young children in general – and poor children in particular – are getting more enriching attention from their parents and using a wider array of free educational resources, finds a related study in the same issue. Daphna Bassok, an associate professor at UVA’s Curry School of Education, and her colleagues tracked the home and school experiences in the same group of children that Reardon studied, participants in several long-term federal education surveys. "Parental investments have gone up quite a bit," Bassok said. "Parents are more likely to report reading to...
Mr. McAuliffe is following in the footsteps of recent predecessors from both parties, who have regarded the permanent disenfranchisement of former convicts as an injustice. Those governors expanded the restoration of voting rights, taking advantage of explicit constitutional language that enables them to do so – a power that the document’s principal draftsman, UVA law professor A.E. Dick Howard, said was virtually unlimited. The state Supreme Court, insisting it knew the meaning of Mr. Howard’s document better than he did, ruled last month that the governor could restore voti...
(Co-written by Craig Volden, professor of public policy and politics and associate dean for academic affairs at UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy) How can legislative staffs help their members of Congress become effective lawmakers? One way is by checking his or her Legislative Effectiveness Score. We have studied lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives across the last 40 years. We trace each and every bill they sponsored and score the effectiveness of members. Our Legislative Effectiveness Scores are based on how far representatives&rsq...
UVA researchers say people with Type 2 diabetes are at a greater risk of experiencing obstructive sleep apnea, which causes people's breathing to stop and start during sleep. Studies suggest OSA can actually cause Type 2 diabetes in some patients.
A project based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that helps researchers tackle big challenges – like modeling severe weather patterns or uncovering the structure of HIV – just landed a $110 million grant to keep coordinating research around the country. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at U. of I. leads the project, and includes 18 other partner institutions located across the country, including the University of Virginia.
(Commentary by Jennifer Chiu, assistant professor of science education and instructional technology at UVA’s Curry School of Education) As the new school year kicks off, students will continue to hear all about success. Here is the tricky thing about success: Success may not be found in always getting things correct. Success is often daring to make mistakes and learning from failure.
UVA’s arts program is kicking off a new school year by trying to get more students and the Charlottesville community involved.
UVA made the top 20 in several categories of the Princeton Review’s annual college rankings. UVA is No. 11 on the list of “Best Alumni Networks” and No. 14 on the list of “Colleges That Pay You Back,” which measures the return on investment of degrees at different colleges.
New research, however, suggests that the trend is changing: The children starting their first days of kindergarten may arrive better prepared than prior generations – and students in poverty will arrive at less of a disadvantage compared with their wealthier peers. Daphna Bassok, an associate professor at UVA’s Curry School of Education, said, "Parental investments have gone up quite a bit. Parents are more likely to report reading to their kids, playing with their kids, taking them on outings to the library or the zoo."
If Hillary Clinton defeats Donald Trump in Virginia this fall by 16 points, as one poll indicated this week, she would dwarf the margin Barack Obama garnered over John McCain in 2008, when the wildly popular then-senator won his first term for president. Larry Sabato’s “Crystal Ball” at UVA’s Center for Politics rated the state as “likely Democrat” in mid-August.
The political field is littered with potential landmines, and a sleeper issue that could explode in the Democrats’ faces is the Obamacare premium rate hikes. UVA political scientist Larry J. Sabato agrees that Obamacare premium sticker shock could make a difference in very tight elections. “Things that happen right before the election can have a disproportionate effect for an obvious reason,” he said. “If something is on the voters' minds, and is bothering them, they are likely to include it in their voting calculation.”
Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio are poised to win primaries Tuesday as the Republican establishment rallies to defend its embattled members against Donald Trump-style insurgents, setting up Election Day tests that could determine whether the party keeps control of the Senate. “They can try, with difficulty, to chart a middle path between outright rejection or outright embrace of Trump,” said Geoffrey Skelley, of UVA’’s Center for Politics. “Both McCain and Rubio are running well ahead of Trump at the moment. Given the decline of split-ticket voting in recent yea...
Trump is casting a shadow over local races more than any presidential candidate in recent memory. “That’s the story all across the country. Democrats want to tie their down-ballot opponents to Trump, and Republicans don’t want to talk about Trump at all,” said Kyle Kondik with UVA’s Center for Politics.
In Charlottesville, volunteers did some quick training before hitting the streets to start speaking with people. Over the next few weeks, the Clinton campaign plans to tap into the student volunteers at the University of Virginia.
For many campuses, like the University of Virginia, this fall marks the first time a Students for Trump group led campaign activities. Sabrina Kim is the Students for Trump ambassador at UVA, and she told The Daily Caller News Foundation that she plans to get students organized for Trump this fall.
A number of College Republican organizations have either refused to endorse Trump or have declared themselves on the fence. Republican groups at campuses including Harvard, Penn State and Princeton Universities have decided not to endorse the candidate. And the College Republicans at the University of Virginia are deliberating whether they will do so.
An expanded lineup of speakers is now available for the fourth annual TEDxCharlottesville event, “The Power of One,” taking place Nov. 11 at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville. Recently announced speakers include 2016 Olympian (and UVA alumna) Meghan O’Leary.
Friday was a good day for the University of Virginia, the General Assembly and what constitutes democracy around here. The state auditor’s report showed that the school’s investment program complied with the law and that its Strategic Investment Fund pooled funds in a way “similar to pooling of resources by the Commonwealth’s Treasury for the General Account.” In other words, UVA was doing intelligent things in ways consistent with the practices and intents of the General Assembly.
(Commentary by Lisa Messeri, a UVA assistant professor of science, technology and society) The European Southern Observatory recently announced that astronomers have detected a planet the size of Earth orbiting our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. We discover hundreds of “exoplanets” every year, but this one is different: It orbits its star at just the right distance so that, in theory, it’s possible it could sustain life.