(Commentary by Farzaneh Milani, chair of UVA’s Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures) When Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia almost 200 years ago, he made the Rotunda and the library, rather than a church, its very center. I have always thought this to be a perfect metaphor for Jefferson’s belief in the separation of church and state and his desire to present the newly established republic and university as a beacon of religious freedom to the world.
The University of Virginia was ranked No. 1, with a $12,668 tuition, $16,449 in average scholarships and grants, and a 97 percent student retention rate.
The University of Virginia has released a new plan to roll back energy use, emissions and waste. Over the next five years, the university will try to eliminate the use of coal as an energy source, increase the use of renewable energy and install building retrofits that reduce the use of lighting and the need for climate control.
A cure for dementia continues to elude scientists. Some think that artificial intelligence could speed drug discovery for dementia and a host of other diseases. “There might be hype, but in the end for it to be truly useful, there needs to be some task not solved by any other approach,” says Yanjun Qi, a UVA assistant professor of computer science.
“The enthusiasm that we have seen before the park has even opened is surprising,” said Elliott Weiss, a UVA business professor who is teaching a course in Shanghai and wrote a case study on Disney’s entry into China. “It is probably a combination of the strength of the Disney brand and the changing structure of the Chinese economy, where the middle-class consumer is rising and showing a preference for western brands.”
A UVA fourth-year student was named the Air Force ROTC Cadet of the Year. Nate Jewell joined the ROTC program as a first-year student because he thought it might be fun. Four years later, Jewell ranked No. 1 in his class.
A pair of South Hampton Roads athletes received individual team honors at UVA’s athletic awards banquet this week, while men's basketball star Malcolm Brogdon and swimmer Leah Smith were named the school's top male and female athletes.
Nine recent college graduates will start as Cleveland Foundation Public Service Fellows in September and will be paired with six Greater Cleveland public sector and nonprofit agencies. Eli Stacy, a 2016 graduate of the University of Virginia in sociology, will work at Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority to help residents become more financially self-sufficient.
The respected Sabato Crystal Ball project at the UVA Center for Politics offers another perspective, using expert judgment on a state-by-state level to assess the likely number of electoral votes that would be won in a match-up between Clinton and Trump. The best estimate offered, as of today, is a projected 347 votes for Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College, with 191 going to Donald Trump.
"With respect to the self-insured plans, the government is preventing any solution by taking too narrow a view of its regulatory authority," UVA law professor Douglas Laycock said. "But if we solved that problem, the religious organizations would absolutely veto that solution."
Every year, thousands of patients undergo surgery to fix all kinds of nose problems. Sometimes, patients develop something called Empty Nose Syndrome. It's is a disorder that makes patients feel like they are suffocating. Unfortunately, the medical community cannot agree if it exists. "The true diagnosis is difficult because there isn't actually a consensus on what the disease actually is," said Dr. Spencer Payne, sitting in his doctor's office at UVA’s Fontaine Research Park.
Is U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s short list of possible vice presidential running mates? “Oh, he’s on the list. I don’t care what anybody says,” said Larry Sabato, a UVA political science professor who has written several books on national elections.
The top elected U.S. Republican, Paul Ryan, says he's not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid. "Suppose Trump loses overwhelmingly. Would you want to have been siding with the captain of the Titanic, or maybe seen as someone who was begging the captain to watch out for icebergs?" said Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics.
Compensating working women to be with their children seems to be one way to get them to work more. California women with children worked 6 percent to 9 percent more hours a week after the leave went into effect in 2004, and saw their earnings increase, according to a 2013 study by researchers Maya Rossin-Slater of UC Santa Barbara, Christopher J. Ruhm of UVA and Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University.
Clint Hill protected presidents for 17 years as a Secret Service agent. Thursday, he took part in book signing and other events with the UVA Center for Politics. Hill was traveling behind John F. Kennedy’s car on Nov. 22, 1963, and saw firsthand the fatal shots that took the president's life.
Fans are flocking to Charlottesville as the Dave Matthews Band prepares to return to the stage at UVA’s John Paul Jones Arena Saturday. The concert celebrates 25 years since the band's first paid gig in the city.
Rita Dove's poetry career has spanned more than 40 years. Commonwealth Professor of English at UVA, she has released a new edition of collected works.
“We know much more about the effects of paid leave on the labor market than we do about its effects on children’s health,” says Christopher Ruhm, a UVA professor of public policy and economics and a lead author on several studies that have attempted to connect the dots between paid leave and infant deaths.
A poll released Thursday found that almost half American voters plan to vote “against” rather than “for,” to make sure that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump doesn't win the presidential election. “This phenomenon is called negative partisanship,” Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said. “If we were trying to maximize the effect, we couldn't have found better nominees than Trump and Clinton.”
If New Yorkers Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton emerge as their party’s picks for president, both would enter the general election as the two of the most disliked candidates in modern American history. “These two are going to be in our faces, and many of us don’t like either candidate,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan research blog run by UVA's Center for Politics.