Bruce Williams, the Taylor Professor in Media Studies at the University of Virginia, said it’s hard to find pop culture references that are familiar to most of the 18-year-olds in his large introductory courses. “The media today is much more segmented,” Williams explained. “If I find an example from a popular TV show, say ‘The Big Bang Theory’ (with close to 20 million viewers), fewer than a third of the students are familiar with that show.”
Physics professor Louis Bloomfield is credited as a source in this multimedia presentation on the physics of ski jumping.
One step in the right direction is the $50.9 million unallocated balance former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell left behind in his last budget, the largest unappropriated balance since 1991. I can’t think of a more worthy priority for the commonwealth’s future than making higher education more affordable for Virginia students.
The College of William and Mary plans to launch a new general education curriculum that has put the nation’s second-oldest college in an ideological crossfire about what students should be learning.
(Commentary) What if Americans really do care about politics – and conflicting ideologies? And, in fact, what if they care so much that they’re willing to go to the extreme lengths of actually packing up and moving from one county or state to another to surround themselves with like-minded folks. This is exactly what is happening, according to researchers at the University of Virginia.
(Commentary) Generation Y is postponing marriage until, on average, age 29 for men and 27 for women. College-educated millennials in particular view it as a “capstone” to their lives rather than as a “cornerstone,” according to a report whose sponsors include the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
American universities vary as to whether they require applicants to disclose convictions. The University of Virginia, for example, expects students and applicants to furnish up-to-date information on arrests as well as convictions, and advises students to “err on the side of disclosure” if in doubt.
Still, it’s hard to be a Democrat from more conservative states. “American politics has sorted itself out so that the Democratic Party is more liberal and the base is fine with that,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, independent analysts at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
(By Gosia Glinska, senior researcher at the Darden School of Business) The big idea: Southern Bancorp, a community development financial institution based in Arkadelphia, Ark., serves distressed rural markets that see growing demand for small, unsecured lines of consumer credit. Those markets attract payday lenders, whose same-day loans carry triple-digit interest rates and can trap vulnerable borrowers in a cycle of debt. Southern is testing affordable consumer credit products and ways to educate low- and moderate-income individuals about managing debt and protecting their finances.
Ski jumpers used to hold their skis parallel to each other, but learned that they could catch more of the air pushing up underneath them if they separated their skis, with the tails pointing toward each other. This V shape has been the standard style since the 1990s. "Skiers are trying to play glider," Louis Bloomfield, a physicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, told Inside Science back in 2010. "You push the air down, the air pushes back, pushes you upward."
University of Virginia employees are pledging Friday morning to lead a heart-healthy life for 12 full weeks. The pledge is part of a kickoff to Heart Month and to celebrate National Wear Red Day.
But Russia is determined to show the rest of the world what it can do, says Gordon Hylton, a professor at Marquette Law School (teaching at U.Va. this semester) whose expertise includes both sports history and Russia.
Albemarle, the district in which Bredder teaches, made a decision to put makerspaces in its middle schools first. Partnering with the University of Virginia, the district has taught middle school engineering teachers to work with core content teachers, training them in mechatronics and rapid prototyping. The goal is to offer the courses across all middle schools and then scale up to the high school level.
A new $4 million gift to support financial aid at the University of Virginia has blunted some of the criticism the school faced after it decided to scale back a landmark grant program for its neediest students. The gift from graduate John Griffin, a professional investor and member of the U-Va. governing board, was announced Monday. It is conditioned on the university’s ability to raise $4 million in matching funds. But the university is sticking by its new financial aid policy despite the likelihood of an $8 million philanthropic infusion.
The most precise measurement yet of a fundamental property of quarks – one of the building blocks of matter – brings scientists closer to finding new exotic particles. The new study, which revisited a decades-old experiment, could help physicists find a theory beyond one of the most successful in physics: the Standard Model.
The legislation proposed in the General Assembly is modeled after programs in Virginia and Florida. Gil Siegal, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studied both programs, said they were successful at reducing malpractice premiums and easing the financial burden on the families of injured babies. The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is reviewing the bill and has not taken a position on it. "More kids are being helped, and in that sense it's a huge social success," Siegal said.
When she was 13, Elizabeth Welsh entered a road race in Norristown. When she saw the huge trophy for the top female finisher, she made a vow: "I'm going to get that." Welsh kept that promise, passing, among others, a fortysomething man to win the overall title. That trophy is in the bedroom of the house where she grew up in Haverford, draped with the many ribbons and medals she has won since in rowing and running contests.
Whether incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, hangs onto her seat could prove central to the success or failure of President Barack Obama’s last two years in office, said Larry Sabato, the director of the highly regarded Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “I’ve been told repeatedly that the Republicans see North Carolina as the key seat,” Sabato said last week. “If the Republican analysis is right, Kay Hagan’s seat could be the critical sixth seat that enables them to take control of the Senate – or not.”
University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock brings a different point of view to the table. Laycock argued for the challengers at the Supreme Court. "We are not asking the court to say that local government meetings cannot have a prayer," Laycock said in comments posted on the University of Virginia Law School website before the Nov. 6 argument. "This is a case about what kind of prayer they can have and how it is presented."
A report titled "Why Marriage Matters, Third Edition: Thirty Conclusions From the Social Sciences," sponsored by the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, came to these five conclusions, among others, about the important of marriage: Children are less likely to thrive in cohabiting households, compared to intact, married families; marriage increases the likelihood that fathers and mothers have good relationships with their children; married couples seem to build more wealth on average tha...