Ohio State University’s board of trustees convened the panel to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing major research universities today — and the qualities that make a good college president. On the panel were Bacow; Elson S. Floyd, president of Washington State University; Thomas W. Ross, president of the University of North Carolina system; and Teresa A. Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia.
John Watterson has suffered from tremors since he was a teenager. The tremors got worse with age, and by his early 70s, his hands trembled so badly that he had trouble feeding himself. He couldn’t hit a golf ball off a tee, he lamented, without taking multiple swings. He visited the University of Virginia Medical Center in 2011 to try an experimental treatment called focused ultrasound. After an intensive, nerve-wracking four-hour treatment, the tremors on the right side of his body were gone.
A Princeton neuroscientist and a political science professor at the University of Virginia will lead a panel discussion on election forecasting at UVa next week. The panel, titled “The Art(s) and Science(s) of Election Forecasting,” features UVa political science professor Larry J. Sabato and Sam Wang of Princeton University. The discussion begins at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in Nau Hall, Room 101.
For an out-of-this-world adventure, consider Saturn. If you don’t have seven years or a spaceship, the shortest distance to the second-largest planet is up Observatory Hill in Charlottesville. O-Hill is what the locals call it. It’s actually McCormick Road, a steep climb that confounds many runners and cyclists. But atop the winding knoll at the summit of Mount Jefferson is the Leander McCormick Observatory and museum.
(Commentary) I don’t think things have changed all that much in this ongoing tension between the Practical/Profitable and the Ideal/Dreamy sides of our nation’s education and career choices. This was brought home by a recent column in The Washington Post by a University of Virginia English professor, Mark Edmundson.
"Every aspect of the campaign becomes more focused and more important after Labor Day." That applies to voters too, said Larry Sabato, head of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "It's the fourth quarter, but for the most part, the crowd hasn't been paying close attention to the first three," he said. "Now every move will be carefully scrutinized by the fans. Voters in the stands will focus and react much more quickly. That's why the endgame matters so much to the final score."
(Commentary by Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics) Are you enjoying the gubernatorial battle between major-party nominees Terry McAuliffe (D) and Ken Cuccinelli (R), or as they call each other, the corrupt flim-flam man and the unethical social issues extremist? If you are, you might want to have your doctor adjust your meds downward.
The investigative arm of the General Assembly has a new executive director — a 19-year veteran of the agency who has served as its second-in-command and legal adviser. Hal Greer III, currently deputy director, takes over at the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission following the retirement this weekend of Glen S. Tittermary, who spent 35 years at JLARC. Greer graduated from the University of Virginia law school and has a master’s degree in public policy from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Legal experts disagree on whether and how President Obama has authority to attack Syria without Congress, but they do agree—along with military experts—that Obama is wrong both on law and on policy. The Federalist Society is America’s premier legal forum for conservatives and libertarians, famous for hosting debates on the big issues of the day. They will typically have a legal giant from their own ranks take on some liberal lion from public life or an elite law school. On Aug. 29, however, they had two of their own square off. Prof. John Yoo of the University of California-B...
About 38 percent of Virginia mothers with minor children are the sole or primary providers in their households, according to University of Virginia researcher Annie Rorem. Those numbers, for the most part, reflect the findings of a national study by the Pew Research Center, which found mothers are the primary earners – or “breadwinners” – in 40 percent of all households with minor children. But Rorem said the research called her attention to a segment of mothers overlooked by the Pew study – unmarried moms cohabiting with a partner.
Dewey Cornell, an education professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in school safety and bullying, said school resource officers provide much more to students than security. Cornell, who helped design threat assessment standards that many schools across the state use, has served on Gov. Bob McDonnell’s task force on school and campus safety since its inception in January, convened after the shootings at Sandy Hook.
This was Morgan Brian’s holiday weekend: Score the tying goal for the University of Virginia women’s soccer team against Penn State on Friday night. Report to practice the next day. Play the first half against Richmond on Sunday, then watch the sixth-ranked Cavaliers breeze to a fourth consecutive victory. Shortly thereafter, hop into her parents’ rental car. Arrive in Washington two hours later. Join the U.S. women’s national team for training Monday morning at RFK Stadium.
A demographic map showing the racial distribution of the population of the United States has garnered national attention for its creator, a University of Virginia researcher.
(Commentary) Even Jefferson’s own university – the University of Virginia (chartered in 1819, opened to students in 1825), which is often hailed my modernists and progressives as America’s first secular university – was in reality anything but. Wallbuilders.com has posted a must-read article on its website titled: “Thomas Jefferson and Religion at the University of Virginia,” by Dr. Mark Beliles and Dr. David Barton. In it, the authors point out that Jefferson “founded the University of Virginia as a school not affiliated with only one denomination; it...
Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said the days are gone when party loyalists would step forward to perform a service to their party by running for office, even though they have little chance of winning.
As debate mounts over whether the U.S. should bypass the United Nations Security Council and take military action in response to human rights abuses in Syria, a scholar has uncovered surprising new evidence about an effort in 1945 to give the fledgling U.N. strong powers to enforce human rights around the world. Writing in the September 2013 issue of the Journal of American History, Prof. James Loeffler reveals that a virulently anti-Semitic adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt undermined attempts by Jewish activists to insert strong human rights provisions in the U.N. charter at its foundi...
(Editorial) Congratulations to the gritty Cavaliers in their stunning upset of Brigham Young University. It was the home game opener of the 2013 season — and it could hardly have been more thrilling.
Are entrepreneurs born, trained or just lucky? Saras Sarasvathy, a professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia, discussed this question and many others at a recent small-business summit.
At University of Virginia, faculty have endured a pay freeze since 2008 — but university President Teresa Sullivan successfully lobbied the school’s Board of Visitors earlier this year for across-the-board salary raises in 2013-14. “Once our peers’ money began to flow again, we knew we would have to be proactive in order to face our competitors,” said Gertrude Fraser, UVa.’s vice provost for faculty retention and recruitment.
Despite an increasing amount of research about trucking from the ivory towers of academia, few researchers ever experience what life is like on the road. However, one spent three years riding in trucks and interviewing long-haul drivers as part of his look into how truck drivers are affected by increasing demands for speed and flexibility. Benjamin Snyder, a graduate sociology student in the University of Virginia's Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, recently presented his paper entitled "The Professionalized Body: Truck Driving in the Age of Flexibilization," at the 108th A...