In The News

It's been voted the best new major concert venue of the year and boosted UVA basketball ticket sales and the team's fan base. Wednesday, the John Paul Jones Arena will celebrate one year of success. ...The JPJ brings in fans from all across the state and even out of state. As far as the impact on Charlottesville, the Visitor's Bureau says the arena has boosted tourism and the local economy. They will be doing a concrete study on its effects in about a year.

...The 41 physics teachers from across Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and other states were creating vanilla ice cream with liquid nitrogen as a treat to celebrate the end of their four weeks at UVa. The teachers have been toiling away in UVa's science labs this summer as part of a two-and-a-half-year program for high school and middle school teachers pursuing a master's degree in physics education. ... The program, which concludes its summer semester today, is aimed at filling a critical shortage of qualified physics teachers in public high schools and middle schools.

The Quest for 'Meaningful' Comparisons Inside Higher Ed / July 31 When college leaders criticize rankings or fend off questions about accountability, they frequently point to the National Survey of Student Engagement. NSSE (pronounced like the Loch Ness monster's nickname) surveys the views of first-year and fourth-year students on a variety of measures of engagement and colleges say that they use the detailed reports they receive to improve their offerings. There's one major problem from an accountability perspective: NSSE lets colleges decide whether to make public any or all of their data,...

Laura M. Barzilai Who received her J.D. from the School of Law Sidley Austin LLP Elevates Seven to Partnership in New York, 36 Throughout Firm PRNewswire / July 30 http://tinyurl.com/yugsk7 Charles L. Evans Who has a B.A. in economics Chicago Fed Names Evans President Wall Street Journal / July 31 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118584814408583020.html Charles L. Evans Who has a B.A. in economics Evans Tapped as Next Chief of Chicago Fed Associated Press / July 31 http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=400167 Todd Mowry Who entered the University of Virginia in 1984 Summer Sci...

Benjamin Cooper College fourth-year and chair of the 2007-2008 Honor Committee HONOR The Next Generation / Real World Second Chances Rarely Free Richmond Times-Dispatch / July 30 http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/search.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-07-30-0183.html Andrew Hodges Engineering graduate student who won Sunday's Charlottesville International Triathlon at Walnut Creek Park Triathlon: Blowing away the competition / UVa grad student cruises to International Triathlon title Charlottesville Daily Progress / July 29 http://tinyurl.com/yrytcx Chris Morrow College student who finished four...

Ann Beattie, John Casey, Rita Dove, Deborah Eisenberg, Gregory Orr and Charles Wright Professors of creative writing UVA's Creative Writing program in top 10 / Programs's size, faculty put UVA on the MFA map C-Ville Weekly / July 31 http://tinyurl.com/28w8vl David Breneman Dean of the Curry School of Education Kaplan, Iowa's Third-largest College Clicks with Older Learners Des Moines Register (IA) / July 31 http://tinyurl.com/2bwe83 Dr. Thomas Daniel A thoracic surgeon Locating Lung Lesions WHOI-TV (IL) / July 30 http://www.hoinews.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=42589 Richard Evans Assistant...

Summer Language Institute introduces Chinese Class Law School Campaign Draws Record Annual Gifts, Donors U.Va. to Host 'High-Performance Computing Boot Camp' http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/

If someone had asked Andrew Hodges, he could have produced his USA Triathlon card to prove his professional status. ...But there was no need for the 23-year-old University of Virginia graduate student to do any of that. His time of 1 hour, 59 minutes and 18 seconds in Sunday's Charlottesville International Triathlon at Walnut Creek Park provided all the proof anyone could ask for. ...The engineering student schooled the competition on the Walnut Creek course, which consisted of a 0.9-mile swim, 23.5-mile road bike and 6-mile trail run, clocking in 5:35 ahead of second-place finisher and former...

The debate over whether to teach physics, chemistry or biology first in high school is missing the point, research suggests. Instead of worrying about what order to teach the three major high school sciences, educators should focus on math, because that subject best prepares students to do well in all the sciences once they get to college. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Virginia analyzed the grades of more than 8,000 undergraduates who took introductory biology, chemistry and physics at 63 colleges and universities.

... Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System are using a technique to help them identify and mark the location of a lung lesion so that it can be found during surgery. On the morning of surgery, the patient is taken for a lung CT scan. When the location is confirmed by the scan, the radiologist injects a radioactive substance ... When the patient is taken to VATS surgery, the lung is collapsed. Then, doctors use a 'medical Geiger-counter' to guide them to the exact location of the lesion.

...The Atlantic Magazine ranked UVA's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) creative writing program among the best in the nation. The article, titled "Where Great Writers Are Made," used four criterion in finding the 10 best programs: alumni, faculty, selectivity and funding. ... While UVA's high-wattage alumni, such as Edward P. Jones and Franz Wright, rank up there with other programs, the program's big-name faculty sets it apart. Ann Beattie, John Casey, Rita Dove, Deborah Eisenberg, Gregory Orr and Charles Wright all teach there.

The UVa law school received a record number of annual gifts from alumni for the 2006-2007 campaign. The UVa law school ended the fiscal year with $9.8 million in annual gifts, a new high for giving. A record number 7,643 alumni participated in the campaign. The law school also reported $4.5 million in unrestricted gifts making the total gift revenue $13.9 million.

...The [Novice Teacher Network] program partners the two school divisions with University of Virginia professors.

... Many of these works will now see the light of day as part of his next Virginia exhibit, to be housed at the University of Virginia Art Museum this winter. The artist had frightening dealings with the Klan while in Alabama, and those experiences led to this Klan tableau.

...Honor, both broadly and narrowly defined, is not some archaic notion whose relevancy has faded over time. Instead, it represents a timeless ideal that should be present in all aspects of an educated person's life. Though the nuances of UVa's Honor System have changed over time to adapt to each generation of students, it is this idealistic spirit that has remained constant for 165 years - and will continue to flourish for years to come. It is similarly important not to think of an honor system as a punitive system, but rather as a tool used to develop responsible and educated citizens.

Once you pull the curtain away from an actively managed mutual fund, you won't like what you see if you are able to tally total expenses. ...For every dollar a fund spends on trading, assets were pared by an average of 41 cents, according to a recent study. ... All too often, the more that managers trade, the more that fund holders suffer. The study, titled "Scale Effects in Mutual Fund Performance: The Role of Trading Costs,'' should be noted by every mutual-fund investor and regulator. It was written by Gregory Kadlec of Virginia Tech University, Roger Edelen of Boston College and Richard Ev...

The effects of the arbitrage were on display at Citigroup during the earlier part of the decade. With stock analyst Jack Grubman in the mix, the bank was able to carve out an immense and profitable practice helping telecom companies underwrite initial public offerings and do M&A deals. It turned out that market position was supported by a host of practices -- "spinning" IPO shares to select executives, for instance -- that would later cost the firm dearly. ...The original structure of investment banks tried to control for these bleak scenarios, according to research out of Oxford University an...

Census records are important sources of information about our ancestors. The GeoStat Center at the University of Virginia provides a way to dig even deeper into that data. I'm working on a project focused on Floyd County, Ga., that includes an assessment of the slaves owned by certain families. At the GeoStat Center, accessed online as the Historical Census Browser, ...I can approach this from several angles.

Certain Degrees Now Cost More at Public Universities New York Times / July 29 Should an undergraduate studying business pay more than one studying psychology? Should a journalism degree cost more than one in literature? More and more public universities, confronting rising costs and lagging state support, have decided that the answers may be yes and yes. http://tinyurl.com/28gwnl Inside the Cuomo Probe Inside Higher Ed / July 30 In an interview and podcast, New York's attorney general assesses the genesis and impact of his student loan inquiry - and suggests colleges face more scrutiny. htt...