Accolades: University Recognized as Top Performer for Diversity Efforts

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education is recognizing the University of Virginia as a top performer in its 2016 Sustainable Campus Index, ranking UVA second among doctoral institutions in the area of “Diversity and Affordability.”

The Sustainable Campus Index highlights top-performing colleges and universities in 17 areas and overall by institution type. Performance is measured by the association’s Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, or STARS – a comprehensive rating system that assesses environmental factors as well as social and economic factors.

“STARS provides a useful framework for UVA to benchmark its sustainability progress across a wide range of indicators,” said Andrea Trimble, director of UVA’s Office for Sustainability. “UVA’s Diversity and Affordability ranking is indicative of the work UVA has been undertaking across the STARS criteria – diversity and equity coordination, assessing diversity and equity, support for underrepresented groups, and affordability and access.”

UVA’s STARS score ranks second in the nation for its efforts in campus diversity and equity coordination and assessment; affordability and access for students; discrimination and bias response; diversity recruitment and mentoring; and efforts to increase diversity of faculty in academia.

“The University of Virginia’s strong performance in the area of Diversity and Affordability demonstrates significant leadership and commitment to advancing sustainability,” said the association’s executive director, Meghan Fay Zahniser. “We are pleased to recognize University of Virginia for working to secure a thriving, equitable and ecologically healthy world by incorporating sustainability into campus operations, administration, engagement and academics.”

The University’s full report is available on the STARS website.

Forde-Mazrui Joins 21 UVA Colleagues in the American Law Institute

Law professor Kim Forde-Mazrui has been elected a member of the American Law Institute – the 22nd member of the UVA School of Law faculty currently affiliated with the institute, the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize and otherwise improve the law.

The organization includes judges, lawyers and law professors from the U.S. and abroad, selected on the basis of professional achievement and demonstrated interest in improving the law.

Forde-Mazrui is the Mortimer M. Caplin Professor of Law and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Law. He is an expert on constitutional law, employment discrimination and criminal law, among other topics. His scholarship focuses on equal protection, especially involving race and sexual orientation.

Alon Confino Named a Wilson Fellow

UVA history professor Alon Confino received a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington for the 2016-17 academic year.

Confino, who also teaches at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, will work with Washington policymakers and Wilson Center scholars as he writes a forthcoming book, “Imagining Palestine, 1948: Jews and Palestinians Between Local Experience and Global History.”

History professor Alon Confino received a fellowship to work on the follow-up to his acclaimed book, “A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide.” (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

“This book challenges generally accepted accounts of the war,” Confino said, referring to the 1947-48 war viewed by Jews as the “War of Independence” and by Palestinians as the “Nakba (the Catastrophe).” “It is the first integrated history of that fateful year, linking local experience, national imagination and a global story.”

Confino said that instead of focusing on one topic such as politics, the military situation or international diplomacy, he hopes to craft a story that includes two narratives. The first focuses on local experience, using diaries, letters and photographs, capturing the contingencies and unpredictability of the war, while the other puts the conflict within a global context of the breakup of the British Empire, the evolution of human rights and, in particular, a modern history of partitions and forced migrations, especially in Europe and India and Pakistan.

Confino, who grew up in Israel, recently published “A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide.”

Med School Professor Emeritus Named ‘Influencer in Aging’

Dr. Richard W. Lindsay, professor emeritus of internal medicine and family medicine, has been named a 2016 “Influencer in Aging” by Next Avenue, self-described  as “public media’s first and only national service for America’s booming 50-plus population.”

“Influencers in Aging” include advocates, researchers, thought leaders, innovators, writers and experts at the forefront of changing how we age and think about aging, according the announcement of Lindsay’s selection.

Lindsay was recognized for his “steadfast work around caregiving issues and for devising new ideas within the field,” according to the announcement.

Dr. Richard W. Lindsay has remained active in his retirement from UVA, focusing his efforts on the health of care-givers. (Submitted photo)

Since retiring from UVA, where he founded and directed the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Lindsay continues to teach medical students about the importance of the care-giver as part of the care team and the vital issue of care-giver health.

Lindsay co-founded the Lindsay Institute for Innovations in Caregiving, housed within the non-profit VirginiaNavigator website, in 2013 with a goal of preserving and improving the health of formal and informal care-givers, with a special focus on care-givers of individuals with dementia and other serious chronic diseases. He remains a project consultant for the institute.

Said Adrienne M. Johnson, executive director of VirginiaNavigator and initiative manager of The Lindsay Institute, “The scope of his work and influence in the health, aging and care-giving fields is unparalleled, and even in his so-called ‘retirement,’ his quest continues as he becomes an even more renowned and well-respected thought leader, innovator and disruptor.

“Dr. Lindsay has a rare combination of firsthand professional and personal expertise in aging and caregiving, true compassion and commitment to serve, and an innovative vision for what the future might look like if we make some meaningful change to truly support care-givers and their health.”

Governor Appoints Nursing Professor to Health Workforce Development Board

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has appointed School of Nursing Professor Elayne Kornblatt Phillips to the board of the Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority, a group aiming to strengthen the diversity and cultural competence of the state’s health professions pipeline.

Nursing professor Elayne Phillips will serve on a state board aiming to strengthen the diversity and cultural competence of the state’s health professions pipeline. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)

Phillips, former director of research of UVA’s International Healthcare Worker Safety Center, is an international authority on workplace injury and nurses’ rights, a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, a member of the American Nurses Association, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and former chair of the American Public Health Association.

Ophthalmology Fellow Invited to Present His Research

Dr. Shinichi Fukuda, a fellow in UVA’s Center for Advanced Vision Science, is one of four individuals in the U.S. to win the Association of University Professors in Ophthalmology’s Research Award.

The award, sponsored by Research to Prevent Blindness, the leading private foundation funding ophthalmology research, is “a high and distinct honor for a young physician-scientist,” said Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, DuPont Guerry III Professor of Ophthalmology and director of the Center for Advanced Vision Science.

Fukuda will present his research Jan. 27 at the association’s Resident and Fellow Research Forum in San Diego.