SEPTEMBER

▶ Less than five days after Hurricane Katrina floods New Orleans, the first of 142 students from the stricken area enroll for classes at U.Va. By executive order, Governor Mark R. Warner waives their tuition, and the University makes arrangements to house the forty first-years among them on Grounds.

▶ Ceremonies are held to dedicate a life-size bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson at the University of Virginia's College at Wise. The statue is a gift from the University in recognition of the college's fiftieth anniversary and in appreciation of Ernest H. Ern's service as chancellor during 2004–05.

▶ Funding from the National Institutes of Health for biomedical research at the School of Medicine increases 5.1 percent for the year ending September 30, 2005. The NIH funding includes a five-year, $2.2 million grant to study the cause of high blood pressure and a $6 million grant to investigate a cell-signaling process involved in the spreading of prostate cancer.

▶ Hundreds of alumni, students, faculty, and friends of the Darden School of Business gather on Grounds to kick off a two-year celebration in honor of the school's fiftieth anniversary. The celebration will continue to be observed over the next two years with special events in numerous cities around the world.

▶ Completing a two-year term as University Rector, Richmond lawyer Gordon F. Rainey, Jr. (College '62, Law '67), steps into his next assignment: leading the University's $3 billion fund-raising campaign. Mr. Rainey is a former president of the U.Va. Alumni Association and serves as a trustee of the Law School Foundation.

OCTOBER

▶ Looking back at 100 years of experience in public education, the Curry School of Education celebrates its centennial with "At the Crossroads of Hope and Habit," a conference that brings national authorities in educational policy to the Grounds.

▶ The eighteenth annual Virginia Film Festival draws 13,087 film buffs to its IN/JUSTICE-themed event. Special guests include Vanessa Redgrave, John Grisham, Sissy Spacek, Kathy Baker, and Harold Ramis.

​ ▶ The Rolling Stones more than satisfy the crowd of 55,000 fans who pack Scott Stadium to cheer, dance, and sing along with the self-proclaimed best rock 'n' roll band in the world. The Stones concert underscores the University's ability to attract headliners to Charlottesville.

▶ A team of six electrical and computer engineering graduate students take first place in phase one of a Semiconductor Research Corporation national contest in computer chip design. ​

▶ The University announces that Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners of Santa Monica, California, has been selected from twenty-six applicants to design a new conceptual plan and the first four buildings for the College of Arts and Sciences' "South Lawn Project."

NOVEMBER

▶ ​The University's efforts to move the engineering program into the top ranks receive a boost as Paul G. Rice and his wife, Gina, of Warrenton, Virginia, present the School of Engineering and Applied Science with the second-largest gift in its history. Funded through the Rice Family Foundation, the contribution will serve as a lead gift to fund construction of the school's information technology building.

▶ President John T. Casteen III officially appoints Robert E. Bruner as dean of the Darden School of Business. A twenty-three-year veteran of the Darden School, Dean Bruner is an expert in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, emerging markets, innovation, and technology transfer.

▶ AMERICANPRESIDENT.ORG, a Web site of the Miller Center of Public Affairs, is named one of the top free reference sites of 2005 by the American Library Association. The site, which consists of two sections—The Presidency in History and The Presidency in Action—includes biographies, image galleries, and essays along with other extensive resources for high school teachers and students, undergraduate students, and the general public. ​

▶ Citizen space explorer Gregory H. Olsen (Engineering '71) returns from his ten-day mission to the International Space Station to discuss his experience with University students. The world's third space traveler, who also is a scientist and entrepreneur, conducted three on-board experiments to test the human body's reaction to the absence of gravity.

▶ The Papers of George Washington project is one of twelve National Humanities Medal recipients honored for groundbreaking work by President George W. Bush in an Oval Office ceremony.

▶ Wambui Jackie Chege, founder and executive director of Watoto Village, a nonprofit organization that provides homes, schooling, and health care to the orphaned street children of Nairobi, Kenya, speaks at the auditorium of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library. The talk, co-sponsored by the Women's Center and the Studies in Women and Gender Program, is part of the center's series on Local and Global Challenges for Women.

DECEMBER

▶ Former Virginia Governor Gerald L. Baliles agrees to serve as the fifth director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs, the foremost nonpartisan institution dedicated to studying U.S. national and international policy, with a special emphasis on the American presidency. He joins a distinguished list of presidents and governors,

beginning with Thomas Jefferson and including James Madison and Colgate Darden, who devoted themselves to the University of Virginia after retiring from public life.

▶ ​Virginia's reserve defensive back Ryan Best receives the Brian Piccolo Award. The honor goes to the "most courageous" football player in the ACC.

▶ In partnership with the University's Office of Engagement and in collaboration with faculty, the School of Continuing and Professional Studies launches Cavalier Travels for U.Va. alumni, parents, family, and friends.

▶ The Ivy Foundation of Charlottesville gives $45 million to the University Health System, one of the largest contributions in U.Va. history and the largest ever designated specifically for medical research and clinical applications. It will support three priority projects—a new translational research facility, a new outpatient facility for the Children's Hospital, and a new clinical cancer building. The Chronicle of Philanthropy lists it as one of the ten most significant donations made in 2005. ​

The need for health care in Southwest Virginia has never been greater. A bequest of $2.7 million from Kathleen Strunk of Abingdon, Virginia, to the nursing program at the University of Virginia's College at Wise is an important step toward remedying this situation. This bequest, one of the largest gifts in the school's history, will fund scholarships for nursing students from Southwest Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee, as well as endow professorships in the school's nursing department.

▶ President John T. Casteen III announces the appointment of James L. Hilton as vice president and chief information officer beginning in July 2006. A national expert on information technology policy and an advocate for strong collaboration between academic and technology cultures in a university environment, Mr. Hilton was the associate provost for academic, information, and instructional technology affairs and a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan at the time of his appointment.

JANUARY

▶ The University will play a leading role addressing the nursing shortage in Virginia, thanks to a $5 million gift from the Claude Moore Charitable Foundation of Fairfax, Virginia. The largest single gift received by the School of Nursing, the grant will help fund the new Claude Moore Nursing Education Building across from McLeod Hall.

▶ U21 Global signs an agreement to make the School of Continuing and Professional Studies'

online certificate programs in information security management, procurement and contracts management, and project management available to international MBA students.

▶ Students enrolled in "Technology and Citizenship: Hurricane Katrina" spend J-term in New Orleans, gutting and cleaning houses and helping three high schools merge and open for the first time since the August 2005 storm. The class was designed to expose students from a cross-section of the University to the complex decisions that individuals and governments grapple with as they shape the fate of the city.

▶ The University becomes the academic home for the Semester at Sea program. The University will offer the global comparative study-abroad experience, which takes place on board the MV Explorer, beginning with the summer 2006 session.

Unlike environmental education centers located in pristine "nature," the Learning Barge traverses a heavily industrialized and polluted urban river. Designed by eleven second- and third-year graduate students in architecture and landscape architecture, the proposed floating environmental classroom and field station on Virginia's Elizabeth River won the American Society of Landscape Architects' National Student Collaborative Design Award. Architecture professor Phoebe Crisman is the faculty advisor for the project, which features a 3,600-square-foot floating barge constructed of recycled materials and powered solely by site-based solar and wind energy systems. The ASLA also bestowed a Communications Award of Honor on Bridget Belkacemi, a 2006 graduate of the master of landscape architecture program, for her project "Bayou as Infrastructure," which uses video animation and storytelling to create an interactive model for representing possible schemes for the rebuilding of New Orleans to the public. Robin Dripps, the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Professor of Architecture; and Maurice Cox, associate professor of architecture, served as her faculty advisors. For more information on these projects, see asla.org/awards/2006/studentawards and www.arch.virginia.edu/learningbarge.

 

▶ Succeeding current president Jack Syer, C. Thomas Faulders III (College '71) is selected as president and chief executive officer of the U.Va. Alumni Association by the association's board of managers. He will assume his position by early March.

▶ Nobel laureate Dr. Ferid Murad, a groundbreaking physiologist who conducted some of his most important research during the 1970s at the University, presents "Before and After the Nobel Prize," in the Rotunda Dome Room. The annual public lecture by Nobel science laureates is free and open to the public. Dr. Murad won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology.

▶ A 1997 paper, "Processing of X-Ray Differentiation Data Collected in Oscillation Mode," by Wladek Minor, professor of molecular physiology and biological physics, co-authored with Zbyszek Otwinowski, of the University of Texas, is recognized by The Scientist magazine as the second-most cited scientific paper in the world in the last ten years.

FEBRUARY

▶ The University of Virginia again claims the number one spot among medium-sized schools (less than 15,000 undergraduates) for Peace Corps involvement, with eighty alumni serving as volunteers.

▶ The first African American student to receive a degree from the University is honored with a lecture series sponsored by the Curry School of Education, the Vice President and Chief Officer

for Diversity and Equity, and the Walter Ridley Scholarship Fund. Walter N. Ridley graduated in 1953 with a doctorate in education and had a distinguished career in higher education administration. Henry L. Johnson, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education for the U.S. Department of Education, is the first speaker for the series.

▶ P. Kenneth Seidelmann, dynamical astronomer and research professor of astronomy, is among a team of Russian and American scientists who receive the

Catherine S. Neale and Ross Baird selected for All-USA College Academic Team.

2005 International Scientific Cooperation Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal Science.

▶ USA Today lists Catherine S. Neale (College '06) and Edward Ross Baird (College '07) among those honored in its seventeenth annual undergraduate recognition program, the All-USA College Academic Team. Ms. Neale, a 2005 Truman Scholarship winner, is a history major who plans to attend law school and to pursue a career in public higher education.

Governor Timothy M. Kaine names Alexandria businessman Daniel R. Abramson to the Board of Visitors. Dr. Edwin Darracott Vaughan, Jr., of New York City; Don R. Pippin of Wise Country; and Warren M. Thompson of Fairfax County are reappointed to the board. The student member of the board is Anne Elizabeth Mullen (College '07), of Greenwood, Virginia.

A 2006 Truman Scholar, Jefferson Scholar, Echols Scholar, and Robert K. Gooch Scholar, Mr. Baird is majoring in the politics honors program and intends to study law and public policy.

MARCH

▶ For the twelfth consecutive year, the University posts the highest graduation rate for African American students among major public institutions, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Six-year graduation rates are 86 percent, far ahead of the nearest contenders, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of New Hampshire at 70 percent.

▶ Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy (Law '59), delivers the keynote address at the School of Law's Conference on Public Service and the Law. Founded by law students seven years ago, the conference brings together students, citizens, and attorneys to discuss current public interest legal issues. Following his address at the Law School, Senator Kennedy spoke at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, which is completing a six-year oral history project on the senator's life and career.

▶ Edge of Empire, by history professor Maya Jasanoff, receives the Duff Cooper Prize, one of Britain's most prestigious nonfiction awards. Digging into mostly unexplored records in archives and museums on four continents, Professor Jasanoff describes life in India and Egypt as seen through the letters and diaries of the European adventurer-collectors who bought or sometimes plundered the artifacts of ancient civilizations. Previous Duff Cooper Prize winners include Laurence Durrell, Seamus Heaney, Richard Ellman, Richard Holmes, and Robert Hughes.

▶ The University of Virginia Art Museum presents a preview of "Complicit! Contemporary American Art and Mass Culture," a special exhibition curated by Johanna Drucker, the Robertson Professor of Media Studies. An art historian and internationally renowned book artist, Professor Drucker explores the engagement of artists in dialogue with mass culture, drawing from her recent book, Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity.

APRIL

▶ The University signs a landmark agreement with the Virginia Community College System that guarantees admission to VCCS graduates who meet an established set of requirements. Coupled with AccessUVa, this program will attract students who might have thought they could not qualify for admission or could not afford the costs of attendance.

▶ David J. Prior, a highly regarded scholar and administrator, is formally installed as the seventh chancellor of the University of Virginia's College at Wise. Over the last decade, the college has experienced a remarkable renaissance, thanks to a rising endowment and the addition of several new buildings. Chancellor Prior's charge is to make the College one of the best public colleges in the nation.

▶ Basketball star Dawn Staley (College '92) is honored as U.Va.'s Distinguished Alumna of 2006 by the Women's Center. The three-time Olympic and two-time World Championship gold medalist has served as head coach at Temple University since 2000.

▶ As part of Founder's Day celebrations, Ronald M. Dworkin, a professor of law at New York University and professor of jurisprudence at Oxford, receives the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law, while Swiss architect Peter Zumthor receives the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture. The medals are given to individuals for lasting contributions in fields that deeply interested Jefferson.

▶ Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announces that presidential historian Timothy Naftali will be the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. Currently associate professor and director of the Presidential Recordings Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, Professor Naftali will assume his duties on October 16.

MAY

 

▶ Plans for an addition to the University's Drama Building take a major step forward, thanks to a $4 million gift from Mortimer Caplin (College '37, Law '40) and his wife, Ruth. Their gift will fund construction of a 300-seat thrust-stage theater, part of a building expansion for the Department of Drama.

▶ With the connection to the National LambdaRail (NLR), a high-performance computing network, University researchers can access data at super high speed from national labs such as Oak Ridge, supercomputing centers in California and Illinois, particle accelerators, major observatories, and environmental monitoring sites. The NLR uses transcontinental optical circuits (light waves, or lambdas) for transporting massive data over fiber-optic cable specifically for scientific research. The $100 million network took three years to develop, and as a member, U.Va. has full access.

▶ The men's lacrosse team defeats the University of Massachusetts to win the NCAA championship, completing a historic undefeated season. The Cavaliers end the season with a perfect 17–0 record before a championship game record crowd of 47,062 at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field. The national championship is the fourth in the history of the men's lacrosse program at the University.

▶ Author and journalist Tom Wolfe addresses graduates at Valedictory Exercises during graduation weekend. Some 30,000 people attend Commencement on a brilliant sunny day on the historic Lawn, where Governor Timothy M. Kaine presents the Commencement address at the 177th Final Exercises.

The Black Coaches Association selects athletics director Craig Littlepage to receive its Athletics Administrator of the Year award. In his fifth year as Virginia's athletic director, he has been listed twice on Sports Illustrated's list of the 101 most influential minorities in sports and was named as one of Black Enterprise Magazine's Most Powerful African Americans in Sports.

▶ The University joins the Virginia-Nebraska Alliance, a partnership among colleges in the two states dedicated to expanding the ranks of minority health professionals and researchers. As part of the program, talented undergraduate students from Virginia's five historically black colleges and universities will receive summer fellowships to work in Health System research laboratories.

▶ Athletics Director Craig Littlepage receives the Black Coaches Association's Athletics Administrator of the Year award at the association's national convention.

▶ Ending a far-reaching search, conductor Kate Tamarkin is announced as the next music director and conductor of the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra. She has a distinguished national and international reputation, coming to U.Va. from the Monterey Symphony (California) where she was music director for five years. Ms. Tamarkin will join the University faculty in the fall and will lead the orchestra in the upcoming 2006–07 season.

JUNE

▶ Cheryl Burgan Evans will spearhead University plans to increase the diversity of its graduate student population as its first director of Graduate Student Diversity Programs. Formerly associate dean of the graduate

school at the Miami University of Ohio, she will pursue a variety of approaches, including developing closer ties with historically black colleges and universities and other minority institutions.

▶ A McIntire School of Commerce student team takes first place in the American Advertising Federation's National Student Advertising Competition, the premier college advertising competition. After finishing second two years in a row at the national AAF competition, a student team advised by Jack Lindgren, the Consumer Bankers Association Professor of Retail Banking, topped teams from other finalist universities.

▶ Governor Timothy M. Kaine signs legislation to create the New College Institute, a new public college in Southside Virginia, where classes offered through the University of Virginia along with Longwood University, Radford University, Averett University, and Ferrum College will begin in fall 2006.

▶ Four graduates of the Darden School of Business are named to Black MBA magazine's list of the "Top 50 Under 50" African American corporate executives. Thomas Baltimore (Darden '91), Bryan Simms (Darden '94), Warren Thompson (Darden '83), and William Wright (Darden '87) are named to the prestigious list.

▶ The University's College Guide Program becomes a national model for college access when the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation invites 175 institutions to apply for eight $1 million grants to create programs based on the U.Va. model. The program places recent graduates in public high schools throughout the Commonwealth to assist students with college admission, financial aid, and scholarship applications.

 

JULY

▶ For the first time, the University Library's Declaration of Independence is available for public viewing on July 4. The Library's permanent exhibit,

"Declaring Independence: Creating and Recreating America's Document," highlights the collection given by Albert H. Small (Engineering '46) and includes one of only twenty-five surviving copies printed on the night of July 4, 1776.

▶ On July 1, Virginia higher education formally enters the new era created by the Restructured Higher Education Financial and Administrative Operations Act, which gives all sixteen public colleges and universities new freedom from state control in areas such as spending, tuition, and personnel management while also requiring the schools to meet specific goals set by the state. The University of Virginia,

Virginia Tech, and the College of William and Mary are granted the highest of three levels of autonomy available under the new system.

▶ The unveiling of the Thomas Jefferson Statue in Paris culminates an almost ten-year effort by University alumni in Paris, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, and Guy Wildenstein, an art collector and dealer based in New York and Paris. Created by renowned French sculptor Jean Cardot, the statue will be installed permanently by the Pont Solférino, in the Seventh Arrondissement and across the Seine from the Jardin des Tuileries, near the Palais de Salm, which served as Jefferson's model for Monticello.

▶ Cheryl L. Gomez, director of utilities for the University, receives the Meritorious Service Award, the highest individual service honor from the Association of Higher Education Facilities Professionals. During her tenure, the Energy and Utilities Department has received numerous awards from the Environmental Protection Agency including the Energy Star Partner of the Year and Green Lights Partner of the Year. The department also was recognized by the White House Climate Change Task Force for making energy efficiency upgrades in campus facilities.

▶ The Curry School of Education is awarded $10 million from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to study approaches for training preschool teachers. The five-year study will assess whether new methods for preparing preschool teachers actually make them better teachers and shows in children's learning and social interactions. Colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC-Greensboro, plus the University of California at Los Angeles, will join U.Va. researchers to work with some 550 student-teachers mostly from two- and four-year institutions in several large urban areas in Chicago, Los Angeles, and central Florida.

▶ U.Va.'s NanoQuEST (Nanoscale and Quantum Engineering, Science, and Technology) Institute hosts a national conference focusing on device engineering research at the nanoscale level. James Aylor, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Robert Hull, director of the institute, deliver opening remarks at the three-day conference, which features talks by prominent researchers in the field of nanotechnology.

AUGUST

▶ The University of Virginia Medical Center is recognized as a "Magnet" hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association. Magnet status acknowledges the high quality of care given by U.Va.'s nurses as well as their professional standards and education levels. Independent studies of Magnet hospitals show that patients have shorter lengths of stay, higher satisfaction, higher nurse-to-patient ratios, and lower mortality rates. Nurses are more satisfied with their work and Magnet recognition strengthens nursing recruitment and retention efforts.

▶ The Center for Politics wins a grant from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for recruiting and training college students as nonpartisan poll workers on Election Day. The funding will continue to expand the Student Poll Worker Program, begun in early 2006 as a partnership between the Center for Politics and the City of Charlottesville Office of Voter Registration. The center also kicks off a yearlong commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the settlement at Jamestown with a four-day International Youth Democracy Summit at the University.

▶ On Saturday, August 19, more than 3,600 new students arrive on Grounds, accompanied by parents, relatives, and friends bearing suitcases, boxes, and residence-hall essentials. For 3,125 incoming first-year students and 533 transfers, this will be their first official day on Grounds; for thousands more returning students, Move-in Day marks the unofficial beginning of the 2006–07 academic year.

▶ Cavaliers' basketball coach Dave Leitao leaves for Japan with six other current or former coaches to visit sailors aboard a ship in the region. Invited to join the "Operation Hardwood" tour, sponsored by United Service Organizations and Armed Forces Entertainment, the coaches will also coach teams of military personnel competing in a tournament in Tokyo.

▶ The Virginia Center for Digital History (VCDH) is a partner in "The Virginia Experiment: Growing Seeds of Democracy in Four Hundred Years of American History," a program funded with a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. With the Center for Liberal Arts, the Center for Technology and Teacher Education, and the Miller Center of Public Affairs, VCDH will provide resources for the teaching of American history in five local public school systems.

SEPTEMBER

▶ The Dave Matthews Band plays to a sell-out crowd at the grand opening of the 16,000-seat John Paul Jones Arena. In addition to providing a much-improved home court for the men's and women's basketball programs, the arena is designed to bring nationally acclaimed attractions—such as the Ringling Brothers Circus, Eric Clapton, and the Cirque du Soleil—to Charlottesville.

▶ Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro speaks at Newcomb Hall Ballroom to a crowd gathered by the Center for Politics as part of its National Symposium on Women in Politics. She is introduced by former Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, the only woman to run for governor in Virginia.

▶ The University kicks off its $3 billion Campaign for the University of Virginia with fireworks on the Lawn and a gala celebration in the new John Paul Jones Arena. More than $1 billion in gifts and pledges is received by the start of campaign launch weekend, including a $5 million commitment from Sheila C. Johnson to create the Sheila C. Johnson Center in Bavaro Hall at the Curry School and a $1 million gift from brothers Tiki Barber (McIntire '97) and Ronde Barber (McIntire '97). Half of the Barbers' gift will be divided among the McIntire School of Commerce, the Virginia Athletics Foundation, 

Fireworks over the Rotunda help launch the Campaign for the University of Virginia: Knowledge is Power. The University is seeking $3 billion to support carefully selected priorities in every school on Grounds, as well as University-wide initiatives that will establish new strengths across disciplines.

the U.Va. Children's Hospital, and the U.Va. Alumni Association's Walter N. Ridley Scholarship Fund and Young Alumni Council. The other $500,000 is a challenge gift to encourage young alumni to participate in the campaign.

▶ The National Institutes of Health renews the School of Medicine's Cell Migration Consortium grant. The $35.7 million "glue grant" from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a part of the NIH,

brings the total NIH funding to the project to more than $73 million. The largest research grant the University has ever received from the NIH, the glue grant will support a multi-institutional study of cell migration, a process critical to the development of diseases like cancer, and to understanding tissue regeneration.

▶ A previously unknown poem by Robert Frost (1874–1963) is published in the Virginia Quarterly Review. Found by an English doctoral student, Robert Stilling, in an archive recently acquired by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, the thirty-five-line poem, "War Thoughts at Home," was written in 1918, not long after Frost's friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas was killed in World War I.