SEPTEMBER 2006

▶ With the explosion of brilliant fireworks over the Rotunda, the University launches its $3 billion campaign. At the kickoff it is announced that gifts and pledges of more than $1 billion have been received toward the $3 billion goal.

A Greener Grounds In resolving that all new and renovated buildings at the University receive LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, the Board of Visitors made a major commitment to University-wide sustainability programs. LEED certification, based on a rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings. One of the first facilities to receive LEED certification will be the South Lawn Project. The board also established the Grounds Improvement Fund, designed to accommodate pedestrian and bicycle traffic and reduce automobile use at the University.

 

▶ As part of continuing efforts to increase accessibility for low-income students, the University ends its early decision admissions program beginning with students entering in fall 2008. Because financial aid decisions are announced after acceptance, students seeking financial aid could not make a commitment to early decision.

▶ The Curry School of Education's teacher education program is cited as a national model by the Education Schools Project. The Curry School's five-year B.A./M.T. program, the high quality of its students, the balance between theory and practical experience, and the reputation of the faculty are all given high marks.

▶ Lisa Goff, Jack Schermerhorn, Rachel Shapiro, and Eric Stoykovich, doctoral candidates in the Corcoran Department of History, are awarded research fellowships by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The fellowships will support work in one of five archives in New York City including the New-York Historical Society and the New York Public Library.

▶ Mohammad Khatami, the former president of Iran, urges a "dialogue among civilizations" before an audience of 140 assembled in the Dome Room. Charlottesville is one of just five cities President Khatami visits during his tour of the United States.

▶ The Jefferson Scholars Foundation makes major enhancements to its graduate fellowship program, raising its annual stipend for winners to $30,000 and more than doubling research funds. These increases allow U.Va. to compete more effectively for top graduate students across a broad range of disciplines.

OCTOBER 2006

▶ Leonard Sandridge, executive vice president and chief operating officer, is honored by the Board of Visitors for his thirty years of dedicated service with the naming of Leonard Sandridge Road and the Leonard W. Sandridge Portal, the entrance to the John Paul Jones Arena.

▶ The Virginia Quarterly Review adds two more honors to its list of accolades�a Gold Award for Editorial Excellence, nicknamed the "Eddie," from FOLIO: magazine and a nomination for an Independent Press Award for Best Writing from Utne Reader magazine.

▶ U.Va. gridiron standouts give back to their alma mater. Thomas Jones (College '99), star running back for the Chicago Bears who later joined the New York Jets, establishes a scholarship fund for students from Southwest Virginia. 

All-pros Rondé (McIntire '97) and Tiki Barber (McIntire '97) establish the Barber Challenge with an initial $500,000 gift.

▶ For four days, Charlottesville finds itself at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, courtesy of the nineteenth annual Virginia Film Festival. Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, and Liev Schreiber join more than 15,000 enthusiastic film fans�a record�who attend thirty-two sold-out screenings, discussions, and concerts.

▶ Four graduates of the School of Law begin clerking for the U.S. Supreme Court, more than from any other law school except Harvard and Yale. The Law School alumni include Gordon Todd ('00), who is clerking for Justice Samuel Alito; John Adams ('03) and David Bragdon ('02), who are clerking for Justice Clarence Thomas; and Dan Bress ('05), who is clerking for Justice Antonin Scalia.

NOVEMBER 2006

▶ The University of Virginia Library extends its global reach as part of the Google Books Library Project. Google will digitize hundreds of thousands of books from the library, including selected portions of American history, literature, and humanities works collections. Other partners in the project include the University of California, Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library, and Oxford University.

▶ Christopher Goyne, director of the Aerospace Research Laboratory at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, presents the Hy-V Project at the AIAA/AHI Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies Conference in Canberra, Australia. Several U.Va. aerospace engineering students are working with colleagues at Virginia Tech, William and Mary, Hampton University, and Old Dominion University to design a scramjet engine that will fly at five times the speed of sound, or 3,700 miles per hour�a feat that could revolutionize air transport. "Hy" stands for hypersonic and "V" represents Virginia and the Roman numeral five, as in the Mach 5 speed of the scramjet.

▶ Eight graduate students at the School of Nursing win National Research Service Award fellowships, more winners than at any other nursing school in the nation. The highly competitive fellowships cover tuition and fees and provide a stipend and other funds for five years of predoctoral study.

▶ A total of 3,736 University employees contribute a record $813,125 to the Commonwealth of Virginia Campaign, receiving the Award of Excellence for leading the state in giving. The amount given by employees surpasses U.Va.'s goal of $650,000 and represents approximately one-fifth of the statewide total, more than any other state agency.

DECEMBER 2006

▶ Three fourth-year students, all Harrison Research Award recipients, travel to the University of Queensland in Australia to make presentations at the Universitas 21 conference on undergraduate research. Astronomy-physics and mathematics major Rachael Beaton presents her research on the structure of the Andromeda Galaxy. History major Lindsay Friedman discusses her work on British and Indian women's relationships to dress in nineteenth-century India. Politics major Ross Baird presents his study of voter participation in his home state of Georgia.

▶ Businesswoman Sheila C. Johnson, an advocate for the protection of children and cofounder of Black Entertainment Television, pledges $5 million to the Curry School of Education to establish the Sheila C. Johnson Center for Human Services. The center will include clinics that specialize in communication disorders, reading and literacy acquisition, counseling and career development, and clinical psychological services.

▶ Robert L. Pressey, internationally acclaimed conservation biologist and pioneer of systematic environmental planning, is appointed to a Thomas Jefferson Foundation Visiting Professorship in the School of Architecture.

JANUARY 2007

▶ The University of Virginia Art Museum opens two exhibits to start the new year. A retrospective of works by abstract impressionist Hedda Sterne brings together some 100 pieces from museums across the country and the artist's own collection. The special exhibition "Fernand Léger: Contrasts of Forms," curated by Matthew Affron, director of special curatorial projects and associate professor in the McIntire Department of Art, features works that reveal the rise of cubism and the beginning of abstract art.

▶ The number of J-term classes increases to thirty-six this year, including eight

study-abroad sessions. J-term classes attract the participation of some of the most respected faculty on Grounds. Stephen Plog, the David A. Harrison III Professor of Historical Archeology, offers a course on modern and historic Pueblo culture in New Mexico; Thomas Jefferson Foundation Visiting Professor Robert L. Pressey explores ideas for systematic environmental planning and protection.

▶ U.Va. astronomers and collaborators at the University of California Santa Cruz and UCLA discover an enormous halo of red giant stars around the Andromeda Galaxy. The discovery suggests that Andromeda is as much as five times larger than previously thought.

▶ The first African American to receive an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia, Robert Bland (Engineering '59), is the keynote speaker as part of a celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Office of African American Affairs.

▶ Robert E. Johnson, the John L. Newcomb Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, is chosen for a NASA team that will develop a concept for an orbiting space mission to Mars slated to launch in 2011. The "Great Escape Mission," one of two finalists selected by NASA, will include measuring the structure and dynamics of the Martian upper atmosphere.

FEBRUARY 2007

▶ The University Library acquires Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery, a previously unknown African American slave narrative. Now a part of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at U.Va., the seventy-two page autobiographical account relates the experiences of Henry Goings, a Virginia-born slave who escaped to freedom in Canada.

▶ President Casteen establishes the Commission on the Future of the University to set priorities for the next decade. Among the areas that the commission will address are the University's competitive posture, academic infrastructure, and physical plant. It is the third such commission in the University's history.

▶ The 2005 Nobel Prize winner in physics, Theodor Hansch, presents his talk "A Passion for Precision" to faculty and students in the Dome Room as part of the Nobel Laureate Science Lecture Series sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies.

▶ Law professors A. E. Dick Howard, Michael Klarman, and G. Edward White are featured in the first major television series to trace the story and influence of America's highest court. The Supreme Court, is a four-hour PBS series produced by Channel 13 / WNET New York.

▶ The University is saddened to learn of the death of former University Rector Hovey Dabney. Mr. Dabney served on the Board of Visitors from 1992 to 1998 and helped lead a $1.4 billion capital campaign that fundamentally changed the University's financial structure. The Charlottesville native was also the founder of the Health Services Foundation.

MARCH 2007

▶ Men's head basketball coach Dave Leitao is named the 2007 Atlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year. He is the first Virginia men's head basketball coach to receive the award since Terry Holland in 1982 and only the third U.Va. coach to receive the honor. Bill Gibson was honored in 1972.

▶ ecoMOD, the innovative housing initiative directed by John Quale, assistant professor of architecture, becomes the first project ever to receive all three major architectural education awards in the same year. It receives the grand prize from the National Council of Architectural Registration, having earlier won the American Institute of Architects National Education Honor Award and the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture Collaborative Practice Award. With student teams, Professor Quale and his collaborators across the University are creating and evaluating prototypes for affordable housing that combine principles of prefabrication and environmental sustainability.

▶ U.Va. receives high marks for undergraduate business. Business Week names the McIntire School of Commerce the second best undergraduate business school in the nation, just behind the Wharton School. In several areas, such as student satisfaction and percentage of graduates going on to top MBA programs, McIntire ranks highly.

▶ The School of Architecture is ranked first among the nation's graduate architecture programs for sustainable design practices and principles in the eighth annual "America's Best Architecture and Design Schools" study conducted by the Design Futures Council. The graduate architecture program ranks sixth, tied with the University of Michigan and the Rhode Island School of Design.

▶ The Office of the Architect issues its first comprehensive look at U.Va.'s numerous programs in support of environmental sustainability and cites initiatives such as adding energy-efficient lighting and using biodiesel blend for the University Transportation System. The report comes on the heels of a Board of Visitors decision to require LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council on all new and renovated buildings.

 

APRIL 2007

▶ Frank Batten, Sr. (College '50), makes an unprecedented gift of $100 million to create the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, the first new school established at the University since the Darden School of Business was created fifty-three years ago. Mr. Batten's gift is the largest in the University's history.

▶ Robert Pianta, the US Novartis Foundation Professor and a nationally acclaimed expert on early childhood education and teacher quality, is named to become the next dean for the Curry School of Education, succeeding David W. Breneman, who will step down in June after serving for twelve years. Mr. Breneman, the Newton and Rita Meyers Professor of the Economics of Education, with Eric Patashnik, associate professor of politics and associate director of the public policy program, will oversee the planning for the new Batten School.

The University Responds to the Virginia Tech Tragedy At a candlelight vigil honoring those who were killed and injured in the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech in April, President John T. Casteen III urged the crowd to continue moving forward to change the world "with the hope that we can make such incidents rarer." The University community quickly offered its support to Virginia Tech in several key ways: U.Va's Web Communications Office created a Web site housing news podcasts, statements of support, and a slide show of U.Va. events for Virginia Tech. The site also featured community resources that had been made available, including counseling.   A Public Affairs team traveled to Blacksburg to assist Virginia Tech with the deluge of media calls in the hours after the incident.   Groups around Grounds set up message boards and memorials for public use. Other responses included painting Beta Bridge with "Hoos for Hokies," painting the Z on the Rotunda stairs in Virginia Tech's colors, and setting up funds to accept contributions designated for the victims' families. In July, the University hosted the fourth public meeting of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, convened by Governor Timothy M. Kaine to review the incident and related procedures and safety issues. Prior to the incident, U.Va. added an emergency text messaging system as part of its ongoing emergency preparedness program. In August 2007, Marjorie L. Sidebottom, director of emergency preparedness for the U.Va. Health System since 1993, was named the University's director of emergency preparedness, a new post.

▶ On Founder's Day, the Board of Visitors passes a resolution expressing the University's regret for its use of enslaved persons from 1819 to 1865 and recommits the University to the principles of equal opportunity and human freedom and learning.

▶ Pioneering international relations attorney and educator Anne-Marie Slaughter is the recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law. Visionary architect Zaha Hadid receives this year's Medal in Architecture, first awarded in 1966 to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Renowned economist and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is given the inaugural Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Citizen Leadership, which was created to honor personal leadership and lasting influence on our common culture.

▶ The Carter G. Woodson Institute celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary. One of the nation's premier centers of research and writing on African American and African studies, the institute reflects the University's efforts to integrate the black experience fully into the life of the academy.

▶ Governor Timothy M. Kaine appoints CarMax cofounder Austin Ligon to the Board of Visitors and reappoints Susan Y. Dorsey (Architecture '82, Darden '87) of Mechanicsville, L. F. Payne (Darden '73) of Charlottesville, and 

John O. Wynne (Law '71) of Virginia Beach. First-year law student Carey Mignerey (College '04) is the incoming student representative.

▶ The University names Dr. Arthur "Tim" Garson, Jr., executive vice president and provost. Dr. Garson, the Robert C. Taylor Professor of Health Science and Public Policy and an internationally recognized pediatric cardiologist, has served as vice president and dean of the School of Medicine since 2002. He succeeds Gene D. Block, a biologist who is leaving to become chancellor of the University of California Los Angeles.

MAY 2007

▶ President John T. Casteen III is elected sixth chairman of Universitas 21, a global educational consortium comprising twenty major research universities in twelve countries. Among his first official duties will be to welcome undergraduate students from eighteen nations to the Universitas 21 Student Summer Conference 2007, which U.Va. will host in July.

▶ Daniel Meyers, a Boston businessman and chair of the Curry School of Education Foundation board, pledges a $1 million challenge gift to name the courtyard between the current and future education buildings in honor of outgoing dean, David W. Breneman.

▶ Violinist Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews 

Band speaks at Valedictory Exercises on Finals Weekend. At Final Exercises, best-selling novelist and master of the legal thriller John Grisham delivers the Commencement address and shares some lessons about life.

▶ Three alumni of the Darden School of Business are named to Black MBA Magazine's Top 50 Under 50 list. They are Eric P. Brown (Darden '84), Octavia Matthews (Darden '89), and Lewis M. Warren, Jr. (Darden '87, Law '87).

▶ The Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau awards Richard Herskowitz, director of the Virginia Film Festival, its 2007 Tourism Person of the Year Award. The award recognizes his artistic vision and leadership in the success of the Virginia Film Festival.

▶ The inaugural cohort of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical program successfully completes the program. More than 140 applications are received for the 2007�08 program, with twenty-two students beginning in June.

JUNE 2007

▶ Citing a desire "to promote closer ties with the faculty and more faculty involvement" with its deliberations, the Board of Visitors passes a resolution inviting a faculty representative to be a 

nonvoting member of three key board committees. Beginning July 1, the immediate past chair of the Faculty Senate will sit on the Educational Policy Committee, the External Affairs Committee, and the Special Committee on Diversity. The first faculty representative will be architecture professor Kenneth A. Schwartz.

▶ Alumnus and astronaut Patrick Forrester boards the space shuttle at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for an eleven-day mission. Mr. Forrester received his master of science degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering in 1989 from the School of Engineering and Applied Science. The mission will deliver and help install a new set of giant solar panels on the International Space Station.

▶ Virginia tennis player and NCAA singles champion Somdev Devvarman is named Men's National Player of the Year by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.

▶ The University's Office for Diversity and Equity and School of Engineering and Applied Science are awarded a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Program. University members will lead a cooperative program among eight colleges and universities throughout Virginia and North Carolina that will focus on increasing the number of students from underrepresented groups who pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

▶ The University's recycling program receives the Virginia Recycling Association's top award for colleges and universities. It is the sixteenth recycling award the University has received since 1994.

 

JULY 2007

▶ The University's Creative Writing Program is among the top ten graduate writing programs in the country, according to Atlantic. The magazine's special fiction issue cited the quality of the program's alumni and faculty, its selectivity, and its resources. Among the faculty are novelist Ann Beattie, National Book Award winner John Casey, past Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, short story writer and playwright Deborah Eisenberg, poet Gregory Orr, fiction writer Christopher Tilghman, and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Charles Wright.

▶ President John T. Casteen III appoints Karen Ryan as the interim 

dean for the College of Arts and Sciences. She has served as associate dean of the College since 2001. Ms. Ryan begins her new assignment on July 1 while the search continues for a permanent successor to Edward L. Ayers, who was named president of the University of Richmond.

▶ A landmark Supreme Court antitrust ruling strikes down a ninety-six-year-old rule that resale price maintenance agreements are an automatic violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Kenneth Elzinga, the Robert C. Taylor Professor of Economics, plays a key role as the lead economic expert for the winning side in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc., vs. PSKS, Inc. Professor Elzinga, who has been a member of the University faculty since 1971, specializes in industrial organization, antitrust economics, and economics and fiction.

▶ Michael Menaker, Commonwealth Professor of Biology and international leader in the field of circadian rhythm research, receives the Peter C. Farrell Prize in Sleep Medicine from the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine. The award recognizes his groundbreaking research on circadian clocks�the internal timers that regulate rhythmic behaviors and functions of organs.

AUGUST 2007

▶ The Class of 2011 arrives on the Grounds. Of the 3,289 students anticipated in the class, 33.5 percent identify themselves 

as either minorities or international students�which makes it the most diverse class in U.Va.'s history. Women comprise 57 percent of the class, and 68.6 percent of expected students are from Virginia.

▶ Former Treasury Secretary John W. Snow begins his one-year appointment at the Miller Center of Public Affairs as its Newman Visiting Fellow. The chairman of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., one of the world's leading private investment firms, Mr. Snow will work with the Governing America in a Global Era program to address matters related to international and fiscal aspects of governance. He served as U.S. secretary of the treasury from 2003 to 2006.

▶ Dr. Cato T. Laurencin, the Lillian T. Pratt Distinguished Professor and chair of orthopaedic surgery, with a research team of faculty from five departments, begins work on a first-of-its-kind, $2 million project to explore novel methods for regeneration of musculoskeletal tissue for the growth of new limbs. The grant from the National Science Foundation is known as an EFRI grant�Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation.

▶ Semester at Sea voyagers return to San Diego after two months of exploring Latin America. Students climbed the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán, Mexico; met with artists, playwrights, and musicians in Santiago, Chile; and visited Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountains of Peru. The voyage is the first on which a member of the U.Va. faculty, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish David Gies, serves as the academic dean.

▶ Lynda Phillips-Madson is named interim dean of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies. The associate dean for academic affairs at the school for six years, she takes the reins from Sondra Stallard, who departs to become the thirteenth president of Strayer University.

SEPTEMBER 2007

Keeping the Foster Legacy As part of the South Lawn Project, the homestead of Catherine "Kitty" Foster will be preserved as a one-acre park. A free black woman, Kitty Foster bought the property along Venable Lane near Jefferson Park Avenue in 1833, and her descendants lived there until 1906. She was a seamstress who also did laundry for the University's faculty and all-male student population in the early to mid-19th century. The park will include the footprint of her house as well as an adjacent thirty-two-grave cemetery.

▶ The Miller Center of Public Affairs with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions produces the first in its National Discussion and Debate Series. The series, which is webcast live and carried by PBS affiliates throughout Virginia, addresses major issues facing the United States, including its role in the world, its responsibilities to its citizens, and how it fulfills its founding principles. Visit http://millercenter.virginia.edu/public/debates to view the debates.

▶ The French Academy awards its Grand Prix Moron to Trinh Thuan, professor of astronomy, for his book The Ways of Light, published in March by Editions Fayard. The academy's Grand Prix Moron, roughly equivalent to the American Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award, recognizes the distinguished philosophical work of an author involving a new ethic or aesthetic.

▶ The McIntire Department of Music presents a free, live broadcast of the Washington National Opera's production of Puccini's La Bohème. U.Va. is one of thirty-two schools across the country presenting the live simulcast from the Opera House stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. More than 45,000 viewers are expected�the largest-ever simultaneous viewing of an opera in the world.

▶ Architecture students win awards in two categories in the American Society of Landscape Architects 2007 Student Awards program. Toshihiko Karato, graduate student in architecture and landscape architecture, receives the Award of Excellence in the General Design category for his project "Plugging In: Bringing the Stream Back to Watts." Graduate student editors of the second volume of the online journal Lunch: Dialect � Shanti Levy, David Malda, and Ryan Moody � win an Honor Award in the Communications category.

▶ The late Oliver W. Hill, Sr., noted civil rights attorney who played a crucial part in the integration of both secondary and higher education, is honored by the School of Law for his role in the civil rights movement. The event, held in the Caplin Pavilion, includes a panel discussion and the presentation of the inaugural Oliver W. Hill, Sr., Lifetime Achievement Award by the Center for the Study of Race and Law. Oliver Hill, Jr., accepts the award on his father's behalf.