Notable
awards and achievements of faculty and staff

• University President John T. Casteen III received the first Distinguished Leadership Award given by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the regional accrediting commission for degree-granting institutions.
  
  Casteen was presented with the award in December during the association's annual meeting in Atlanta. The award recognizes "visionary leadership and outstanding involvement in and support of the activities of the Commission on Colleges." It is the highest public recognition given by the commission and is reserved for "those exhibiting extraordinarily distinctive and effective leadership," according to the commission.
  
  Casteen has also joined the board of directors of Central Virginia Educatioaanl Telecommunications Corporation, the parent company of WHTJ-TV 41 Charlottesville and WCVE-TV 23 Richmond.
  
  
• Rita Dove and Fred Viebahn shared the $500 John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for their several translations in Poetry magazine's special German issue, October-November 1998. The prize is awarded for the first time this year and permanently endowed through a fund established by Bonnie Larkin Nims, trustees of the Modern Poetry Association and friends of the late poet, translator and editor of Poetry.
  
  
• Jeffrey S. Young, assistant professor of surgery and emergency medicine, was recently appointed by Gov. Jim Gilmore to the State Emergency Medical Services Advisory Board.
  
  
• Kyra Gaunt, assistant professor of music and an ethnomusicologist, received a $30,000 National Endowment for the Humanities research fellowship grant. Her research on how identity is expressed in black culture focuses on the role of African-American musical games in the socialization of black girls, particularly through the games of hand clapping, cheers and double dutch jump-roping, and looking at the role of women to understand culture as a whole.
  
  
• The School of Nursing Alumni Association recently announced the names of the Spring 2000 Innovative Teaching Award recipients. These awards are given to support projects or course development activities that promote excellent, innovative an
  
  
• Reba Moyer Childress, assistant professor of nursing, received an award to develop and implement a clinical/service/leadership component of her Clinical & Interactive Skills I course. Instructors in Nursing Emily Drake and Mary Gibson will use their award to foster their use of end-of-shift nursing reports as a clinical teaching tool.
  
  Gibson was also recently appointed coordinator of the Jefferson Chapter of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses.
  
  
• Daniel L. Duke, professor and director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Educational Design, addressed the Virginia Legislative Commission (House and Senate) on the infrastructure needed in planning the rebuilding of Virginia's public schools in December.
  
  
• The U.Va. Library, nationally recognized as being at the forefront of providing digital collections and services, was recently invited to join the Digital Library Federation. The federation is a consortium of select research institutions with a common goal to create, maintain, expand and preserve a distributed collection of digital materials accessible to scholars and to the public.
  
  
• The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture recently recognized Reuben Rainey for his long-term accomplishments and the excellence and creativity he has brought to the teaching of landscape architecture with its 1999 Award of Distinction. The award was presented at a combined national conference of the American Society of Landscape Architects and CELA celebrating the 100th anniversary of the profession in September.
  
  
• Former astronaut Kathryn Thornton, an engineering professor at U.Va., has been tapped by NASA to join the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team. The group will review NASA's approach to robotic exploration of Mars and other deep-space projects in the wake of the recent loss of the Mars Polar Lander mission. The team will report their findings to NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin by mid-March 2000.
  
  
• The Center for Governmental Studies received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the center's Youth Leadership Initiative, an innovative program aimed at reviving young people's interest in the political process. Recent approval of the grant by Congress and a previous $500,000, two-year grant from the Virginia General Assembly will help the program reach students thorughout Virginia and the nation.