Q&A - Sheehy shares management goals for the University

Experience the mystical arts of Tibet

Photo courtesy of Bayly Art Museum

These Buddhist monks travel around the world sharing their music and art.

From making vivid, intricately designed mandalas by pouring colored sand through narrow straws to performing sacred dances, monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India devote their lives to learning the mystical arts of Tibet. They will bring their talents and treasures to Charlottesville in the coming weeks. A Bayly Art Museum exhibit, on display through Jan. 14, features sacred objects from His Holiness the Dalai Lama's collection and ancient artifacts from Drepung Loseling, Tibet's largest monastery, along with color photographs of Tibet and objects made by Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal. The monks will create a sand mandala in the museum between Nov. 28 and Dec. 3. Visitors are invited to see the mandala, a symbolic depiction created to invoke the blessing of the healing Buddha, take shape and be destroyed -- an act of devotion and attention whose ephemerality is central to Buddhist thought. See Tibetan arts and culture to come to U.Va.

What the changing leadership means for the University

By Anne Bromley

Leadership is an art, "a performing art," according to Darden School professor Alexander B. Horniman, an expert on organiza- tional behavior and managerial psychology.

Within a year, several high-level academic-administrative posts at the University will need to be filled: Peter W. Low is stepping down as vice president and provost, as are Robert Scott, dean of the Law School, and Melvyn P. Leffler, dean of Arts & Sciences. Jay Lemons is taking a new presidential post and leaving U.Va.'s College at Wise. In addition, two new vice presidential positions are being established under Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Leonard W. Sandridge. And there are a half dozen other new leaders who have recently taken the helm of areas such as the Architecture School, the Division of Information, Technology and Communication, and the Dean of Students office. It's safe to say the University will go through a major transition in leadership.

In a series of articles, Inside UVA will examine some of the unique aspects of academic leadership and speak with some of the University's most distinguished leaders before they step down from those roles.

"A new CEO or president of a private company can make dramatic changes in a short time, but a university is a more stable [environment]," said Horniman, a senior fellow at the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics. The structure and function are going to stay in place, because there will always be an educational mission. There is a distinctive academic culture, however, with its own procedures and rituals that successful academic leaders need to work with in order to be effective, he said. Full story.