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Photo
by Jenny Gerow
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| Students
make final adjustments to U.Va.’s solar house. |
Solar team shines on the Mall
By Jane Ford
Towels
were hung out to dry in the sun at many of the houses at the Department
of Energy’s Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington,
D.C.
The
teams took advantage of the direct application of solar energy –
aka sunlight – to save the power in their batteries, collected
with photovoltaic cells. They had to return the dried towels to
the judges to be weighed. Each team would receive the total number
of points allotted only if their towels weighed to-the-ounce what
they did before they were washed.
The
practical and technical parts of the competition were under way.
Decathletes were busy cooking meals, running the dishwasher and
washing machine, producing a newsletter in their home offices, watching
six hours of TV or video, driving an electric vehicle and taking
showers with 110† water. The 14 teams, from colleges and universities
across the nation, were busy completing their assigned tasks for
the day.
In
addition to day-to-day living chores, they were required to maintain
room and water temperatures and monitor other systems on a regular
schedule to earn points in the complicated rating scheme. Full
story.
Budget cuts implemented
Casteen’s action reduces budget by 15 percent
immediately
By Dan Heuchert
With
a two-year state budget gap last officially pegged at $3 billion
and expected to grow, U.Va. President John T. Casteen III announced
earlier this month that the University would go ahead and implement
most elements of a worst-case budget-cutting plan submitted to Gov.
Mark Warner.
Warner
required state agencies to submit contingency plans reflecting 7,
11 and 15 percent cuts in state funding, and is to announce Oct.
15 his deficit-reduction plan. Casteen’s action implements
the 15 percent plan immediately.
“It
would be unwise and imprudent to delay taking inevitable steps to
meet the level of these further reductions,” Casteen wrote
in a memo to University faculty and staff. Full
story.
Biggest gift ever
By Bill Sublette
The
late David A. Harrison III of Hopewell, one of the University’s
most loyal and generous alumni during his lifetime, has made an
even greater impact on the institution through his estate.
A retired
lawyer, investment banker and farmer, Harrison died June 8 at the
age of 85. Recent distributions from his estate and a previously
established trust have provided the University with $64 million,
most of it directed toward endowed professorships in the schools
of law and medicine. The Virginia athletics program and the University
Library also will benefit from the estate’s provisions. Full
story.
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