Digest -- Daily news about U.Va.
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Photo by Tom Cogill

Mead gift offers students access to the heavens
His former students remember Ernest C. Mead, who taught music at the University for 43 years, as a friendly and accessible mentor who was always eager to share time with them. It is fitting, then, that an endowment in Mead’s name will support new initiatives fostering faculty and staff interaction, including a trip to a world-class telescope with first-time grant recipient, astronomy professor Steven Majewski, at right. (Top News Daily, Oct.23)

Center to study issues of race, gender, nation
Eighteenth-century Monticello was a fascinating mix of African, European and emerging American culture. Studying hundreds of similar localities may shed some light on the development of American notions of race gender and nationhood, a task being undertaken by a new center at U.Va.’s Carter G. Woodson Institute, funded by a three-year, $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. (Top News Daily, Oct. 30)

Post-9/11 pondering: Presidential greatness
What is the secret of being a great presidential leader within the constraints of American democracy? According to Miller Center scholar Sidney Milkis, co-author of a new book on the topic, it has as much to do with restraint as with boldness. (Top News Daily, Oct. 29)

In case of bioterror attack, stay home
Stay calm and stay home. That’s the advice of a report from U.Va.’s Critical Incident Analysis Group, which examined how people should cope in the event of a biological attack. “The wrong response to a bioterrorist attack could well increase casualties and promote the terrorists’ cause,” the report says. (Top News Daily, Oct. 30)