News Briefs

State employees to get raises
State employees at the University will get raises later this year, thanks to action taken by the General Assembly and Gov. Mark Warner.

Salary increases of 2.25 percent for state employees were proposed by the legislature during its session in February, but the Assembly made the raises contingent on sufficient revenues later in the fiscal year.

Warner, however, pledged to provide the raises regardless of the economic outlook and criticized legislators for making an election-year promise they might not be able to keep.

The Assembly, which met for its veto session April 2, agreed with Warner’s proposal.

The raises, which are for both faculty and classified staff, will be effective Nov. 25 for University employees.

State allows wartime e-mail
The Commonwealth has announced a special relaxation of state policy, allowing computers to be used to communicate with family members and friends in the military stationed in the Middle East due to the war in Iraq.

In an e-mailed memo to all state employees, Gov. Mark Warner’s chief of staff William Leighty said employees may use the state Internet system to communicate with loved ones in the military. All other provisions of the computer policy against personal use remain intact.

Seeking new vice provost for international affairs
The Provost’s Office is beginning a job search for vice provost for international affairs, to succeed William B. Quandt, who has served as vice provost since 2000 and will return to full-time teaching. Responsibilities include overseeing the International Studies Office, its programs for study abroad and work with international students and scholars, the International Center and the International Residential College. The vice provost is also involved in expanding the University’s ties with universities abroad, in hosting visiting foreign delegations and in representing the University in international settings. Only U.Va. faculty are eligible to apply. The half-time position will be for three years. Application review begins May 14 and will continue until the position is filled.

For details, see http://www.virginia.edu/provost/ or call Laura Hawthorne in the Provost’s Office at 924-3561.

NEH grants propel digital projects
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded grants for three U.Va. projects. Spanish professor David Gies and the Center for Liberal Arts, which offers continuing education for teachers, will receive $200,000 to develop curriculum materials to teach about contemporary Spanish culture. With participation from the Curry School and the Robertson Media Center, local teachers will create an electronic archive of clips from contemporary Spanish films that they can then use to teach language and culture.

William Thomas, director of the Center for Digital History, was awarded $80,287 to create “A Digital Archive of Materials that Document the History of Technology and Cultural Development in Virginia.”

Another U.Va. professor, Brian Owensby, won a summer research NEH grant of $5,000 to work on his history project, “Justice against Powerful Hands: Law and Colonial Lives in 17th-Century Mexico.”

Students win Goldwater Scholarships
Three U.Va. students will receive Goldwater Scholarships, which are given in a national competition for second- and third-year students in mathematics, science and engineering. Second-year student and chemistry major William Hill Harman, third-year students Yvonne M. Mowery, a double major in biology and biochemistry, and Anna M. Palumbo, who is majoring in music as well as biology, will receive up to $7,500 for one or two years. This brings the total of U.Va. students who have received Goldwater Scholarships to 36.

Unsworths to depart
John and Maggie Unsworth, who joined the faculty in 1993, will be leaving the University at the end of the academic year for new positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Maggie, executive director of the Curry School Foundation, will serve as director of development for the College of Business, planning the strategy for an upcoming campaign. John, an associate professor of English who has directed the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, will be dean of the College of Library and Information Science.

How did U.Va. use tuition surcharge dollars?
From academic support to financial aid to support for residence life staff, the University has put tuition surcharge dollars to use in ways that directly benefit students and protect academic programs. To see the complete list of where the $6.6 million went, see the Web at:
http://www.virginia.edu/tuitionsurcharge.html

Signs of the times
There’s a distinction between deaf and Deaf, and from the distinction arises a culture and field of study. Lowercase “deaf” is a condition, while “Deaf” refers to a community, with its own language and customs. U.Va. students may fill their foreign-language requirement by learning American Sign Language. Although 75 students participate in the ASL Program, only about 15 percent of interested students can be accepted into its introductory sections, due to class size restrictions. Nevertheless, instructors hope to add courses in literature, history and culture in the near future. A graduate student at U.Va. in the 1990s, assistant professor of English Christopher Krentz, who is deaf, helped start the program in 1998. For more, see the March edition of Arts & Sciences Online at http://aands.virginia.edu/toc.phtml?iss=20

Kudos from Curry School
The Curry School of Education Foundation will give its 2003 awards and scholarships at the school’s Awards Day April 25.

Several awards for outstanding teaching are made possible by the Curry School Foundation for Virginia teachers: Nancy Jean Markos from Broadus Wood Elementary School; John R. Nicholas, Parkside Middle School in Prince William County; Joyce Harlow Corriere, Hampton High School; Robert C. Pianta, Curry School professor; and Brenda Boyd, Curry staff. Retired Curry professor Mary Alice Gunter will be recognized as this year’s distinguished alumna.

Call for nominations: Zintl leadership award
The U.Va. Women’s Center is accepting nominations for the 2003 Elizabeth Zintl Leadership Award. Nominees must be women currently employed at U.Va., who display excellence in work that makes a direct impact on the core academic enterprise and who possess an unusually high degree of service to U.Va.
The deadline for nominations is May 9. A reception honoring the recipient will be held in the fall.

The award, which includes a $1,000 prize, was established in memory of Elizabeth Zintl, a writer and journalist who served as chief of staff in the President’s Office until her death in 1997. Past recipients include Shirley Menaker, Claire Cronmiller, Louise Dudley, Dr. Sharon Hostler, Patricia Lampkin and Sylvia
Terry.

For information, contact Kristy Vipperman Haynes at 982-2902 or e-mail her at klv3j@virginia.edu for details.

Last chance to create your teaching portfolio
The Teaching Resource Center can tell you why it’s a good idea to have a teaching portfolio. The center is holding a three-day workshop devoted to the endeavor the mornings of May 13, 16 and 22. This won’t be offered again until 2005, according to director Marva Barnett.

Apply by sending a letter of interest, a brief CV and a statement of support from your chairman. For details, see
http://trc.virginia.edu/Workshops/Portfolio.htm. The deadline is April 15.

Virtual electronics lab helps students ‘see’ concepts
After 20 years of working in the field, engineering professor John Bean had a pretty good mental picture of the world of semiconductor physics. But sharing that world with his students had not been easy until he hit upon a solution: develop a virtual microelectronics laboratory.

With $500,000 from the National Science Foundation, he assembled a team of educators from the Northern Virginia community college system, the State University of New York at Buffalo, a Virginia magnet high school of science and technology, and local Albemarle County high schools.

More than 20 undergraduates, as well as high school and community college teachers, are building modules.. “They are getting a lot out of the process,” Bean said. “As a learning experience, it’s unsurpassed.”

Together, they have created a virtual lab Web site where visitors can take a virtual tour of the Micron Semiconductor facility in Manassas, build transistors and electronic circuits and learn about the principles of electronics by examining everything from a guitar pickup to a scanning electron microscope.

Sharpen office technology skills
ITC Training Services will host the Office Technology Conference, “Raising the Bar,” May 21 at Newcomb Hall from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Participants will have the opportunity to attend sessions featuring new technology and software in the U.Va. environment, tips and tricks for applications and other topics. This year, two concurrent sessions designed especially for the Health Science Center will also be offered.

You will need your departmental PTAEO number to register online at
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/training/conferences/otc2003. The fee is $25 for local support associates and $50 for all other attendees.

Procuring up-to-date information on procurement
If you are a U.Va. employee responsible for purchasing goods and services, see the new home page for Procurement Services, http://www.virginia.edu/procurement. The “Tools” section has direct links to the most-used reference pages in the site, including the Goods and Services Procurement Guide and a completely revised and expanded Diversity Procurement Programs topic area. It now includes new pages offering information on small, women-owned and minority-owned enterprises currently doing business with U.Va.

Regenerative medicine: The shape of things to come
U.Va. marks the recently formed Morphogenesis and Regenerative Medicine Institute with a symposium May 19-21. The symposium will showcase some of the major national and international researchers studying morphogenesis and regenerative medicine, areas which deal with how biological forms and structures come to be and how they seek to duplicate the growth process of tissues and organs.

Through the Virginia 2020 planning process, the University targeted the area of morphogenesis, where it already possesses strengths in the basic fields of cell adhesion, cell motility, cell signaling and nuclear functions, as well as in developmental biology, cardiovascular biology and biomedical engineering.
For registration, which is required by April 15, see the Web site at http://www.morphogenesis.virginia.edu.

Flowers interpret art
Don’t resist spring — celebrate Garden Week in Virginia with the University Art Museum at its annual “Flowers Interpret Art” exhibit April 22 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Individuals of all ages are invited to create still-life floral or other creative arrangements in response to works of art on view in the museum. For details about creating a floral design, contact Virginia Paul at 974-6029.

Visitors to the museum will vote for their favorite arrangements, and refreshments will be provided.

The annual “Flowers Interpret Art” buffet dinner will conclude the day at 6 p.m. in the museum. The buffet is $25 for members and $30 for non-members.

Reservations are required by April 18. For details about the buffet, contact Mike Alexander at 243-8874.

Nobel winner at McIntire symposium
Daniel Kahneman, who last year won the Nobel Prize in economics, will be the featured speaker at the fourth annual spring symposium sponsored by the McIntire School of Commerce. The symposium will explore “Judgment in an Uncertain World: Conversations with Master Decision Makers.”

Kahneman, a psychologist by training and one of the founders of the new field of behavioral finance, is counted among the most influential thinkers in 20th century economics. Taking issue with the idea of man as a rational consumer, his research suggests that man is irrational but in ways that can be predicted.

The daylong symposium, which is free and open to the public, will be held Friday, April 25, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., in U.Va’s Old Cabell Hall auditorium.

Reading room to be restored
One of the splendors of Alderman Library for more than six decades has been the magnificent wood-paneled reading room and exhibition hall.

This space, which has drawn thousands of visitors from around the world and been the site of lectures by such writers as William Faulkner and W.H. Auden, won’t be forgotten when the University’s renowned collection of rare books and manuscripts moves into a new Special Collections Library next year.

The historic Tracy W. McGregor Room will be restored and re-furnished as an elegant reading room, open to all students, library officials have announced. A new lecture series in the renovated room is also planned.

Thanks to a $200,000 grant from the McGregor Fund, a Detroit-based private foundation, “we will have the opportunity to restore the McGregor Room to its former use as a quiet space for reading and reflection,” said University Librarian Karin Wittenborg. “Students tell us that, while they greatly appreciate computer labs and coffee shops, there is a clear need for quiet, comfortable reading spaces.”

The library intends to put attractive books in the wall-to-ceiling bookcases, unshutter the large windows, refinish the floors and add new carpets, tables, lamps, chairs and draperies. The renovation will probably begin in the fall of 2004.
Meanwhile the Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History will move to a new special collections facility, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, due to be completed in the fall of 2004.

In Memoriam

• Frank Whitney Finger, 87, a psychology professor from 1942 until 1985, died March 31.

Recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award in 1980, Finger was praised in his citation with the description, “Mr. Jefferson would have indeed admired this dedicated teacher, sympathetic counselor, tireless researcher and community servant.”

Finger held the world record in 400 meters for his age group and was the North American Champion in the half marathon event for the masters age bracket when he was 63.

He became the University’s official carillonneur on April 13, 1957, when the Seven Society presented the carillon to U.Va., and continued playing the distinctive toll at the Chapel, announcing the death of Seven Society members.

In his 25 years of academic work, Finger conducted groundbreaking research examining the body’s 24-hour clock, its circadian rhythms.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Syracuse University, and his Ph.D. in 1940 from Brown University.

• Robert Milton Desper Sr., 68, of Troy, died April 2. He retired from facilities management in 1999.