Headlines @ U.Va.

By Matt Kelly

“I’m still in shock,” said former School of Medicine Dean Robert M. Carey as he shook hands and hugged well-wishers, minutes after being named the 2003 recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award.

U.Va. President John T. Casteen III presented the University’s highest honor to Carey, 63, who served for 16 years as Medical School dean and is known internationally as a researcher, at Fall Convocation, held Oct. 31 at University Hall. “This is a wonderful surprise,” Carey said after the ceremony. “It is the greatest honor I could have received and it honors my family.”

The Thomas Jefferson Award is presented annually to a member of the University community who exemplifies in character, work and influence the principles and ideals of the University’s founder. Carey was nominated by colleagues, students and alumni, who lauded him as a passionate scientist and scholar, an institutional change agent, a champion of humanistic and professional values, a leader whose actions bespeak integrity and honor, a model citizen of the University and a servant of the public good. Full story.

Setting Monacan history straight

Panelists spoke at a public lecture on Monacan culture and life in the Dome Room Oct. 23.

By Fariss Samarrai

Some sat with their eyes closed. Others watched transfixed. But all listened intently as Daniel Red Elk Gear, a leader of the Monacan Indian Nation, sang an ancient honor song to a full house of guests during the Oct. 23 “Engaging the Mind” program in the Dome Room of the Rotunda.

His song was followed by an ancient Monacan peace prayer — first in Tutelo, the language of the Monacans, then in English — by Karenne Wood, a Monacan leader and a poet.

For more than two hours the Monacan members, along with their tribal Chief Kenneth Branham, and U.Va. anthropologist Jeff Hantman, discussed Monacan culture and life, and the ways that the Monacan nation and U.Va. are working together to accurately and fully tell the history of the Monacan people. Full story.