News Stories about JPC Students and Projects
- Changing the World, One Project at a Time
Summer 2013 | The University of Virginia Magazine
While many college students across the country will spend the summer relaxing, 44 of our undergraduate students will launch research projects in fields ranging from neuroscience, to global development, to studies of diabetes, autism and schizophrenia.
- U.Va. Nonprofit Organization, PureMadi, Develops Innovative Water Purification Tablet for Developing World
February 5, 2013 | UVAToday
Called MadiDrop, the tablet – developed and extensively tested at U.Va. – is a small ceramic disk impregnated with silver or copper nanoparticles. It can repeatedly disinfect water for up to six months simply by resting in a vessel where water is poured. It is being developed for use in communities in South Africa that have little or no access to clean water.
- U.Va. Environmental Sciences Professor Named Virginia Professor of the Year
November 15, 2012
Robert Swap, a research professor of environmental sciences in the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, has been named the 2012 Virginia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, known as CASE. -
Study Find Jefferson Public Citizens Program Meeting its Objectives
November 8, 2012 | UVAToday
The University of Virginia’s Jefferson Public Citizens program, a competitive research-service program for undergraduates that focuses on academics and civic engagement at the local, national or international level, appears to be accomplishing its objectives, according to findings by Youth-Nex: The U.Va. Center to Promote Effective Youth Development.
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U.Va.-South African Collaboration Produces Clean-Burning, Efficient Cook Stoves, and Much More
September 5, 2012
Last fall, two students stood at the front of their “Development on the Ground” class at the University of Virginia and described a mysterious-sounding device called a “rocket stove.” -
Students Work on Primary Health Care in St. Kitts and Nevis
June 26, 2012 | UVAToday
The University of Virginia is partnering with the Ministry of Health in St. Kitts and Nevis on two student-led research projects that examine the use of primary and preventative health care in the two-island Caribbean nation. - 2012: Virginia Food Heritage Video Project– Planning for Sustainability and Resilience
Students enrolled in this Academic Commnunity Engagement funded course produced 17 short films on local food heritage, all based on individual interviews with elders from Charlottesville and counties of Albemarle, Louisa, Fluvanna, Nelson and Greene.
- The Summer Morven Summer Institute: The Farmers Market
All of the final presentations were really interesting and well thought out. The Farmers Market students each chose a farmers market in the region and developed research questions and an implementation plan to collect data for their market research.
- FMC Collaborates with the University of Virginia to Host First Ever Course on Farmers Market Research
June 11, 2012 | Farmers Market Coalition
Since the beginning of this year, the Farmers Market Coalition has been working with instructors at the University of Virginia to plan the syllabus, reading, and assignments, of a ten day course devoted to teaching students about farmers market research.
- Service in the Sun
April 27, 2012 | Cavalier Day
As enjoyable as it is to think of the sun, relaxation and traveling which summer brings, some University students are planning to spend their vacation pursuing more purposeful projects.
- U.Va. Team Wins Walmart Better Living Business Plan Challenge
April 24, 2012 | UVAToday
A team of University of Virginia students aiming to improve water quality and the local economy in a rural South African province won the $20,000 grand prize at the Walmart Better Living Business Plan Challenge, held April 13 in Bentonville, Ark.
- Putting Ideas Into Action: Jefferson Public Citizens program gives students springboard for projects
Fall 2011 | Virginia Magazine
When Natalie Roper (Col ‘13) visited the Charlottesville City Market for the first time, she looked at the fresh produce with envy.
- U.Va. Students Win SXSW Startup Competition with Mobile App for Student Safety
March 20, 2012 | UVAToday
The best protections against crime, universities generally advise their students, are to avoid walking alone at night, to look out for each other and to be aware of one's surroundings.
- U.Va. Students Receive Backing in Public Service Projects
February 20, 2012 | UVAToday
Helping residents of Southside Virginia lower their utility costs. Improving primary and preventative health care in St. Kitts. Assessing water health in Africa and Guatemala, vocational training in India, and "girlfighting" in Charlottesville city schools. Sustainable schoolyard gardening at Clark Elementary.
- University of Virginia's 'PureMadi' Brings Clean Water to Developing Countries
February 9, 2012 — A ceramic water filtration device that looks like a clay flowerpot may someday play a large role in reducing waterborne infectious diseases in developing countries.
- UVa Project Does its Part to Provide Clean Water for All
January 20, 2012 - A group of students and faculty at the University of Virginia is doing its part to make sure people around the world have clean water.
- UVa students in Mongolia Try to Build Greenhouse Out of Soviet-Era Vodka Bottles
November 30, 2011 – It is often said that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. For a team of University of Virginia students and their Tibetan and Mongolian partners, discarded Soviet-era vodka bottles have become the beginnings of a greenhouse in central Asia.
- U.Va. Students Present First-Ever Survey Research on Charlottesville City Market
November 15, 2011 — Roughly 5,500 people attend the Charlottesville City Market each week. Two-thirds of them drive to the market, while 20 percent walk. The most popular purchases are vegetables, fruits and prepared foods.
- Helping Haiti reCOVER
November 11, 2011 – Anselmo G. Canfora was looking to engage architecture students in a timely and relevant design–build project when disaster struck — literally.
- Stakeholders Hash Out Future of City Market
November 13 2011 – The future of downtown Charlottesville’s City Market is an unclear picture. Vendors from the April-November farmers market met with students from the University of Virginia’s Jefferson Public Citizens program, Market Central — a nonprofit made up of vendors and patrons of the market — and the public Sunday to discuss the gathering’s future.
- Good after the Last Drop
October 26, 2011 —Stacking up vodka bottles is not usually an indicator of good lifestyle choices. That is until last summer, when a group of University students traveled to the Mongolian countryside to build a greenhouse out of the discarded glassware.
- U.Va. Class Project Leads to Hand-Built Mongolian Greenhouse
October 18, 2011 — An assignment born in a University of Virginia classroom grew into an international development project this summer when an interdisciplinary group of students traveled to a former Soviet-era spa in rural Mongolia to build a greenhouse made mostly of discarded glass vodka bottles.
- Little Red Schoolhouse Opens an Online Campus
September 20, 2011 — While it might sound like a kids' game, the Little Red Schoolhouse is actually the nickname for the writing curriculum used at the University of Virginia. The curriculum not only helps U.Va. students become better writers, it also helps prepare them for professional communications after they leave the Academical Village.
- Stephanie's Heroes: Building Glass Greenhouses in Mongolia
August 15, 2011 What may look like garbage to some could have great potential for others. “We thought why don't we take the glass and use that as a construction material for greenhouses,” said project organizer David Martin.
- JPC Student Wins Sullivan Award
May 19, 2011 — The recipients of the 2011 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Awards at the University of Virginia are Ishraga Eltahir and Ethan Heil, who will graduate this weekend, and Valerie H. Gregory, associate dean and director of outreach in the Office of Undergraduate Admission. They will be honored during Valedictory Exercises Saturday at 11 a.m. on the Lawn.
- JPC Students Win National Awards
May 13, 2011 — The University of Virginia's class of 2011 has received many honors, scholarships, research grants and awards, and includes a Rhodes Scholar, a Udall Scholar, four winners of Davis Prizes for Peace and four Goldwater Scholars.
- Home Energy Education Project Wins Student Sustainability Competition
April 22, 2010 — Top honors in the second annual University of Virginia Student Sustainability Project Competition went to a proposal to better educate local homeowners on saving energy.
- Project Assessing 'Grand-Aides' Health Care Initiative in Inner Mongolia Wins Top JPC Prize
April 21, 2011 — The prize for the best Jefferson Public Citizen presentation has gone to a group of University of Virginia students whose project focused on improving health care in Inner Mongolia with the help of grand-aides, senior community members who receive medical training.
- Future by design Five Architects Who are Building Tomorrow
April 5-11, 2011
Welcome to C-VILLE’s Design Annual, where each year we address the latest in local design. This year’s issue is a little different in that much that’s been designed here hasn’t, in fact, been built. Instead, we talked to outstanding students in UVA’s architecture school who are looking to solve today’s problems—from global warming to boring cities—with cutting-edge design solutions.
- Service Beyond Volunteering Jefferson Public Citizens Bring Academics to Field
April 7, 2011 — It is not uncommon for students to contemplate the impact they will have on the world, but for some these thoughts are more than just a hazy idea of post-graduate plans. Members of the Jefferson Public Citizens program are devising ways to improve life in Charlottesville as well as many other communities abroad.
- U.Va. Duo Receives Davis Projects for Peace Grant
March 29, 2011 — Two University of Virginia students have been awarded a 2011 Davis Projects for Peace award for their program to create a business training curriculum in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
- January Term Class Tackles Local Food Hub Challenges
January 21, 2011 — Over 10 long days this January term, 24 University of Virginia students tackled real-world challenges facing the Local Food Hub, a local non profit that aggregates crops produced by small, local farmers to make it feasible and convenient for customers like restaurants and institutional cafeterias to serve locally produced food.
- U.Va. Architecture School's 'Initiative reCOVER' Wins International Housing for Haiti Competition
January 13, 2011 — Initiative reCOVER, a University of Virginia School of Architecture program to design and build disaster recovery structures, has won first prize in an international housing competition to help with the reconstruction of Haiti following the devastating January 2010 earthquake.
- Water Purification in Rural South Africa: Ethical Analysis and Reflections on Collaborative Community Engagement Projects in Engineering (PDF)
International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1-14, Spring 2009
Approximately 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. In the Limpopo Province of South Africa, one of the poorest regions in the country, only 32% of children have access to drinking water on site and 24% have access to basic sanitation. Diarrheal diseases are the second highest cause of premature mortality for both adults and infants in this province.
- Water Supply and Treatment Design in Rural Belize: A Participatory Approach to Engineering Action Research (PDF)
International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 47-63, Spring 2010
The UN Millennium Development Goals call for the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water to be reduced by one half by the year 2015. Unfortunately, this global challenge tempts an engineer to believe that there is a single technological fix that will address the needs of some monolith of underserved communities.
- Jefferson Public Citizens Unveil Academic Journal at Second Annual Public Service Conference
April 19, 2010 — In collaboration with the Virginia Policy Review, the Jefferson Public Citizens program launched the first edition of its academic journal "Public" on Friday at the University of Virginia's second annual public service conference.
- Winner of the 2009 JPC Presentation Award Announced
At this year's UVAPublic Service Conference, the 2009 Jefferson Public Citizens students gave 10 minute presentations on their findings from projects completed over the past year. The projects were carried out locally and internationally. Each group was competing to win $500 for their community partner.
- U.Va. Launches Second Annual Public Service Conference (PDF)
- Student-led, Community Driven Improvement of the Drinking Supply in a Rural Village in South Africa (PDF)
International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 94-110, Spring 2010
The provision of potable water in developing regions and underserved areas of the world is both a major concern and an objective of international aid agencies, national governments and local communities. This is also the case of communities in the rural provinces of South Africa.
- U.Va. Student Team Creates Transitional Disaster Recovery Shelter Design, Prototype
March 24, 2010 — After Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, hundreds of thousands of displaced residents were forced to live in transitional housing.
- JPC Students Combine Public Service, Research Efforts in Nicaragua
February 25, 2010 | UVAToday
Robin Kendall first felt a strong connection to Bluefields, Nicaragua, after a January Term trip during her first year at the University of Virginia.
- U.Va. Students Find Mentoring a Two-Way Street
January 29, 2010 | UVAToday
Kevin Pujanauski knew he wanted to give something back to the community. That's why he stepped in to sustain a mentorship program at the Red Hill Elementary School in southern Albemarle County.
- Water Quality Improves in Meadow Creek, Dell Pond
December 17, 2009 | UVAToday
Biofiltration is cleansing runoff in the University of Virginia's award-winning stormwater management system.
- U.Va. Students Present Visualizations about Vinegar Hill Urban Renewal
December 8, 2009 | UVAToday
To open the Neighborhood ReGeneration exhibit at the Charlottesville Community Design Center on the Downtown Mall, students in a University of Virginia digital history seminar on Friday presented visualizations of their research on Charlottesville's Vinegar Hill – a once-thriving African-American neighborhood that was demolished for urban renewal in the 1960s.
- Books Behind Bars
December 3, 2009 | They Cavalier Daily
Can great literature truly change peoples’ lives? Next semester, students enrolled in a new course at the University, “Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature, and Community Leadership,” will attempt to answer this question in the affirmative. Led by Russian Prof. Andrew Kaufman, the course will use academics and community service to study literature’s power to promote positive social change in the youth of a local juvenile treatment center.
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- ACE Courses Provide an Outlet -- and Funds -- to Move Teaching and Research into the Community
November 12, 2009 | UVAToday
A dozen new courses being offered this year at the University of Virginia are designed to foster public service and engaged research among students and faculty.
- ecoMOD4 to be Moved to Its Site Soon; Remodeling Project Takes Shape
September 2, 2009 | UVAToday
After a busy summer of construction in the old hangar at the University of Virginia-owned Milton Airfield, the four modules of ecoMOD4 – a first floor with kitchen and living area, a second floor with two bedrooms and a bathroom, and first- and second-floor stairwell-storage-powder room modules that tie the two stories together – will be hauled by tractor-trailer later this month, lifted by crane onto the prepared foundation, and assembled on its permanent Elliott Avenue site.
- U.Va. Faculty Members Develop Course to Explore Mental Health in Southwest Virginia
Aug. 12, 2009 — University of Virginia nursing faculty members Diane Boyer and Cathy Campbell are using their Academic Community Engagement Grant to teach students in an undergraduate psychiatric nursing course about pain management and associated depression, substance abuse and addiction.
- Student Helps Build Computer Lab for Honduran Schoolchildren
August 05, 2009 | The Hour Online
On July 4, Robert Wyllie was in Honduras with a group of Latin American children celebrating the fact that the first computer some of them had ever seen was up and running.
- Stockstrom to Develop Affordable Housing
July 22, 2009 | The Frazee Forum
A project proposed by Frazee native Leah Stockstrom was chosen for an inaugural round of funding from the Jefferson Public Citizens program at the University of Virginia.
- Grants Awarded for Courses That Connect University with Community
July 10, 2009 — University of Virginia faculty members have received 12 grants to develop courses that will bring U.Va. closer to its surrounding community.
- Midlothian student’s project chosen for U.Va.‘s inaugural Jefferson Public Citizens Program
July 8, 2009 | Midlothian Exchange
A project proposed by Michael David Zoghby of Midlothian has been chosen for the inaugural round of funding from the Jefferson Public Citizens program at the University of Virginia.
- 16 Student Projects Receive Funding in Inaugural Year of Jefferson Public Citizens Program
June 4, 2009 — Sustainable affordable housing. The use of a sensory resource guide in the care of dementia patients. A GED class for the homeless. A study on the social, political and technical barriers to alleviating groundwater arsenic contamination in an Argentinian town. A "Sister to Sister" project for local ninth-grade girls.
- 16 Student Projects Receive Funding in Inaugural Year of Jefferson Public Citizens Program
June 4, 2009 | UVA Today
Sustainable affordable housing. The use of a sensory resource guide in the care of dementia patients. A GED class for the homeless. A study on the social, political and technical barriers to alleviating groundwater arsenic contamination in an Argentinian town. A "Sister to Sister" project for local ninth-grade girls.
- Fourth Annual Jefferson Trust Grants to Support 14 Projects at the University of Virginia
May 26, 2009 — A project to preserve Thomas Jefferson's original drawings of the buildings at the University of Virginia and a program to ensure educational access for low-income students will benefit from grants recently awarded by the Jefferson Trust.
- U.Va. Renews Jefferson's Mission to Create Public Citizens
March 10, 2009 — University of Virginia students who are passionate about public service now have a new option, the Jefferson Public Citizens program, which combines scholarship and service.