Jonthan Haidt

Associate Professor, Department of Psychology

When Jonathan Haidt was deciding among several teaching opportunities in the mid-1990s, he recalls people saying things like, "Virginia is a class act," or "the psychology department is one big happy family." Little did he know the profound effect joining the University would have on his research.

"As soon as I got here, I discovered I'd made the right choice," he says. "I found that everywhere I went in the University there were smart people willing to help me do the best research I could."

As a social psychologist, Haidt's ongoing interest had been moral emotions. However, it was only after reading Thomas Jefferson's letters that he began to explore "elevation" — the uplifting feeling produced by witnessing acts of beauty and virtue. "I really had this feeling my first year that I was working for Thomas Jefferson." he says. "It was an ennobling feeling."

In 2001, Haidt's inquiry into elevation won him psychology's largest monetary award, the John Templeton Positive Psychology Prize. The recipient of several University-wide teaching awards as a well as the state's Outstanding Faculty Award, Haidt credits being in the classroom with helping him develop the approach for his most recent book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.

"The ethos of U.Va. is professional and warm. It's just a wonderful place to work. I really do feel like I'm part of something larger."

Roseanne Ford

Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering

Following the aroma of baking bread through city streets to locate a bakery may seem a strange topic of discussion for a chemical engineer. But that's how Roseanne Ford explains bacterial chemotaxis, a process that forms the center of her cutting-edge research to use microbes to remedy environmental contamination. "Chemotaxis is kind of like a sense of smell," she says. "As the bacteria are swimming along, they can sense when they're moving toward something."

Ford first became interested in the potential use of bacteria to clean up hazardous waste after the Exxon Valdez oil disaster in 1989 — the same year she joined U.Va. By doing interdisciplinary work with the Department of Environmental Sciences and using magnetic resonance equipment at the School of Medicine, Ford has made discoveries about how bacteria move through soil toward a contaminant's source.

The recipient of grants from the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation, in 2006 Ford became a fellow in the prestigious American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Even more exciting was taking graduate students to Cape Cod to begin field-testing her lab research. "It was really my colleagues in Environmental Sciences that kept the pressure on," she says. "I've benefited from having their perspective on this whole issue."

"What's been enlightening to me is how once you get the right tools and the right people at the right school, new things are possible."

Rita Dove

Commonwealth Professor, Department of English

It's rare for a living poet to become an American household name. Rita Dove is one of those exceptions. When the future U.S. Poet Laureate joined the University of Virginia in 1989, her resume was already laden — she'd won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, Thomas and Beulah, and collected fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

What attracted Dove to the University of Virginia, she says, was its "intellectual fervor and excitement." "Everyone that I met in the English Department and the other departments were such exceptional people — fun, intelligent, curious people," Dove recalls. "I thought: I want to sit down and talk to these people!"

Since joining the faculty, Dove has won numerous literary awards and recognitions and holds 21 honorary degrees. Her latest book, American Smooth, a collection of poems inspired by ballroom dancing, came out in 2004. She's currently working on another poetry collection, as well as a book of short lyrics and a series of one-act plays.

Dove says U.Va. has been central to her creative achievement. "It's been phenomenal because the University has a way of supporting your research, your artistic endeavors, without being intrusive," she explains. "You're on a bed of support. And that's what every intellectual needs to be daring."

"Just walking through the halls, there's a hum of intellectual activity. I love that."