Category: UVA

Podcasts related to the University of Virginia.

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Repost: An Interview with Terry Belanger of the U.Va Rare Book School


Last year, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation selected a Charlottesville man as one of this year’s 25 MacArthur Fellows.

Terry Belanger is the founder and director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He was chosen for “raising the profile of the book as one of humankindGuv,!v,,us greatest inventions.”
Shortly afterwards, Sean Tubbs took an elevator ride to the sub-basement of Alderman Library to speak with Belanger about the school.

This podcast concludes with music from Magnatune. The track is Daniel Berkman’s “Folkways” off of the album Calabashmoon.
Soundscape fans may be intrigued by MacArthur’s selection of Emily Thompson, an aural historian.

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Students ask: where does Charlottesville get its food?

A unique class in the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture has spent much of this last semester analyzing where Charlottesville residents get their food. Students in PLAC 569, Community Food Systems, presented their results this week in City Council chambers in front of a group of local farmers, grocers and food activists. The basic consensus: most of our food comes here from a long way away. We present an edited portion of their presentation in this podcast.

What do you think? Please leave your comments below and let us know where your food comes from. A follow-up meeting will be held in June to take further action on the findings of the class. Next spring’s section of PLAC 569 will continue the research.

Update from July 6: Waldo Jaquith says the preliminary report of the class “is very much worth your time.” And here is a link to the paper.

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Heart failure simulator visits Charlottesville

Heart failure is the number one reason people die in the United States, but cardiologists say early diagnosis can reduce the mortality rate. To help physicians identify early warning signs, drug manufacturer Astra-Zeneca has built a virtual reality simulator to put doctors in the shoes of those with weakening hearts. The Heart FX Pod rolled into Charlottesville earlier this month, and I stopped by for this report.

This report was supported in part by the Daily Progress. Visit their Healthology section for health and science related features, polls, links and videos.

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Wake-Up Call: A Look at the Living Wage Campaign at U.Va

Activists at the University of Virginia this week rallied outside a meeting of the school’s Board of Visitors to ask the University to pay a “living” wage to all of its employees. Two people who marched for higher pay join Rick Moore on this week’s installment of WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call. They are Teresa Daniels and Kevin Simowitz.

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Next week’s show will feature Barbara Nordin of the Hook, who will look at the case of former U.Va medical student Patrick Collins, who has been missing for the past twenty years. Was he murdered, or did he just simply walk away from his life? Tune in Sunday April 16 at 11:00 AM to hear what Nordin has to say.

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U.Va and the Peace Corps

John F. Kennedy signed the Peace Corps into existence by executive order on March 1, 1961. Since then, the University of Virginia has sent over 800 volunteers to all corners of the globe. Since 2000, over 400 U.Va graduates have gone overseas to honor and sustain Kennedy’s vision of an agency that works for world peace through coexistence and understanding. Last week, U.Va celebrated its special role in the Peace Corps in a day-long series of conversations and musical performances.

We spoke with three volunteers about what they learned. Charlottesville resident Bob Vernon served in Venezuela in the 1970’s. Curry School graduate Sara Johnston served in Namibia and the Gambia from 1998 through the end of 2000. Matt Hural is the current on-Grounds recruiter for the Peace Corps. Their remarks are book-ended by comments by deputy director Jody Olsen in this 27-minute podcast.

Update: The Hook features the stories of several U.Va graduates who served in the Peace Corps in its July 27 edition.


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Nursing simulation conference at U.Va


Reba Childress instructs a nurse using Sim-Man (photo credit: Tom Cogill)

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates the nation will need a million new nurses by 2012. Nursing schools across the country are looking for new ways to increase the number of graduates, but are also struggling to fill faculty positions. Increasingly, they’re turning to advanced simulation models to help bridge the gap. Sean Tubbs recently visited the first-ever Virginia-wide conference at the University of Virginia’s School of Nursing.



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Montana Governor speaks at U.Va


Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer

Virginia’s not the only red state with recent experience with a popular Democratic governor. Brian Schweitzer has been Montana’s chief executive since January 2005, and has a 69 percent approval rating according to Wikipedia. Schweitzer spoke on March 1 in the Rotunda as the guest of University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. He’s introduced by Center director Larry Sabato and speaks for about seventy minutes including a Q&A session.

Thanks to CPN Volunteer Sean McCord for recording the sound.

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Lectures from the U.Va Health Sciences Library

Many lectures from the University of Virginia are available through the U.Va podcast. But individual lecture series are beginning to develop their own specialized podcast feeds as well. One such is the History of the Health Sciences series, produced by the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library and the University of Virginia School of Medicine Continuing Medical Education Program. The most recent lecture is available here. It’s a talk by Duke University’s Margaret Humphreys about the health of the 180,000 African-Americans who joined the Union Army during the Civil War.

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You can use iTunes to access the entire U.Va Health Sciences series as a podcast. Subscriptions are free, and episodes will be downloaded to your music library. Or, you can add this URL to the podcast receiver of your choice:

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/library/historical/cmhsl-historical-podcast.xml



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Wake-Up Call: Sustainable Design in Charlottesville

The Charlottesville Waldorf School announced plans this week to become the “greenest school in America.” Here’s a bit from the press release.

It will feature a completely integrated “green” design featuring straw bale construction, a rammed earth wall, a living roof, geothermal heating and cooling, water reclamation and passive solar technologies.

How can spending a bit more money when contructing a new building save lots more money in electrical and other bills down the road? Can any contractor handle the ‘green’ job? How is the ecoMOD project moving from developing less expensive urban housing to assisting victims of hurricane Katrina? On this week’s edition of WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call, Charlottesville Waldorf Foundation chair Sarah Tremaine joins U.Va Architecture professor John Quale for a discussion. Quale is the director of the ecoMOD project at the University.

The monologue touches on some of the average aspects of Americans. Rick Moore opines on how partisan political decisions are unfortunately average as well.

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Do you have iTunes, version 4.9 or above? If so, then click here to add the Wake-Up Call podcast to your music library. This will allow you to download every episode through iTunes. Or consider odeo.com to search through thousands of podcasts from all over the world.



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Sorensen Training the Next Generation of Political Leaders

The 2005 class of Sorensen’s college leaders program

For over a dozen years, the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership has been training would-be politicians and government officials the ins and outs of Richmond. Currently the Institute is looking for applicants to its 2006 Youth Leaders Programs. Sean Tubbs recently dropped by Sorensen’s offices on Old Ivy Road to speak with recent alumni of the program as well as Marc Johnson, youth programs director.

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Wake-Up Call: Is Iran a Nuclear Threat? R.K. Ramazani weighs in

Are we in any more danger from annihilation if Iran continues to develop nuclear energy? On this installment of WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call, Rick Moore speaks with U.Va Professor Emeritus R.K. Ramazani, an expert on Iran. Rick uses his weekly monologue to give his 2006 State of the Union speech.



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The Many Faces of Jane Eyre

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Charlotte Bronte, the author who gave millions of school children something to read with the publication of Jane Eyre. The novel is one of the most common in the English language, and the Rare Book School is honoring Bronte with a look at the ubiquitous nature of this classic in a special exhibit in the Rotunda called Eyre Apparent, which features a look at the depth at which the novel has penetrated pop culture, and to show that there’s much more to a book than its text.

Barbara Heritage is curator of collections at the Rare Book School. I met her recently at Alderman Library while she was putting the exhibit together and asked her to describe a shelf containing much in the way of Eyre paraphrenalia.