Ampersand

Engaged Learning

Class of 2021: From a Life Abroad, Student Brought a Unique Perspective to Grounds

After being accepted to UVA in 2016, Zoe Larmey delayed her arrival for a gap year spent working as an au pair in France to improve her French, and then as a housekeeper and volunteer translator for a Mercy Ships hospital vessel offering medical care off the coast of Benin for some of Africa’s poorest populations.
Engaged Learning

Class of 2021: How Ja’Mel Reed Learned ‘You Never Stop Growing – A Magical Thing’

“Some students simply pass through the University, but Ja’Mel has helped to transform us throughout his matriculation, in mind-opening and inspiring ways for which we all have cause to be grateful.”
Focused Research

UVA’s COVID Testing Efforts Get a Helping Hand From Biology Professor’s Robot

Rosie the Robot operates six days a week in UVA’s “Be SAFE” Lab, with two shifts of lab workers processing as many as 3,500 saliva samples a day.
Focused Research

For UVA Astronomers, New Space Telescope Could Be a ‘Game-Changer’

UVA astronomers are leading two of the first research projects selected by NASA for the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch this fall.
Engaged Learning

Progress Continues on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives

Special focus has been on efforts to increase the diversity of the student body and faculty, consistent with the University’s 2030 Strategic Plan.
Dynamic Support

$5 Million Mellon Grant Backs New Academic Program on ‘Race, Place and Equity’

This new initiative will create a broad, interdisciplinary undergraduate program on “Race, Place and Equity” expanding UVA’s academic strengths in teaching about racial equity and democracy.
Engaged Learning

Avital Balwit, UVA’s 55th Rhodes Scholar, Seeks to Prevent ‘Existential Risk’

Avital Balwit plans to study at the Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford.
Engaged Learning

Soundtrack to a Pandemic

When COVID-19 closed down in-person classes at UVA, A.D. Carson was ready to let his class opt out of their final project: making a full-length rap album together. His students, however, weren’t ready to give it up.
Engaged Learning

‘A Mountaintop Moment’: Professor’s Met Exhibition Sparks Discovery of Lost Painting

Can you call me? That request landed in art professor Elizabeth Hutton Turner’s inbox after she wrapped up a session of her “American Modernism” course recently. The email was from Randall Griffey, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who had just met with Turner’s students on Zoom to discuss the Met exhibition Turner co-curated about American modernist painter Jacob Lawrence.
Engaged Learning

UVA Opens Its Doors a Little Wider for Working Adults

UVA Edge, a yearlong, six-course, online program, aims to give workers who might only have a few college courses – or none at all – a way to develop skills that can be useful in their careers and a new path to a degree.