Eleven honorees were chosen by the Mead Endowment to receive funding for various "dream ideas" at a celebratory dinner Saturday.
Named after Ernest "Boots" Mead, a retired professor of music, the endowment was created 10 years ago when "some of his former students got together to create a fund that honored Mead's contributions to the University," said Jennifer Erickson, a junior member of the endowment's board and 1998 College alumna.
The purpose of the endowment fund is to help professors looking to connect and engage with their students.
The fund encourages professors to fulfill the Jeffersonian spirit, not only by "engaging with students inside the traditional classroom, but finding ways to broaden the educational experience," Erickson said.
One such project, planned by honoree and Asst. Biology Prof. Sarah Kucenas, brings together female science students and female science faculty at monthly dinners. Her plan is to "take eight to 10 young women on Grounds that are majoring in some of the hard sciences and get together once a month and meet with [herself] and other faculty," Kucenas said.
Assoc. Music Prof. Bonnie Gordon, another honoree, proposed a project to connect University students to children in the Charlottesville community.
Gordon expressed her interest to "bridge the gap between U.Va. and the community with the arts" by using her endowment funds to pay for trips to take 10 University student mentors and 10 fourth-grade students to eight arts events in the Charlottesville area.
Another project, proposed by Gregory Fairchild, associate professor of business administration and executive director of the Tayloe Murphy Center at the Darden School, takes on a different approach. Fairchild plans to start a program to educate prisoners who will soon be released from correctional facilities in Virginia. Graduate business students will travel with Fairchild to one such correctional facility in Virginia to learn about prisoners' educational needs, and will later meet with representatives in Houston, Texas to lead a similar program.
"Darden students would work with me on the creation of this pilot program," Fairchild said. "The Mead Endowment allows us to involve students directly in the program."
Other projects, such as Asst. Environmental Sciences Prof. Matthew Reidenbach's proposal, reach beyond than the United States.
Reidenbach intendeds to choose three students from his "Biomechanics of Organisms" course - to be offered in Spring 2012 - to accompany him to Bocas del Toro, Panama, next summer, he said in an email. The students will be directly involved with his research on "the impacts of nutrient loading and sedimentation on coral reef degradation," or on their own research "related to the health and functioning of marine organisms in the region," he said.
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