Police and explosive device personnel responded yesterday morning to a report of a ?suspicious piece of abandoned luggage? in the Dawson?s Row area, near the Office of African-American Affairs, University Police Chief Michael Gibson said.Once officials arrived at the scene, the area surrounding the luggage was cordoned off with yellow caution tape.
In light of affordable housing issues in Charlottesville and economic troubles nationwide, the City of Charlottesville has recently raised city workers? base wage and is encouraging the University to do the same.
The Federal Pell Grant Program recently predicted it will need an additional $5.9 billion in 2009, as compared to 2008, to support the financial needs of college and university students.Pell grants are need-based grants that promote access to postsecondary education for low-income undergraduate and some post-baccalaureate students.
Last night Student Council passed a piece of legislation that renewed the contract for the ad hoc committee on international student financial aid.?I think this committee did fantastic work last year working on an issue that in the past hasn?t gotten as much attention as it truly deserves,? Council President Matt Schrimper said.
Unveiled last week, a new Web site service called Knetwit will serve as a networking site for students and professors who want to upload their class notes, papers and other resources for others to use.The social networking and information-sharing site is free to join and use, and the more a person?s material gets downloaded, the more points a student earns to be redeemed for cash or merchandise from the Knetwit store.The creators of the site, Benjamin Wald and Tyler Jenks, call Knetwit ?knowledge-based social networking,? and Wald said it takes social networking one step further.
Increased voter registration in the City of Charlottesville in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election has the city facing the possibility of having to redraw voter precincts.
McCain-Palin. Obama-Biden. Nader-Gonzalez? Perhaps to the surprise of some, there are four campaigns aside from the Democratic and Republican ones vying for the White House this November.
Institutions of higher education should place less of a focus on standardized testing when it comes to admissions decisions, according to a Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admissions report published by the National Association for College Admission Counselling.The report notes that external factors can and will affect how well students score on standardized tests and also states that these tests do not holistically measure students? capabilities.?Access to test preparation will always be differentiated based on family income, school setting, and other variables external to the student,? the report states, outlining the faults it finds with standardized testing.
Since returning to Grounds this fall, University Judiciary Committee members have been working toward settling a large case overload from last semester.
College and high school students now have a new way to keep track of important deadlines, following the recent launch of a free, nationwide master calendar and information system for higher education institutions.More than 1,500 four-year colleges and universities, including the University, are now involved with the ?College Life is Cool? Web site, www.theclic.net, which provides students, high schools, colleges and community programs access to information about scholarships, financial aid and application deadlines, according to CLIC network CEO Donna Michelle Anderson.?The CLIC is a useful resource for students because it allows them to access information about any college from just one Web site,? she said.The site is also useful, Anderson said, because it helps students judge and compare different aspects of the college application process, from scholarships and financial aid packages to the individual schools themselves.
Over the next four years, selected students enrolled in the University?s Early Childhood Special Education Program will be able to alleviate fifth-year tuition costs by tapping into an $800,000 U.S.
Rethinking Student Aid, a group of higher education policy experts, published its findings Thursday regarding two years of meetings about simplifying and improving the federal financial aid system.The report focuses on improving both financial aid and the student loan system, said Rethinking Student Aid member Kathleen Little, senior executive director of College Board Financial Aid Programs.
Though some students may believe the practice commonly described as ?Facebook stalking? is limited to their own generation or potential employers, a Kaplan survey has found that social networking profiles are also sometimes reviewed by undergraduate and graduate schools? admissions offices.
A letter issued by the U.S. Department of Education?s Office for Civil Rights regarding affirmative action has recently been met with protest by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.The OCR?s letter, released Aug.
In light of the recent economic troubles facing the U.S. business market, the Commerce School is stepping up its efforts to prepare students for the job market, especially those interested in investment banking.Tom Fitch, assistant dean of career services at the Commerce School, said Commerce Career Services is trying to give students who want to go into investment banking more options outside of the big banking or ?bulge bracket? firms because a number of those firms have recently filed for bankruptcy.?We might be pointing [Commerce students] in the directions of more alternative types, locations and sizes of firms,? Fitch said.
University students may not find a marching band particularly novel, but for a couple of French filmmakers, the subject holds significantly more intrigue.
At Saturday night?s seventh-annual Mead Endowment awards dinner, 10 University faculty members received funding for ?dream? proposals to develop classes they would like to teach.
Poll results released last Wednesday by the National Education Association?s Got Tuition campaign suggest higher education affordability is an important issue to many voters.The poll, conducted from July 21 to Aug.
In advance of the upcoming Oct. 4 home football game against the University of Maryland, the University has once again issued a statement allowing Lawn social events, albeit with several new provisions designed to better control excessive crowds and maintain the historic Lawn community, Dean of Students Allen Groves said.The new provisions, which reverse the tailgate ban issued following the home football game against the University of Southern California, are the result of extended discussion with Lawn and Range residents last week, Groves said.
Volkswagen Group of America announced a five-year, $2.1 million education initiative and partnership yesterday with six institutions in Virginia and Washington, D.C., including the University.At the University, the initiative, called ?Partners in Education,? will fund a new international component of the Rodman Scholars program and a graduate engineering student fellowship, Volkswagen Group Communication Director Jill Bratina said.
