Campus
First-year applications jump nearly 20 percent
First-year applications to attend the University in the fall have increased nearly 20 percent from last year, which also was a record-breaking year. The admission office considered 7,966 applications this spring.
Many factors, including a change in recruiting strategy, contribute to the increase, says Sabena Moretz, associate director of admission. She also credits the convenience of applying online, use of a common application, rankings in Newsweek and BusinessWeek magazines, and a great football season.
Allred named provost
Dr. Stephen Allred has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs. The University launched a national search for a new chief academic officer last summer and chose Allred from among dozens of strong candidates.
He comes to Richmond from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, where he was executive associate provost and professor of public law and government. He became a member of UNC’s academic leadership team in 2001, when he was appointed associate provost for academic initiatives.
In recent years, Allred oversaw the processes for faculty appointment, promotion, and tenure. He directed programs for targeted faculty, spousal hiring, and faculty retention while coordinating senior academic searches and reviews. He also worked closely with deans and other key stakeholders to develop UNC’s academic plan.
“We are excited indeed that Steve Allred is joining the University,” says President Edward Ayers. “A prize-winning teacher, author, and public servant as well as a seasoned academic leader, Steve will help us sustain the momentum UR clearly enjoys. Experienced in building diversity and connections to the community, Steve brings crucial skills to the work of our leadership team.”
Allred earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in public administration from UNC. After nine years in labor relations work for the Environmental Protection Agency, Defense Mapping Agency, and Office of Personnel Management, he earned his law degree at The Catholic University of America. He also holds a doctor of education degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
“The University of Richmond is an outstanding institution with a well-deserved national reputation,” Allred says. “I am honored to have been asked to join the faculty, staff, and students in what will clearly be a great adventure.”
Another reason for the increase is a change in standardized testing requirements. “Applicants used to be required to take three SAT-II exams in addition to the SAT,” she notes. “Now they can submit the SAT alone, so it reduces the number of tests they need to take.”
Moretz also says high schools are turning out a high number of graduates this year and that more international students are applying to U.S. colleges.
Finally, many selective institutions have stopped early-decision programs, forcing many students who would have filed only one college application to submit several.
Douglass promoted to Law School dean
Richmond has promoted John Douglass to dean of the School of Law. He had been acting dean for the past year.
Douglass joined the Richmond law faculty in 1996 and won the University’s Distinguished Educator Award in 1999. He teaches criminal law, evidence, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy.
As dean, his agenda will include the further development of the law school’s academic centers and institutes—the National Center for Family Law, the Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr. Center for Environmental Studies, the Intellectual Property Institute, and the Institute for Actual Innocence.
“The University of Richmond Law School has a rich tradition that combines the best in professional education, community engagement, and scholarly excellence,” Douglass notes. “We are at a moment of remarkable opportunity to build on that tradition while we challenge ourselves to pursue new and creative ways to prepare our students.”
Richmond taps Tessier as VP for enrollment
Richmond has hired Nanci Tessier as vice president for enrollment management, a newly created position.
Tessier will coordinate the University’s admission and financial aid efforts to build on Richmond’s momentum in enrolling high-achieving undergraduates from a wide array of backgrounds.
“As a university with an outstanding national reputation, Richmond is poised for even greater success in the coming years,” Tessier says. “Access, affordability, and an increased understanding of the value of a Richmond education will be central to our goals.”
Tessier was vice president for college marketing and enrollment management at Saint Anselm College. Previously, she was director of admissions at Smith College.
“Nanci brings outstanding experience and talent to lead our enrollment-management efforts,” says President Edward Ayers. “Her broad experience promises to make her exceptionally effective in this new role at the University.”
Gutenberger named VP for advancement
Richmond has named Thomas Gutenberger, B’87, as vice president for advancement. He will be responsible for managing Richmond’s alumni relations, communications, and fundraising as well as its foundation, corporate, and government relations.
Previously, he was vice president for college relations at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., where he led a $200 million fundraising campaign and built an integrated external relations program.
“The University of Richmond is a very special place to me, and it has been my dream to be able to work at Richmond ever since I began working in higher education,” Gutenberger says. “I am looking forward to working with President Ayers, the wonderful team in advancement and across the University, and particularly the alumni and friends of UR.”
Students
Junior receives Goldwater Scholarship
Miles Johnson, ’09, has won a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate scholarship in mathematics, science, and engineering.
Johnson is among 321 undergraduates selected nationwide from a field of more than 1,000 students nominated for the awards by university faculty members. The scholarships provide up to $7,500 per year.
With Dr. Wade Downey, assistant professor of chemistry, Johnson is studying the aldol reaction, a powerful method of bonding carbon atoms that pharmaceutical companies use to develop new drugs.
Johnson was part of the University’s first class of Howard Hughes Medical Institute students who live on campus and conduct research during the summer before they matriculate.
He plans to pursue a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and conduct research in organic and medicinal chemistry.
Research
NIH grant will support brain degeneration study
Dr. John Warrick, assistant professor of biology, has been awarded a grant by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study proteins in brain cells of flies that contribute to brain degeneration. The institute is an agency of the National Institutes of Health.
The three-year, $182,159 grant will provide summer support for Warrick and up to two undergraduate students, equipment, and supplies.
Math-science ‘supercourse’
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has given the University $1.4 million to develop a math-science “supercourse” for highly motivated, first-year science students.
The two-semester course will replace standard introductory classes in biology, chemistry, physics, math, and computer science. It also will help top students develop computational skills that are used commonly in scientific research.
“We’ve found that students who don’t have at least a rudimentary background in computer science are at a real disadvantage in biology, chemistry, and physics,” says Dr. Kathy Hoke, associate professor of mathematics and associate dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. “The ties that bind the disciplines tend to be computational.”
A committee of faculty and staff met weekly last spring and summer to begin developing the course and a grant proposal to fund it. The University plans to enroll students in the new course in fall 2009.
Richmond’s new approach is a bold step in the teaching of introductory science, one taken at only a few institutions in the country, says Betsy Curtler, assistant vice president for foundation, corporate and government relations. “An integrated introductory science course will provide an undergraduate experience like none other.”
In addition to funding the new “supercourse,” the Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant will provide an outreach component for middle school math teachers in the Richmond area. Working with volunteers on the University’s faculty, they will create a middle school course that incorporates data from scientific experiments into math classes.
The grant will allow the University to hire a new faculty member in epidemiology and develop five new interdisciplinary science courses. It also will expand research opportunities for sophomores, first-year students, and under-represented minority students during the summer before they enter Richmond.
Warrick’s research on flies has implications for human brain diseases with no known cures or therapies, such as Machado-Joseph disease, an inherited disease prevalent among families of Portuguese/Azorean descent. He compares proteins in diseased brain cells with non-diseased brain cells to target potential therapies and cures.
“This research is important because it tries to understand the biological basis for why inherited diseases like Huntington’s disease and Machado-Joseph disease cause brain degeneration,” Warrick says.
Mentors
Multicultural office hosts Helping Hands program
In March, the Office of Multicultural Affairs invited 40 black alumni to campus to mentor 40 African-American students in a one-day event called Helping Hands.
Alumni and students participated in a panel discussion about real-life issues, and they ate lunch at “career-themed tables,” says Dr. Tina Cade, the University’s director of multicultural affairs. Then they got better acquainted during one-on-one discussions.
Many of the 40 alumni were returning to campus for the first time since they graduated, but they quickly bonded with students, Cade recalls.
“This was a wonderful opportunity to give back to the University,” says Reginald Skinner, ’97, who graduated from Harvard Law School and is a commercial litigator at Hunton & Williams in Richmond. “I benefited hugely from this type of mentoring when I was a student.”
Skinner has continued to mentor prelaw students Daniel Harawa, ’09, and Jasmine Fryer, ’08.
Rankings
Kiplinger’s hails UR as best-value college
The April 2008 issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance ranked Richmond 22nd among the 50 “Best Values in Private Universities” for the second year in a row.
The magazine rates private colleges and universities based on outstanding academics, overall costs, and the amount of financial aid awarded to students. Richmond was the only school in Virginia to make the private universities list.
“Our extensive aid to students makes our personalized education far more affordable than people may realize,” says President Edward Ayers. “We are delighted to be on this list and to open our doors to students of need.”
The magazine’s rankings are based on overall academic quality, which accounts for two-thirds of the measurement, and affordability, which accounts for one-third.
More than two-thirds of UR undergraduates receive some type of financial aid. For the 2007–08 academic year, the University awarded $42.2 million in financial aid, and its average financial aid grant was more than $20,000.
BusinessWeek ranks Robins School 20th
The Robins School of Business continues to climb the BusinessWeek rankings of the best undergraduate business programs in the United States.
In late February, the Robins School hit No. 20 on the list, up from 23rd in 2007 and 25th in 2006, the first year BusinessWeek compiled the list.
Dean Jorge Haddock says that high-quality faculty and students, strong corporate support, and alumni backing have enhanced the Robins School’s national reputation.
“We moved from No. 31 to No. 20 in student satisfaction, received grades of A-plus for teaching quality and A for facilities,” Haddock notes. “Our students told BusinessWeek that they cherish their small classes and close relationships with professors. And the median starting salary of our graduates has increased from $47,000 to $51,750.”
Haddock says the survey also highlights opportunities for improvement, such as attracting more corporate recruiters.
Community
Richmond helps build Highland Park home
In April, the University worked with three community partners to build a Habitat for Humanity house in Richmond’s Highland Park neighborhood.
The project was a partnership among the University, Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity, Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, and Boaz and Ruth, an agency that engages people released from prison in community revitalization.
Fed chairman speaks at UR
As the U.S. economy struggled with a financial crisis, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors, delivered a policy speech on the UR campus.
At an event hosted by the World Affairs Council of Greater Richmond, Bernanke summarized recommendations of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
To a considerable extent, the financial crisis was caused by sloppy practices throughout the originate-to-distribute system of lending money, he said. Originate-to-distribute refers to one company making a loan and selling it to financial intermediaries who create packages of loans that they sell to investors.
Underwriting practices became increasingly compromised as this system promoted quantity over quality. Subprime mortgages, for example, were extended to unqualified borrowers. As long as housing prices increased, those borrowers were able to refinance, but when home prices fell, many of them defaulted. Similar problems surfaced in other credit markets because people charged with assessing and disclosing credit risks were rewarded for not doing their jobs.
“The originate-to-distribute model broke down at a number of key points, including the stages of underwriting, credit rating, and investor due diligence,” Bernanke explained.
He expressed confidence, however, that the model can be fixed by adhering to higher standards for assessing and disclosing credit risks at each step in the process. Greater market discipline will raise standards, and greater regulatory discipline will complement those efforts, Bernanke said.
Regulators, for example, must require disclosures that “improve the ability of consumers to shop and of investors to evaluate risks.” They must provide “protections to less-sophisticated market participants” and require “that financial institutions meet high standards in their management of risk.”
—Karl Rhodes
“This collaboration is an important part of Build It, the University’s largest sustained community-engagement initiative,” says Cassie Price, who coordinated the project for UR’s Bonner Center for Civic Engagement.
The University sponsored the project with $65,000 raised or contributed by the Center for Civic Engagement, the Chaplaincy, the student chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and Trustee Gilbert Rosenthal, R’47 and H’99, and his wife, Fannie. The University also provided hundreds of volunteers.
Trustee Janice Moore, L’81, drove from Washington to Richmond three times to work on the project. “Working shoulder to shoulder with UR students, faculty, staff, and alums had a special appeal for me,” she says. “I’ve been delighted to learn that we all have at least one bent nail in that house.”
In addition to the Habitat home, Build It stays engaged with Highland Park year-round.
To learn more about
the program, visit
buildit.richmond.edu.
Faculty
Holton receives coveted Guggenheim fellowship
Dr. Woody Holton, associate professor of history, has been awarded a fellowship from the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
The fellowship will support Holton’s work on a biography of Abigail Adams, wife of President John Adams. Holton will take a one-year sabbatical during the 2008–09 academic year to complete Abigail Adams, Entrepreneur.
In this year’s Guggenheim competition, Holton was honored alongside Pulitzer Prize winners Jonathan Weiner and Margo Jefferson, fiction writers Lan Samantha Chang and Thad Ziolkowski, poets Michael Paul Burkard and Rae Armantrout, filmmakers Anne Makepeace and Rodney Evans, and other scholars, writers, and artists.
Holton’s 2008 book Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution was a finalist for the National Book Award and the George Washington Book Prize.
Holton joined the Richmond faculty in 2000. He previously taught at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. Before entering academia, he founded a grassroots environmental organization called Clean Up Congress.
McGoldrick receives SCHEV faculty award
Dr. KimMarie McGoldrick, professor of economics, has won an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
The award is the commonwealth’s highest honor for faculty members at Virginia colleges and universities. Its $5,000 stipend rewards outstanding achievement in teaching, research, knowledge integration, and service to the professor’s institution and the public.
In addition to her research on labor market information, McGoldrick develops and assesses new methods of economics education.
“Dr. McGoldrick’s teachings enabled me to look beyond the seemingly plain economic data and statistics and visualize the individual people and decisions that are enveloped within the numbers,” says former student Jerry Holly, ’03.
Three professors retire from long UR careers
“You don’t need to know when” Dr. Robert Terry graduated from Randolph-Macon College, according to his Web site. He earned his Ph.D. in romance languages from Duke “four years after the earlier degree.”
Terry will retire this summer after teaching French at Richmond for 39 years. He held the William Judson Gaines Chair in Modern Foreign Languages from 2002–05. And in 2004, he received the Florence Steiner Award for Leadership in Foreign Language Education, Postsecondary, from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
Two other faculty members are retiring this summer with 30 or more years of service to Richmond.
Dr. Alan Loxterman, professor of English, joined the faculty in 1970. He taught classes in literary criticism, Renaissance poetry, and science fiction.
Dr. Joan Bak, professor of history, joined the faculty in 1978. She won the University’s Distinguished Educator Award in 1983 and 1988. She focuses on Latin America and Brazil in her teaching and research.
History
Mitchell clarification
The summer 2006 issue of Richmond Alumni Magazine stated that Dr. Samuel Chiles Mitchell was a professor at Richmond College from the 1890s to the 1940s—implying incorrectly that his tenure was continuous.
From 1908 to 1920, Mitchell served as the president of three institutions of higher learning: the University of South Carolina, the Medical College of Virginia, and the University of Delaware, in that order.
“Dr. Mitchell was a matchless teacher,” wrote Dr. Woodford Hackley, in Faces on the Wall. “His personality simply radiated enthusiasm for learning.”
