41. Black Excellence Gala
Black History Month at UR culminates with one of the best-dressed parties on campus: the Black Excellence Gala. It’s a night for coming together to celebrate the culture, contribution, and achievement of the Black community on campus and in the region and country.
42. Alumni regional groups
UR’s nearly 60 volunteer-run regional alumni groups keep Spiders connected. “U of R San Francisco meant so much to me when I first moved here in 2019,” said Matt Ely, ’14, who now helps lead the chapter. “I’d like to give that experience and sense of home to other incoming Spiders.”
43. Finding your people
From the Accounting Society to Zen Buddhist Sangha, the names of clubs and organizations at UR would make up a wild ABCs book. These days, students choose among about 175 of them, including 15 fraternities and sororities and 30 sport clubs. Seventy percent of students are involved in one or more, and the relationships made in them can last a lifetime.
@urichmond If you don't think science and math are for you, it might just be that you need to meet Dr. Kelly Lambert at URichmond... and yes, she's the scientist teaching rats to drive cars! 🐀🏎️👩🏼🔬 #universityofrichmond #neuroscience #behavioralneuroscience #spiderpride #undergradresearch
♬ original sound - University of Richmond
44. Rats that drive tiny cars
Kelly Lambert, the professor behind this eye-popping drivers ed program, has a serious research purpose. Teaching rats to drive is helping her unravel mysteries about mental health — and spread her research conclusions, because who doesn’t click on a headline about driving rats?
Specifically, Lambert’s research is showing that a rat’s living environment has a meaningful effect on its brain’s ability to change, learn, and remain resilient despite challenges. It’s also providing amazing opportunities for the undergraduate researchers she mentors as they prepare for careers in the sciences.
45. Starting early
A signature program — URISE, which stands for University of Richmond Integrated Science Experience — creates a pipeline of future scientists. The program brings several dozen first-year students — ones generally underrepresented in STEM fields — to campus early for a summer that’s part science, part fun.
They are introduced to lab research, meet faculty, and start learning concepts they’ll encounter in class. But it’s not all lab coats and textbooks. URISE students also visit amusement parks, dine together, and are known to have epic Uno tournaments.
The result? Early skill development, research experience, and a community of support before they take their first class
46. The tenacity of the Spiderbyte
These catch-all, daily email announcements have been part of campus life since the 1990s. You never know what you are going to get in them. A note about a talk by a chemistry student might be followed by an announcement about oysters on D-hall’s menu, something about Vehicle Safety Day, or a promo for an electroacoustic musical festival — possibly all three. Those are all recent, real examples.
47. Spider student-athletes know when to walk
In sports, walks are not often good. Pitchers give them up. Basketball players earn a whistle and a turnover when they walk.
But there’s a more important kind of walk in college athletics: the graduation walk.
Spider athletes are great at it. For the third straight year, the most recent academic data from the NCAA shows that 96 percent of Richmond student-athletes earned their undergraduate degrees or transferred from UR in good academic standing.
48. Lifelong learning
Nearly 1,200 people are members of UR’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute — an organization for learners “age 50 and better,” its website says. The institute offers more than 300 courses each year, plus travel opportunities and more through SPCS. There are no entrance requirements, no tests, and no grades. It’s the love of learning that counts — and staying connected to the Spider community.
49. Trial runs
Effective hands-on learning is a delicate matter when it comes to law. How does one practice law before passing the bar? Answer: Richmond Law’s clinics. Through these clinics, upper-level students under faculty supervision represent real clients in a wide variety of legal matters — including children’s defense, intellectual property, and actual innocence cases — as well as sharpen their sense of professionalism and responsibility.
50. Students earning high national honors
The awards seem to come one after another: Shea Henderson, ’23, received a national Boren scholarship. Sarah Schalkoff, ’23, earned a Critical Language Scholarship from the State Department. Ngan Bui, ’23, and Elspeth Collard, ’23, won Projects for Peace grants. Six recent graduates just received National Science Foundation fellowships for graduate research.
That partial list doesn’t even include any of the Fulbrights; 2024 marks the sixth consecutive year that the university has been named a top producer of Fulbright students.
More Spiders than ever are competing for the most prestigious national and international awards. One reason is the Office of Scholars and Fellowships, which was founded in 2017. Its staff helps students explore and pursue externally funded opportunities — and because Spiders are excellent, land them more than ever.
51. Digital Scholarship Lab
Anyone in the world can access and use projects produced by UR’s Digital Scholarship Lab, and millions do. As of the end of 2023, about 2.5 million users had accessed the DSL’s most popular project, Mapping Inequality, since its launch in 2016.
The DSL reaches wide audiences by developing open-source projects that integrate history with new media. Its first core project was a historical atlas called American Panorama. Its interactive maps explore the forced migration of enslaved people during the Civil War; canals and economic development; and more. Mapping Inequality focuses on redlining — the practice of denying financial services based on race or ethnicity. Its maps are frequently used by teachers, journalists, and scholars to analyze redlining and its consequences.
The DSL is also home to the popular Photogrammar, a platform for organizing, searching, and visualizing the 170,000 New Deal-era images taken for the federal government by Gordon Parks, Dorothea Lange, and others.