Innovation Challenge 2007

The 5th annual Innovation Challenge returns to the Darden School of Business in November. The enrollment is open now, and ends on September 28, 2007.

The international panel of judges this year includes Charlottesville entrepreneur Elizabeth Pyle.

See Innovation Challenge for more information about this year's event and winners from prior years.

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

Batten Institute's Chic Thompson and Darden Graduate School of Business's Philippe Sommer just produced a podcast for With Good Reason, Virginia public radio. "So You Want to be an Entrepreneur" will be airing June 9 - 15.

Thompson and Sommer advise aspiring entrepreneurs to take a vacation now; they won’t have the time again for 3-5 years.

New Horizons at UVA - Final Day

The New Horizons for Teaching, Learning and Research wraps up today with a series of workshops on tools and technologies covered earlier, including Collab/Sakai, podcasting, videoconferencing, Camtasia, and the Google Books Project.

In addition to presentations covered earlier, U.Va. Library’s global information system specialist Chris Gist demonstrated some of the new design and presentation opportunities emerging with GoogleMaps, including GMapEZ and MyMaps. Kathy Gerber covered date mining, and Ed Hall and Katherine Holcomb addressed Computational Science at UVA.

The conference has been a fascinating look at some extraordinary UVA initiatives and experiments, and the creative and expanding use of technology in teaching and research at the University. Although designed for students and faculty, the conference was open to members of the larger community.

Congratulations to the UVA Library on the success of this first conference!

Darden Alumi in 50 under 50

According to UVA Today, three alumni of the Darden School of Business have been named to Black MBA Magazine’s Top 50 Under 50 list. They are Eric P. Brown (Darden '84); Octavia Matthews (Darden '89); and Lewis M. Warren (JD/MBA '87). Brown is a divisional vice president for Charter Communications. Matthews is vice president for regional branch services at Grainger, Inc.; and Warren is deputy head of global investment banking at Banc of America Securities.

In 2006, four Darden graduates were among those honored: Thomas Baltimore (MBA ’91), Bryan Simms (MBA ’94), Warren Thompson (MBA ’83), and William Wright (MBA ’87).

Darden’s Executive Education program has again been ranked among the world’s best according to the Financial Times.

BGN Entrepreneur's Minute, May 23,2007

(About one minute)

Talking with Martha Sites, University of Virginia's Associate University Librarian for production and technology services, about the New Horizons Conference.

The BGN Entrepreneur's Minute is made possible by the generous support of the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.

Collab and Collex

Day 1 of the University of Virginia New Horizons conference pointed to some sophisticated projects using Collex and Sakai Collab.

Bethany Nowviske's PataCriticism blog addresses the development of NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth Century Electronic Scholarship) with Collab.

David Germano described his Sakai Collab work on the Tibet and Himalayan project for coursework.

The conference continues through Thursday, with several early presentations available again. The schedule is here.

New Horizons at UVA

The University of Virginia New Horizons for Teaching and Research conference is underway, with presentations and demos of new online tools and collaborative projects.

Dean Pianta

Robert C. Pianta, a longtime faculty member in the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, has been named its eighth dean, President John T. Casteen III announced today.

Pianta is an expert on early childhood education and teacher quality whose work spans the worlds of policy, practice and basic science. In addition to his teaching and research, he directs the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). Snippet from UVA Today

UVA NSF Graduate Fellowships

Five UVA Graduate students have received NSF research Fellowships for 2007 - 2008:
Jennie Doberne, Anthropology: "My research focuses on older women’s quest for motherhood as a way to investigate the social and technological limits of pronatalism in Israel"
Niccolo Fiorentino, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering:"My research project focuses on characterizing the way muscles change shape during motion, determining how muscles generate force to produce joint movement, and developing methods to model complex muscle behavior."
Erin Reed, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering: "My research involves using a non-intrusive measurement method called Planar Laser Induced Iodine Fluorescence which involves seeding iodine molecules into a flow and shining a laser sheet across it, causing it to fluoresce or shine allowing us to obtain visuals of the flow as well as velocity and mole fraction measurements."
Hillary Schaefer, Psychology: "My research explores the neurobiology of emotion."
Adam Watson, Archaeology: "I am interested in patterns of social differentiation and integration in this prehistoric Pueblo society."

Batten funds UVA School of Leadership and Public Policy

Former newspaper publisher Frank Batten Sr. will donate $100 million to the University of Virginia. The donation is the largest single gift in the school’s history.
The money will be used to create the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Snippets from Virginia Business

“There’s an urgent need to develop the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders,” Batten said.
The Batten School will be the first new school at UVa since the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration was founded in 1954.
The Batten School will offer both undergraduate and graduate degrees, with full programs beginning in 2009. A master’s of public policy program will be established in 2009, followed by a post-doctoral program in public policy and a master’s in foreign service or global affairs. An undergraduate degree program in public policy, consisting of both foreign and domestic tracks, will also begin in 2009.
A search for the first dean of the Batten School will start this fall. UVa officials estimated the new school would aim for about 260 undergraduates and 160 graduate students. Snippets from the Daily Progress