Our Facutly Honorees send reports back of relationship formed, lessons learned and adventures had.

One Faculty Honoree had this to say about his experience...

The Mead program has made me refocus on improving the educational experience of my students.  Despite increasing demands on my time, I am dedicated to making more time available for interactions with my students . . . The Mead program is both wonderful and unique. I sincerely hope that it will continue its already successful mission of enhancing the UVa experience for both student and faculty alike, promoting exactly the kind of intense interaction envisioned by Jefferson.

-- Steve Majewski, Astronomy

 

Faculty Reports

2006-2007
2005-2006
2004-2005
2003-2004

2006 - 2007

When we learned we'd be able to put on our production, we chose a short burlesque by Henry Fielding (author of Tom Jones, before he turned novelist):   Tom Thumb, or, The Tragedy of Tragedies (1730), as it was adapted to satirize Italian opera by Eliza Haywood (another popular novelist) into The Opera of Operas (music by Thomas Arne).  Two students adapted the play for our production, adding scenes with the authors, Fielding and Haywood, between the acts, to explain some of the references and changes.  I frequented Kinkos to get copies made. The rest of the students divided into groups and started learning their lines and scavenging for costumes and designing the set.  We got permission to use a performance room in the Drama Department.  We went to the Drama Department costume sale, and students went to the Salvation Army, Walmart, their local costume stores, and all over the place to come up with really wonderful wigs and costumes.  Marianne Kubik  from the Drama Department (a former Mead winner), demonstrated Restoration and 18thC movement and gestures to us, and taught some of the students minuets.  Since the only copy of the Arne music was in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, students researched music by Purcell and Handel and adapted the songs.  They bought oranges and gingersnaps for the "orange wenches" to distribute to the audience.  They designed tickets and programs a la 18thC (the program has condensed information about the historical aspects of the production--I am sending you a copy).  And in the end, we all invited friends, family, and UVA eighteenth-century scholars.  (I invited Mr. Mead, but he had another engagement.)  The audience laughed generously and in the right places, the scenery only fell down once or twice, Tom Thumb's plumed helmet, large boots, and larger sword (not to mention the actor's comic talent) won great applause, and everyone was simply brilliant.

That evening, I treated everyone to a lavish cast party at my house, catered by Feast! on Market Street.

    I also treated my other class (ENEC 312 The Later Eighteenth Century--45 students) to two evenings (half the class each night) of pizza and a Blackadder video (satirizing Samuel Johnson's Dictionary).   And I took the whole class to see Amadeus at LiveArts!

CYNTHIA WALL, ENGLISH

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In January (during the winter break), we took a Mid-Atlantic concert tour with the University Singers. Some might consider this the ultimate in faculty-student interaction: seven concerts in eight days, each day full with hours on the bus together, meals, rehearsals, performances, and sight-seeing adventures. This particular tour included performances in Newport News, Virginia Beach, Lancaster, the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas, and several performances in Washington DC, including at the National Cathedral. Along the way, we also gave at least one impromptu performance at a restaurant in Chincoteague, and had an opportunity to visit an open rehearsal with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center.  During the tour, I used some of my Mead Endowment money to pick up the dinner tab (in Chincoteague) and lunch tab (at Baltimore's Inner Harbor) for the students at my table, who were grateful for the surprise gift.

In May, I will use the remainder of the gift to help host my annual dinner for the officers of the University Singers.   The officers, fourteen in all, form a group of elected and appointed students who give hundreds of volunteer hours each year to assist in running the ensemble.

Thanks so much again to you and the rest of the Mead committee for your generosity, recognition, and encouragement,

Best wishes,

Michael Slon, Music

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I took a group of 20 students from my two undergraduate classes this semester to see the UVA Drama Department's production of Oedipus Tyrannos. We started out with a group dinner at Michael's Bistro on the Corner and then headed over to the Theater about 7:30. The production was terrific (including the most powerful and creepy Tiresias I've ever seen), and it was especially interesting for the students from my Greek mythology class, since we'd read and discussed the play just a few weeks before. I'd arranged for the cast and the director, Betsy Tucker, to join us after the show for a "brief" question and answer session--which in fact wound up going on for almost forty minutes.    It was a wonderful opportunity to socialize with a real cross-section of students; since the Greek mythology class is large (140) there were some I knew only as faces in an auditorium, so it was especially nice to have a chance to interact with them. Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I'm very grateful to the Mead Endowment for making the evening possible.

Best,

Greg Hayes

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Together with my PhD student Katharine Ott, I am running this semester the proposed   seminar on the mathematical ideas in the work of Thomas Jefferson. Our plan for the semester is to meet the four undergraduate women involved in this activity every other week in an informal setting and research and discuss Jefferson's interest in mathematics.

           We already met two times: once we discussed the cryptography ideas behindJefferson's wheel cipher through a series of hands on experiments and once we met for dinner when we discussed about the challenges women face when choosing science oriented careers.

         We also in touch with a reference librarian, Jeff Looney, at the Monticello Library who is interested in our cause. He invited us to visit and take a look at some ofJefferson's documents containing mathematical and scientific calculations (he mentioned in particular astronomical calculations). We will combine this trip with lunch this coming Tuesday.

       We will keep you posted with the feedback from the participants and with our future activities.

       Thanks again for making this possible!

        Irina Mitrea, Mathematics

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Dear Tom:

          I am excited to share with you the news that Caitlin Rees, Meredith Wesley Jennings, Adrienne Felt and   Alyssa Godesky -- the undergraduate students whom I mentor with the help of my PhD student Katharine Ott in the Thomas Jefferson and Mathematics seminar -- will make presentations tomorrow at a high school mathematics outreach event I am organizing at UVa.

          The event is aimed at encouraging high school women to pursuemathematical related careers. The web page of the event is: http://people.virginia.edu/~im3p/SonjaKovalevskya.html

          Caitlin and Meredith will speak on "The golden ratio in the architecture of Thomas Jefferson" and an abstract of the talk is posted at http://people.virginia.edu/~im3p/abstract_ratio.html

          Adrienne and Alyssa will speak on "Thomas Jefferson and the Wheel Cipher" and their abstract can be viewed at http://people.virginia.edu/~im3p/abstract_wheel.html

         Thank you very much to the Mead Endowment for allowing us to buy books on these topics, visit Monticello together, buy educational material for their presentations, and have several fun social interactions with the girls! We will keep you updated with the rest of our activities for the semester.

         Best,

          Irina

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    Today I used part of the social budget from the Mead Endowment to hold a picnic on grounds for my 20 students in the Numerical Analysis class. After everyone's hard work during the semester it was nice to enjoy each others company, delicious pizza and dessert, and the beautiful UVa campus! What a beautiful day too!

          The social event allowed me to learn about my students plans for the future (about half will graduate and already accepted exciting jobs and the rest of them I will be seeing again next Fall). Thank you to the Mead Endowment for making this possible!

          Irina Mitrea, Mathematics

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Dear Tom:

I pass along the following to let you know how my Mead Endowment money was spent. Please forward it to interested parties.

This semester I taught a class called "Arts and Cultures of the Slave South," a Common Course I teach with Louis Nelson, a professor in the School of Architecture. The idea behind the course is to encourage the interdisciplinary study of the many different cultures that came together to form the American South.

Throughout the semester we work to provide students with outside the classroom experiences that both enrich their educational experience and give us an opportunity to get to know them better. The first was an all-day field trip to Shirley Plantation and to a privately owned Albemarle County Plantation. The second was a foodways lecture and demonstration by Leni Sorenson, African American Research specialist at Monticello. She talked about the different foods from the Old World--both Africa and Europe--and the New World and how we can trace the creation of new cultures through transformations in foodways. The students also participated in making corn pone, a staple of both white and blacks throughout the American South in the 18th and 19th centuries. Third, and this is where the Mead Endowment money helped, we had a movie night and a catered southern meal. We watched the first half of "Gone with the Wind," then ate a wonderful meal of Spoonbread (an updated version of the cornpone we made earlier), collard greens, Hoppin' John, and chicken gumbo. That was followed by watching an Episode from the television series "Roots."

Throughout these events, we have come to know the students in our classes much better and I think they have had the kinds of experiential learning that I know the Foundation likes to foster and, more importantly, the opportunity for the kinds of faculty/student interaction for which Boots is so revered.

Thank you to the Mead Endowment for this opportunity.

Maurie McInnis, Art History, American Studies

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Tom,

This is just a quick note to let you know that I sponsored a series of informal lab meetings with the money provided by the Mead Endowment. I have about 25 research assistants who work with my graduate students more than me on a day to day basis.   So we organized 3 lab meetings with lots of junk food (e.g., chips, cookies, pizza) to give the students and me a chance to interact informally.  The meetings were great fun.  I think everyone enjoyed them.

Thanks!

Stacey Sinclair, Psychology

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Dear Tom,

After my "dream class" stage production last semester of an 18thC farce by Henry Fielding (Tom Thumb; or, The Tragedy of Tragedies), there were still some funds left over.   So this semester I treated my 18thC novel class of 60 students to two nights of Rowan Atkinson's wickedly funny "Blackadder" series--the epidode on Dr. Johnson's Dictionary--along with pizza, soda, grapes, vegetables, and decadent cookies.  I don't often get to "party" with large classes!  Thank you again.

Cindy Wall, English