Month: November 2010

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia has passed a resolution to ask the General Assembly for more money in the state financial aid program. The group cites increasing tuition and a struggling economy as sources for a higher number of students elibigle for aid.

According to SCHEV, in the past decade, the number of students eligible for aid has increased by 11.3 percent, to 60,331 from 54,221. However, the state’s financial aid program has been able to fulfill need-based aid and has, interestingly, seen an increase in the number of awards given to students, a 27.2 percent jump—to 57,433 from 45,140. 

At four-year institutions, the average award has increased 62 percent—to $3,441 from $2,124, but this number represents a smaller portion of tuition. 

“Tuition is going up faster than financial aid,” says Kirsten Nelson, SCHEV’s director of communications and government relations. “Every year we are required to make budget recommendations, but this year we made a point of saying that financial aid is a priority.” 

At Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC), tuition has increased steadily for the past eight years. This fall semester, in-state students paid $101 per credit hour, compared to $81.65 in 2008, $72.50 in 2006 and $40.46 in 2002. Out-of-state students paid $304.25 per credit hour for tuition and fees. 

Tuition has increased just as PVCC’s enrollment exploded, an estimated 5,600 enrolled this fall, up 30 percent over the past five years. The number of students seeking aid has also increased. 

At UVA, the number of undergraduate students with financial need has steadily increased since 2005. Then, 3,275 students, or 23.6 percent of the student body, demonstrated financial need. In the preliminary figures for 2010, that number increased to 4,562 students, or 31.8 percent. The biggest jump was recorded between 2008 and 2009, when the recession kicked in. The number went from 3,798, or 26.6 percent to 4,315 or 30.3 percent. 

Tuition at UVA has also seen an increase. This fall, in-state students paid $10,836 compared to $33,782 for out-of-state students. 

Carol Wood, UVA’s spokesperson, says that all students with need receive financial aid offers to meet that need. AccessUVA, a financial aid program that meets 100 percent of a student’s financial need has been helping UVA students since its inception a few years ago. In June, Leonard Sandridge, UVA’s COO, told the Board of Visitors that for 2010-2011, $21 million in stimulus funds would be used to fund the program. 

According to the SCHEV report, at four-year institutions, the number of students with an income level of $60,000 or more seeking aid has increased. In community colleges, the need for aid has increased in all income levels. 

“I think a lot of what’s happening here is the cost of education is increasing and that’s causing someone, for example making $70,000 eight, nine years ago who may not have had financial need … now they are able to demonstrate financial need,” says Lee Andes, SCHEV’s assistant director for financial aid. “There are a number of factors, perhaps more students are applying for aid, but also more students who are already in school being able to demonstrate financial need as well.” 

Bottom line, says Andes, the purchasing power of financial aid has decreased. 

In addition to the almost $30 million in need-based request, SCHEV has also asked the General Assembly for an additional $5.3 million in financial aid for graduate students for the next academic year. “The purchasing power of the graduate financial aid program has decreased as well,” says Andes. “What we want to do is to return the program back to the 1995 levels of purchasing power. In order to do that we need another $5 million a year over five years to get to that point.”

The fate of the parking lot at the Amtrak train station on West Main Street may be at a turning point. The owners of the lot, local developers Gabe Silverman and Allan Cadgene, will finally pave it.

“That’s what we have been trying to do all this time, is to pave the parking lot,” says Silverman. The lot has been unpaved since the developers bought it in 1997.

After an attempt by the owners to use a product called Durasoil to abate the dust problem, area residents and business owners were prepared to pursue a lawsuit they had temporarily shelved. Peter Castiglione, co-owner of Maya Restaurant, previously retained lawyer Edward Lowry, who contacted Cadgene and Silverman about the threat of legal action if the dust problem was not resolved. Cadgene, a lawyer based in San Francisco, responded to a request from Lowry for “binding assurance” to try and bust the dust with Durasoil—which, according to its website, is an odorless fluid meant to bind with any surface.

Ultimately, says Castiglione, “Durasoil was worthless.” The restaurateur says he saw twisters of dust rise from the lot a few days after the product was used and, after the heavy rain of last week, “big new puddles” materialized throughout the lot. Silverman claims that Durasoil resolved the lot’s problems. “There doesn’t seem to be dust anymore…I’m happy about that,” he says.

Now, with neighbors and developers on the same page regarding plans to pave, the lot owners’ next step is putting the paving contract out to bid. Although Silverman says the document will be ready in the next couple of weeks, he does not know how long it will be before the lot is paved.

“It really depends on the people who are going to bid, and when the contract is signed,” says Silverman. “I would hope that it happens in the next month or so.”

Meanwhile, the City of Charlottesville recently approved an amendment to a site plan for the parking lot. Valid for five years, the site plan calls for landscaping, new street lights and a rain garden—a storm management feature‑—in the center of the lot. According to City Planner Nick Rogers, the lot will be leveled first, then paved.

In an earlier interview, Silverman said outside buyers were interested in purchasing the lot, on the market for $13.5 million, for a multi-story development. However, things now may be different. “No updated information about that. We are just going ahead and paving the lot,” he says.

The average American teenager sends or receives six text messages for every hour they’re awake.  Extrapolated, that’s 3,339 texts per month, according to a recent study by Nielsen Co.

“That statistic does not surprise me,” says Amy Hoppenjans, a world history teacher at Charlottesville High School. “My co-teacher and I are constantly on the lookout for cell phones, and, in some cases, have had to refer students to the office for their refusal to comply to put their cell phone out of sight.  For some students, it’s like an addiction.”

In a teenage culture where texting is sometimes more common than talking, Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, wants to ensure there are clear ways to police the perverse. Bell has authored a bill that would update Virginia law so that texted threats or lewd photos are accounted for.

If Bell’s bill is enacted, Virginia law would treat obscene or threatening text messages the same as traditional phone calls, closing what he says is an antiquated loophole.

“We want to make sure the law addresses these new technologies,” Bell told C-VILLE.

The early feedback surrounding the bill appears positive.  

Dewey Cornell, Director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project at UVA’s Curry School of Education, lauded Bell as “a champion of efforts to reduce bullying and threats of violence in schools.” 

Cornell also emphasized the nuances of patrolling inappropriate texts and the need for schools to strike a balance between their own prevention efforts and law enforcement involvement.

“There must be a way to distinguish the small number of very serious cases that may rise to the level of a criminal offense from the majority of cases that can be addressed through prevention, counseling and ordinary school disciplinary measures,” he told C-VILLE.

In another act of support, the Virginia Joint Commission on Technology and Science recently endorsed Bell’s proposal, meaning that the General Assembly will now consider it during the body’s next legislative session that starts in January.

Though optimistic about the bill’s success, Bell said 10 years spent sitting in his delegate seat have taught him there is no sure-fire proposal.

“We’ll see what the House and Senate think,” he says.

In works like “Leviathan”—a work in cut paper, mineral pigment, polymer emulsion, gesso, gold leaf and rust on canvas mounted to panel—Clay Witt pushes his working materials to their natural limits. Witt speaks at the gallery on December 5 and hosts a holiday lunch December 8. Visit www.lesyeuxdumonde.com for details.

If the themes of the exhibit don’t excite your particular tastes, there’s a good chance the craftsmanship will. To call Witt’s work painting would be like describing NCAA sports as an exercise program for students. Over the two months it can take a single piece to emerge, Witt will apply layers of gilding, clay, gesso, ink, emulsion, cut Japanese paper, varnish and wax, then strip away strategic bits with tools ranging from a rag to an automotive sander. 

“I’m building a world,” he says. Where you see hundreds of fish, there are likely hundreds more hidden within the piece so he can make the image three dimensional by rubbing away translucent coats of material. To depict a circle of fire on the ocean, Witt fed a digital image of waves into his computer plotting cutter, so he could apply the resulting slivers of paper to the canvas in layers to create depth. The flames are water gilding, a delicate process that involves films of gold so thin they come packed 250,000 sheets to an inch and disintegrate when touched with bare hands.

“I do these gold surfaces and then destroy them,” the artist says, “almost as a corrective to this preciousness.”

That’s not entirely true. The gold in his work may be obscured or coated with strategically cracking varnish in places, but it still shines brilliantly where it needs to and gives the images their trademark contrast. Don’t trust the newsprint reproduction on this one. If you want any sense of what this stuff looks like, its metallic element requires you see it in person. 

For his part, Witt’s background is as multifaceted as his work. He picked up gilding when a frame shop where he once worked needed help with an urgent restoration job. He apprenticed in Arabic calligraphy in Syria after degrees at UVA and the University of Massachusetts. At the opening, Witt greeted gallery visitors wearing an impeccable pinstripe suit with a white satin pocket square. But the ink stains around his fingernails let on to the long hours in the studio with his dog, Agnes, contemplating the way animals see the world and pushing the limits of half a dozen materials at once. The fruits of his labor are visually intriguing and unlike anything you’re likely to find from another artist.

The $30 million renovation of St. Anne’s lower campus, which includes new athletic fields as well as K-8 classroom buildings, is winding down.

According to STAB historian Kay Walker Butterfield, the school’s pedigree dates back to 1856. That’s when the Albemarle Female Institute opened on 10th and E. Jefferson streets. In 1910, one Henry Lee bought the struggling academy and turned it into the St. Anne’s School. 

By 1939, St. Anne’s was doing well enough to relocate to a new campus, paying $40,000 for a property on Ivy Road that had been the home of Elizabeth Wetmore, a journalist noted in her day for taking on fellow reporter Nellie Bly in a race around the world. By 1975, St. Anne’s and the nearby Belfield School had merged, and the school has been spread across the Wetmore property, dubbed Greenway Rise, and Belfield property ever since.

So how does this history lesson tie into the capital campaign? STAB initiated the campaign last year to celebrate 100 years of this path to the present and make enough cash to continue it well into the future. To that end, St. Anne’s raised a staggering—and staggeringly specific—total of $44,000,407.21 (picture a Mr. Burns type scrawling out his check for $7.21). 

Luke Anderson, STAB’s director of communications, says that the campaign had four goals: bulk up the school’s endowment (and this it did, up from $2.7 million last year to $17 million at present); sustain $1 million-plus in its general fundraising coffers; build a new arts and science center on the Greenway Rise campus; and perform a major overhaul of the Belfield campus. 

The former two goals certainly may not do much to dispel, as Anderson puts it, the “rich kids on the hill” image that STAB holds among many in the area, particularly given that most of the money is from parents of current students. However, Anderson says that the push to increase the endowment is largely about stabilizing tuition. “It allows us to keep tuition steady and try to offset the 2 to 4 percent annual increase in tuition that most schools face,” says Anderson.

The endowment is also intended to assist the 41 percent of STAB students who receive financial aid. Anderson contests the notion that this is simply subsidizing the school’s athletic programs and says that financial aid at STAB is purely needs-based. 

The $30 million Belfield renovation project has likewise not been without controversy. C-VILLE previously reported on objections over the former headmaster’s house being demolished to make way for the renovation. But with the demolition well in the past and final construction winding down, STAB expects both campuses to be running at full capacity by next month. The Belfield campus’ new athletic fields and main complex of buildings, housing kindergarten through 8th grade, have been in operation since classes began in September, and the final phase of the project, the preschool building, is scheduled to be completed by the end of this month.