Kristina Lawrence (Col ’07) of the U.Va. Club of Washington, D.C., pitches in during a Halloween party held to benefit Horton’s Kids, an organization founded by Karin Walser (Col ’88) to help inner-city children in the district.

• Two for One


• Admissions FAQs: Straight Talk


•  Lost and Found


• Get E-mail for Life


• Ridley airs on PBS

Grant has unexpected payoff in African project

A grant from the Jefferson Trust yielded unexpected dividends for a project that’s addressing community health issues in Africa.

The trust, which is administered by the U.Va. Alumni Association, designated $50,000 (part of $325,000 last year in various grants) for a single effort, called the Mbeya Program. A team of nine graduate nursing students, four medical students and a faculty member was scheduled to spend four weeks last summer in Lesotho, where nearly one in three residents is infected with HIV/AIDS.

Political unrest in that country, however, necessitated a change in plans. Most of the group went to Bushbuckridge, a district in the Mpumulanga province of South Africa. A few decided to push on to Lesotho as the tension eased.

Meredith Cooley Photo by Rob Holmes

"The trust was very responsive to the fact that not only could we make one location a sustainable location, but that it looked like we could in fact have two locations," says Doris Greiner, a professor in the School of Nursing.

Sustainability comes from helping others to help themselves. The students’ first step was assessing needs, and in Bushbuckridge a big need was improving sanitation. The Lesotho effort, which included teaching local health-care providers to train others, took an unusual twist with construction of a rabbitry.

"It was a remarkable experience because it was so tangible and sustainable," says Meredith Cooley, a second-year graduate student in nursing. The rabbitry program creates a source of protein as well as income to buy other healthy foods.

Cooley had been to Lesotho earlier as a Peace Corps worker, so she was familiar with the harsh conditions and devastation wrought by HIV/AIDS. During July, which is a winter month in the southern hemisphere, she shared the bitter cold with a woman who had lost her husband and children in the epidemic. The woman was caring for seven grandchildren—and she was HIV positive herself.

"We really got to experience what life was like for this woman," says Cooley, who returned to Lesotho for two weeks in January. Additional students and faculty in the project—a combined effort of the School of Nursing and the School of Medicine—expect to continue the two-pronged effort this summer. Greiner, Cooley and others don’t take the Jefferson Trust’s help for granted.

"It was a dream come true," Cooley says. "We wouldn’t have been able to do the work we did without that grant."

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Admissions FAQs
Straight TalkDemystifying the admission process

The best choices are made with accurate information.

Sometimes, however, prospective students have misconceptions that cloud the process of applying for admission to the University.

The Alumni Association’s Admission Liaison Program, in conjunction with the Office of Admission, begins a series this issue to address questions and dispel myths so that students and parents will have "just the facts" about the University.

Will admission be more competitive now that U.Va. has decided to drop the Early Decision program?

"That is unlikely to be the case," says John A. Blackburn, dean of admission.

The ED program was discontinued because few students with financial need applied for it. In some years, as much as 35 percent of a class would be filled through early decisions, but only one or two low-income students would be in the group.

"Our decision to change the process opens up all 3,170 first-year places to all candidates," Blackburn says.

All students accepted in the ED program planned to attend the University. Now, to fill the first-year class, there will be more offers because some applicants will decide to enroll elsewhere.

"Because of the quality and depth of our applicant pool, however, we are confident that there will not be any change in the credentials of the students we accept," Blackburn says.

In the past, some students accepted in the ED program let their grades slide, resulting in their admission being canceled. "We are far less likely to see this among regular decision applicants," Blackburn says, "because one of the credentials we always have is the first-semester grade report.

"It will be interesting to see if dropping ED leads to fewer cancellations this summer."

For more information, go to the Admission Liaison Program’s Web site at www.alumni.virginia.edu/admission/ or the Office of Admission’s site at www.virginia.edu/undergradadmission.

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Lost and Found Class ring, ID card find their way home

What do a lake in Mississippi and a circuit breaker panel in U.Va.’s Dobie House have in common?

Both yielded long-abandoned items in a curious pair of lost-and-found cases for two University alumni.

John Pospisil (Engr ’66) had worn his class ring through two tours in Vietnam, but while he was pushing his sailboat onto Okatibbee Lake in Mississippi, one day in the early 1970s, the ring slipped off his finger. He tried to grab it but failed.

"I went back several more times [with a fishing net] and rooted around in the bottom of the lake where I knew it was, but I never could find it. I just sort of gave up on it," says Pospisil, a retired pilot who lives outside Chicago. At the time, he was an instructor pilot at nearby Naval Air Station Meridian.

Fast-forward to Oct. 22, 2007. Keith Page was enjoying one of his routine fishing outings on the drought-stricken lake when he saw something glinting in the sand. "I pushed it with my finger, and the ring jumped up," he told WTOK-TV in Meridian.

The next morning Page and his boss called Kerry Graves, assistant director of alumni relations in U.Va.’s Law School Foundation, and some detective work began. The letters "B.E.E." engraved on the ring indicated the owner received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and "J.P." led to John Pospisil. Page telephoned him with news of the discovery.

"It was just such a coincidence and surprise that I was dumbfounded," Pospisil says.

In that regard, he’s got something in common with Michael Campbell (Col ’91), an attorney in Rockville, Md.

Campbell received a phone call last fall from residents of Dobie House, where Campbell had lived as a first-year student.

"For some reason, they had needed to access the circuit breaker panel in the suite, and inside they found my college ID from 1987-88," Campbell says. "I don’t remember losing it."

The ID showed Campbell’s Social Security number, and the students used the Internet to track him down.

"This made me realize how much technology has changed since 1987," Campbell says. "Back then, personal computers were just beginning to arrive on the scene and the Internet was unknown."

Campbell says the students were giddy with excitement at finding what they must have considered an "ancient artifact."

"I realized they were not even born in 1987, so it must have been a real find for them."

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Get E-mail for Life New service offered to alumni

Want to make sure you stay connected to the University, no matter where you move?

Lifetime e-mail is now available for all U.Va. alumni. This new service allows alumni to obtain an @virginia.edu e-mail account powered by Google Gmail or Microsoft Windows Live.

The service is being offered on HoosOnline as an upgrade to the lifetime e-mail forwarding option. The new accounts offer free message storage space, in addition to access to other online tools.

To sign up, go to HoosOnline at hoosonline.virginia.edu.

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