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U.Va. part of new teaching fellowship

U.Va. tests Viagra-like drug for women

Many doctors at U.Va. make national Best Doctors list

U.Va. part of new teaching fellowship Source: Charlottesville Daily Progress

Robert Pianta Photo by Dan Addison

The University of Virginia will take part in a major new initiative to encourage top-tier college graduates to teach in high-poverty schools.

The $6 million initiative, developed by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, will offer 100 fellowships to graduating outstanding seniors, recent college graduates and mid-career professionals who agree to teach in a high-need urban or rural secondary school for three years.

U.Va. is one of four institutions chosen to participate in the foundation’s Leonore Annenberg National Teaching Fellowship, which is intended to be the equivalent of the prestigious Rhodes scholarships. The other schools are Stanford University, the University of Washington and the University of Pennsylvania.

Participants in the fellowship program will be placed in Charlottesville middle and high schools starting the summer after their selection and throughout their time at U.Va.

Photo by Jane Haley

Each university will have 25 fellowships, all of which include a $30,000 stipend. The first Annenberg Fellows will be chosen in late spring, and their master’s degree work will begin in early fall. They will start classroom teaching in the fall of 2009.

"Preparing skilled educators to teach the nation’s children is one of the most important functions of any university, and certainly of the University of Virginia," U.Va. President John T. Casteen III said in a statement. "This fellowship support will enable the College of Arts & Sciences and the Curry School of Education to work together to educate and equip the next generation of effective teachers."

High-poverty urban and rural school districts across the nation have long struggled to attract and retain top-tier teachers.

"The problem is staggering," said Robert Pianta, dean of U.Va.’s education school. "In the whole population of new teachers, we lose half within the first five years. At high-poverty schools, the turnover rate is closer to 75 percent. At some of these schools, the rate is closer to 80 or 100 percent."

View the U.Va. Today article for link to a video of Robert Pianta discussing the Annenberg Fellowships

The fellowship program is financed by a $5 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation and a $1 million grant from the Carnegie Corp. of New York.

Though the initiative is funded for only three years, Pianta said he hopes to find a way to extend it at U.Va.

"I don’t want it to end after three years," he said. "I want to be able to say that we had a sustained impact on these schools."

One of the reasons U.Va. was chosen for the fellowships, Pianta said, is because U.Va. graduates frequently enroll in the Peace Corps, Teach for America and other service-oriented programs.

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U.Va. tests Viagra-like drug for women Source: The Associated Press

A drug that could do for women what Viagra has done for men is being tested at the University of Virginia. The drug is a testosterone-laden ointment called LibiGel and it’s intended to boost the libido of women who have lost interest in sex. It will be prescribed at U.Va. in coming months to women who are suffering from hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

The condition is believed to affect one-third of American women.

"It is the most common sexual problem that women have," said Dr. Anita Clayton, a psychiatrist with the U.Va. Health System and author of the 2007 book "Satisfaction: Women, Sex and the Quest for Intimacy."

U.Va. joins 99 other medical institutions participating in testing the drug’s efficacy and safety.

If given the green light by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Illinois-based BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc. hopes to offer the drug to any woman complaining of a low sex drive.

For now, though, Clayton will enroll 25 women between the ages of 30 and 65 to take part in the national study.

Those women must have had both ovaries surgically removed, be currently taking an estrogen supplement and be distressed about their lack of libido.

Ovariectomies, or surgical menopause, can lead to a drop in sexual interest because ovaries produce roughly half of the testosterone in a woman's body.

Testosterone plays a key role in sexual functioning for men and women.

LibiGel comes in a pump bottle. The woman rubs the small dot of gel into the skin of her upper arm. Over the next 24 hours, the gel’s testosterone seeps into her bloodstream, boosting her energy and libido.

Clayton, who is running the clinical trial at U.Va., said the drug is better than previous testosterone treatments because it keeps levels of the chemical constant, much like naturally occurring testosterone.

"I expect this will work," she said.

In its second-phase clinical trials at 17 institutions, LibiGel led to a 283 percent increase of satisfying sexual encounters for the women taking the drug.

"A lot of women have this problem, but unfortunately they’ve been largely ignored by pharmaceutical companies," said BioSante's chief executive, Stephen M. Simes. "It’s not fair that women have no drugs, while men have many."

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Many doctors at U.Va. make national Best Doctors list Source: U.Va. Health System

Dozens of University of Virginia physicians were named to the list of Best Doctors in America® by Best Doctors, Inc., the largest number ever for U.Va. This year 160 names made the list—35 more than appeared on the previous list in 2005.

Best Doctors database contains the names and professional affiliations of doctors chosen through a comprehensive peer-review survey that asks: "If you or a loved one needed a doctor in your specialty, to whom would you refer them?" The database represents the top 3 percent to 5 percent of physicians in more than 400 medical subspecialties. A Best Doctors physician goes through regular evaluations by the company in order to maintain his or her status as one of the Best Doctors in America.®

The Best Doctors are selected through a peer nomination process combined with additional research.  More than a quarter million doctors are surveyed in the evaluation process to make selections for each list.

The 160 U.Va. Health System physicians on the Best Doctors roster, listed with their specified medical specialty, are:

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© 2008 by the U.Va. Alumni Association