Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

Page 317 of 549

PVCC: 1,000 More Students Coming

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 21, 2005 in Education. 5 Comments

A projection by the State Council of Higher Education (SCHEV) shows that 40,000 students more than the current number will expect to receive an education from the Virginia college system come 2012, but there’s just not the capacity to handle them. One thousand of those will expect to go to PVCC. Melanie Mayhew wrote in yesterday’s Daily Progress:

Demand projections indicate that nearly 1,000 additional students will want to enroll by 2012 at Piedmont Virginia Community College, which President Frank Friedman believes the college cannot accommodate without additional state funding.

“We would love to educate all of those students, but the state must fund our capacity so we can accept all of those students,” he said. “The handwriting is on the wall. In 2012, we’re going to have thousands of students turned away unless the state takes action now. More and more Virginians will be squeezed out of higher education.”

[…]

Although PVCC will be able to accommodate all of its 4,300 students this fall, steadily climbing enrollment figures will limit students’ choice of classes and class times, Friedman said.

I can say, having just graduated from Virginia Tech in May, that overcrowding is currently a tremendous problem. Our class sizes were limited not by the number of seats, but by the fire marshall, who began to audit classrooms to determine how many students could safely sit on the steps, stand in the aisles, and peek through the doorway. Freshmen are told at orientation that it will take five years to graduate, because there’s not enough room in the classes that they need.

I figure that we need to either increase funding or limit growth. If there’s another solution, I don’t see it.

Honor Probe Concludes

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 21, 2005 in UVa. Closed

The economics department has concluded their investigation into a possible large-scale cheating incident, Leah Nylen reports in today’s Cavalier Daily. But they’re not saying what came of it. Citing the small size of the economics department, the honor chair said that public information regarding any cases would not be made available.

It certainly looks like the economics department and the honor committee decided to keep this one quiet, to avoid a repeat of the major UVa cheating scandal a few years ago, but I’m certainly no expert on UVa’s honor code.

AFP Moves to a Quasi-Blog Format

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 19, 2005 in Meta News. Closed

The Augusta Free Press — formed out of the ashes of the Valley Observer — has announced that they’re switching their format. Rather than produce an issue each day, they’ll instead release articles as they’re written, over the course of the day, as events unfold. The internet-only publication, which covers Shenandoah Valley and state politics in equal measures, is created with Userland’s site management software, which happens to also be blogging software. (The Hook uses the same software to produce their site.) The AFP will be a curious hybrid of a newspaper and a blog, something that I’ve certainly never seen before. Tuesday was their first day of publishing in the new format.

Council to Challenge Census

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 18, 2005 in Development and Politics. 5 Comments

The April census numbers for Charlottesville report that the population has dropped by 8.7% since 2000, but City Council isn’t buying it. At tonight’s City Council meeting, they voted unanimously to formally challenge the Census Bureau’s findings, asking for a recount, WCAV reports. Getting the number right is important, because state and federal funding is often based on the population size — if our population is being underestimated, then we’re not getting our fair share.

A quick Google perusal shows that such challenges are common, for the same reasons cited by the city. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

Belmont Growing Up

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 18, 2005 in Business and Development. 3 Comments

Just a few years ago, Belmont was almost entirely residential, with only a few businesses, the sorts that had been there for decades. Now, with the hipification of the neighborhood and some hot spots clumped together, it’s all changing. David Hendrick writes in today’s Progress:

Following in the pioneering path of the popular tapas restaurants Mas, a trio of new businesses – one open, two soon to come, are bringing an increasingly commercial, urban feel to a pocket of the neighborhood.

Come fall, it looks likely that a combination wildlife photo gallery and café will share space at the Monticello Road-Hinton Avenue nexus with a fine dining jazz club and the already bustling La Taza, a coffee bar and eatery.

[…]

“It’s very unusual in that it has a village sort of feel,” Easter said of the area surrounding La Taza. “Some people describe it as the Soho of Charlottesville, which really cracks me up.”

What this new Belmont feel reminds me of, more than anything else, is the urban pockets that circle suburban Paris, a few miles outside of the arrondissements. I like it.

Sideblog