Near West End

Photo is from twitter.

Officials at the University of Richmond tonight say the area has been thoroughly searched and they do not believe a suspected armed man spotted in the library earlier today is on campus or in the neighborhood.

“Police feel the suspect has left the campus and the area,” said university spokesman Brian Eckert.

Authorities, however, are continuing their investigation while the school will reopen as scheduled Wednesday.

The university is asking employees, faculty and students to be vigilant and report any suspicious behavior. Also, Eckert said, there will be extra patrols overnight and tomorrow.

After first checking Boatwright Library, where the man was reported seen between 2:30 and 2:45 p.m., police inspected other buildings on the locked-down campus and the neighborhood, Richmond Police Chief Rodney Monroe said earlier tonight.

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The University of Richmond is trying to ease neighbors concerns about traffic of a proposed expansion to First Market Stadium, by agreeing to a timeline for road improvements, and trying to guide stadium traffic through entrances with the least neighborhood impact.  The proposed $25 million football stadium expansion, which would hold 8,700 people, will need a special use permit from the city.

John K. McCulla, coordinator of university relations, and other UR officials met last night with neighboring residents to brief them on the project.

After the meeting, McCulla said university officials are willing to improve UR Drive by the stadium’s opening in fall 2010 and to build a connecting road from Crenshaw Way to Spider Lane by fall 2011.

The improvements are expected to make UR Drive, one of two campus entrances from River Road and one of four overall, more inviting for stadium traffic. It also should have the least impact on neighbors.

McCulla said the timelines and new limits on stadium noise and lighting will be part of a revised permit application to be filed this week. University officials are hoping for approval by the Planning Commission and City Council in June.

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I was lucky to talk briefly with Julie Rechel, the Richmonder who won the Twenty-12 Talent Identification Triathlon in Tuscaloosa, AL,  last week.
 I asked her if she had any idea, going into this race,  that she might win it. “I had no idea!” she said. “I looked up all my competition — and I was going to be so excited if I was in the first half (of the finishers). It really took me by surprise.”

Rechel is a distance runner at UR who is described on the UR website as a three sport athlete.  The three sports?  Swimming, running, tennis.   Since this was a talent competition to scout for potential triathletes for the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, you’d think that it would drastically change her plans. But it hasn’t. “Right now the only thing it changes is that I’ll now race U23 Elite.”  She says if the Olympics are in her future, it is far  in the future.

Rechel is both talented and humble. “I’m not particularly outstanding at any one (event) but I”m good at them all. I can can improve in each, but there is not one that stands out as my weakness.” In training she said she’s been focusing on the bike leg, biking mostly on Old Gun Road and Riverside Drive, and she’s glad she spent so much time on the bike because that is what ended up winning it for her.  It didn’t hurt that she had a personal best on the run either.
“I had a phenomenal run. I dropped 1 minute off the best run of my life.” Previously, at a 5K that was not part of a triathlon, her best time was 18.52 but in this race even after the swim and pushing herself on the bike, she came in at 18.39.

“I love this sport of triathlon. I love the training. I love the athletes” 

Thanks to a vigilant female student at University of Richmond, a suspected rapist is off the streets of Richmond.

A man awaiting trial on rape charges in Hanover County had his bond revoked after a University of Richmond student said he had been watching her and acting suspiciously.

Timothy Hargett, 29, of Henrico County faces felony charges of abduction, object sexual penetration, and two counts each of rape and forcible sodomy.

In that case, a woman told authorities that she was raped and forced to perform oral sex early the morning of Dec. 2 in a car in the Mechanicsville area.

The University of Richmond was among 48 universitiues to receive money from The Howard Hughes Medical Institute. UR will get $1.4 million towards its teaching computer science to introductory science course students.

A year ago, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute issued a challenge to 224 undergraduate colleges nationwide: identify creative new ways to engage your students in the biological sciences.

Now 48 of the nation’s best undergraduate institutions will receive $60 million to help them usher in a new era of science education.

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Computational Tie Binds Interdisciplinary Classes

If you want to see the big picture in science, you’ve got to learn to crunch the numbers. That’s a theme at the University of Richmond, where faculty funded by a $1.4 million HHMI grant are teaching computer science in their introductory science courses.

“We’ve found that students who don’t have at least a rudimentary background in programming are at a real disadvantage,” says HHMI grant director Kathy Hoke, a mathematician. “The ties that bind disciplines tend to be computational.”

The faculty at this Richmond, Va., institution aim to expose students to computer science and more in a new, two-semester course that replaces standard introductory classes in computer science, biology, chemistry, physics, and math. Instead of learning these subjects in isolation, students will approach them in an interdisciplinary way. Students will use their programming skills to investigate pertinent science questions, such as modeling key HIV proteins and analyzing their ability to bind to inhibitory drugs. That class will prepare students for upper-level courses in each field, which they can pursue from their sophomore years onward.

“We want our students to think algorithmically,” Hoke explains, saying it will better prepare the students for a career in science. “And we’ll structure the class so they learn to answer questions like this by drawing from different perspectives, such as molecular biology, thermodynamic analysis, and mathematical modeling.”

The emphasis on computation is also reflected in newly-offered courses in bioinformatics, biophysics, computational science, neuropharmacology, and systems biology. Hoke says these subjects all combine elements from multiple fields; progress in each one is dependent on the use of databases and quantitative methods. Systems biology, for instance, draws heavily on genomics and molecular biology, which are data-intensive fields.

The same can be said for epidemiology, which looks for medical trends in human populations. Using its HHMI grant, Richmond is adding a new faculty member in epidemiology this year. “Epidemiology draws on multiple disciplines, and it’s an area that we currently don’t have expertise in,” Hoke says. “And we’ve found that questions about disease really engage students from a variety of different majors.”

Julie Rechel, age 20, of the University of Richmond, finished as the first place female at the Twenty-12 Talent Identification Triathlon in Tuscaloosa, Alabama this weekend. She won the race with at time of 1:06:57.
Sunday’s race was a chance for USA Triathlon or USAT officials to scout and develop talent for the Olympic Games in 2012 or 2016.

Rechel, a student at the University of Richmond, said she didn’t expect to be out front on the bike in the women’s race. “I just held on and brought it home on the run,” she said.

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The location of the April 10 symposium kicking off the inauguration of Edward L. Ayers as president of the University of Richmond has been changed to accommodate high demand for tickets.

“New Perspectives on the American Civil War” will be held on campus at the Robins Center at 4:30 p.m. April 10. A book-signing by the three panelists — Ayers, Harvard University president and history professor Drew Gilpin Faust, and University of Virginia professor of the Civil War Gary W. Gallagher — will follow.

Ticket requests have significantly exceeded the capacity of the originally scheduled location, 600-seat Camp Concert Hall, and continue to come in. Admission is free and open to the public, but advance online registration is required at inauguration.richmond.edu. For more information, call 804-287-1800.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will speak at the University of Richmond tomorrow. Let’s hope he has something good to say about the economy! As for me, my entire tax refund and economic stimulus check, and vacation allowance will be going towards a new $3,000 transmission in husband’s car. Wonder how much that will do for the local economy.

The national spotlight will be on Richmond tomorrow when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will speak to the World Affairs Council of Greater Richmond.

About 235 business representatives are expected to attend the sold-out luncheon at the University of Richmond. An overflow room for students and others also will be filled, said council President Randolph Bell, former U.S. ambassador at large.

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University of Richmond police are investigating the simulated lynching of a miniature black doll as a possible hate crime.

“When I actually saw what had been done, it took my breath away,” said Walter Schoen, chairman of the university’s department of theater and dance, who discovered the figure hanging by a noose in a small studio theater.

Schoen described the green and red elf-like character as a Christmas decoration that has been around for at least the past two years. It was brought to school by a student as part of a fraternity initiation ceremony that involved giving a present, he said.

Just under 2 feet tall and considered female, the figure had become a good-luck charm, Schoen said, that was kept in the lighting booth.

“Some of the kids would even talk to it,” Schoen said.

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Join the Friends of Bandy Park, and Richmond City Parks and Rec and help plant seedlings at Bandy Field Friday starting at 2 p.m.

The University of Richmond has donated 135 seedling trees, which student volunteers from the university and members of the non-profit citizen group, Friends of Bandy Field, will help Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities plant at Bandy Field Nature Park on Friday, April 4, starting at 2 p.m.

The park is located on Three Chopt Road west of Patterson Avenue near the university.

The tree planting is one of the programs planned in conjunction with the April 10-11 inauguration of the university’s new president, Edward L. Ayers, and reflects the university’s focus on protecting the environment. As part of President Ayer’s inauguration, the university is donating a total of 178 trees that will be planted in various locations around the city—in honor of the university’s 178-year history.

The University of Richmond held the first of two public hearings last night regarding the new football stadium proposed on campus. Neighbors are concerned that traffic for the stadium, which will hold almost 9,000 people, will be a problem.

NBC12 reports:

Right now, the Spiders play at the hard-to-fill stadium near Carytown. Construction on the new campus stadium can’t begin until the city of Richmond approves a special-use permit - which likely won’t happen until early June.

The Spiders hope to take to the new field in fall of 2010. A second public meeting is scheduled for April 29 at Weinstein Hall.

The University of Richmond has named its new chief academic officer.

Stephen Allred will join the university as its provost and vice president for academic affairs on July 1. He is executive associate provost and professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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The University of Richmond will hold two public meetings to update the community on plans to expand First Market Stadium, the campus multipurpose stadium.
The first will take place April 1 at 7 p.m. at Jepson Hall, Room 118. The second will be held April 29 at 7 p.m. at Weinstein Hall in the Brown-Alley Room.
To register to attend the sessions or for more information, call (804) 289-8694. For information about the stadium project, visit the First Market Stadium Expansion Info Center online .

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A law student at the University of Richmond died Saturday afternoon after he fell off a cliff during a hiking trip to the popular Crabtree Falls, relatives said yesterday.

Robert Slimak, 26, was on a weekend camping trip with a group of Virginia Commonwealth University alumni when he slid down a rock and fell about 150 feet, said his sister Katherin Crossling.

Slimak, a native of Northern Virginia, had lived in the Richmond area since he came to VCU for his undergraduate studies in 1999.

He later went to the University of Richmond to pursue a law degree and was to graduate in May, said his wife, Holly Slimak, 24.

Crabtree Falls, a popular hiking destination in Nelson County off state Route 56, about two hours from Richmond, is “the highest vertical-drop cascading waterfall east of the Mississippi River,” according to the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the area.

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About 15 years ago, back in 1993, I was on the Lecture Committee at Virginia Commonwealth University. No, we didn’t lecture people…I think it was just a poorly named group. We actually were a committee of students who gathered together to choose speakers to come to the university and talk to us. For a short while there, I was the chair and vice chair of the committee. We brought Malcolm X’s daughter, Atillah Shabazz, Alan Ginsberg, Nadine Strossen, Chuck D and more to the university to speak to the students. The fringe benefit was we also got to take these folks out to dinner and pick their brain. Of all the folks we picked, I’d say Chuck D was the most popular. And while I did get to take him out, because of his popularity, I didn’t get to say much….there must have been 10 people taking him out, instead of the 3 we had who wanted to escort Alan Ginsberg.
Anyhow, 15 year later, it seem Chuck D is still relevant….and now, even the University of Richmond wants to hear what he has to say, and invited him to their leadership forum. Something I can’t say I thought I’d ever see. Actually, his comment seem remarkably similar to what I heard about 15 years ago. Almost identical, I’d say. I guess we were pretty cutting edge back at VCU in 1993.

“It takes real minds and real people to do real things,” said the rapper/author/activist/political commentator/producer and advocate for the Internet.

“Americans are short on geography and history, especially black folks who don’t know who we are or where we come from,” he said during a visit to the University of Richmond’s Jepson Leadership Forum yesterday.

Knowledge — especially history — he said, is power. But using it may make one unpopular.

“We’re in a country that doesn’t give props for intelligence,” he said.

“Young, intelligent people stay quiet. In the last 15 years, the bully who used to get a dunce cap is getting a crown and is rewarded.”

Commercial radio and television are responsible for a lot of the dumbing down, he said. Corporations, he said, profit by keeping consumers ignorant. But he believes they can overcome it.

Education is the solution, he said. “Study black music, and you’ll get black history by default.

If you take a look at UR’s Jepson Leadership Forum’s past lineup, there are lots of great events that they’ve recently held. Next up:

Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
Wednesday, April 2, 7 p.m.
Jepson Alumni Center

The first black woman to be appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard Law is the author of numerous articles on democratic theory, political representation, educational equity and issues of race and gender. A leading voice for political reform, she advocates rethinking race and class and changing the way we look at affirmative action. She is the author of Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice, The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy, co-author of Who’s Qualified? and co-author of The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy. Book signing

The University of Richmond’s stay in the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament was a short one for the third consecutive year.

Fifth-seeded Saint Joseph’s eliminated fourth-seeded UR 61-47 in the quarterfinals Thursday afternoon at Boardwalk Hall. Richmond hasn’t won an A-10 tournament game since beating Rhode Island in the opening round of 2005.

Saint Joseph’s outscored UR 16-0 during a first-half stretch, took a 10-point lead, and the Spiders never really threatened the Hawks the rest of the way. Richmond’s largest deficit was 19 points, with 5:15 left.

The Spiders (16-14) now wait for Sunday, when they’ll discover if they will be included in the fields of the National Invitation Tournament, of the College Basketball Invitational. The Hawks (20-11) advance to Friday afternoon’s semifinal vs. top-seeded Xavier, which eliminated Dayton in yesterday’s first quarterfinal.

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I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the University of Richmond is crazy for thinking that Three Chopt Road could handle all of the traffic of a real university football stadium and run it through their petite entrances on extremely narrow streets. This week, Style Weekly writes about the big players involved.

While the University of Richmond moves forward with pre-season deals to expand its on-campus football stadium, neighbors have made an aggressive draft pick to help voice their traffic concerns.

Anticipating ongoing negotiations with the city and the university, the Three Chopt Road Civic Association has retained Ralph “Bill” Axselle Jr. — an attorney who parlayed his 16 years of service in the House of Delegates into a career as a powerful lobbyist.

“We’re confident the city will, at the end of the day, impose the appropriate conditions,” says Axselle, who received his law degree from UR.

For years the university has wanted to move its Spider football team home from the old, hard-to-fill 22,000-seat city stadium south of Carytown. In January, UR announced that a $5 million donation from the Robins Foundation had pushed it over the $25 million fundraising goal line. The school filed for a special-use permit with the city Feb. 20 seeking clearance to enlarge the existing on-campus First Market Stadium from 3,000 seats to 8,700 seats.

Three Chopt Road Civic Association’s president, William Berry, says he’ll monitor modifications to the sound and lighting scheme, but neighbors are worried most about the traffic.

“We’re not opposed to the stadium; we just want them to do it right,” says Berry, former president of Dominion Resources and a UR alumnus. He says the university needs to consider adding an additional entrance or exit to the stadium to keep traffic from clogging Three Chopt Road.

Adding another entrance or exit could get tricky. The backside of the property touches Henrico County. Tuckahoe District Supervisor Pat O’Bannon says residents along Horsepen Road are also wary of traffic and are opposed to a proposed new road connecting Horsepen to the university.

John McCulla, UR’s community relations director, says the university has brainstormed ideas to stem the traffic: reserving the lots nearest the field for vehicles with four or more fans, installing more bike racks, providing an internal shuttle system to make inconvenient parking less so and launching a campaign to make visitors more aware of other campus entrances.

He says the indoor basketball arena next to the stadium, the Robins Center, seats just more than 9,000, and the university has responsibly managed traffic from the season’s 15 home games for years.

The specter of those extra few days of heavy traffic may provide an opening for the neighbors to address the situation.

“If you come up with another entrance and exit,” Berry says, “then you’ve solved a problem for football, but you’ve also solved it for the Robins Center and the rest of the university. It’s a three-fer.”

CSTV.com reports on the University of Richmond’s loss to Princeton in the baseball season opener:

UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, Va. - Princeton capitalized on two costly Richmond errors in the seventh inning to score four unearned runs and beat Richmond, 8-5, Saturday in the first game of a three-game series at Pitt Field. The Spiders, who led 2-1 in the fifth, tried to mount a last-inning comeback but freshman’s Andrew Lowry’s first collegiate homer — a three-run shot — wasn’t enough

In its highest finish in 6 years, the University of Richmond Spiders basketball team is tied for third place in the Atlantic 10 Conference. The Spiders play Xavier on tomorrow at the Cintas Center.

Squash player, world ranked #2 Egyptian Ramy Ashour, takes on Canadian qualifier David Philips in straight games at the University of Richmond. photo by Patricia Lyons

Squash has taken over this city. Pro squash players are in the Near West End for the 2008 Davenport Professional Squash Championship being held at the high visibility glass-walled court at the University of Richmond now through Saturday. Too bad the rest of the matches are sold out. The tournament is the largest in North America.

Locally, bloggers and Style Weekly have been covering the squash mania.
And hey, I learned something new. Not only is March 15th the Ides of March, but also
it is World Squash Day.