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By Chris Davis
February 24, 2009
By Chris Davis
May 1, 2009
By Chris Davis
September 16, 2009
By Chris Davis
October 27, 2009
By Chris Davis
November 16, 2009
By Chris Davis
December 6, 2009
Construction at U of R Limits Commuter Parking
By Chris Davis
December 6, 2009
December 6, 2009
RICHMOND, Va. -- The University of Richmond has undertaken four major construction projects that are reducing available commuter parking spaces in several lots around campus.
The university has reassigned some of the already-limited commuter lots (C-lots) near work areas to construction workers, providing space for worker parking, construction equipment, several trailers, and several portable bathrooms.
In one parking lot alone, Andrew McBride, an architect for the university, said they “lost probably 60 parking spaces.” In all, he went on, “at least a couple hundred, maybe 300” spaces have been sacrificed to the workers.
The university has allowed displaced commuters to park in alternate lots around campus, but at peak hours, usually between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., many of the lots become overcrowded, forcing students to circle until a space becomes available or try a different lot altogether.
Additionally, construction has closed both law school parking lots. Law students are also being relocated to the already-overcrowded alternate lots.
“The law students have been the ones that have been most affected” by the construction, said McBride, noting that the east grandstand for the new E. Claiborne Robins Stadium encroaches on a previous law school lot. The lot on the other side of the stadium, also usually reserved for law students, has also been converted. “Half of that parking lot is basically a road,” McBride said.
Some commuter students, like senior Hayley Swinson, complain that while the university provides more than adequate parking for faculty and staff, some professors park in student spots. Since students are not permitted to park in faculty spaces, Swinson said, there is no way to relieve the overcrowding.
“It’s frustrating…because some of the professors will park in student parking spots even though there are plenty of spaces in their lot, and I end up circling for ten minutes trying to find a spot.”
In response to the lack of parking spaces, many students began parking in grassy areas between spots. However, university parking services was quick to crack down on the illegal parking with a flurry of parking violations.
“That eliminated…10 or 15 potential additional spaces,” said Swinson. “There’s a lot of pine straw in there that isn’t taken up by spaces….I don’t see why that was a problem. It’s not like they were parking in a garden.”
Since parking violations are billed directly to the student’s account, many students do not realize the effects of parking illegally until the end of the semester. And some students, said Swinson, simply do not care.
“Some students, assuming their parents are paying their student accounts, don’t really care that they’re getting parking tickets,” she said. In some instances, she continued, students have added thousands of dollars to their tuition because of tickets.
And as for the students who continue to neglect their violations, “eventually they get their cars kicked off campus,” said Swinson.
Though the new construction and renovations will add more than 100,000 square-feet to the university’s facilities, there are no plans to expand parking. While he admits that “parking has certainly been an issue,” McBride said that the issue concerns the convenience, not number, of parking spots.
“We’re not adding any new parking,” McBride said. “We’ve got plenty of parking on campus. It’s just is it where you want it to be?”
Juxtaposed from displaced commuters, junior resident student Casey Kelly said she doesn’t have much trouble with parking on campus. While the construction projects do create a dangerous and noisy environment, Kelly noted “they don’t interfere with [her] life too much.”
However, parking is not only a problem during classes. Various sporting events around the campus attract audiences from the entire Richmond area.
“When we have a basketball game, parking is pretty tight,” said Kelly. And with the addition of the Robins Stadium, scheduled for completion in August of 2010, the influx of fans for home games might further strain the limited parking.
Kelly, a lacrosse player at the University of Richmond, said she is not excited about the university’s decision not to increase parking to accompany the new 8,600-seat stadium.
“Once we get the stadium on campus there [are] going to be a ton of people coming in for the games,” said Kelly, adding, “I don’t know how much of a say I’m going to have on if they create more parking, but it would probably be a good idea if they did.”
In addition to the stadium, the university’s construction projects include an expansion of the Westhampton Deanery, including the addition of the Westhampton Center, a collaborative space for students; the Carole Weinstein International Center, designed to enhance the school’s treatment of international studies; and Queally Hall, an addition to the Robins School of Business. The reassigned lots will remain closed until the construction projects are completed by the end of 2010.
For more detailed information on the University of Richmond’s construction projects and parking lot closures, visit the university’s Web site at www.richmond.edu.
Profile: Mark Holmberg
By Chris Davis
November 16, 2009
November 16, 2009
RICHMOND, Va. -- Have you ever needed to find a bricklayer who could teach you biology and then write about it for an on-air newscast? If so, Mark Holmberg is the man for the job.
A journalist for WTVR, the CBS affiliate in Richmond, Holmberg writes, shoots, and edits a video column. The topic of each column is entirely up to Holmberg, and he often chooses subjects that conventional news might find trivial.
However, to Holmberg and his viewers, the journalist’s stories about subjects such as “haunted” houses provide quality journalism with a softer edge. And, after two years of airing the column, CBS is not showing signs of censorship.
Holmberg’s move to CBS in 2007 followed an interesting collection of interests and occupations, starting when he was in college. Majoring in biology, he quickly changed tracks after graduation, delving instead into the world of manual labor.
Laying bricks for nine years after college, Holmberg realized a natural ability for the work. If not for a badly-written concert review in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Holmberg might still be stacking bricks and mortar.
The article, a review of heavy metal artist Ozzy Osbourne, inspired Holmberg to try his hand at reviewing concerts. After watching the band Ratt perform a few nights later, Holmberg wrote an account of the concert and submitted it to the Times-Dispatch. That piece of journalism landed him a job as a free-lance music reviewer for the paper.
“I was interested in the world in a different way,” Holmberg said during a recent talk he gave in a journalism class at VCU. “I consider myself a scientist.”
After only a year of writing reviews, Holmberg was promoted to feature-writing, where the increasing poverty and crime in the city kept him busy for eight years. He gained prominence in Richmond during that time, and for the 11 years following, Holmberg wrote two columns a week for the paper, including the main Sunday column, in addition to his other writing.
When the paper pulled one of his columns from print following a slow financial decline caused by a decrease in advertising funds, Holmberg wrote one last piece concerning the newspaper itself and left the print journalism world.
Holmberg’s penchant for writing high-quality articles about interesting topics did not go unnoticed, though, and a call from CBS 6 ended his brief unemployment. He began producing a column similar to that which he wrote for the Times-Dispatch, but he was forced to adapt it for television.
At first, “it was horrible,” he said. “It just didn’t fit.” But after learning to shoot and edit his own footage, “it all started making sense,” and the video column blossomed into a success.
Perhaps the biggest difference between writing for print and for broadcast, Holmberg mused, was that broadcast writing relied much less on the writing to propel the story. With the capabilities of sound, video, and editing techniques, the actual copy of the story is less important.
Learning to rely on video and audio instead of the copy was both the most difficult and most productive adjustment Holmberg made at CBS.
“Once I quit writing, I started doing a good job,” he said. That’s not to say a broadcast journalist should ignore writing altogether, but since the video and sound drive the story, he said, he finds it easier to shoot the video before writing.
VCU School of Medicine Receives NIH Grant
By Chris Davis
October 27, 2009
October 27, 2009
RICHMOND, Va. -- Through these difficult economic times, cutbacks and layoffs have become a part of everyday life. But the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law in February of 2009 by President Obama, created a rare funding opportunity for many organizations and schools, including the VCU School of Medicine.
The School of Medicine accepted a grant of $1 million from the National Institutes of Health on Sep. 23, 2009. The grant, named “Community Partnership for Ethical Research,” will fund a program to determine the overall effectiveness of research and general health care in the Richmond community.
Through their research, a four-member team from the School of Medicine, led by Dr. Betsy Ripley, Professor of Medicine and senior chair of the Institutional Review Board at VCU, plans to map a more effective strategy for future research and clinical care in the Richmond area.
Ripley wants “to increase knowledge about research in the city,” citing the establishment of Community Advocates for Research (CARs), Richmond inhabitants who essentially serve as liaisons between the researchers and the rest of the community.
Not only does Ripley’s team “want the city to be full of CARs,” but they plan to recruit up to 12 community members to serve on the team with them.
The grant will not only pay for travel, equipment, and overhead paid to the university, it has also created three new jobs and will pay the salaries of the principal investigators in the study.
Additionally, the funds will allow Ripley’s team to pay the CARs in the study.
“Their skills and their time are just as important as ours,” added Ripley.
With the CARs, the team is trying to map hot spots for seizures in the city.
“Our goal is to map where all the seizures occur, and then map where all our contacts (CARs) are to see if we can truly cover the city,” said Ripley. In doing so, the city’s health system can become more responsive to the needs of its patients.
Ripley’s study is partly based on RAMPART (Rapid Anticonvulsant Medication Prior to ARrival Trial), a program being tested by many medical centers around the nation.
According to the Emory University School of Medicine’s Web site, RAMPART is working to determine the most effective way to stop prolonged seizures, or status epilipticus, whether with an IV or an intramuscular injection.
Ripley’s program, one of only about 200 proposals to receive funding, focuses more on the community, dealing with aspects of ethics and creating a network of information that can be disseminated easily throughout the population.
“Ethics is becoming a much bigger part of what the NIH is looking for,” said Ripley. And as for getting the information to the network, Ripley wants to “train the community advocates about research. Then they can take it out into their networks.”
However, she said, these networks can’t continue to grow without future funding.
VCU’s grant was just a small portion of the NIH’s allotment through the Recovery Act; with the $200 million they received from the act, the NIH established a series of Challenge Grants in a wide range of categories.
According to the NIH’s Web site, the 23-month grants are designated “Challenge Grants” because they address specific scientific research challenges, such as “specific knowledge gaps, scientific opportunities, new technologies, data generation, or research methods that would benefit from an influx of funds to quickly advance the area in significant ways.”
Profile: Tammie Smith
By Chris Davis
September 16, 2009
September 16, 2009
RICHMOND, Va. -- When most people think about medical reporting, images of doctors in lab coats rattling off endless strings of meaningless data generally follow. However, there is a lot of valuable information available to consumers if they have the medium to understand the jargon.
Tammie Smith is that medium.
During a recent visit to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Monroe Park Campus, Smith gave a talk to a Mass Communications class. Covering topics from her personal life to the intricacies of healthcare reporting, Smith provided insight into the world of print journalism.
A health and medical reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch for almost 10 years, Smith has been interested in covering the medical beat since early in her career. Everyone is involved with healthcare to some degree, she said during her visit, whether as medical professionals or simply consumers.
Not only did it interest her, she decided, but medical news would also interest her readers.
After graduating from Old Dominion University in 1983, Smith landed a job writing for The Journal and Guide in Norfolk, Va., relying on the education she acquired in her studies in communications and journalism.
Still a fresh face in the journalism world, Smith, like most rookies, did not have the opportunity to report on the larger issues, instead being relegated to the stories passed over by the veteran journalists.
Smith kept writing, though, and after four years with the Norfolk paper, she moved to Nashville in 1987 to pursue an opportunity writing for The Tennessean.
After several more years of writing for any beat she was assigned, the primary medical reporter at The Tennessean left the paper. Smith’s interest in healthcare resurfaced, and, seeing her opportunity to move up the journalism ladder, she applied for, and was promoted to, the position.
Smith said that her beat in Nashville was a great place for her to begin her career as true medical reporter. Not only was she covering only stories related to healthcare, but Nashville is home to two strong medical programs, Vanderbilt University and Meharry Medical College.
Smith’s proximity to these research centers put her in the middle of countless academic studies, allowing her to expand her repertoire of coverage.
In addition to the news from the medical research centers, Smith had first-hand access to much of the information sent out by HCA, Inc., one of the largest hospital chains in the nation.
Headquartered in Nashville, information on HCA’s advancements was just a phone call away. After six years of medical reporting for The Tennessean (13 years total employment), Smith brought her portfolio to Richmond in 2000.
Since her move, Smith has been a prominent health and medical reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Again, her proximity to a medical college, this time the Medical College of Virginia, has provided a wide range of research for her to review and report.
Smith has written many feature articles concerning public health while with the Times-Dispatch, and she doesn’t show signs of stopping.
City Council at Odds with CAR
By Chris Davis
February 24, 2009
February 24, 2009
RICHMOND, Va -- The Richmond City Council met yesterday to consider, among other items, the Commission of Architectural Review’s denial of a proposed 33-unit condominium development in Church Hill.
After arguments by the commission, the developers, and worried citizens, the council reversed the decision of the commission unanimously (barring Councilwoman Reva Trammell’s abstention), allowing Fulton Hill Properties to begin development on Oakwood Heights.
The property, which lies between 3618-3626 E. Broad St. and 3609-3611 E. Marshall St., is located in the Church Hill Historic District, sparking controversy over the project’s perceived misalignment with the City Code of Ordinances.
The code lays out requirements for new development in old and historic districts, giving this the appearance of a cut-and-dry case of compatible or incompatible design; however, as secretary of CAR Jim Hill noted in his presentation to the council, the commission is authorized to adopt additional guidelines to further restrict development.
“This denial is an attempt to strip away…my property rights,” said Margaret Freund, founder of Fulton Hill Properties, in her address to the council. Freund’s argument stressed the development’s compliance with the code, which, as another representative for Fulton Hill said, supersedes the non-binding guidelines.
To prevent the meeting from dragging on for hours of deliberations, City Council President Kathy Graziano suggested a suspension of the rules, giving each side of the debate 15 minutes to argue for or against the project. After a quick affirming vote and the developers’ arguments, upwards of 35 residents lined up to
express their dislike of the project.
The opposition primarily cited references in the adopted guidelines to issues of massing in the surrounding neighborhood. Massing refers to the number of units available for occupation in a development. This 33-unit behemoth, which one resident said “cannot overcome the issue of massing,” is not compatible with the single-family homes and duplexes common to the area, according to the commission’s ruling.
Even though the complex is compatible with the district regulations, noted Church Hill Association President John Johnson, it does not fit with the existing architecture on the street. “Just because you have the right,” he asked the council, “does that mean you should?”
Despite the opposition’s turnout, their 15 minutes expired with almost 30 residents still in line to speak.
Following deliberations in which the council members clarified the codes for the district, the council sided with Freund, valuing district standards under law over the additional community guidelines.
This decision marked the end of a three-year conflict between Freund and the city to obtain permission to develop the condos.
The council also voted last night to approve a conservation and open space easement on the James River, which ensures the city’s ownership and management of the river and parks system indefinitely, which Graziano said “guarantees this park will always be a natural area.”
Council members sympathized with the 10-year struggle by environmentalists, such as Amber Foster. Speaking at the meeting, she said the easement was necessary to “preserve the natural character” of the river. The ordinance received unanimous support from the council members.
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