Retta Young

The next Coffee Talk presented by the Women’s Leadership Colloquium will take place on Tuesday, April 9, from 8 to 9 a.m. at *718 Venue, 718 Caroline St., Fredericksburg. Parking is available at Riverfront Park, George Street Lot and Sophia Street Parking Deck. Street parking is also available along Caroline Street. Register for the April Coffee Talk.

*Please note: The location for April’s Coffee Talk is 718 Venue in Fredericksburg. The event space has been graciously donated by Joy Crump, Founding Partner & Executive Chef, and Beth Black, Founding Partner, of Foode + Mercantile and 718 Venue. Attendees will receive a 10% discount on coffee from Italian Station when they mention they are there for the Coffee Talk session.

The session, titled “Rising Strong: Navigating Life’s Challenges with Resilience,” will be presented by Retta Young, owner and senior advisor of Assisted Living Locators.

We all face challenges and adversity in our lives, and it can feel difficult (sometimes impossible) to pick ourselves up and push through after a setback. In this session we’ll discuss how to recover our strength and faith in ourselves in order to navigate life’s challenges with resilience!

Originally hailing from Long Island, New York, Retta boasts a distinguished 22-year career in the federal government. Her journey began as a Budget Analyst, and she steadily climbed the ranks, assuming pivotal roles such as Contract Specialist, Supervisor Senior Contract Specialist, Deputy Director, and ultimately, Director of Acquisitions.

Retta’s career in federal government continued with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) until 2022, where she contributed her skills to the Financial Management & Budget Office Division. In 2022, she embarked on a new chapter, pursuing her entrepreneurial dreams by becoming a franchise owner and Senior Living Advisor for Assisted Living Locators.

Take Back the Night will take place Thursday, April 11, at 6:30 p.m. on the Lee Hall Patio (Rain location: Lee Hall 411)

Let’s speak out against sexual violence. Join us for an empowering evening of support and healing for survivors and their allies!

If you are interested in speaking at the event, scan the QR code on the poster to the right or sign up online.

Contact Melissa Palguta or Amiria Niori with questions.

This event is sponsored by the Talley Center for Counseling Services in collaboration with CPE, Doctors without Borders, Empower House, FAHASS, Mr. Reggie’s Snow Cones, One Note Stand, PRISM, RCASA, Safe Harbour, Safe Zone and more.

Join us for the Annual Student Art Exhibit April 11 to 28, 2024 at DuPont Gallery! The opening reception and awards will be April 11, 5 to 7 p.m.

ASPIRE Week will take place April 15 to 20.

Get excited because UMW SGA is excited to announce our second annual ASPIRE Week! ASPIRE week is a week to celebrate UMW community values spelled out in the letters ASPIRE! ASPIRE Week will be held April 15 to 20, so please mark the date in your calendars. We will see you then!

Learn more about UMW’s ASPIRE principles and values.

On Tuesday, March 12, you should have received an email invitation to participate in a short survey about your experiences and knowledge of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on creating new content, such as images, text, music, or speech, based on existing data. Some examples are applications like Chat GPT, Dall-E, Copilot, and Gemini.

Your participation in the survey is at the request of the AI Working Group, a cross-disciplinary team of faculty and staff who are exploring the opportunities and challenges of AI at UMW.  It will take approximately 5 minutes to complete and is completely anonymous. Your responses will help us understand the current state and future directions of generative AI use in teaching, learning, and work at UMW.

We thank you for your time and input,

The AI Working Group

UMW Campus Community,

The Apogee project to upgrade the UMW MyResNet network is now complete as of Friday, March 1, ahead of schedule. Students in the residence halls need to create a login via the new portal to access the upgraded service. Single sign-on is available, so students can use their umw.edu NetID. In addition, the Apogee wireless network is available to residential students outside of the residence halls. Occasional re-authentication will be required using single sign-on.

For visitors to the residence halls, a guest portal is also available for temporary access up to six hours at a time. Residents should log-in using the new portal to access the faster internet speeds. Instructional posters will be available in each residence halls, and students learn more by reviewing this video of how to connect to the upgraded services.

The wireless network upgrade features faster internet speeds enhanced to 150/50 Mbps with up to 10 devices on the network simultaneously, an increase from prior networks. Residents have a user-based personal area network (PAN) and can connect wireless printers, gamer devices and IoT devices, and these devices should be able to see each other, just like a home network. Users also have an easy PSK (personal share key) for device onboarding.

As part of the service, Apogee continues to offer one click call/chat for student support and specialized gaming support. If you have any questions or issues with the ResNet by Apogee services, contact their 24/7/365 support center at 877-478-8808. They can help you add devices to your account (printers, phones, game consoles, etc.).

If you are experiencing any problems with Apogee Support not resolving your issues, please contact the UMW IT Help Desk to let us know.

Hall Cheshire
Chief Information Officer
hcheshir@umw.edu

Seacobeck Hall

At its 69th annual membership meeting on Saturday, March 9, the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation Inc. (HFFI) recognized people, businesses, and institutions that have made outstanding contributions to preserving the unique cultural heritage and historic built environment of the Fredericksburg area.

UMW’s Seacobeck renovation project picked up an award for recognizing the act of preservation through the rehabilitation of historically significant resources in Fredericksburg. Seacobeck received the E. Boyd Graves Preservation Award, named for one of HFFI’s founding members who played an instrumental role in protecting, preserving, and adaptively reusing some of Fredericksburg’s most recognizable historic landmarks

According to the HFFI press release:

In the UMW project, the university undertook a historically sensitive rehabilitation project to adaptively reuse the 1931 Seacobeck Hall designed by architect Charles Robinson. The project converted the former dining hall into a mix of “classrooms and lab space with the latest technologies, faculty offices, collaboration and group work rooms, student organization spaces, a large assembly space, a curriculum lab, and makerspace,” according to architects at the Richmond firm Hanbury. Members of Hanbury’s design team and the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company joined UMW Capital Outlay Director Gary Hobson in accepting HFFI’s E. Boyd Graves Preservation Award, presented by Professor Michael Spencer, author of UMW’s Campus Preservation Plan and acting Chair of the Department of Historic Preservation.

HFFI’s Board of Directors is pleased to honor these exceptional individuals and organizations for their unwavering commitment to preserving Fredericksburg’s rich history, architectural legacy, and cultural landscape. Their dedication serves as inspiration to us all, reminding us of the important ways that historic preservation nurtures our collective memory and challenges us to learn from the past.

For more information, visit the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation Inc. website.

The following message is from the Office of Advancement and Alumni Engagement:

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

I am writing to announce an exciting opportunity to secure funding for your projects through the new Fund for Mary Washington Impact Grants. Through this pilot program, donor-funded grants of $500 to $5,000 will be awarded to support projects and initiatives that advance programs, lead to professional/academic growth, and/or exemplify the University’s ASPIRE values.

The application form is now open at alumni.umw.edu/impactgrants, and the deadline to apply is March 29. Proposals will be accepted from faculty, staff, and student leaders applying on behalf of recognized student organizations. UMW’s Alumni Association Board of Directors, with input from the Young Alumni Council, will evaluate proposals on the criteria outlined here. Finalists will be announced by April 15 and will be invited to present their proposals on the morning of April 20, when final funding decisions will be made. Grants will support projects and initiatives to be completed between May 2024 and May 2025. The attached flyer provides an overview, and answers to FAQs are available here.

Please reach out to Executive Director of Development Beth Hunsinger ’01 with questions: ehunsing@umw.edu or (540) 654-2068.

Katie Turcotte
Vice President for Advancement and Alumni Engagement