May 21, 2013

Get Energized for Your Weekend with Yoga at the James Monroe Museum!

May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Get your weekend started on a healthy kick with yoga in the James Monroe Museum garden! Work out the kinks from your work week and connect with nature during classes led by teachers from Fredericksburg’s Healing Arts Yoga. Bonus: when you finish, you’re right around the corner from the Farmer’s Market! It’s a perfect Saturday morning.

Drop-in classes are $12 each, held from 8 to 9 a.m. on Saturdays (May 25 to June 29). All ages and skill levels welcome! We recommend bringing a yoga mat. E-mail auphaus@umw.edu with questions.

This program allows the museum to participate in First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move! Museums and Gardens” initiative.

Filed Under: What's New @ UMW Tagged With:

Stafford Campus Blood Drive – 6/13

May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

The American Red Cross will be sponsoring a blood drive at the Stafford Campus on Thursday June 13th.  The drive will take place in the University Hall from 1:30-6:30.  All those who donate will be entered into a raffle to win a Movie Treat basket (Regal Cinema Gift Card, Microwave popcorn, M&Ms, etc.).  To make an appointment to donate, please contact Kevin Caffrey at kcaffrey@umw.edu or 540-286-8008.

Filed Under: Newsletter On Campus, UMW Home Page Announcements, What's New @ UMW

Green WOW Card Deadline: May 31, 2013

May 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

All 200 green WOW cards for this cycle have been issued!  Thank you, supervisors, for recognizing your employees in this way!

The deadline for cashing in green WOW cards is close of business, Friday May 31st .  Employees who haven’t already cashed their green cards can do so by visiting the cashiers in Lee Hall by 5/31!  The next green WOW card cycle will begin in September.  In the meantime, please utilize the other recognition options available to you:

Yellow WOW cards (recognition leave): http://adminfinance.umw.edu/hr/employee-relations/employee-recognition/umw-wow-card-program/yellow-wow-card-program/

#1 FAN Program: http://adminfinance.umw.edu/hr/employee-relations/employee-recognition/colleague-recognition-program/

Filed Under: What's New @ UMW Tagged With:

Volunteers Needed for Marine Corps Half Marathon

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

UMW is a sponsor of the Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon on Sunday, May 19. We will have a booth at the Fredericksburg Expo Center on Friday, May 17 from 4–8 p.m. and Saturday, May 18 from 10 a.m.–7 p.m. This is where runners pick up their packets. We will be handing out branded towels as well as information about UMW. We are looking for volunteers for two-hour shifts. It’s a great opportunity to meet and greet folks from all over the country.

We also need volunteers for the UMW water stop bright and early Sunday morning. You can hydrate AND encourage the 7,000 runners as they make their way down Sunken Road.

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Kelly Eury at keury@umw.edu.

Filed Under: What's New @ UMW

UMW’s ThinkLab Makerspace featured in EDUCAUSE

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

8104216938_f27446563b_z-150x150The innovative ThinkLab Makerspace in the Simpson Library of UMW has been featured in the latest publication from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s 7 Things series on rapid innovation. UMW is cited alongside Stanford, Rutgers, and Case Westerns among other institutions for recognizing early on the importance of makerspaces as a way to inspire self-directed and hands-on learning using emerging technologies like 3D printing, robotics, and e-textiles. DTLT and UMW’s work has been featured in past issues of the 7 Things series on a variety of topics including MOOCs, WordPress, and 3D Printing technology. The full paper can be found on the EDUCAUSE website in PDF and ePub format.

Filed Under: What's New @ UMW Tagged With: , , ,

DTLT’s Innovative Work featured in The Blue Review

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Leslie Madsen-Brooks featured the long history of innovative work coming out of UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technology in her article “Beyond Disruption” for The Blue Review. Below is a somewhat extensive quote from the article:

Those who have been paying attention only to partnerships among Silicon Valley companies and the Ivies may be surprised that the beating heart of a tremendous amount of academic technology innovation is a small state university in Fredericksburg, Virginia. At theUniversity of Mary Washington, the Division of Teaching and Learning Technology has launched at least four amazing initiatives that should be replicated widely because it’s clear to even casual observers that they advance teaching and learning in myriad ways. For one, evidence of student learning appears on the open web, and I encourage you to check out the current blogs developed for courses. Faculty, too—and I know this from first-hand experience—benefit from knowing what students are thinking (as expressed in blog posts and comments) before they convene for class.

Several years ago, UMW’s DTLT premiered UMW Blogs, termed “the Bluehost experiment” by the DTLT staff because in its first iteration, it was little more than a WordPress Multi-User installation on an inexpensive ($6.95 per month) shared server at Bluehost. Today, any UMW student, faculty, or staff can set up a blog for class or personal use on UMW Blogs—and 500 courses have been brought onto the platform since fall 2008.  Anyone can browse the courses using UMW Blogs or discover all kinds of non-course blogs by exploring the latest posts featured on the home page. The UMW archives, for example, recently put online a series of lectures by the late civil rights leader James Farmer, and Jess Rigelhaupt’s Oral History class has createdRosie the Riveter, an excellent resource that includes “firsthand accounts of what people experienced on the American home front during World War II.”

Next to emerge from this innovation engine was DS 106, an open course on digital storytelling, originally taught by Jim Groom, but since taught by several different instructors, including noted ed tech thought leaders and innovators Martha Burtis and Alan Levine, and recently by instructors at other universities as well. Because of the strong networks of the instructors and students, DS 106 took on a life of its own, with students—both those enrolled at UMW and those following the course from elsewhere—providing daily fun assignments (“the Daily Create”) that stimulate participants’ creativity and stretch their technological savvy. DS 106 spawned ds106 radio, a free-form, streaming broadcast for which anyone could volunteer to provide content.  How popular is DS 106 and its apparently endless stream of creative multimedia content? In spring 2012, Groom launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a better web server for DS 106, and the campaign raised 600% of its goal in just a few days, providing funding for all kinds of course improvements and expansions.  While Kickstarter provided private funds for this project, I’m excited about this kind of crowdsourced funding—although I’d be even more enthusiastic about greater public funding—because it allows project creators greater future freedom than would, say, funding from investors whose motive is more likely to be profit than pedagogical revolution.

Springing next from the mind of the DTLT geniuses was Domain of One’s Own, in which each first-year student at UMW receives a domain name and space on a web server. The project encourages each student  to “reclaim the web” by “taking control of your digital identity,” gathering its artifacts “in a central place that you own and control.” And it’s offered in collaboration with the university’s Office of Information Technology Services,

The pilot gave 400 students and faculty their own domain name and web space to install a portfolio of work or map onto existing systems. In Fall of 2013 every incoming student at UMW will have the opportunity to choose their own domain and receive a web hosting account with the freedom to create subdomains, install any LAMP-compatible software, setup databases, email addresses and carve out their own space on the web that they own and control.

Then, as if granting students this creative freedom and technical autonomy wasn’t enough, this spring UMW launched Thinklab, amakerspace. According to its About page:

ThinkLab is the exciting new makerspace located in the Simpson Library at the University of Mary Washington. As a collaboration between the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies, the College of Education, and the Library, ThinkLab hosts a variety of emerging technologies and tools for students and faculty across all disciplines. 3D printing, robotics, and electronics work using Arduinos and simple breadboard kits are just some of the many exciting things happening at ThinkLab.

The innovations and—yes, I’ll say it—disruptions, emerging from UMW exemplify some of the best practices in developing communities of learners, fostering collaboration, encouraging writing and reflection and developing curiosity about the world. Channeling George Kuh, Randall Bass emphasizes that such “high-impact practices” lead to “meaningful learning gains” as well as “high retention and persistence rates” because they encourage these specific behaviors:

  • Investing time and effort
  • Interacting with faculty and peers about substantive matters
  • Experiencing diversity
  • Responding to more frequent feedback
  • Reflecting and integrating learning
  • Discovering relevance of learning through real-world application

In an age when universities are pushing faculty ever harder to develop monetizable intellectual property, it’s refreshing to see faculty doubling down on using relatively inexpensive technologies to improve student learning. UMW is a case in point: it’s a modestly funded, small state university that, thanks to all the active minds (and periodic strategic hires) at DTLT and on the faculty, has become a major hub of innovation in higher education.

Filed Under: What's New @ UMW Tagged With: , , , , , ,

HR News: Employee Appreciation Day, Service Awards

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
2012 Employee Appreciation Day

2012 Employee Appreciation Day

UMW’s Employee Appreciation Day will be held Monday, May 13 from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The University Awards Ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m. in George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium. The ceremony will recognize the recipients of the Charles Coleman Memorial Service Award, the Hurley Presidential Commendation and the Staff Advisory Council’s Larry Atkins Awards. During the ceremony, Professor of Psychology Chris Kilmartin will present a lecture, “Look in the Mirror: It Will Cause You to Reflect.”

After the ceremony, all employees are invited to a picnic luncheon on Ball Circle from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. As a reminder, the university will close at 3 p.m. on Monday, May 13.

Service Award Recipients

Congratulations to our service award recipients for the month of May: http://adminfinance.umw.edu/hr/files/2011/08/May-13-Service-Award-Recipients.pdf.

Filed Under: What's New @ UMW

Students Presented at Kemp Symposium & Joined Lambda Iota Tau

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

On Thursday, April 25, the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication inducted 17 people into the Eta Chapter of Lambda Iota Tau, the international honor society for students of literature. Inductees are majors in English who had completed at least 12 credit hours in literature and with a GPA of at least 3.5 in those credit hours.

Inductees included: Ana Rebecca Bice, Taylor Rae Chadman, Colleen D. Clark, Theresa Davidson, Danielle Paige DeSimone, Chelsea J. Dicus, Ellen R. Dreher, Michaela P. Godfrey, Catherine S. Kellogg, Gabrielle Kuhn, Catherine R. LeBouton, Danica Leninsky, Joseph Samuel Deitell Pugach, Charlotte Rodina, Bryanne Elise Salazar, Brittany Anne Vitner, and Amanda K. Wikle.

Danny Tweedy, Assistant Professor of English, gave the Taddesse Adera Memorial Address.

The induction ceremony was part of the Ninth Annual William Kemp Symposium for Majors in English, Linguistics, and Communication at which approximately 100 students in upper-division courses in English, linguistics, and communication presented original research and creative works. This year’s symposium featured 18 panel sessions and ran April 25 and 26.

Filed Under: Newsletter On Campus, What's New @ UMW

Business Services eUpdate – May 2013

May 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

 Bus Svcs Logo

 

 

May 2013 Updates and Announcements

  • Procurement Services
    • SPCC News
      • Vacation Reminder (to manage sign-off)
      • Violations & Consequences
      • Clean Sweep!
    • eVA Search
    • IT Purchases now FY14
    • Fall Purchases – plan now!
    • Contract Activity
    • Surplus Items Available Online
  • Parking
    • Chandler Lot Closure
    • Scheduled Lot Maintenance
  • Bookstore
    • Fac/Staff Discount Day!
  • EagleOne

Procurement Logo

 

 

 

VACATION INFO

SPCC cardholders and supervisor reviewers are responsible for contacting Procurement Services before taking a leave of absence; ie vacation, sabbatical.   The PA will work with individuals and their departments, to ensure that card activity is accounted for and signed off prior to leave of absence.

For assistance with SPCC, please contact Melissa Myers @ 1057.

——————————————————————————-

SPCC VIOLATIONS & CONSEQUENCES

The SPCC Violations & Consequences have been revised. Please visit the website to view the updated information: SPCC Violations & Consequences

——————————————————————————-

CLEAN SWEEP!

You did it again! … No transactions were swept for April 2013. Thank you all for your timely action in coding and signing-off on transactions.

——————————————————————————-

eVA SEARCH

Please view the following document in order to see step-by-step instructions on how to view multiple vendor locations within the same eVA search.

eVA Vendor Search

——————————————————————————

eVA Problems?

If you are experiencing problems with eVA, please contact Pacifique Munezero in Procurement Services at x1127.

——————————————————————————

IT PURCHASES NOW FY14

IT Purchases being entered now will hit the FY14 budget.

http://adminfinance.umw.edu/tess/files/2012/03/FY13-year-end-memo.pdf

——————————————————————————

FALL PURCHASES – THINK AHEAD

If you have already identified equipment, services or possible contracts that will be needed for the Fall 2013 semester, please contact Procurement Services. The purchasing staff can assist in planning and ensuring that orders/contracts are ready in a timely manner.

Procurement Services or x1127

——————————————————————————-

CONTRACT ACTIVITY

  • Campus wide Janitorial Contract – Intent to Award Contract has been posted
  • Background Checks –  A new contract will be available for use later this month.
  • Promotional Items – Awarded: Contact Pacifique Munezero
  • Athletic Hotel – Awarded

——————————————————————————-

SURPLUS ITEMS AVAILABLE ONLINE

The University of Mary Washington, offers surplus property for sale to other state agencies and local governments which may be purchased from www.govdeals.com.  State employees are eligible to purchase surplus property in an amount less than $500

——————————————————————————-

Parking Logo

 

 

CHANDLER LOT CLOSURE

The Chandler Lot will be going offline later this month to support construction of the new Campus Center.   A new surface parking lot on Thornton Street will be available for use in August.

——————————————————————————-

SCHEDULED LOT MAINTENANCE

Please view the following memo for scheduled lot closures occurring during the week of May 6 – May 10, there may be changes due to weather:

Parking Lot Maintenance

——————————————————————————- 

Bookstore Logo

 

 

FAC/STAFF DISCOUNT DAY!

The UMW Bookstore will offer 20% off the purchase of regularly priced clothing and insignia items* during Employee Appreciation Day. (*Some exceptions apply)

Store hours on May 13, 2013 are:

  • 9:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.
  • 1:45 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Get your UMW gear early, and wear Eagle Pride throughout the day!

——————————————————————————-

EagleOne Logo

 

 

OFF-CAMPUS MERCHANTS AVAILABLE ALL SUMMER

Our office-campus merchant partners accept EagleOne all summer long.

http://adminfinance.umw.edu/eagleone/eagleone-off-campus-2

———————————————————————————

 

Please contact Business Services for information and assistance at x1576.

 

Erma A. Baker   CPPO, VCO

Assistant Vice President for Business Services and CPO

University of Mary Washington

1301 College Avenue

Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401

ebaker@umw.edu

540-654-2043

 

Filed Under: What's New @ UMW

Discounts on New Subarus from Corporate Partner

May 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

All UMW full- and part-time employees are eligible to receive a special discount when purchasing a new Subaru from Ultimate Subaru of Fredericksburg, a corporate partner of UMW Athletics:

You are entitled to VIP PRICING

new vehicles priced at our lowest Buying Service Price

Vehicle Preference: New Subaru

All sales subject to availability and dealer discretion

Dealer information:

Ultimate Subaru
5150 Jefferson Davis Highway
Fredericksburg, VA 22408
540-898-6200

Dealer contact: Harry Nuckols, Sales Manager

UMW AUTHORIZATION: Employee must show valid employee ID

valid through 12/31/2013

Filed Under: What's New @ UMW
« Older Posts