Author: Brynn Boyer

While some popular and academic discourses endow “green” technology with heroic powers to both rejuvenate our stagnating economy and bring about a more environmentally sustainable society, Eric Bonds and his University of Colorado co-author Liam Downey argue that it is important to place their development, fabrication, and use within a global context of inequitable relationships between nations.  The authors did just that by examining three cases of ecological modernization in the automobile industry in an article recently published in the Journal of World-Systems Research.  The cases reveal that “green” technologies instituted in wealthy nations are often composed of natural resources extracted from the Global South.  Consequently, such technologies have a real capacity to create environmental improvements in wealthy nations, but may also inadvertently increase environmental degradation and human rights abuses experienced by people living near natural resource extraction projects elsewhere on the globe.  The article, entitled “Green Technology and Ecologically Unequal Exchange,” can be downloaded at: www.jwsr.org.

Cassandra Good, assistant editor of the Papers of James Monroe, recently attended the National Historical and Public Records Commission’s Institute for Editing Historical Documents , where she received a certification in that field.

Dear Fellow State Employees :

Thanks in great measure to your hard work and dedication to efficient and effective government, I will formally announce today that, for the third year in a row, the Commonwealth finished the fiscal year with a budget surplus that includes both revenue and savings. This total surplus of $448.5 million is comprised of the $129.2 million in revenue that I previously announced, plus $319.3 million in savings from unspent general fund appropriations, recoveries, and non-general fund balances. I am pleased to share with you in advance of my public announcement that $187 million in savings, largely due to your continued dedication to spending taxpayer resources wisely, made up the largest portion of the surplus total. To be clear, the largest share of this surplus would not have been possible without the hard work and ingenuity of state employees.

As I announced at my employee town hall last December, my introduced budget included a bonus for state employees, the payout of which was partially dependent on agency savings through innovation and frugality, the same principles applied in the private sector. I recommended an up-to-3% performance bonus, provided that we achieved a state revenue surplus and that agencies returned savings to the Commonwealth. Obligations to the Revenue Stabilization Fund, the return of Transportation’s share of the accelerated sales tax, and the equally mandatory deposit to the Water Quality fund had first call on certain surplus funds. Thanks directly to additional efforts by you and your fellow state employees to save rather than spend down year end balances, the Commonwealth has saved enough to provide for the $77.2 million general fund share of the 3% bonus. This bonus will be paid out on December 1 of this year to all classified employees of the Executive branch and other full-time employees of the Commonwealth.

This is the second time I’ve asked you to rise to the same challenge given to private sector employees across all sectors of the economy. In FY2010 incentives were put in place to end the practice of spending appropriated funds down to zero at the end of the fiscal year and instead identify ways to save state money to receive a one-time 3% bonus. In response to that challenge, in FY2010 we accumulated $174.7 million in savings and unspent balances and you were awarded with a year-end bonus. When I asked you again to generate savings at the end of last year, I had no doubt you would rise to the challenge; however, you exceeded expectations by saving $12.3 million more than in 2010. The culture of prudent use of public funds that we have created, in addition to the historic 2012 reforms to preserve the Virginia Retirement System, will be lasting legacies that we share.

As always, thank you for the world class customer service you exhibit daily for our citizens and thank you for your continued service to the Commonwealth.

Sincerely,
Governor Bob McDonnell

Faculty Special Assignment: Social Media Consultant for University Relations and Advancement

General description of job/objective:

This position will support the University’s use of social media, and will work within the Division of Advancement and University Relations. As a faculty consultant on social media, this person will work primarily on four initiatives:

1) advance and further develop the institution’s social media strategy; 2) work with University Relations and Admissions to develop a social media strategy to engage prospective students; 3) develop an academic model to use social media to engage on- and off-campus constituents; and 4) plan for the production of social media content that can be used across campus.

This position reports to the Associate Vice President for University Relations.

Qualifications:

• Required: Demonstrated experience with a variety of social media platforms and tools.
• Required: Demonstrated experience with video and multimedia production.
• Required: Experience with the use of social media in teaching environments.
• Preferred: Track record of advancing the mission of an institution with effective communication strategies.

Release time and salary stipend: Negotiable.

To apply for the position, please submit a résumé and cover letter to the Office of Human Resources by 5 p.m. on August 31, 2012.

Professor of Mathematics Suzanne Sumner, together with Dr. Wyatt Mangum, adjunct faculty member, recently delivered the invited talk “Worker Bee Aggression towards a Foreign Queen: Modeling from Data” for the Progress on Difference Equations international conference hosted at Virginia Commonwealth University.  The talk addressed their continued research into the mathematical modeling associated with the behavior of bees.