April 11, 2026

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Buster-Williams’ Research Project featured in Richmond Times-Dispatch

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Vice President for Enrollment Management Kimberley Buster-Williams

Vice President for Enrollment Management Kimberley Buster-Williams

Vice President for Enrollment Management Kimberley Buster-Williams was featured in an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Sunday, July 26, 2020. The feature story discussed the discovery of her grandmother’s connection to a national social organization.

 

Kimberley Buster-Williams celebrated a joyous Christmas Day with her family in December, but it would be an unwrapped box she opened a day later that would turn out to be the most beloved of gifts.

Buster-Williams, of Fredericksburg, stumbled onto an unknown family legacy when she began looking through family pictures and documents last December that had belonged to her grandmother, Mary Hewlett Brown. The family matriarch and native Richmonder died in late January at age 98. Those who knew her called her Lollie.

Those she held closest in her heart called her “Mama Lollie.”

Buster-Williams intended to use the box of photos and documents to gather information for the obituary she would eventually write for Mama Lollie. That day after Christmas, however, as Buster-Williams began sifting through the contents of the box, she found a folder labeled “Epicureans,” an organization she’d only ever heard of in passing.

She was intrigued.

Earlier this year, with those same documents spread out on a table before her, Buster-Williams said she was curious back in December about what she found. There was a 1944 photo of 11 young, well-dressed Black women surrounding a table with what appeared to be cut-out letters that spelled “EPICUREANS.” Her grandmother was there, in the midst of the group. Read more.

McMillan Publishes Book Chapter

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Lauren McMillan

Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation Lauren McMillan

Lauren McMillan, assistant professor in the Department of Historic Preservation, published a book chapter entitled “Diamonds and Triangles: Two Locally-Made Pipes from the 17th-century Chesapeake” in the book Artifacts that Enlighten: The Ordinary and the Unexpected. The chapter examines the multi-racial and ethnic influences of clay tobacco pipe making in colonial Virginia.

Farnsworth Lectures on Presidential Communication

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Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, recently delivered an online lecture, “Presidential Communication and Character,” for the Character Assassination and Reputation Politics Research Lab at George Mason University. The talk focused on Professor Farnsworth’s recent book, “Presidential Communication and Character: White House News Management from Clinton and Cable to Twitter and Trump.”

Information on the book is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Presidential-Communication-Character-Stephen-Farnsworth/dp/1138212237

Farnsworth has also commented on several regional and national news stories:

Trump suggests delaying 2020 elections, claims mail-in voting amid pandemic will be ‘incorrect and fraudulent’ (MEAWW) 

Trump’s COVID-19 Response (CTV News Channel)

U.S. Civil Rights Icon John Lewis Dies (CTV News Channel)

Election Update (cp24.com) 

100 Days Until U.S. Presidential Election (CTV News Channel) 

Pandemic and Polling (cp24.com)

Tell-All Book by Trump’s Niece (CTV News Channel)

U.S. election swing states: Virginia is for… Democrats? (New Statesman)

Cooperman Publishes Article on Republican Women

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Associate Professor of Political Science Rosalyn Cooperman

Associate Professor of Political Science Rosalyn Cooperman

Associate Professor of Political Science Rosalyn Cooperman contributed an article to the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) Election Watch Project, entitled, “Is 2020 the Year of the Republican Woman? Women’s PAC support for Republican Women Candidates Suggests Otherwise.”

Women’s gains to Congress in the 2018 midterm elections were party specific. That year nearly three dozen new Democratic women, and just one Republican woman, were elected to the U.S. House. As Republican women’s membership in the House shrunk to 13, Representative Elise Stefanik (NY-21) promised to “play in primaries” to increase the number of Republican women running for Congress in 2020. Since then, much has been written about whether 2020 would be the year of the Republican woman as it had been for Democratic women in 2018. To be sure, the increased number of Republican women House candidates on the ballot this cycle bodes well for those within and outside of the party working to recruit and elect more Republican women. After all, women can’t win if they don’t run. Many of these candidates also hold credentials including distinguished military service, community activism, and previous officeholding that enhance their standing. A closer examination of the most competitive House elections along with existing campaign finance networks available to these women, however, reveals a more nuanced evaluation of Republican women running for Congress in 2020. While more Republican women are running for the House this year than in previous cycles, they are hampered by their status as challengers – further complicated for some by a late primary schedule – and the patchy campaign finance network available specifically to them to aid their fundraising efforts. Together, these challenges present significant roadblocks for Republican women candidates and the efforts to grow their ranks. Read more.

Rettinger Comments on Cheating in Online Courses

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Professor of Psychological Science David Rettinger

Professor of Psychological Science David Rettinger

Professor of Psychological Science David Rettinger, who is also Director of Academic Integrity Programs at UMW, commented in an Inside Higher Ed article entitled, “Best Way to Stop Cheating in Online Courses? ‘Teach Better’.”

“Ever since the first monks were saying, ‘Oh, those new styluses are allowing them to illuminate those manuscripts much more easily, that’s clearly dishonest,’ there’s been somebody who thought the new technology makes [cheating] so much easier,” David Rettinger, a professor of psychological science and director of academic programs at the University of Mary Washington, said during the Wiley webcast. “The reality is that there has always been people using technology for good and for ill. I don’t think the internet is an epochal technological change — it’s just another in a series of the wheel turning.” Read more.

Stommel Comments on Hybrid Instruction

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Jesse Stommel, Senior Lecturer of Digital Learning

Jesse Stommel, Senior Lecturer of Digital Learning

Jesse Stommel, senior lecturer of Digital Studies, was interviewed by Education Dive on how colleges that are offering hybrid instruction this fall can support their students.

Several issues may arise with hybrid classrooms, especially when in-person and remote students are tuning into the same lecture. This structure has the potential to make a virtual student feel like a “fly on the wall,” said Jesse Stommel, a digital learning fellow and senior lecturer at the University of Mary Washington, a public institution in Virginia. 

Although instructors can use technology to boost remote students’ participation, that group’s needs may be different from those of in-person students. Online learners, for example, could be more likely to have a chronic illness or be taking care of someone who is sick, Stommel said. 

“The best thing that institutions can do is make sure that they are creating asynchronous opportunities for learning for those students,” he said. 

Some institutions that only recently announced their fall plans have given instructors little time to prepare for hybrid courses. And others walked back their plans for an in-person fall as the coronavirus is surging throughout many parts of the country. 

“Institutions should have made strong, assertive decisions about what the fall was going to look like so that students and faculty could start planning,” Stommel said. “Most institutions have instead waited until the very last minute to decide what the fall was going to look like.” Read more.

Richardson Column in The Free Lance-Star

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UMW College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson

UMW College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson

College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson’s weekly column in The Free Lance-Star discusses being bold about your organization’s plans for after the pandemic. Read IMAGINING THE FUTURE.

THE PANDEMIC has totally disrupted so many parts of our lives, not the least of which is the workplace. So I’ve been wondering how our organizations will look in a few years.

In conversations with people who work in a variety of industries, a common theme is astonishment that work requiring an office setting a year ago can effectively be done from home today. One person said to me, “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.” We can relate.

While what we do may be similar, how and where we work is different. So where do we go from here?

Grothe Pens FLS Letter to the Editor

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Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Pamela Grothe

Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Pamela Grothe

Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Science Pamela Grothe recently penned a letter to The Free Lance-Star entitled, “Smarter choices will lead to net-zero emissions.”

 

As a professor for UMW’s COVID-19 in Context course, I spoke to students and community members on how the worldwide shutdown of economies has affected climate change.

The students asked an astute question: Will reduced emissions during the pandemic help climate change?

Scientists estimated that global emissions during the peak confinement period in early April dropped to 2006 levels. On average, countries with large economies reduced their emissions by 25 pecent at the peak of their confinement periods. Estimates for 2020 annual emission reductions range from 4-to-8 percent, the largest drop ever to be recorded. Read more.

Larus Comments on Indus News on Chinese Sanctioning of U.S. Officials

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Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Elizabeth Freund Larus

Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Elizabeth Freund Larus

Elizabeth Freund Larus, Chairman of the Department of Political Science and International Affairs, commented on Indus News on China’s sanctioning of U.S. officials. Larus indicated that China imposed sanctions on U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, and U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback in retaliation for their support of the newly passed Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, and for their criticism of Chinese human rights abuses in Hong Kong and in Muslim-majority populated Xinjiang Province. Larus also indicated that the U.S. Congress compelled President Trump to invoke the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act against four Chinese officials last week for their role in abusing human rights in Xinjiang.

Dr. Larus’s comments begin 23 minutes into the program at
https://youtu.be/UMSN-zwvtxU

Harris Publishes Article on the Soviet Jet Age

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Photomontage celebrating the Jet Age in the Soviet magazine, Grazhdanskaia aviatsiia, no. 12 (1963).

Associate Professor Steven E. Harris (HISA) recently published the following peer-reviewed article: “Dawn of the Soviet Jet Age: Aeroflot Passengers and Aviation Culture under Khrushchev,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 21, 3 (Summer 2020): 591-626.

In this article, Harris examines how representations of the ideal Soviet passenger became a central feature of aviation culture under Khrushchev and bolstered the state’s broader goals of advancing mass consumption, embracing the scientific-technical revolution, and fighting the Cold War. The research and writing for this article and the broader book project on which it is based were generously funded by an A. Verville Fellowship at the National Air & Space Museum and multiple grants from the University of Mary Washington, including a Waple Professorship. Many of the themes in Harris’s article are also featured in the exhibition, “Cold War Friendly Skies,” which is on display at the entrance to Simpson Library.