Category: What’s New @ UMW

Several PBS stations across the country have agreed to air “A Fiddler’s Holiday” with The Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band featuring the UMW Philharmonic led by Maestro Kevin Bartram.

Last week, an email from President Richard V. Hurley went out to all UMW alumni, parents, friends, students, faculty, and staff. In his communication, President Hurley asked members of the Mary Washington community to contact PBS stations to request the airing of the unique musical program filmed last December in Dodd Auditorium and around Fredericksburg.

Several alumni contacted UMW to acknowledge their support of the program and Mary Washington, including a loyal alumna from New York. “I am a life member of the Alumni Association, and I still take interest and pride in the school,” said Dorothy Shaw ’41. “While ‘fiddling’ isn’t my style, UMW is, and I’d like to see (or hear) this program with friends.”

Stations agreeing to air the show during this holiday season include WETA in the District of Columbia; WCVE in Richmond; WHTJ in Charlottesville; WVPT in Harrisonburg; UNC-TV throughout North Carolina; ETV in Columbia, S.C.; WQPT in Moline, Ill.; KCTS in Seattle, Wash.; WHMT in Albany, N.Y.; and the station Ms. Shaw contacted – WNED in Buffalo, N.Y./Toronto, Canada.

PBS program directors are still finalizing their holiday schedules, so there is time to contact them to make your request. See the complete list of PBS stations and contact those that have not yet made programming commitments. For more information, visit the website at special.umw.edu.

BB & T has been selected as the vendor to place a new ATM on campus.  We anticipate a start up date of  late October.  The ATM will be placed in Lee Hall and will carry denominations of $5 and $20.  For BB & T accounts there will be no transaction fee, for all others the transaction fee will be $2.  Your patience has been appreciated as we work through this project.

— Richard R. Pearce, Vice President for Administration and Finance and CFO

The C-SPAN Campaign 2012 Bus rolled into Fredericksburg on Thursday, Sept. 27 and made a stop on UMW’s Fredericksburg campus. The stop was part of a four-day tour to five Virginia universities and colleges to speak to students and community members regarding their thoughts about campaign issues.

When the bus first arrived, Stephen Farnsworth, political science professor and director of the University’s Center for Media and Leadership Studies, was a guest on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal segment. Throughout the morning, students, faculty and staff toured the bus, tested their knowledge of American politics and shared their thoughts about the upcoming election. Short interviews with members of the UMW community are available at http://www.tout.com/u/cspanpolitics and may be used in upcoming C-SPAN programming.

Support the second annual National Student Day on Wednesday, Oct. 3. More information is available in the attached flyer: https://eagleeye.umw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Student-Day.pdf.

Department of History and American Studies & Department of Mathematics

An Accidental Cryptologist:  Genevieve Young Hitt
the U.S. Government’s First Female Cryptologist

presented by

Betsy Rohaly Smoot

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

5:00 PM

116 Monroe Hall

Genevieve Young Hitt, wife of U.S. Army Colonel Parker Hitt,  was the first woman to break codes and ciphers for the U.S. government.  She first worked on an unpaid basis during Pershing’s Punitive Expedition, and then as a paid government employee at Fort Sam Houston during World War I.   Recently discovered letters and government records shed light on this remarkable woman, her brief career and her interesting life.

Betsy Rohaly Smoot is a historian at the National Security Agency’s Center for Cryptologic History.  She is a member of the Class of 1982 and majored in Geography and Economics while at Mary Washington.