Category: What’s New @ UMW

Thanks to the dedication and loyalty of Mary Washington alumni, parents, friends, businesses, faculty, and staff, the University of Mary Washington reports a record-breaking $9.4 million total for gifts received and pledges made during the 2012 fiscal year.

The generous gifts from 7,787 UMW donors provided support for the Fund for Mary Washington, new and enhanced scholarships, and additional programs within the three colleges, athletics, and UMW’s cultural organizations and museums. In addition to gifts, the University received more than $4 million in new estate plan commitments from 18 Heritage Society members and $1.3 million in multi-year pledges.

Overall, the 2012 fiscal year was an exciting period of discovery as many alumni and friends renewed their connections with the University and now are making plans for additional ways to offer their support to UMW students and programs.

This message is from the Division of University Advancement and University Relations

A group of University of Mary Washington students camped out in a Madrid library, scrolling through decades-old microfilm to learn more about Spanish women’s social and civic activities during the early 20th-century.

“We got a better sense of the breadth and depth of what charity meant at that time,” said Betsy Lewis, professor of Modern Foreign Languages, who led the nine-day trip to Spain this summer.

Sophomores Sarah Abbott, Madeline Albrittain, Katie Lebling and Lara Pugh, read and cataloged women’s publications from the period of Spain’s civil war through the early Franco dictatorship. The magazines, a window into trends and culture of the time, are not digitized or readily available outside of Spain, making the journey from UMW a necessary one.

The trip was the capstone of the research team’s semester-long project, “Women and Charity in Spain,” one of 15 undergraduate research projects for spring 2012 and one of dozens of projects to receive an undergraduate research grant for the spring or summer.

Part of a larger project on the evolution of women’s charity from the late 18th- through the early 20th-centuries, this year’s research team examined several Spanish women’s magazines published by the Sección Femenina de la Falange, the fascist women’s organization supported by dictator Francisco Franco.  The group from Mary Washington explored how women’s civic activity and charitable work through the Sección Femenina was presented in the weekly and bi-monthly magazines, which also included  features typical of women’s publications such as fashion, home decorating, recipes, love advice, child-rearing tips and crossword puzzles.   Placing the work of the conservative Sección Femenina in the context of women’s civic work and social action, searching for the points of contact and divergence with their more progressive predecessors sets this research apart from other current work, Lewis said.

In the semester prior to the trip to Madrid, Lewis and the students did preliminary research, worked on data collection techniques and explored background reading on the time period.

“This was an amazing experience for me because it gave me so much experience with Spanish and gave me time to work one-on-one with a professor,” said Albrittain, a Spanish major.

This is the second year Lewis has taken a group of students to Spain as a part of her larger research project, though each trip has taken a different focus.

During this year’s trip, the students spent four to five hours each morning at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the National Library of Spain, poring over documents, then used the afternoon to visit museums, exhibits and historic sites.

“The students had all these opportunities, mostly unplanned, to see history still alive,” Lewis said, noting an exhibit on women’s history that the students stumbled upon during the trip.

For Lebling, the semester of research and the trip to Spain provided a new perspective on her academic work.

“It was a great experience to be able to take all my knowledge I have been learning in Spanish classes and be able to apply it in real life,” she said.

Because of UMW’s undergraduate research grant, the students were able to take the trip without cost as a factor, Lebling explained.

“The whole experience has made me feel I definitely belong at Mary Washington,” she said.

Lewis and the four students will continue the project this fall to expand their work with the information and data they collected over the summer.

“The most rewarding thing is being able to include students in my research,” Lewis said. “I can cover a lot more ground in a short period of time with their help.”

Preparation of the construction site and fencing began this week in the vacant retail space between the University of Mary Washington Foundation’s Eagle Village complex and Giant Food, to allow for construction of the new Hyatt Place hotel. The hotel will be located in the second phase of the Eagle Village mixed-use development adjacent to UMW’s Fredericksburg campus.

The work will continue through mid August. During that period, lanes may be re-routed around the building on a day-to-day basis, but no major roadway closures are expected, according to Jeff Rountree, chief executive officer for the UMW Foundation.

The five-story, 66,500-square-foot hotel is scheduled to open its doors by fall 2013. The hotel will include 93 studio rooms or suites, several meeting and conference rooms for public rent and 24-hour food and beverage service for guests. The 66,500-square-foot facility also will include an indoor pool and a fitness center. In addition, the building will house approximately 1,400 square feet of retail space and possibly a day spa, according to Rountree.

As announced in June, the Hyatt Place will be the first to benefit from the new Virginia Tourism Development financing project.

Drema Khraibani of Woodbridge, Va., has been named the 2012-2013 recipient of the University of Mary Washington’s Citizenship Award for Diversity Leadership.

The annual award is given to a rising senior enrolled as a full-time student in an undergraduate degree program at UMW. The student must possess characteristics of leadership and a personal commitment to advocating an appreciation for diversity and inclusion on campus.

As the award recipient, Khraibani will serve as an active spokesperson for diversity inclusion, a peer mentor to students and a voice for underrepresented populations, while maintaining high academic standards.

Khraibani, an environmental science and secondary education double major, is a student representative for the President’s Council on Sustainability, the Fredericksburg Forum and the RISE Peer Mentor Program. She is a member and past president of the Islamic Student Association and is an active member of Kappa Delta Pi, an education honor society. Khraibani, daughter of Mohamed Khraibani of Lorton and Donna Bailey of Woodbridge, is a 2009 graduate of Freedom High School.

University of Mary Washington seniors Jennifer Crystle, Christine LaPlaca and Riham Osman have been chosen as writing interns as part of Phi Beta Kappa’s new two-semester internship program.

During the internship, the students will prepare a series of brief articles for publication on Phi Beta Kappa’s national website for news and alumni relations.

Phi Beta Kappa, based in Washington, D.C., is the nation’s oldest academic honor society focused on the liberal arts. The Kappa Chapter of Virginia was established at Mary Washington in 1971.