Office of Student Affairs Archives

A message from the Vice President for Student Affairs

June 24, 2021 by Guest Author

Dear UMW Community,

On May 13, 2021, President Paino released his response to the report and recommendations of the UMW Police Advisory Committee, which met throughout the 2020-21 academic year.

Dr. Paino’s recommendations included an evaluation of the University’s mental health crisis response. Here is the specific recommendation:

Restructure mental health crisis response. Dr. Juliette Landphair, Vice President for Student Affairs, and Dr. Tev Zukor, Director of the Talley Counseling Center, will form a working group that includes University Police, those on staff responsible for mental health crisis response, and interested students, to develop a timeline and plan for reform that might include:

24/7 availability of clinical professionals for student support
Changes in UMW Police protocols during a mental health crisis
More Residence Life staff training and communication responsibilities to proactively inform students about student support options

The working group has been established and includes the members below. In addition to gathering feedback from the community, we will be reviewing relevant data, including Campus Police Surveys, and University policies and protocols around crisis response.

We look forward to reporting out the results of our work in the fall. In the meantime, do not hesitate to email me or Dr. Zukor with any questions or insights.

Sincerely,

Juliette Landphair, Ph.D.
Vice President for Student Affairs

Mental Health Crisis Response Working Group

Co-Chairs

Dr. Juliette Landphair, Vice President for Student Affairs
Dr. Tev Zukor, Director of Talley Center

Members

Megan Brown, Area Coordinator for Residence Life and Housing
Alexandra Diviney, Class of 2022
Lt. Bill Gill, UMW Police
Vivian Hyatt, Class of 2022
Sgt. Tegan Lewis, UMW Police
Marissa Miller, Director of Prevention and Education

Landphair Pens Column on John Lewis in Richmond Times-Dispatch

August 11, 2020 by jlaiacon

Vice President of Student Affairs Juliette Landphair

Vice President of Student Affairs Juliette Landphair, who is the Farmer Legacy 2020 co-chair, penned a column in The Richmond Times-Dispatch on the late Rep. John Lewis’ legacy and the impact that he and Dr. James L. Farmer Jr. have had on the University of Mary Washington and its students.

Sixty years ago, much like today, many American young adults were on fire to dismantle racial discrimination. U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who recently passed away as an international icon for civil rights and public service, was one of them. Born in 1940 into a tenant farming family in Pike County, Ala., where half of their cotton crop’s earnings went to the white landowner, Lewis grew up in a poor, rural part of the nation completely alien from stereotypical recollections of 1950s consumerism and suburbanization. As historian Dr. Andrew Lewis recalls, John Lewis’ childhood “conjures up a world that the twentieth century seemed to have passed by.”

While in college at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tenn., Lewis became active in civil rights protest. Over a few critical months in late 1959 and early 1960, he and other young activists, including the extraordinary (and not enough remembered) Diane Nash, attended workshops on nonviolence and its philosophical roots, taught by the minister James Lawson. Principles such as the power of the collective and the redemptive community settled into Lewis’ conscience and remained the rest of his life; he later described “crossing over” into a lifelong commitment to the movement in 1960 while participating in the Nashville sit-ins.

At my institution, the University of Mary Washington (UMW), Lewis figures prominently in our story. We like to think it is a special bond, but of course, Lewis made all admirers feel important. In 1961, Dr. James Farmer, leader of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), who later became a Mary Washington College professor, helped recruit the 21-year-old Lewis to join 12 others on the Freedom Rides. They would travel on two buses through several Southern states challenging interstate transportation facilities. During the Rides, Lewis was attacked by angry whites in South Carolina and Alabama.

More recently, Lewis agreed to serve as honorary chair of Farmer Legacy 2020, UMW’s yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of his friend Dr. Farmer’s birth. This past November, in his official acceptance of his chairperson role, Lewis met with a small UMW delegation in his Capitol Hill office for nearly an hour. I was fortunate to be among the attendees. With his celebrated warmth and humility, he spent nearly an hour with us, asking about UMW and our lives, and sharing stories. He especially was attentive to Jason Ford, our Student Government Association president who, as a black man himself, knew he was in the presence of a giant on whose shoulders he stood. Read more.

Call for Move-In Volunteers

August 3, 2020 by Guest Author

A message from the Office of Student Affairs.

Dear Colleagues:

As you know, the University of Mary Washington will be reopening our residence halls starting with first-year students on Thursday September 10. We need your help! We typically count on scores of Move-In volunteers; however, so far this year the response from staff and faculty has been lower than usual, which certainly makes sense given the public health emergency and other pandemic realities.

Please know that 2020 Move-In will be very different. We will have very strict guidelines in place for our Move-In volunteers and the students and families moving in. This year, our staff and faculty volunteers will assist with traffic flow, answering questions, and guiding students and families across campus.

The Move-In dates are next week, September 10-13. We will have a brief Zoom training for our volunteers ahead of time. If you’re interested in volunteering during Move-In, please go to our volunteer page on Sign-Up Genius.

Please direct any questions to Michelle Brooks, mesch@umw.edu.

For our new students especially, the first few days and weeks at UMW are particularly important for the rest of their time in college. Many new students and their families are hopeful and excited about being back on campus. Thank you in advance for assisting us with this significant student experience.

Sincerely,

Juliette Landphair
Vice President of Student Affairs
University of Mary Washington .

New Student Orientation

April 22, 2020 by jlaiacon

A message from the Office of Student Affairs and Office of the Provost.

Dear Colleagues,

For the University of Mary Washington, New Student Orientation is a special and significant time. Over the summer, orientation typically welcomes new students to campus with a program that is educational, practical, and energetic, allowing them to learn about UMW’s academic expectations and institutional values while planning for fall classes and meeting peers in an overnight visit.

This summer, we plan to deliver New Student Orientation virtually. While students and their families will not be on campus physically, they will experience UMW in an engaging and innovative way that highlights our distinctive strengths and enfolds students into our community. For 2020, the Orientation planning team has created a schedule distributed throughout the summer that utilizes both synchronous interactions and self-paced asynchronous components. It will be personal, emphasizing one-on-one advising meetings with faculty and small group interactive sessions with peers as well as offering numerous opportunities for enrichment, engagement, and fun. And finally, it will emphasize the proposition that we need to orient students for a future now understood to be indeterminate, rapidly changing, and requiring an adaptability that is illustrative of the liberal arts experience.

You will soon hear more about how to participate in the 2020 New Student Orientation. We are particularly grateful to the Orientation planning team members for their hard work, innovative spirit, and commitment to the student experience as we welcome new students to UMW. Feel free to contact orientation@umw.edu or either of us with questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Juliette Landphair, Ph.D.

Nina Mikhalevsky, Ph.D.