From the beginning of the pandemic over a year ago, there has been an alarming and misguided tendency of some to blame and attack members of America’s Asian-Pacific community, including assaults on the streets, bullying in schools and on playgrounds, and hateful rhetoric from political leaders, creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.
As we launch the 2021 spring semester this month amid continuing challenges from the COVID-19 threat, the contours of the post-pandemic world are emerging. Steadily accelerated vaccinations, improved compliance with public health measures, strides in treating the disease, and the resilience of our students and faculty in mastering new ways to learn and research are creating conditions to spring back even stronger after the pandemic.
After an inaugural call for Global Mentors applications, the Office of Global Affairs has selected the first cohort of mentors who will work with University of Virginia faculty and students in the spring semester.
Nancy Huai is a first year MBA student at Darden School of Business from China. During the pandemic with the embassy closures, she was unable to get a visa from China to come to Charlottesville.
The J-term courses offered at the University of Virginia this January provided a unique opportunity for students to engage in global topics, gain new perspectives, and go beyond the classroom virtually.
Building back UVA’s global engagement will be one of the more exciting and urgent challenges we face as a University as we emerge from the COVID shadow in the coming months. Since evacuating hundreds of our students and faculty from locations around the world beginning last January, we’ve suffered a painful retrenchment of our education abroad programs that will continue through the coming spring semester and significantly curtailed our global research activity.
UVA is in the top 12 U.S. universities for short-term study abroad programs, according to the annual Open Doors report released Nov. 16 by the Institute of International Education, a New York-based nonprofit.
Few elections have had more significant implications for the future of America’s engagement with the world, including in the field of higher education, than this year’s just-concluded ballot.
