There I sat, my face covered in goop, my hair wadded up in a rubber bald cap and my chest covered in a barber’s drape. No, this wasn’t the result of a wild night out gone horribly awry, but art in progress. Lifecasting is an art form. It is also a lot of fun. The premise is simple: take a mold of someone’s face, hand or other body part using a substance called alginate, pour some plaster into the mold, and voilà! You have art!

Most students spent their snow break eating more than usual, According to an online poll at NOVAFortnightly.com. Behind that students evidently grew bored spending more time than usual “Twittering or Facebooking.” With the grass and mud starting to peak through the snow pack and memories of Snowmageddon I and II fading fast we’ve added a few pictures contributed by the staff of the Fortnightly. For the snow lovers voraciously ogling these pictures, we may have more snow as local meteorologists are calling for a possible blizzard on Thursday.

The NOVA women’s basketball players joined the team to compete versus other teams, but the last two months have been mainly practices with only two games played due to various reasons.
The string of game cancellations began Dec.19 when the game against Cecil College was cancelled due to the big snowstorm. The team did play on Jan. 4 against the Community College of Philadelphia, losing that game. The Jan. 9 game at Southside was cancelled as Southside could not field a full team, and then the Jan. 13 game against the College of Southern Maryland at home was cancelled, as reportedly it could not field a full team, perhaps due to the awful season it was enduring.

The following are brief profiles of three current NOVA ice hockey players.

Chris Altice, a first-year student, plays Wing. Altice has been playing ice hockey since he was 12 years old and plays year-round. The first time he tried it, he borrowed skates and played for eight hours as he quickly became hooked on hockey. He thinks that, though the NOVA team had a rough start, it has good chemistry and will make the conference playoffs.

Getting a credit card is about to become a lot harder for those younger than age 21. New regulations intended to clean up the credit card industry include additional measures to protect young people. The so called Credit CARD Act will go into effect on Feb. 22.  The new law was championed by President Obama to protect consumers from unfair practices of the credit card industry.
The CARD act requires those younger than 21 to prove they earn enough money to pay off a credit card. Otherwise, a person age 21 …

Ever since last spring, one woman has stood out from the typical crop of campus leaders. Karima Ben Ayed has made a lasting impression on both the staff and students at Northern Virginia Community College’s Alexandria campus. Carrying the appellation of the most recent past-President of the International Club, Ben Ayed’s autograph covered many programs gathered by attendees at last year’s International Spring Festival.
The event was the most highly attended student-initiated function in recent NOVA history and was even more noteworthy because Ben Ayed raised the defunct International Club from a three-year-long period of inactivity to a juggernaut, able to mobilize the most creativity, curiosity and culinary expertise the student body may have ever seen.

A man was fatally shot in a residence near NOVA’s Annandale campus on Monday night around 10:30 p.m. When the police arrived they found a man with head trauma from a gunshot. According to a press release from the Fairfax County Police Department there were others in the residence at the time who police were able to identify and then determine there was no threat to public safety.

The victim was identified as Nathan Smiler of 8317 Little River Turnpike. The shooting occurred in the 8300 block of Little River Turnpike, if it was at the victim’s home was not made clear.

NOVA student Roz Schaufele donates blood with the help of Red Cross worker Suzanne Fantigrossi at the Woodbridge campus blood drive February 4. NOVA holds several blood drives throughout the year, including an upcoming one at the Alexandria campus on February 24 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Appointments will be scheduled every 15 minutes and can be scheduled by contacting Syrous in the Student Activities Office at: student.activities.nova.al@gmail.com.

The most important aspect of communication is listening. This was the message a broadcast executive had for several NOVA communications classes. On a Jan. 26 visit to the Alexandria campus, Brian Lamb, founder and CEO of C-SPAN, shared his insights with students.

Lamb started the day visiting Professor Lucy Holsonbake’s communication class. He was greeted with the sounds of country music playing – a surprising contrast considering the rainbow of students present. The class had been thoroughly prepared for Lamb’s visit, remembering that he liked country music from a biography they had read on him.

Photos from the Black Light Winter Dance at the Annandale campus. The dance was sponsored by the Annandale Student Government Association to welcome students back to the Spring semester on Jan. 29.