NOVA’s Loudoun campus will have a new provost come July 30 when Julie Leidig takes the top position at the campus. The provost oversees student services and campus operations.
“Dr. Leidig’s expertise and strong leadership in higher education will be a valuable addition to NOVA,” NOVA president Robert Templin said in a press release. “We look forward to welcoming her as a member of our administration.”
Leidig comes from a position as vice president of instruction at Lone Star College – Montgomery, a community college in suburban Houston. There, she oversaw …

The Northern Virginia Community College annual sports banquet took place on the evening of April 29 at the Springfield Hilton Hotel. It was organized by NOVA’s collegewide Student Activities Coordinator Brian Anweiler.

The event began with remarks by Dr. Peter Maphumulo, provost of the Alexandria campus. He discussed the importance of sports within the overall NOVA experience, and mentioned that NOVA would soon be considering whether or not to strengthen its sports program.

It’s happened to many of us. We’re driving along, maybe late for class and going too fast or looking for a parking space and not paying attention to how we’re driving. Then we see blue lights flashing behind us. No matter who we are, we get nervous. We may wonder what we did wrong, or we may know. But even if we do know what we did, we don’t all know what to do next.

People tend to love police officers when they need their help and curse them when they get a traffic ticket. But the officer walking toward your car has a job to do, and part of that job is to give tickets to anyone violating traffic laws, which still apply on campus.

Last December’s shooting at the Woodbridge campus opened many concerns on safety issues at NOVA. To address those questions and provide ideas for a safer environment for students, faculty and staff, NOVA president Robert Templin created the Presidential Commission on Safety and Security. The commission was charged with creating a report on the state of safety and security.

Despite a special web page detailing the creation of the commission, neither the final report nor a summary of its findings, are publicly available on NOVA’s web site. However, the NOVA Fortnightly was able to obtain the report through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Road damage along East Campus Drive at the Alexandria campus will be repaired next week resulting in parking lot closures and bus detours until June 3 at the earliest. In addition East Campus Drive is closed to automobile traffic.

During the repairs Metrobus routes 25A, 25B and DASH Bus AT-6 will not pick up passengers along East Campus Drive, including the stops at Dawes Avenue and Beauregard Street. According to an email sent to students, signs will be posted at the affected bus stops. Normal bus service will resume when East Campus Drive is reopened.

Dr. Terry Alford’s upcoming biography, Fortune’s Fools is about the life of John Wilkes Booth, the famous actor and infamous assassin of the 16th president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln scholar has already written two books published by Oxford Press, made numerous television appearances, worked as a consultant for the 2007 film hit National Treasure 2, and helped found the NOVA Honors Program. He was recently awarded the 2010 Outstanding Faculty Award by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is the only community college professor to ever receive the accolade.

“Everything seemed to be going my way,” Regina Spiegel recently told the large audience at the theater at the NOVA Woodbridge campus. The Polish winter was her biggest complaint in life. The topic turned serious as the guest speaker talked of her experience as a survivor of the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz on April 8.

She remembered the exact date that the German army attacked her village in Radom, Poland: Sept. 1, 1939. The building shook with the force of the army. Spiegel ran from her home, where her mother, Brandla, was preparing a traditional Shabbat dinner, to see what was happening.

Canadian author Denise Chong spoke about her most recent book Egg on Mao at the Annandale campus on the afternoon of April 8.
Her book follows the life of one of three persons, who during the Tiananmen Square student sit-in in Beijing, China in 1989, threw eggs filled with paint at the giant portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong in the Square. They were subsequently arrested, termed vandals and counter-revolutionary reactionaries, and sentenced to various terms in prison, from 16 years to life.

A new report from NOVA gives the clearest picture yet of what happened on Dec. 8 when a student shot at a teacher on the Woodbridge campus.
The shooting occurred when a disgruntled student, Jason Hamilton, snuck a high-powered rifle hidden in a duffel bag into his math class. Hamilton fired two shots from a distance of no more than six feet at the professor. His shots missed. As he attempted to reload his rifle, it malfunctioned.

A recent job fair at the University of Mary Washington attracted more than 6,000 people and halted traffic on both U.S. 1 and Interstate 95 at the U.S. 17 exit.

Janet Giles of JobZone, which holds job fairs throughout much of Virginia, has reported an increase in the number of job fairs attendees and a decrease in the number of companies that exhibit. She also said she’s been seeing people who have never lost their job before.