When walking around NOVA’s Woodbridge campus, you may come across a bevy of stylish students, at times dressed head to toe in the latest trends, sometimes painfully so. But if you keep looking, you’re likely to come across Heather Kirkpatrick, a NOVA sophomore and fresh face in the ever-changing fashion industry, walking the halls or helping students as part of her job with the Student Ambassadors.

After initial practices, NOVA’s team competed in four scrimmages in late August before officially opening its season at the Howard Community College tournament in Columbia, Md., in which it played four matches in two days.

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.

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.

Most NOVA graduates eventually work in such areas as in offices, in selling, as nurses or perhaps in an auto shop. Not Kris “Savage” McCray, 28, who smashes bodies and bangs heads in a cage ring in mixed martial arts.

Mixed martial arts includes striking and grappling techniques and appears to be a combination of boxing, wrestling, kick boxing, and jiu-jitsu. MMA fighting has become popular on network and cable television, such as on Spike TV, and on pay telecasts.

“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.

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.

The turnout for the seminar was low, with more than half the auditorium left unfilled. Disappointing, said organizers, considering the topic is so important and common. That topic was domestic violence.
Every year Peggy Joy Sullivan comes to the Woodbridge campus of Northern Virginia Community College to teach people about what constitutes domestic violence and what to do about it. Sullivan is the community outreach coordinator for ACTS/Turning Points Domestic Violence Program in Dumfries. She has trained police officers, magistrates, mediators, judges, social workers, school nurses, teachers and counselors.

Tax season is rapidly approaching, and with it the stress of complicated tax laws. However, with free tax preparation workshops at NOVA and special tax credits for students, there are many ways to make the season easier.

There are several tax provisions that are designed to help students. One is the Hope Credit which can provide $2,500 for education expenses; the other is the Lifetime Learning Credit that affords a broad range of tax refunds for educational expenses.