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NORFOLK

     Olympic gold medalist Francena McCorory will speak at the fifth annual Hampton Roads Conference for Girls and Young Women at Old Dominion University on Saturday, May 18.

NORFOLK

   Dominion Virginia Power has selected Old Dominion University to be the first participant in the company’s Solar Partnership Program. More than 600 solar panels will be installed this summer on the roof of ODU’s Student Recreation Center in the heart of the campus and generate 132 kilowatts for the electric grid.

VIRGINIA BEACH

  Gamma Xi Chapter, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., Va. Beach, held its annual Talent Hunt at Old Dominion University in Norfolk on February 27. The event was co-hosted by Tau Lambda Chapter of ODU. Fourteen area high school students performed, competing for cash awards and the opportunity to represent the chapter at the fraternity’s Third District Meeting in Richmond in April. 

By Rosalind Tyler

Associate Editor

New Journal and Guide

   Several sponsors will help host the annual Hampton Roads Urban League Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast on Jan. 21.

  Tidewater Community College has taken the lead in planning the annual event with several partners including Eastern Virginia Medical School, and Old Dominion, Norfolk State and Regent University.

By Randy Singleton

Community Affairs Correspondent

New Journal and Guide

HAMPTON

      Hampton University (0-2) was defeated 45-7 by Old Dominion University (2-0) in a rain shortened football game between crosstown rivals Saturday night (Sept.8) at Armstrong Stadium in Hampton.  Officials stopped the game with 11:43 left in the 4th quarter after a thunderstorm entered the area.  

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

    Old Dominion University continues to take bold steps into the future a few weeks after President John R. Broderick delivered his annual address.
    For example, a new art building will open on campus in early 2014. Meanwhile, a team of graduate accounting students recently won the Government Finance Case Challenge for the second year in a row. And the CIVIC Leadership Institute has partnered with the university to work to keep more talented people in the area.
    “Community engagement is one of the key initiatives in Old Dominion’s strategic plan,” said President John Broderick. “Partnering with an organization with the stature and strength of CIVIC opens new opportunities for the university to accomplish that goal.”
    Clearly, there is a lot of activity on campus since the president delivered his annual address on Aug. 21 in the Ted Constant Convocation Center to about 1200 community leaders and members of the university.
    Broderick said for the long-term health of Old Dominion, it’s vital that the university examine several critically important issues that connect to its goals.

Part 1: School Desegregation in Norfolk

By Leonard Colvin

Chief Reporter

New Journal and Guide

        Fifty-eight years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared separate but equal public schools in the United States illegal, two scholars have written a book showing the city of Norfolk’s history in complying with the high court’s decision.

        Norfolk State University History Department Chair and Professor Charles Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, a history professor at Sam Houston University in Huntsville, Texas, have chronicled the  African American community’s fight for educational and economic equality from the 1930s until recently in  “Elusive Equality, Desegregation and Resegregation in Norfolk Public Schools.”

        The book details the African American community’s fight using civic cohesion, courts, and the federal government to subdue Jim Crow segregation in the city’s public schools, starting in the 1930s.

        The book ends, sadly, describing a long and drawn out legal struggle in the local and federal courts by Blacks against the city’s white elite which shrewdly succeeded in ending school busing and in effect, resegregating the city’s public schools. “Massive Resistance” was the first layer of resistance to the school desegregation mandate that was exemplified by strict and discriminatory entrance screening of Blacks into the all-white schools; or at one point in the fall of 1958, the outright closure of white schools that had been ordered to be desegregated rather than admit Black students.

        Using neighborhood housing patterns and  freedom of choice to decide which school a student would attend were examples of “passive resistance” , another layer of resistance to deter compliance with the integration of all-white and Black public schools.

         The book reviews many parts of this epic tale contained in prior books and news articles. But unlike previous accounts of the Norfolk story, this one gives more detail and context to the political, social and personal complexities of the struggle In Norfolk by using an array of new voices that have not been heard before, especially as recorded in local newspaper articles.

         Ford said the authors used materials  from the  Norfolk School Division’s legal, meetings and policy records which were thought to have been destroyed, but  were sitting on the shelves at Old Dominion University and unearthed by Special Collections Librarian and University Archivist Sonia Yaco.  Ford said that information was also used from files of the NSU Archives, thanks to Dr. Tommy Bogger, NSU’s Interim Librarian. Also professional employees, historians and genealogists at the Norfolk Public Library and the city made contributions to the effort.

NORFOLK

     Remica Bingham-Risher has been hired as Old Dominion University’s director of writing and faculty development, with responsibility for the school’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP).

       ODU’s QEP is intended to improve upper-division undergraduate students’ disciplinary writing – that is, writing that demonstrates a reasoning process supported by research and reflection on a problem, topic or issue - through faculty development and engagement initiatives.

NORFOLK

     If you’re interested in learning how to network, successfully manage a political campaign, train volunteers or run for office yourself, then sign up for the Democracy for America Campaign Academy.

     The DFA Academy will run July 28-29 at Old Dominion University starting at 9 a.m. The regular cost is $70 but students or participants with low-incomes will pay only $35.

The workshop includes 16 hours of interactive instruction that will be provided by hundreds of local political volunteers, campaign staff and candidates.

By Rosaland Tyler

Associate Editor

New Journal and Guide

          Area colleges are providing some diverse opportunities to help in updating your employment skills.

For example, Hampton University is increasing its international footprint by expanding WHOV-FM, the essence of Hampton University. Meanwhile, Old Dominion University recently received a $600,000 grant that will extend its partnership with Eastern Virginia Medical School in medical modeling and simulation. And, a culinary degree at Tidewater Community College could land you a job before graduation.

          Meanwhile, Norfolk State University has been selected by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to participate in RWJF’s New Careers in Nursing Scholarship Program (NCIN). Students who receive the NCIN scholarships – in the amount of $10,000 each – have already earned a bachelor’s degree in another field, and are making a career switch to nursing through accelerated nursing degree programs.

          “We need a well-educated, diverse nursing workforce to provide quality care for our changing patient population,” said David Krol, MD, MPH, FAAP, program officer for NCIN, RWJF senior program officer and team director of the RWJF Human Capital portfolio. “NCIN is strengthening nursing education and helping to fill the pipeline with capable, culturally-competent nurses.”