UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Judith Shatin, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music

“I went to a store in New York that sold MIDI equipment, and I learned enough to write a grant application to the then-existing academic computing support committee.

“And so we started the Virginia Center for Computer Music with a couple of Mac SEs, Mac II, Amigas. We scrounged other equipment that was being thrown out at Carruthers Hall and in the psychology department. And we started.

“We went through Next computers and SGI, and I made multiple applications. And gradually were able to receive more support from the department. And so that’s what enabled us to start the program and to retrofit a seminar room to be the Virginia Center for Computer Music.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Iggy Provencio, Professor of Biology

“My plans are to continue our work in anxiety, and the effect of light and how light regulates anxiety.

“Hopefully we will elucidate what some of the circuitry is and be able to develop pharmaceuticals for these anxiety disorders. You know, I get a chuckle every time I look at my iPhone, and there’s that setting on it you can activate that will reduce the blue wavelengths that come from your phone as the evening progresses, because blue wavelengths are stimulatory.

“Well, those blue wavelengths are stimulating these photoreceptors that we discovered. So prior to that discovery, removing blue wavelengths wouldn’t have made any sense. And so I get a little chuckle out of that every time I see that.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Judith Shatin, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music

“I’m also concerned about the corporatization of the academy, which is a function of course of funding models, and the idea that you need to get the best bang for your buck.

“Well I’m glad that Newton wasn’t thinking about that, for example. So I think there needs to really be room for this kind of integration. What is the value of the arts? What are the dollar values we’re going to put on it? I think it is really super important for the university to be able to be an advocate for the meaning and the role of education, broadly construed, in our democracy.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Judith Shatin, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music

“I was absolutely stunned a few weeks ago, after I had given a colloquium for the composition seminar at Columbia University.

“A colleague and friend of mine there sent me a letter that I have no memory of writing in 1966, when I was a junior at Columbia High School. The letter was to the Electronic Music Center Columbia-Princeton, based at Columbia University, asking whether they had any volunteer options or summer courses in electronic music, because I was very interested in it.

“Little did I know that twenty-one years later, I would found the Virginia Center for Computer Music at the University of Virginia.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Judith Shatin, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music

“So I developed a number of different courses in computer music and combining those with acoustic music. And in more recent times I have taught songwriting, which I have absolutely loved.

“And one experience that I remember is a student in one of my computer music classes. They were given a challenge to compose a piece based on a DNA structure for a contest that was international, and that was won by one of the students in the class. So that was really fun, and very exciting.

“But in general, just to see them bringing their own creative minds to bear on their projects. So that was also really wonderful.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Martha Sites, Acting University Dean of Libraries

“The potential renovation of Alderman was one of the things that I’m very proud to have made visible during the time that I was in this interim role.

“One of the things I loved doing, because we were always having leaks somewhere, I learned that there was a box of rusty water pipes, and one of our facilities people brought some examples to me. I used to go, when I’d go to faculty meetings, or even when I spoke to legislative groups that visited, I would pull out those rusty [pipes], and you’d look at it in horror because you thought, Our water is running through these things! Oh my!

“There is nothing that gets the eye and the attention of people more than that.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Martha Sites, Acting University Dean of Libraries

“The potential renovation of Alderman was one of the things that I’m very proud to have made visible during the time that I was in this interim role.

“One of the things I loved doing, because we were always having leaks somewhere, I learned that there was a box of rusty water pipes, and one of our facilities people brought some examples to me. I used to go, when I’d go to faculty meetings, or even when I spoke to legislative groups that visited, I would pull out those rusty [pipes], and you’d look at it in horror because you thought, Our water is running through these things! Oh my!

“There is nothing that gets the eye and the attention of people more than that.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Martha Sites, Acting University Dean of Libraries

“I mean, I remember in the eighties when we first had mini-computers, I literally remember some of us standing around, scratching our heads, going: ‘Now what do we think people will do with these?’

“I was lucky to be in the path of this trajectory where I saw things literally move through that life cycle that you talk about when you talk about arrows of change and it taking forty years for change to actually become absorbed and effective. I feel like I lived that in the computing world, and had a chance to affect that, because when I went to the library, we were just bringing all of these electronic means into the library.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Martha Sites, Acting University Dean of Libraries

“I mean, I remember in the eighties when we first had mini-computers, I literally remember some of us standing around, scratching our heads, going: ‘Now what do we think people will do with these?’

“I was lucky to be in the path of this trajectory where I saw things literally move through that life cycle that you talk about when you talk about arrows of change and it taking forty years for change to actually become absorbed and effective. I feel like I lived that in the computing world, and had a chance to affect that, because when I went to the library, we were just bringing all of these electronic means into the library.”

UVA's Bicentennial Stories initiative from WTJU 91.1 FM tells our collective story. It helps us understand our shared history and make meaning in the University today. And as we look ahead, these stories help us shape the future of the University and our role in a democratic society.

Martha Sites, Acting University Dean of Libraries

“We have been very progressive, I think. Clearly we still need reading rooms. But we also need spaces where people can access digital content in new and different ways.

“I think one of the catalogers many years ago impressed upon me that we didn’t need to develop different kinds of processes for acquiring and cataloging and making materials available, we needed to think about them all as integrated processes. That we could take long-honed processes for doing this in the book world and apply it to the digital world.

“That was an eye-opener that stuck with me for many, many years. Don’t say you have to have different staff or different processes to do these things; bring them together.”