Southern Virginia University	Virginia Military Institute
Washington and Lee (ranking)	Washington and Lee (science)

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Fall Semester at SVU Commences with Another Record Enrollment Buena Vista, VA, October 9, 2003

Record enrollments are becoming an annual event at Southern Virginia University. According to statistics released from the SVU Registrar’s Office, 576 students enrolled for the Fall 2003 Semester, an 18% increase from last year and the most the University has ever enrolled.

This year’s student body consists of individuals from 48 states and 10 foreign countries, including Canada, Argentina, Ghana, Yugoslavia, Ecuador and China. Approximately one-third of SVU’s student body comes from western states including California, Utah, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Virginia remains the top state as 30 percent of the students are from the Commonwealth. The total number of new students is 339, including 61 students who have transferred to SVU from other colleges and universities. The new students were chosen from a record pool of nearly 1,400 applicants, which is over a 30 percent increase from last year. SVU plans to grow to accommodate 1200 students.

With enrollment continuing to rise, SVU President Dr. Monte S. Nyman sees a bright but challenging future.

“While we are able to accommodate the current number of students,” Nyman said, “we are at the point where additional on-campus student housing, academic and other university related facilities are needed to meet the growing demand.”

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VMI Receives High Marks from U.S. News and The Princeton Review

For the third consecutive year, VMI was selected as the country's best national, public liberal arts college. All three engineering departments at VMI are among the best in the nation according to U.S. News & World Report's 2004 edition of "America's Best Colleges."

The rankings also placed VMI in the "top tier" among its 200-plus peer institutions.

The Civil Engineering Department was rated 7th best in the nation among schools whose highest degree is a bachelor's or master's. Electrical Engineering was rated 14th nationally, and Mechanical Engineering was cited as America's 15th best.

“Classes are small, the school is well run, no one cheats and the instructors are good teachers,” states the Princeton Review when rating VMI.

" I am delighted especially by the national rankings attained by all three of our engineering programs and the quality of colleges in which our new overall rank places us," said VMI Deputy Superintendent and Dean of the Faculty Brigadier General Charles F. Brower, IV, Ph.D. "There's still hard work ahead for us to realize our full potential, but it's also clear our progress is real and rapid."

The Princeton Review named VMI to its "Best Mid-Atlantic Colleges" list. That list contains the top schools in the six state region.

One unique feature of the Princeton Review is its "Survey Says" section where the editors share characteristics of each school with the readers.

The Princeton Review's "Best Mid-Atlantic Colleges:98 Great Schools to Consider," will be available in bookstores soon. That web site address is www.PrincetonReview.com.

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W&L Moves Up to 12th Best Liberal Arts College in U.S. August 22, 2003

LEXINGTON, VA - Washington and Lee University is ranked the 12th best liberal arts institution in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. This represents a significant increase over last year's 15th-place ranking.

On the 15 major indicators of excellence, W&L performed above nearly 200 other liberal arts colleges nationally in key academic, financial and quality measurements examined by U.S. News, including:

W&L's 11-to-1 student-faculty ratio also reflects W&L's stature among the top echelon of liberal arts colleges and universities. So, too, does the increasingly high academic performance of W&L freshmen--four out of five were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, and the middle half of the students scores were 1280 to 1440 on the SAT exam.

Washington and Lee, founded in 1749, is the country's ninth oldest institution of higher education and has been ranked among the top 25 U.S. News liberal arts colleges and universities for more than a decade. Other guidebooks of select colleges also routinely feature W&L.

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W & L Chemists Awarded National Science Grants The News-Gazette

A group of chemists at Washington and Lee University has been awarded a second National Science Foundation grant for their continuing integration of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy into their classes and student-assisted research endeavors.

The $70,830 NSF grant will help finance the installation of a new probe, high-tech amplifier and low temperature Dewar in W&L’s NMR spectrometer , a large, computer-controlled device used to determine the structure of molecules.

W&L’s chemistry department will showcase its research work at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Lexington, Virginia in March 2005.

Upgrading the equipment will allow additional and more complex research to be conducted by students and faculty, since the improved spectrometer will analyze molecular compounds in one-tenth the time and, for elaborate assessments, with sustained accuracy, said Erich S. Uffelman, an associate professor of chemistry and director of the NSF-funded project.

“This will allow us to show students the techniques they will be using at the top graduate schools in the country,” said Uffelman. “Too often, people have a stereotypical view of chemists mixing things and holding test tubes up to the light, but chemists can’t work today without sophisticated instruments.”

The grant also will enable the W&L team of chemists -- associate professors Uffelman, Marcia B. France, Steven G. Desjardins and Lisa T. Alty -- to expand their research and their mentorship of student research assistants.

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