The Faculty Senate passed a resolution Thursday afternoon condemning JMU Provost and Senior Vice President for Student Affairs Heather Coltman alleging a lack of shared governance between administration and faculty and a culture of intimidation in hiring practices. Thirty-three of 42 voting senators supported the resolution.
MyMadison outages on Tuesday morning caused students with overlapping enrollment appointments to experience crashes and delays. The enrollment process groups students by credit hours into the same time slots. Students who have yet to enroll for fall classes are experiencing more fear following Tuesday's crash.
The Student Government Association (SGA) Senate approved funding for the Asian Student Union (ASU) and JMU acapella groups Low Key and Unaccompanied, as well as the budget for University Program Board (UPB), and heard a presentation from JMU Dining Services during Tuesday’s meeting.
General education classes will no longer be grouped into clusters. Instead, groups will be named after a new summary of the skills they aim to teach.
Hindsight is 20/20, or at least that was Monday's focus as Dr. Anthony Fauci and CNN Chief Domestic Correspondent Jim Acosta (’93) led a town hall at JMU to talk about lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and reflect on the mistakes and successes that have followed the U.S. throughout the global health crisis.
SGA announced the major candidate results of Tuesday's election. Winners were President Nate Hazen, Vice President Faith Forman, Executive Treasurer Matt Haynicz and Student Representative to the Board of Visitors Abigail Cannella.
Banning and censoring books have been hot-button issues of late, particularly within education. The implications of censoring or not censoring content in public schools have wracked the public consciousness for decades but have picked up speed within the past few years, and Harrisonburg is no exception.
Class registration occurs just a few months before the semester begins, and for some students like sophomore Maddie Tardif, this proves to be stressful. During this time, students are often racing against one another to get classes, but what really makes this time so hectic is the battle over “good professors,” several students told The Breeze, and they often consider Rate My Professors ratings when picking classes.
JMU’s Office of Disability Services (ODS) expanded to a second testing location this month to accommodate the growing population of students registering with disabilities at JMU.
The Breeze has been JMU’s official student-run newspaper for 100 years. Since its first issue on Dec. 2, 1922, The Breeze’s mission has been to provide the JMU community with news and important information. From college name changes to the construction of new buildings, here are some of the biggest moments The Breeze has chronicled at JMU since 1922.
Seen at schools throughout Harrisonburg are small plots of land that’ve been turned into gardens by contributors across the city assisting students in learning about sustainable garden practices and building connections with the environment and healthy food.
As the priority filing date for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) nears, the JMU Director of Financial Aid and Scholarships Brad Barnett urges students who are returning for the 2023-24 school year to apply on the Federal Student Aid website before the March 1 deadline.
The JMU Board of Visitors (BoV) discussed changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), updated members on JMU’s efforts with the Virginia General Assembly and heard a presentation on a new Innovation Center for Youth Justice at its full board meeting on Feb. 10.
There’s a new internet tool that’s taken the academic world by storm by assisting students in cheating their way to good grades: ChatGPT, a revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) language model.
Eric Nickel, the director of university recreation, won the Dolley Madison Award, which recognizes a member of the Hart School of Hospitality, Sport and Recreation Management for their time, talent and treasure.
COVID-19 created shortages of all kinds across the world, including in different areas of labor in the U.S., such as retail, hospitality and the food industry. One area, in particular has been hit hard: teachers. In Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS), there’s high demand for time off and leave from teachers, but not enough substitutes to fill all the requests, according to Jeremy Weaver, the director of human resources for HCPS.
Anne van Leeuwen, an associate professor of philosophy at JMU, received the inaugural Patterson Prize from Simone de Beauvoir Studies, a scholarly journal dedicated to the philosopher of the same name.
The Gus Bus, an after-school enrichment program for elementary school students in Harrisonburg, has recently undergone a transformation — one that highlights local landmarks with the hope of bringing the community together.
Two retiring JMU professors, Neil Marrin and Tassie Pippert, have founded the Marrin and Pippert Scholarship Endowment for Study Abroad & Experiential Learning to support study abroad efforts for students from the Hart School of Hospitality, Sport and Recreation Management.
Many GenEd professors have noticed reduced attendance since the return from the pandemic and see a correlation between students' attendance and their and grades. Some students said the increase in absences may be due to a lack of motivation or a lack of interest in classes that aren't for their majors.
JMU senior Casey Brewer won the 2022 Henry Fong Award, an international award that grants one student a scholarship to study at another International Network of Universities (INU) member university for one semester with a stipend of $2,000 for travel costs and living expenses. The last Henry Fong Award winner at JMU was in 2011.
Karin Tollefson-Hall, an art education professor at JMU, has won Virginia Art Educator of the Year, the highest award in the profession at the state level. She’s been at JMU for 13 years.
JMU’s Center for First-Generation Students opened on Nov. 7. Located in the Student Success Center (SSC), it’s the first on-campus center of its kind for first-generation students. In 2022-23, about 12% — 2,391 — of undergraduates at JMU are first-gen students, according to the university.
At the Dec. 1 faculty senate meeting, faculty were informed on how to deal with student absences, JMU Provost Heather Coltman reported on the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) Survey and staff bonuses were discussed.
Race-based factors have been used in college admissions processes since the 1960s — now the Supreme Court is considering whether they’re constitutionally viable. The Supreme Court held oral arguments for two affirmative action-related cases Oct. 31 in which Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed suit against the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Harvard for considering race in their admissions process. SFFA argues that race-based admissions leads to discrimination of Asian and White Americans.
The JMU Board of Visitors (BoV) introduced a new center for first-generation students, announced low-cost educational resource programs and heard a presentation on career outcomes and retention rates at its full-board meeting on Nov. 18.
JMU’s selection of majors and minors may soon become wider. Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) professors Mary Thompson, Dawn Goode and Kristen Kelley have proposed a new LGBTQ studies minor.
The Department of Political Science and JMU's modern European Studies program hosted a Ukraine and the Future of Europe event on Wednesday, where students could voice their opinions and ask questions to a panel of professors with expertise on the subject.
Students, alumni and other visitors to campus will have plenty of events and activities to choose from during this year’s Homecoming weekend from Friday, Oct. 21, to Sunday, Oct. 23. Here are highlights of the weekend’s events.
Madison Hall will be renamed Holland Yates Hall after JMU alumnus Paul Holland (’82) and his wife, Linda Yates, donated the largest cash gift to the university in JMU history, according to an email sent to faculty and staff Oct. 19.
Molly Merryman, associate professor at Kent State University, visited JMU on Friday to speak about her work as the research director for Queer Britain — the national LBGTQ museum of the United Kingdom — and gave insight on adding an LGBTQ studies program at JMU.
Nick Brinen, assistant professor of architectural design, was awarded the 2023 Beck Fellowship from the College of Visual and Performing Arts in September 2022. Brinen received the fellowship due to his spring 2022 project: building a bike pavilion for children with disabilities.
JMU's Grow Your Own program is fully funded from the state and aims to give back to lower-income communities by giving people in underserved areas of Virginia an opportunity to become teachers. The program was born to enhance those lower-income schools by awarding scholarships to education students who agree to go back and teach at their local high schools.
At the end of August, President Joe Biden introduced a plan that’ll forgive up to $20,000 of student loans per person. With this plan, people who make $125,000 after graduating will be eligible for up to $10,000 of loan forgiveness and Pell Grant recipients will be eligible for up to $20,000. The Breeze spoke to past and current JMU students who'll be affected by the loan forgiveness plan.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced nominees for the Board of Visitors (BoV) of universities across Virginia, including five new members for JMU. As Youngkin is Virginia’s first Republican governor since 2014, this could shift education initiatives across the commonwealth, and the BoV itself. The Breeze spoke with the new members about their goals for their terms and what they hope to bring to the table.
Students and faculty in the School of Art, Design and Art History (SADAH) face the complex world of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the discourse surrounding them.
JMU Libraries announced the renovation and expansion plans for Carrier Library, with three years planned to complete the project. Construction will begin in May 2023 and is anticipated to be completed by the fall of 2026.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected many students and recent graduates in JMU's School of Nursing, making them rethink their careers in the field of nursing.
Senior ISAT majors conducted research on virtual reality video games and its effect on rehabilitating vestibular dysfunction.
In summer 2021, the geographic science major was renamed to "geography" and current students in the major have expressed their frustrations with the name change.
JMU’s Board of Visitors (BoV) voted to approve an increase to tuition and fees and the proposed budget for the 2022-23 school year at the last meeting of the semester.
Senior Rachel Stegmeier is conducting research on the levels of CBD and THC within hemp plants for her honors thesis. Her goal is to establish a variation in the many different ways to measure CBD and THC in hemp.
Grant Writing for Agencies awards two nonprofit organizations $3,500 each in grant money each year. Students in the class learn how to write a grant proposal for the nonprofit organization they're partnered with.
The Student Government Association (SGA) Senate approved all front-end budgeting (FEB) groups’ budgets for the 2022-23 academic year in Tuesday night’s meeting.
Rankin & Associates Consulting presented its finding from a climate survey about the attitudes, behaviors and policies in the JMU community.
The Board of Visitors (BoV) and members of the public discussed proposed tuition and fee ranges for the 2022-23 academic year.
Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) has welcomed two new members of its staff — E. Lee Dyer IV as director and Cassidy Mechalske as associate director.
After a search of over 50 applicants, Hollie Hall was chosen as the new dean of students.
SGA voted to approve an amendment to its financial procedures to allow the student organization, Safe Rides, to obtain more funding.
At Friday morning’s Board of Visitors (BoV) meeting, JMU leadership announced recognition with a new national university status, heard from President Jonathan Alger in his Presidential report — including on mental health in the community following a string of localized tragedies — and covered updates in the Virginia General Assembly legislative session and on COVID-19.
Students are advocating for more American Sign Language (ASL) classes on campus and more hires for people in the Deaf community.
