Press

UVA Today & Andrés Clarens, Morven Advisory Committee Member, named an assistant director of the White House’s Office of Science Technology Policy

“Andrés Clarens, whose research focuses on understanding decarbonization of infrastructure systems, will be an assistant director of the White House’s Office of Science Technology Policy.”

Elizabeth Meyer, Morven Faculty Director & Harvard Graduate School of Design Lecture

“Elizabeth K. Meyer presents the Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture, “Unsettling Sustainability: Landscape Laboratories as Experimental and Experiential Grounds.” The talk offers an overview of how landscape architectural design thinking is at the core of the strategic planning process for the 3000-acre rural landscape on the peri-urban edge of Charlottesville. Meyer is the Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Architecture and the inaugural faculty Director of UVA’s transdisciplinary Morven Sustainability Lab. “ February 2024

UVA Today & Paul Freedman’s January Term Course

Professor Freedman’s January term students taking his course on the Politics of Food visited Morven to explore the MKG

UVA Today & Michael Luegering, UVA Landscape Architecture professor

UVA’s Michael Luegering was featured in a UVA Today article on his research to support efforts at nature-based flood control and ecosystem management in the Chesapeake Bay region. The UVA team is using test plots at UVA’s Morven Land Lab to discover how native plants will react in various soils.

Beth Meyer honored with Thomas Jefferson Award

Faculty Director Beth Meyer honored with Thomas Jefferson Award for her excellence in scholarship.

Gardening All Wrong? It’s All Right, You’re Learning! Try These 6 Spring Growing Tips

Signs of spring are everywhere at the Morven Kitchen Garden farm, the 1.25-acre plot that the UVA Morven Sustainability Lab uses for teaching, and to some extent, feeding, UVA students and community members.  

The plants growing at Morven, though, got their start over the winter. So what should this year’s would-be gardeners be thinking about now? UVA Today asked Fiona Flynn, the kitchen garden coordinator, for her best advice about getting started, or getting better at, making those incredible edibles grow.

MORVEN PROPERTY TO BECOME UVA’S ‘SUSTAINABILITY LAB’

The University of Virginia and the UVA Foundation announced this month that the Morven Farm property will move forward as UVA’s “Sustainability Lab,” bringing together a broad range of education, experimentation, innovation, research and engagement in support of the University’s strategic commitment to environmental resilience and sustainability.

Virtual Japanese Garden Tour

Morven Programs helped facilitate and advertise virtual tour of the Japanese Garden at historic Morven in partnership with the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library’s “Same Page Community Read” reading initiative.

Public History Institute Internships

We are hiring research assistants for the 2022 Morven Summer Institute class, ARH 4500/AAS 4559: Morven’s Enslaved and Descendant Communities. The application process began in February and students will be hired by the end of March.

21st Century Civil Protest: Fall 2021

A hybrid event presented by six 2021 Mandela Washington Fellows. Fellows presented and facilitated a virtual discussion around the focus, structure, and impact of Nigeria’s grassroots #ENDSARS campaign, which targets a special police unit implicated in widespread human rights violations but has catalyzed a broader call for social justice among African youth across the continent.

MKG 10-year Anniversary: A Report

The Morven Kitchen Garden celebrates a decade of connecting students and community members with our local food system, providing sustainability education, and engagement with local food justice efforts. On September 10th we held a 10 year anniversary party, where we launched our Anniversary Report and celebrated a decade of programming. Thanks to our event sponsors: UVA Dine, Boar’s Head Resort, UVA Sustainability, and UVA Parents Committee.

Morven Announces Request for Proposals: Sustainability Teaching & Research related to Morven Farm

Morven Programs, in partnership with the University Committee on Sustainability, announces a round of grant funding enabling innovative Sustainability-focused course development or research projects centered around the unique Morven Farm property.

Virginia Film Festival to Return with in-Person and Drive-in Presentations in October

“After last year’s necessary and successful pivot to virtual screenings, we are thrilled to return to theaters in person and to reprise last year’s popular drive-in movie screenings. We are very happy to announce that we are back this year with a somewhat smaller, but incredibly robust program of films,” said UVA Vice Provost for the Arts and VAFF Director Jody Kielbasa. “This year’s festival will include in-person theatrical screenings downtown at the Paramount Theater and Violet Crown Charlottesville, and at Culbreth Theatre on the Grounds of the University. The festival will also continue its very popular drive-in movies series at the beautiful Morven Farm in Eastern Albemarle County.”

Human Rights a Main Focus for Students in Summer Global Internships

Gyamfi and Biggiani were two of 32 students who took part in the Global Studies-sponsored academic Virtual Global Internships program. Their connections with internship hosts were made in partnership with the Presidential Precinct – a Charlottesville-based nonprofit that brings together UVA, William & Mary, Morven Farm, Monticello, Montpelier and Highland to offer resources to emerging community leaders around the world. Many of the hosts, as alumni of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, knew Charlottesville well, having spent six weeks with the Presidential Precinct…

Morven Programs Report: Spring 2021

Our Spring 2021 report summarizes our recent and upcoming projects, including our virtual “Food and Justice in Virginia,” our 7th year of hosting the Mandela Washington Fellows, research projects at Morven, internship projects, MKG innovation, and more.

Morven & UVA Sawmilling Collaboration

The purpose of this project is to provide a creative example of how UVA can foster a culture of sustainability among students, faculty and staff; and how the University might directly address the pressing societal challenges of environmental sustainability, while also enhancing and expanding the student experience.

On a beautiful March day, Morven teamed up with UVA Sawmilling on a beautiful to mill downed Morven trees with the help of UVA students.

Food and Justice in Virginia: What Next? a Post-Event blog

One week after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Lifetime Learning, in partnership with Morven Farm, hosted the program “Food and Justice in Virginia“ as part of the 2021 Community MLK Celebration. The panel addressed several of the many dimensions of food justice, including questions of food access, treatment of agricultural workers, and the continuing legacies of harm toward Black and Indigenous farmers and landowners.

UVA Hosts Online Event Discussing Food and Justice in Virginia

University of Virginia Lifetime Learning, in partnership with Morven Farm, hosted an online event Wednesday, January 27. Entitled Food and Justice in Virginia, the panel addressed several ongoing challenges facing the United States food system…

In the Car, Under the Stars: See Virginia Film Festival’s First Drive-In Movies

As the sun set Wednesday night, a line of cars snaked through the winding roads of Albemarle County, past the homes of Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to Morven Farm where, in a rolling field by the polo barns, an inflatable screen awaited…

UVA Today’s 2020 in Photos: Part II

University of Virginia photographer Sanjay Suchak is sharing some of his most memorable photos from 2020.We shared Part I and some of Suchak’s reflections, earlier, covering mostly the spring semester and the abrupt shift from normal life on Grounds to virtual learning in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world.

Here is Part II, covering the fall semester, from students’ return to Grounds in September to UVA’s first COVID-19 vaccinations at the beginning of December, with many moments and memories in between.

NSF Grant Funding UVA Researchers’ Efforts in Arctic Community

Morven Farm has served as a testing site for the Arctic Research Center’s network of integrated meteorological, aquatic and geotechnical sensors. Read about their work in the article below…

UVA Today, September 23, 2020

UVA Foundation Protects Morven Land Through Conservation Easement

More than 1,150 acres of land situated near the historic homes of three presidents in Albemarle County will be permanently protected by a conservation easement placed by the University of Virginia Foundation, UVA President Jim Ryan announced today…

UVA Today, January 17, 2020

Students brainstorm engagement for Morven farm

Indigo Mathon wants to bring horses back to Morven farm and provide a home for rescues. Indigo and her partner pitched the idea as part of a class project at Community Public Charter School. The middle-schoolers spent two weeks immersed at Morven, working on ideas for how the farm could better engage the community…

The Daily Progress, October 18, 2019

Former MSI Fellow & MKG intern Receives Fulbright

Former Morven Summer Institute Fellow and Morven Kitchen Garden summer intern Elin Woolf of Centreville, received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2019. She graduated with degrees in psychology and economics distinguished major with a minor in environmental sciences, and received a scholarship to teach English in Taiwan. While there, she plans to study Mandarin, create an after-school gardening program and teach yoga.

UVA Today, October 18, 2019

Madison House Volunteers Go Big on Saturday

Students volunteered at Morven Farm, doing a variety of tasks in the educational garden that currently serves as a local food systems laboratory for students and faculty…

UVA Today, April 15, 2019

President Bill Clinton to Appear at UVA’s Presidential Ideas Festival

Former President Bill Clinton was the featured speaker May 23 at the University of Virginia, capping the three-day Presidential Ideas Festival that brought together more than 60 White House veterans from both parties, plus prominent journalists and leading scholars to discuss the state of the modern American presidency. Morven Programs was proud to be a partner to host this event.

UVA Today, March 28, 2019

UVa launches First Lady’s Food Lab at Morven

Former Virginia first lady Dorothy McAuliffe was honored Thursday for her work to end childhood hunger at the launch of the First Lady’s Food Lab, a new program and facility at the University of Virginia’s Morven Farm…

C’ville Tomorrow, October 18, 2018

Ackerman To Speak At University Of Virginia’s Women’s Global Leadership Forum

The Women’s Global Leadership Forum, hosted by the University of Virginia in conjunction with the UVA Bicentennial, will bring together women from the University and around the world to discuss “The Role of Women in 21st Century Democracy”…

Big East News, November 13, 2017

Hillary Rodham Clinton to Participate in UVA Forum on Women’s Global Leadership

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will headline the Women’s Global Leadership Forum, a two-day University of Virginia symposium that will draw leaders from across the country and around the world to explore the role of women in 21st-century democracy…

UVA Today, October 13, 2017

W.Va’s First Female Senator Says Listening is the Key to Success (WGLF)

Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito spoke Monday to kick off the two- day Women’s Global Leadership Forum, which concludes Tuesday with an address from Hillary Rodham Clinton. Women may be the key to breaking political gridlock in Washington, the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from West Virginia told a University of Virginia audience on Monday….

UVA Today, November 13, 2017

These Rapidly Reproducing Critters Offer Evolutionary Insights

Bergland is looking specifically at how fruit fly populations in an orchard on Carter Mountain outside of Charlottesville and at UVA’s Morven Farm, adapt over tens of generations to the seasonal changes of a single year, and over multiple years…

UVA Today, June 6, 2017

Young Latin American Leaders Learning From Local Businesses, Non-Profits

President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba last March put Saily Gonzalez Velazquez’s nascent bed-and-breakfast into overdrive. Obama’s visit, part of the United States’ easing of sanctions against the island, emboldened American tourists to consider traveling to a part of the world that has been off-limits for years…

UVA Today, October 20, 2016

Tracking the Sun: Sunflowers & How They Do it

It’s summertime, and fields are colored with an array of flowering plants – some of them sunflowers – that are dutifully watching the rising sun. Plant biologists at the University of Virginia and two universities in California have now discovered how young sunflowers use their internal circadian clock – acting through growth hormones – to follow the sun from east to west during the day, then return to face east by dawn as they grow…

UVA Today, August 5, 2016

Albirght Lauds Stettinius as She Receives New UVA Award Named for Him

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tuesday evening that she felt a special kinship with Edward R. Stettinius as she accepted a new award named in his honor. University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan presented Albright with the University’s inaugural Edward R. Stettinius Award for Global Leadership at a dinner at the Boar’s Head Inn.

UVA Today, March 30, 2016

UVA Alum Emily Salle and Students Keep Morven Garden Growing

As winter and its cold, short days overtake us – and they will eventually – the University of Virginia’s hardcore gardeners already are anticipating spring. At the Morven Kitchen Garden, farm manager Emily Salle, who graduated in May with a degree in environmental sciences, is planning for the next growing season with a team of UVA student volunteers – and about to harvest the last produce after a fall planting…

UVA Today, December 10, 2015

UVA Creates Award Honoring Former Student who Shaped Post-WW2 World

The University of Virginia has announced the creation of a major new award for global leadership to recognize the 70th anniversary of the United Nations and UVA’s commitment to international leadership and discourse. It honors an alumnus and former rector who was one of the forces in post-World War II diplomacy…

UVA Today, October 26, 2015

Forgotten Founder: Jefferson’s “adoptive son” and the legacy of slavery

When I got the assignment a couple of months ago to write about Jefferson and his protégé William Short and their dialogue about race and slavery, the nine murdered worshipers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston were still alive. We’ve lost far too many people to race-inflected violence and outrage in recent years, but this feels different. It feels impossible now to dive in to telling a story about race from 200 years ago without acknowledging at the outset this most recent stain on our nation…

C’ville Weekly, July 1, 2015

Student Gardens on Grounds and Morven Farm

UVA Magazine interviews the founders of the Morven Kitchen Garden to find out more about why it was founded, what the hopes are for it, and how it will serve UVA and the Charlottesville Community.

UVA Magazine, Summer 2011