Batten student DeAnza Cook is one of two undergraduate students recently awarded a prestigious fellowship from the Miller Center.

University of Virginia students and faculty last September formed the Tri-Sector Leadership Fellows program, an innovative effort that brings together students and professors from three fields of graduate study – law, business and public policy – to learn about each sector and gain a competitive advantage and a more expansive network as they enter the workplace after graduation.

Zach Blackburn’s interest in public policy and his eventual decision to enroll in the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy all began with an unexpected family trip to Latvia.

We canvassed the world of the social and behavioral sciences, looking for rising stars whose careers promise to make a lasting mark. We’ll be profiling the top 30 throughout the month of April.

On Wednesday evening, Hale and Stam shared these life lessons with students as a part of Housing and Residence Life’s 24th edition of the Last Lecture Series. An annual spring tradition, the Last Lecture invites the University’s  finest faculty members to impart their wisdom and knowledge to students as if it is their very last opportunity to do so.

Second-year MPP candidate Caryl Merten is no stranger to foreign languages. As an undergraduate student, she received a degree in Foreign Affairs with a minor in French, and spent two years as senior resident in the language houses.

For Kathryn Babbin (MPP ’19), the Batten community cannot be underestimated. Babbin who graduated last May with a master’s of public policy was drawn to the Batten School for a variety of reasons, mainly because it offered what seemed like a tight-knit community of students, faculty, and staff, where she felt she could make a real impact.

Today, the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy is proud to announce that ten Batten students were elected to Phi Beta Kappa Society. Founded in 1776 amidst the American Revolution by five William and Mary students, Phi Beta Kappa remains America’s most prestigious honors society, and one whose founders believed education and academic excellence were integral to freedom of thought.

Conventional evaluations of voting systems focus on ballots for which no vote can be recorded (that is, “residual” votes). However, recorded votes that misrepresent voter intent are another potentially important, but less easily measured, source of error. 

While it is obvious that America’s state and local governments were consistently active during the nineteenth century, a period dominated by laissez-faire, political historians of twentieth-century America have assumed that the national government did very little during this period. A Government Out of Sight challenges this premise, chronicling the ways in which the national government intervened powerfully in the lives of nineteenth-century Americans through the law, subsidies, and the use of third parties (including state and local governments), while avoiding bureaucracy.