Talk:Virginia Commonwealth University
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[edit] problem with images being of unknown origin
Many of the images are in danger of being deleted, as they were uploaded without clear documentation! I believe that many of the images ARE from fair-use sources; i found one on a vcu website. what can be done about this?
the images that are up show a much older campus, please update as well as give clear documentation, Images should be able to be obtained
[edit] Size
The article states a few times that VCU has a student body of 31,000 students. What is the source of that? I checked collegeboard.com, which has it at 25,961, and VCU.edu, which simply states "more than 29,000." Preston 08:03, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I've had trouble verifying VCU's actual student enrollment myself. The latest number I could find was from 2004, and I know the university has grown since then. It sounds like the 31,000 number is an estimate. --69.255.3.194 15:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Official stats from the State of Virginia Council of Higher Education: http://research.schev.edu/enrollment/E2_Report.asp shows VCU with 30,381 students
VCU has a live headcount. http://iserver.adm.vcu.edu/reports/pub/stats/univ.htm
The Fall of 2006 Enrollment is as follows
Undergraduates - 21249 Graduates - 7611 Professional (PhD)- 1592
Total of Fall 2006 - 30452
The Spring 2007 Enrollment is as follows
Undergraduates - 19677 Graduates - 6042 Professional (PhD)- 1574
Total of Spring 2007 - 27293
As you see There is a drop from Fall 2006 to Spring 2007
that being said http://www.news.vcu.edu/vcu_view/pages.aspx?nid=1914
VCU went on those fall headcounts and announced themselves the largest university in Virginia.
-Good catch, but you also have to remember more people are graduating in the fall than people transferring in during spring, so most school have a fairly large drop in enrollment between these two semesters. Hence why it’s the standard to list fall semester enrollment for most schools. --Bvjrm 22:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] VCU/MCV naming controversy
It seems this is a hot-button issue, so I thought it would be useful to start a discussion thread on the subject. The way I see it is this: there are two sides to the story, and we should do our best to present both. While MCV students and alumni have obvious emotional reasons to be attached to the MCV name, I think Trani had a valid point in showing how the lack of public awareness of the MCV name since VCU's merger was harming VCU's efforts to gain recognition as a global research university. In any edits that are done to this section I hope to see a balance between these two points of view. I think the section is already pretty biased toward the MCV point of view as it is – most of the section dwells on MCV's "separate identity" without too much of a counterargument for a unified VCU identity. I didn't want to put up a neutrality flag because so far the section is mainly fact-based, but we need to be careful about making the issue too emotionally charged on one side or the other.
--69.255.3.194 15:08, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
"lack of public awareness of the MCV name" ?? If anything it's a lack of awareness of the VCU name, MCV had and still has a great reputation as a medical school, unfortunately there is not a medical residency chair anywhere who knows what or where VCU is. You also miss the fact that the law joining VCU and MCV in 1968 dictated the name as "the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University". By formally changing that to "VCU Medical Center' Trani broke that law, regardless of your stance on the usefulness of combining the schools under the VCU banner it is an illegal act.
As far as emotionally charged, I think you will find it quite emotionally charged for MCV alums who now no longer have a school, or at least have a school that no longer associates itself with what they consider their history.
The main argument for unifying the schools is monetary saving by shrinking departments and more government funds because one large school gets more money, in my opinion whenever something is being done for money that is the wrong decision. Interestingly, as the article notes, the alumni fund is still run by the MCV Foundation - don't tell the alums we changed the name.
Cry me a river. How do you think RPI alums feel? MCV is very well known in the medical community, I will grant you, but the general public outside of Richmond has never heard of MCV. There is nothing illegal about promoting VCU to the outside world as VCU, and as for your little law, it says it's a college at Virginia Commonwealth University. Note that the university still refers to the campus as the MCV Campus.
The naming controversy has nothing to do with saving money - it is a marketing decision. Nothing is changing about the school's internal workings; only the branding. Instead of two separate schools getting credit in the public eye for doing different things, Trani is making sure that all the university's accomplishments are recognized as one body. The very fact that you view VCU and MCV as separate schools to begin with only lends credence as to why such a move is needed. It is a move that is 38 years overdue. The only reason I am not adding "lack of public awareness" to the article is because I can't find online the results to a survey that showed that most people in Virginia thought MCV was part of the University of Virginia, not VCU.
If nothing else, the "VCU Medical Center" name is common sense. The opinion of every university goes up when it has a medical center (see Johns Hopkins, University of Michigan, et al.). And that's what MCV is: a medical center, at VCU. It's about time that we started calling it for what it is instead of having an emotional attachment to an old name that doesn't make sense in the modern world. But then again, since when has Richmond ever let any of its history get out of the way for a little progress?
--24.125.147.15 07:25, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
MCV predates both RPI and VCU. State law mandated the MCV name. Suites are pending regarding the legality of the name change. I think until it's legally settled, we better remain with both names in use. Digitalblister 04:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Trani did nothing illegal; he did not eliminate the name MCV. Take for instance names MCV campus, MCV physicians, MCV hospitals, MCV alumni foundation. The "name change" is also to some extent justified because the university has added some more schools and structures since it received MCV in the VCU charter...the schools of nursing, allied health, pharmacy, dentistry.
It is also important to point out that MCV has never been a stand-alone entity since the formation of VCU, so the name change didn't involve consolidating schools and or changing the chain of command in any way. The name was also to differentiate MCV and VCU Health Systems from the Virginia (UVa) Health Systems; like some else stated the average person presumed MCV is at UVaGoodie2shoes1000 (talk) 05:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd like to see some cites on the state law mandating the name or on the lawsuits existing and being accepted as valid by a judge. This was a minor issue when the change was first announced, but I haven't heard anyone in the MCV community raise a fuss about it in over a year. Bringing it to the article when the people affected no longer care about it may constitute undue weight. Randy Blackamoor (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Problems with faculty section
The problem with the paragraphs in question is that they read more like a history of MCV and the Massey Cancer Center than a listing of notable faculty at VCU. They also have several POV statements without justification or citation, and there are buzzwords throughout ("leading edge," "shake up," etc.). If there are no objections or edits in the next few days or so, I think the remaining paragraphs should be deleted. While these paragraphs are relevant to the history of MCV specifically, the rest of the faculty are notable because they already have articles elsewhere on Wikipedia. --Omaryak 12:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
- After further research, I've found that the faculty members listed in the article did their primary work at places other than MCV/VCU. They were just passing through. While the faculty listed did perform the first transplants in Virginia, the transplants were not the first in the country, let alone the world. Hume performed the first transplant in the nation at Harvard before coming to MCV. It seems his accomplishment would be better listed over at the Harvard entry. I would welcome trivia like this in the MCV article for those seeking a more detailed history of the institution (with cited sources), but I don't think it belongs in a current listing of notable faculty of VCU. As for the Massey Cancer Center, I would support that information going into a new article about the center itself, but the director does not have information about him available on Wikipedia, so a source was definitely needed there. --Omaryak 21:41, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Omaryak suggests that faculty should only be noteworthy if they have made there accomplishment at the institution in question. If that is the case, then VCU should remove Fenn from its famous faculty ranks because he did his nobel research at Harvard. This of course would be foolish. So, why is it different for the medical faculty? Patrick Sweet, M.D. Wahoowa23
[edit] Merging suggestion
It was suggested that the Art Education department wiki page should be merged into VCU's page. I think it is important to keep them separate and to allow the individual departments or schools to have their own identity as constructed through the development of a wiki page about them. Vcu art education 02:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- Re Department of Art Education - Virginia Commonwealth University
- I think merging is the least of the issues involved. The appropriateness (or not) of a university department organising the writing of its own Wikipedia page is being discussed at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. The current format, in any case, falls well into WP:What Wikipedia is not (i.e. a departmental directory). Tearlach 04:10, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Redirect, full protection
I have redirected Department of Art Education - Virginia Commonwealth University to this parent article, removed some of the advertising language, added appropriate tags, and edit protected the article for one month. Although Wikipedia welcomes appropriate participation, serious violations of WP:COI, WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, WP:SPAM, and WP:OWN exist at this page. It would be out of the question for a university professor to assign students to paste over a paper encyclopedia entry with promotional literature and the same ethical prohibition applies to Wikipedia. I can be contacted via my user talk page (linked through my signature) or via e-mail (linked through my userpage). DurovaCharge! 07:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- Per communication from the professor I have unprotected this article. University staff and students are encouraged to contribute cited material to this talk page rather than directly to the article. Uninvolved Wikipedia editors can evaluate it and adapt it as appropriate. Wikipedia welcomes and encourages contributions to other areas where conflict of interest is not an issue, such as edits to articles in a field of academic expertise. DurovaCharge! 17:19, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Notable alumni
Some band named VCR are considered "notable alumni"? And listing people who dropped out or transferred after a year doesn't make any sense either. The DMB bassist probably never even went to a class at VCU.
I'm recommending that VCR entry get deleted and that, if you guys want to keep the others in, we change it to "Notable Students" or something more accurate. Leshii 18:27, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry, I see Lamb of God is/was Grammy-nominated, which I guess makes them relevant. So I take them out of my recommendation. Leshii 18:29, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Removal of "Activities Section"
I removed the "Activities" sections because it was almost a verbatim repeat of the intro of the sports section. The "Richmond Activities" contained a lot of puffery and was written like an advertisement. Also I know for a fact that the images that were used are copyrighted. Bvjrm (talk) 21:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] 'Virginia Commonwealth University', not 'Virginia Commonwealth'
As requested by the University, "When referring to the Rams, please use VCU. Virginia Commonwealth University is acceptable when using other institutions full names. Please do not use Va. Commonwealth or Virginia Commonwealth." Opertinicy (talk) 23:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Recent news about accepting Philip Morris money
Shouldn't something be included about the recent news that VCU accepts money from the Philip Morris company with the promise to the company that they won't publish research that the company doesn't like? This violates independence of the university in my eyes and that seems a very basic thing to know about a learning community, in my eyes. See the article in the NYTimes from today: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/us/22tobacco.html?hp Majesteit (talk) 12:19, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
