2026 Summer
Jerry Dipoto’s endless summer
The former VCU star pitcher has spent 38 years in professional baseball as a player, scout and now president of the Seattle Mariners. Last season, his club fell eight outs short of the World Series. But if Dipoto’s learned anything from a life in the national pastime, it’s that today is a fine day to try again.
The vaccine that bites back!
The only Lyme disease vaccine to hit the market was pulled 24 years ago. It worked against the tick-borne disease but not well enough. VCU microbiologist Richard Marconi, Ph.D., has engineered a new version with a novel twist: It’s part synthetic. And after years of veterinary application, it’s on the verge of human trials.
Reintroducing: Stephen Lenton
Fifty years ago, this assistant dean of student life at VCU helped gay students sue the university for violating their constitutional rights. Over the next two decades, Lenton, Ph.D. (M.Ed.’73), became one of Virginia’s most relentless advocates for the rights of gay people.
Take a deep breath
Jennifer Weggen, Ph.D., and a team of VCU researchers are putting science behind breath work.
Stone cold preservation
In central Kentucky’s Bluegrass region, anthropology alum and dry-stone mason Russell Waddell (B.S.’11) stacks rocks to preserve a “sense of place.”
In ‘The Accused’ Jessica Trisko Darden looks again at the Third Reich
The political science professor's book sheds light on Nazi women and war crimes
How can we impress a date at an ice cream shop?
Your (conversational) scoops for the summer
Actual Intelligence
People are seeking medical advice from AI. A better idea? A clinician with a deeper Rolodex.
Volunteer wisdom
Linda Foley (B.S.’65) discusses civil society, scholarships and how baton twirling brought her ‘outside my little world’
Forgiveness: a ‘whole-body experience’
Everett Worthington, Ph.D., an emeritus psychology professor, has studied forgiveness for 30 years and found it comes with many ancillary health benefits.
A place at Dr. Halsted’s table
A century-old oaken plank on a trough connects VCU to the origins of modern surgery.
