UVA Honors Those Who Built Bridges, Led Pandemic Efforts

Her nominators, including partners from the Blue Ridge Health District, wrote about how helpful she has been during the COVID-19 pandemic. They noted that she reached out to families personally to help remove barriers to getting them vaccinated.

The vaccination effort that Veith helped coordinate resulted in about 600 vaccines administered through 10 vaccine clinics in the community. Veith spent hours working with community partners to organize the clinics as the pandemic conditions changed and required more volunteer hours.

As a clinical instructor, Veith brings students to work in the clinic for 12-week rotations, but they don’t just learn the activities of a community nurse, important as those are. They also learn about the community they are serving, meeting weekly with residents with whom they are paired.

The nursing students learn to contribute beyond the traditional nursing roles, including the pick-up and delivery of food directly to the community kitchen, helping with things like a telephone that isn’t working, and developing an afterschool curriculum to teach elementary and middle schoolers about health, careers and self-care.

They especially made an impact with children during the vaccine drives, Veith noted. At the vaccine clinic for 5- to 11-year-olds, UVA students set up a fun area for observation and to allow for questions and concerns. Although only 16 children had been registered at first, when other children walked by after school, they went and told their parents, and by the end, 43 children had been vaccinated.

A colleague called her “a true public servant” and “a role model” to everyone at the University.

Deirdre Enright and Jennifer Givens, School of Law

Deirdre Enright founded The Innocence Project, which works to overturn wrongful convictions that have sent innocent individuals to prison. From 2015 to 2021, she and Jennifer Givens were codirectors, leading students who help work on such cases. Now Givens is working with Associate Director Juliet Hatchett while Enright pursues a new project focused on reform.

Enright and Givens have worked “to combat one of the most serious injustices that any society can commit: falsely convicting people of crimes,” Law Dean Risa Goluboff wrote in nominating them for the award. “They perform this work tirelessly and effectively with a cadre of UVA Law students at their sides. They free innocent people from prison, heal families, build communities and improve the justice system.”