"The school has hosted intensive summer research programs for 16 years. For 12 of those years, JMU has received National Science Foundation funding as a designated Research Experience for Undergraduates site -- an unusual distinction for a comprehensive university that offers only terminal bachelor's degrees in the sciences."

-- Association of AmericanCollegesand Universities,
JMU Advances Integrative and Engaged Learning through Summer Research Programs in the Sciences, AAC&U News, April 2004

If I have an agenda as a teacher, it is to help my young people understand that the past is something that continues to work upon us.

-- Mark Facknitz, English professor,
Memories and Legacies of World War I: how France, Britain and the United States remembered their fallen soldiers in the Great War, With Good Reason, April 3-9, 2004

"This is a very big thing for people who work in diaspora studies and to the argument over whether there were any African traditions in North America. To actually see real African ideograms in the [United States] is proof that there were." … Historian finds 19th-century cemetery outside Lexington that has grave markers with African symbols etched on their surface, a rare link to the nation's slave-trading past. "The inscriptions are from the West African Igbo culture and could be the only known examples in the United States."

-- Rachel Malcolm-Woods, history professor,
African Link to Cemetery Studied: JMU professor cites headstones in national forest in examining whether traditions survived intact, Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 21, 2004

It's hard work, [but] it's very well organized and I'm working with a group of people my age, which is always fun.

-- Hanna Martinson ('05), graphic design major and Alternative Spring Break volunteer, Working vacation: Students spend their Spring Break volunteering to build,
San AntonioExpress-News, March 16, 2004