Darden School Professor Honored With UVA Public Service Award

By Dave Hendrick


The University of Virginia recently honored a number of professors for exemplary work at the University and in the community, including Darden School of Business Professor Greg Fairchild.

The faculty members who received UVA’s Public Service Awards are “exemplars of what it means for a university to be both great and good,” according to UVA Vice Provost for Academic Outreach Louis Nelson, who surprised the honorees with the news by dropping in on Zoom classes the professors were teaching, according to UVA Today.

Fairchild, who also serves as UVA’s associate dean for Washington, D.C., area initiatives and academic director of public policy and entrepreneurship, was honored for his work leading efforts to teach business courses to incarcerated men and women to help with their reentry to society — efforts that would become the nonprofit organization Resilience Education.

The Darden prisoner reentry program has graduated more than 400 returning citizens, reduced the recidivism rate for those who go through the program to 7% (from Virginia’s overall rate of 23%), and distributed more than 750 certificates across three curricula. More than 250 MBA student volunteers, plus a cadre of faculty instructors, teach in three Virginia correctional facilities.

The program also has become a cross-Grounds enterprise, with participation from Ph.D. students in the Curry School of Education and Human Development, UVA Law students and undergraduate interns.

Since Fairchild and his wife, Tierney (an alumna of the Curry School and Darden), founded Resilience Education as a nonprofit organization, its concept and curriculum have been expanded to other academic institutions. Columbia University now offers courses at New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility, and programs are in the works in other states. Fairchild said, “I am increasingly asked to speak on our work at academic and non-academic gatherings, which has only increased interests in others becoming involved.”

Read the full story on UVA Today.

About the University of Virginia Darden School of Business

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business prepares responsible global leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Darden’s graduate degree programs (MBA, MSBA and Ph.D.) and Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs offered by the Darden School Foundation set the stage for a lifetime of career advancement and impact. Darden’s top-ranked faculty, renowned for teaching excellence, inspires and shapes modern business leadership worldwide through research, thought leadership and business publishing. Darden has Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area and a global community that includes 18,000 alumni in 90 countries. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

Press Contact

Molly Mitchell
Associate Director of Content Marketing and Social Media
Darden School of Business
University of Virginia
MitchellM@darden.virginia.edu