Curie Learning Community
The Curie Learning Community, located in Lee Hall, is an interactive-learning environment designed to promote academic success and engagement with the scientific process and community. Students majoring in the physical and quantitative sciences in the College of Science are eligible to be residents. Those majors are chemistry, economics, geosciences, mathematics, physics and statistics. This community will be part of a larger community called inVenTs, which will include two freshman engineering communities and two science communities.
All Curie Learning Community participants live together, creating a conductive environment for group studying and social interaction. All members will be enrolled in common sections of chemistry, physics and mathematics.
Statement of Purpose / Community Benefits:
- Promote academic success and engagement with the scientific process and community
- Provide interdisciplinary undergraduate training in "scieneering"
- Promote retention and diversity in STEM majors
Questions
For questions about the Curie Learning Community program, contact Debbie Wilson (dewilso2@vt.edu).
For questions related to housing assignments, please contact Housing and Residence Life at housing@vt.edu.
Who was Marie Curie?
Marie Sklodowska Curie was a Polish-French physicist-chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes - in physics (in 1903) and chemistry (in 1911). Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. She became the first - and so far the only - woman to be honored with interment in the Panthèon on her own merits.
Marie Curie’s achievements include a theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium (named for her native country) and radium. She founded two Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw.
Marie Curie was awarded a degree in physics in 1893 and earned a degree in mathematics in 1894, both from the Sorbonne (University of Paris). In 1903 she was awarded her DSc from the University of Paris. Also in that year she and her husband were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in recognition of their work on radiation phenomena. Marie was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1911.
In a 2009 poll carried out by New Scientist, Marie Curie was voted the "most inspirational woman in science".
The year 2011 was declared the Year of Marie Curie by France and Poland.
