Information for Summer Students Coming to Charlottesville

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Information for Summer Students Coming to Charlottesville

Congratulations on your summer appointment at NRAO in Charlottesville!  We look forward to having you join our astronomical community, and we trust your summer here will be a rewarding one. This document contains information to help you with your summer in Charlottesville. Please do not hesitate to contact with questions or concerns.

General Information

General information of interest for all summer students, regardless of assigned site, is collected in a separate document. This document includes information on start dates, stipends, travel reimbursement, your research assignment and schedule, and the opportunity to present your research at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Getting Here

Charlottesville is a city of about 40,000 people, although the "metropolitan region" contains closer to 200,000.  It is located in Albemarle county in the eastern half of the commonwealth of Virginia, 70 miles west of the state capital, Richmond, 110 miles southwest of the nation's capital in Washington D.C., 20 miles east of Staunton, and 70 miles north of Lynchburg. The NRAO has two facilities in Charlottesville: our Headquarters, located on the Grounds of the historic and picturesque University of Virginia (UVa), and the NRAO Technology Center (NTC), located about 1.5 miles west of UVa's Central Grounds.

Please review the NRAO travel reimbursement policy before arranging your travel plans. Details are given in your acceptance letter, and can be found on-line at http://science.nrao.edu/opportunities/students/NRAOstudents_summer#Travel.

It can be useful, though not necessary, to have a car during your appointment in Charlottesville. The NRAO Scientific Offices are located at the base of Observatory Hill, at 520 Edgemont Road, and the NRAO Technology Center (NTC) is located at 1180 Boxwood Estate Road, near the Birdwood Golf Course on Route 250 West. Contact information is found here.

If you fly to Charlottesville, there is commercial service via Charlottesville Albemarle Airport (CHO), about 10 miles north of town.  You can take an Uber/Lyft/taxi from the airport to NRAO or to your lodging in Charlottesville.

You can also fly into either Washington Dulles (IAD) or Richmond International Airport (RIC). You should arrange for transportation to get from the airport to Charlottesville. It's about a 2.5 hour ride from Dulles and 1.5 hours from Richmond. In addition, Charlottesville has a train station (CVS) which can be reached from a number of locations by Amtrak.

 

Prior to Arrival

You will need to secure a place to live over the summer. Information to help you find housing is given below. It is often advantageous to do this early (remotely), since most sublets are from UVa students, who leave at the end of the school term. However, if you prefer to secure housing after you arrive, the NRAO will reimburse you for temporary accommodations at a local hotel, up to a maximum of $300.

Housing

For your living arrangements, you will need to sublet a room for the summer. You will most likely want to sublet a furnished apartment with air conditioning, as summers in Charlottesville can get pretty warm. As Charlottesville is a college town, there are plenty rooms available during the summer term. Almost all sublets revolve around the academic calendar of the University of Virginia (UVa). So many sublets will begin in late May and go through early August.

Staying in UVa dorms has not been a popular option for students in the past, since the rooms generally cost more than a private room in a sublet, and there is no flexibility in the start and end dates. Instead, we recommend that find summer housing by subletting a room or apartment from the plentiful off-grounds student housing market.  The Facebook group "University of Virginia (UVA) Housing, Sublets & Roommates" can be particularly useful, as can the site www.kopa.co.

In addition to those, we have collected other on-line resources, tabulated below.

Typical sublets in Charlottesville go for about $600-900/mo plus utilities for a room in an apartment. Most places will require a security deposit, and perhaps even the first month's rent. Please be aware that these expenses are your responsibility. From past experience, sublets advertised in March and early April are more expensive and have more stringent time constraints, while those advertised later include many bargains (utilities included, extra weeks, etc). However, do not wait too long before trying to sublet, as it is hard to contact students once they leave town. Your best course of action is to sublet a place BEFORE you get here.

Many sublet ads mention proximity to "The Corner", an area adjacent to UVa Grounds that has many restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. The Corner is about a 15 minute walk from NRAO Edgemont Road. Another popular area for housing is just south of grounds along Jefferson Park Avenue or "JPA". This area has mostly graduate student occupied housing. Quieter than the Corner, it is a longer walk to stores/restaurants, etc, but a shorter walk to NRAO. Some listings also mention being close to "The Downtown Mall." This is a quaint, red-bricked pedestrian mall. Lots of bookstores, restaurants, a movie house, and coffee shops. It's an energetic area, but 2 miles away, so if this is what you are looking for, you'll want to check the schedule for the Free Trolley. Many housing areas are within walking distance or on the route of the UVa bus service, which is free. Google maps knows about the Charlottesville Area Transit buses (apart from the Free Trolley, these are all 75 cents each way, or $20 for a month pass), so you can use this to check how easy it would be to get to work from any address, but it does not know about the UVa buses, so you'll have to cross-reference those manually.

Sources for Sublet Listings

The Facebook group "University of Virginia (UVA) Housing, Sublets & Roommates" can be particularly useful, as can the site www.kopa.co.  Here we list some additional resources.

Web Sites:

(The Off-Grounds Housing Office is a good resource. You will need to register as a guest in order to get access to this. Once you do, you can do a "quick search", entering location and lease type=sublet. For location, the areas closest to NRAO are "Rubgy Road/Corner" and "Jefferson Park Avenue Area" (see previous section for links with descriptions of these).

Local On-Line Classified Ads:
Local Land Barons:

There are some local land barons that will do summer sublets. The rentals can be a bit higher than the student sublets. Most of the listings will be for long-term leases, but there are sometimes a few sublets. Any sublets will, for the most part, only rent from the first week in June through the second week in August. If no UVa students sign up, it may be possible to stay longer, but they will not promise that ahead of time. They frequently will not rent to undergraduates.

Note that many of the sublets listed in the on-line and print classifieds listed above will be for apartments managed by these land barons. So if you find a sublet listing in the above, you should be able to find a picture and/or map of the property through one of the links below.

You might consider looking for a place with the other summer students. (Shortly after you accept the position, we will be emailing you the contact information for all Charlottesville summer students.) You should email among yourselves to decide on the type of place to get.

Starting Your Appointment

Official start dates for the program were given in your acceptance letter, and are listed in the general NRAO summer student documentation. Your appointment will be for 10 to 12 weeks. You should arrange for your start and end dates directly with your NRAO mentor (contact information will be in your offer letter). If you cannot meet this schedule, please contact your NRAO mentor for alternative arrangements.

On your first day, you should report to the NRAO Headquarters at 520 Edgemont Road. For students working with any of our engineering staff, your regular work site will be at our NRAO Technology Center on Rt. 250 (Ivy Road). Directions to both are given above. There will be a short orientation presentation on the morning of your first day.

Summer Schedule

Your project mentor will have told you the topic of your research prior to your arrival. You will spend the next 10-12 weeks on this project. At the end of your appointment, you will give a short (~15min) lunch talk to the observatory staff about your research, and will write up a short project summary. Examples of previous years projects are linked to from the general summer student webpage. If you obtain results that you and your advisor think are worth presenting at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society, then the NRAO has some limited funds that you can apply for to pay for your travel and stay. More information will be available on this during the summer.

During the summer, there will be a lecture series at Edgemont Road. These will feature local members of the scientific or engineering staff or the UVa Astronomy Department giving introductory talks about various fields in astronomy.

Charlottesville students also take a trip to the NRAO site at Green Bank, West Virginia, for the Radio Astronomy Summer School. The Green Bank summer students may also make a trip to Charlottesville during the summer.

Local Information

Charlottesville, at the heart of Jefferson Country, is a quaint, historic city with amazing virtues for you to explore during your time here. Be aware, though, of the weather.  Summers here are hot and humid, so plan accordingly (e.g. you may want to make sure that whatever housing you secure has air conditioning).

You can find on-line information about Charlottesville, and things to do in the area, at the following websites:

Many areas are within walking distance or are accessible via the UVa bus service and the Charlottesville Area Transit, which includes a free trolley downtown.

 

Connect with NRAO

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory are facilities of the U.S. National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Founded in 1956, the NRAO provides state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities for use by the international scientific community. NRAO telescopes are open to all astronomers regardless of institutional or national affiliation. Observing time on NRAO telescopes is available on a competitive basis to qualified scientists after evaluation of research proposals on the basis of scientific merit, the capability of the instruments to do the work, and the availability of the telescope during the requested time. NRAO also provides both formal and informal programs in education and public outreach for teachers, students, the general public, and the media.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense..."

AUI collaborates with the scientific community and research sponsors to plan, build, and operate cutting-edge facilities. We cultivate excellence, deliver value, enhance education, and engage the public.