The Darden School (UVA’s MBA and graduate business program) announced today the opening of a new building and innovation lab that will provide “experiential, team-based and collaborative learning opportunities, such as a design-based studio where students can transform concepts and ideas into physical prototypes.” The grand opening event will be March 19th and will include remarks by New York Times bestselling-author Daniel Pink.

From the website announcement:

“Darden’s new i.Lab is a physical manifestation of leading scholarship on innovation that has emerged from the Batten Institute and the Darden School over the past several years,” said Elizabeth O’Halloran, Managing Director, Batten Institute

Do you run a local businesses that is doing well, despite the economic downturn?  As the Cavalier Daily reports, the The Tayloe Murphy Center at the Darden School wants to hear from you.  Starting April 1st, they will be accepting applications for the Tayloe Murphy Resilience Awards Competition with the aim of promoting “innovative and thought-leading entrepreneurs who know how to utilize unique strengths of the community even in a challenging economy.”  Awards include a week-long executive education course at Darden and promotional opportunities.

Props to Darden for wanting to engage with the local startup scene.  Of course, if you run a startup that is currently struggling, you are still out of luck.  Cavalier Daily article here.

Ars Technica has a story up entitled Virginia puts schools on high-fiber diet with broadband funds.  Tom Perriello announced in a press conference that Virginia K-12 schools will be getting more than twenty million dollars in federal funding in order to lay over 500 miles of new fiber optic internet cable.  The new high speed connections with be coming to schools in the “southern part of the state” as well as several Appalachian counties surround Virginia Tech.