MIAMI—Graig Cooper rushed for a career-best 152 yards and a touchdown, Damien Berry ran for a pair of second-half scores and No. 16 Miami eased past struggling Virginia 52-17 on Saturday. Thearon Collier had a 60-yard punt return for the go-ahead touchdown, and Jacory Harris finished 18 of 31 for 232 yards with two TDs for the Hurricanes (7-2, 4-2 Atlantic Coast Conference). The 35-point margin of victory was Miami’s biggest in an ACC game since beating Duke 52-7 in 2005.

The family of Morgan D. Harrington is seeking volunteers to redouble the efforts to locate the Virginia Tech student who disappeared Oct. 17 after leaving John Paul Jones Arena at the University of Virginia. Harrington’s parents were in Charlottesville yesterday with the father of returned abductee Elizabeth Smart to announce a new ground search tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday.

A select group of students at the University of Virginia School of Law will have a chance to focus their attention more on public service this spring thanks to a new program. The first course of the new Program in Law and Public Service will be held in the spring. As many as 20 first-year students and five second-year students will be admitted each year for the program, which includes courses, independent study and faculty mentoring.

The University of Virginia’s Honor Committee is facing a dilemma: How should it treat students who have a sort of dual status in the university community? Add to this the fact that they’re on a ship halfway around the world as part of the university-affiliated Semester at Sea program. For a single-sanction system, where the only punishment for lying, cheating or stealing is expulsion, there doesn’t seem to be any easy answer.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia has accepted remediation plans by Richard Bland College and the University of Virginia’s College at Wise intended to bring the schools into compliance with certification standards.

A French documentary that explores last fall’s presidential election through the sounds of two Virginia marching bands will make its U.S. debut next week.  Virginia State University and the University of Virginia provide the fanfare for “Marching Band,“ which is a portrait of young voters that melds personal stories of band members with the historic election.

CHARLOTTESVILLE—Police are hoping a timeline of when and where a Virginia Tech student was last seen will help jog the memory of someone who can provide a key clue to her whereabouts. Authorities believe Morgan Dana Harrington, 20, was last seen at 9:30 p.m. Oct. 17 on a bridge in Charlottesville, Virginia State Police Lt. Joe Rader said today.

Metallica has added $50,000 to the reward for information in the search for missing Virginia Tech student Morgan D. Harrington, raising the amount to about $150,000, her father said. Troopers from the Virginia State Police passed out fliers Saturday in the area of John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville. Harrington, 20, attended a Metallica concert there Oct. 17, the night she disappeared.

Six Virginia schools made the National Science Foundation’s rankings of the top 200 research universities in the nation. Virginia Tech ranked 46th in the 2008 list based on research and development expenditures. Tech reported expenditures of about $373.28 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008. Virginia Commonwealth University was ranked 108th. It reported $148.65 million in expenditures, an 11 percent increase.

The father of a missing Virginia Tech student said yesterday that he thinks she has been abducted, and announced that the reward for information leading to her return will be at least $100,000. “I think Morgan was taken. I don’t think she ran away,“ Dan Harrington said. Staff at Carilion Clinic, where Harrington is vice president for academic affairs, raised the money, which will be administered by Crime Stoppers, he said.

At the Virginia Military Institute, where three to six cadets share rooms “so small they put their bunks up during the day so they can get around,“ officials had expected roommates also would share the swine-flu virus. “But that’s not happening,“ said VMI spokesman Stewart MacInnis. “We’re really not sure of the pattern” of how the virus is spreading among cadets on the Lexington campus, he said.

CHARLOTTESVILLE—Police are treating the investigation into a missing Virginia Tech student as a criminal matter, though they say there’s still no evidence a crime has been committed. Officials say they have Morgan Dana Harrington’s purse and her cell phone but they have no idea where she is, though they’ve received more than 100 tips.

Virginia State Police and University of Virginia authorities are creating a timeline tracking a Virginia Tech student who was reported missing after attending Saturday’s Metallica concert at U.Va.‘s John Paul Jones Arena. Authorities spent yesterday following up potential leads. They are asking concert-goers to review pictures or videos of the concert to look for anyone resembling 20-year-old Morgan Dana Harrington.

George Mason apparently has edged past Virginia Commonwealth as the state’s largest university. GMU’s unanticipated growth this fall—amid state and federal campaigns to increase the number of college graduates—should be a good thing.

A 9-year-old Albemarle County boy who had been diagnosed with a flu-like illness died Saturday at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Carson Raymond, a third-grader at Woodbrook Elementary School, had an underlying heart condition, his parents said Sunday. It was not immediately known whether he had swine flu. “Carson was just a very unlucky boy that this happened to,“ said Jennifer Raymond, the boy’s mother.