REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT
JOHN T. CASTEEN III
THE PAST YEAR AT THE UNIVERSITY was notable far beyond the interest of its round, millennial number. In the academic year that included New Year's Day 2000, a design for the future--the result of two planning years--took definitive shape. Remarkably, this design builds on Thomas Jefferson's goals for the University, not simply as a repository of old knowledge, but as a discoverer and disseminator of the new. With typical revolutionary fervor Jefferson fought to establish the University of Virginia as one of the nation's first public institutions of higher learning and continued to fight change-inhibiting custom until the day he died. Ambitious for the new country, he was ambitious for the kind of education offered its citizens, and he was willing to do things differently to achieve what he imagined. In our planning, we seek to develop strategies to give Jefferson's University a future worthy of his dreams and ideals.
Recognizing the promise Jefferson saw in public education, its moral and social potential for contributing to civic good, we seek to provide premier undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. While we use the national rankings as at best a rough guide to our progress in this endeavor, we are pleased to once again be ranked the best public university in the nation (tied with Berkeley) by U.S. News & World Report and to observe many of our schools and departments also placing highly in national surveys. This year, the School of Law and the McIntire School of Commerce ranked eighth in the nation, while the Darden School ranked eleventh. The School of Architecture is ranked sixth nationally.
One of our distinctions as a public university is the quality of undergraduate education and student life here. Other public universities rarely make such a commitment to undergraduates. With considerable success, we combine the intimacy of the small liberal arts college with the resources of a great research center.
During the last academic year, 18,386 undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled in the University's ten degree-granting schools. Student life today both resembles and differs from the experiences of students in Jefferson's time. Students still live in the Lawn and Range rooms. Faculty and students still greet one another as they pass on walkways that faculty and students have walked since the beginning. But nowadays students live in many different settings, in dormitories on the Grounds, off-Grounds in fraternity and sorority houses, in shared apartments and houses, and elsewhere throughout Charlottesville and Albemarle. An additional 11,388 students, most of them working adults, take continuing education courses throughout Virginia. In one sense or another, all of these students share the experiences that I and other alumni knew when we came to "drink of the cup of knowledge" that our founder conceived as a means to build a nation.
Jefferson imagined a community of students drawn from throughout the United States, and we are working hard to achieve this goal. Today's students are bright, diligent, and increasingly engaged with the world around them. Women make up more than half the student body. Minority students are prominently enrolled and notably successful in every academic program. No American institution can point to a more successful, more competent, and more diverse student body than the University enrolls. Increasingly, the University looks like America.
That students continue to govern themselves would, I think, bring special pleasure to the original board members who gathered on October 6, 1817, to lay the cornerstone of Pavilion VII. As those who follow the University's history know, this was not always the case. In 1825, the chairman of the faculty complained that our first students engaged in "nightly disorders" and "riot and excess." Over the decades, the system of student self-government has begun to take hold. When today's students act, as they occasionally do, with "riot and excess," students take responsibility for amending their conduct.
Relations between faculty and students have improved since 1825. Together, the two groups have proposed and implemented strategies to address the ongoing problem of student binge drinking. These steps are starting to show results. Fewer students than we counted three or five years ago turn up now in the emergency room and in Student Health seeking treatment for alcohol-related conditions. The cases are generally less serious than they were five years ago. Although some problems remain, the fraternities and sororities have been effective in addressing a problem that at one time may have threatened their existence. At the same time, the University has been taking an active role.
Community-building activism fits well in the long tradition of student self-governance, but other issues remain important also. The Honor System continues to receive public scrutiny even as students work to improve its effectiveness and to maintain fairness. Allegations of racial bias within the system have concerned the Honor Committee in recent years. The system has prevailed in litigation on this subject, but the committee has on its own initiative found new ways to engage minority students to improve the system and to bring a broader population into its everyday operations. One of the goals of the Charting Diversity conference held in February was to encourage inclusiveness in the University community. At the same time, students have found better ways to foster faculty support. In the fall, students introduced new faculty to the Honor System during faculty orientation to the University.
At the beginning, teachers and students lived and studied side-by-side on the Lawn and Ranges. Our system of residential colleges helps extend this experience to students today. This year, we launched our third residential college, which will incorporate the residence halls on Sprigg Lane. The college will have an international focus. Student-faculty interactions, both formal and informal, still shape our academic work.
Students and faculty interact closely in other settings as well. At Madison House and in volunteer work in the hospital,students and faculty join together to make service to the community an element of education here. They also collaborate in classroom and laboratory activities. With funds generously provided by David A. Harrison III, the Faculty Senate awarded grants to outstanding undergraduate students and their faculty mentors to support joint research projects. The quality of these proposals, ranging from analyzing representations of African identity in world film to designing and characterizing a new aerogel composite, were outstanding.
Harrison Grant recipients have the opportunity to engage in in-depth scholarly and scientific investigations in partnership with veteran faculty researchers. In the process, they develop hands-on mastery of advanced research methods and come to understand academic inquiry as a collaborative venture.
In athletics, as in academics and in public service, the University's students are forces with which to be reckoned. More than two hundred students appeared on this year's ACC Honor Roll; the intercollegiate athletic program ranked eighth in the 1999 Division I Sears Directors' Cup standings and thirteenth this year. The program also ranked eighth in The Sporting News' survey, which graded the 112 NCAA Division I football and men's basketball programs on standards covering both on-field and academic performance.
Our teams have more than demonstrated their staying power. Football is one of a handful of teams nationally to have won at least seven games in thirteen consecutive seasons, and it made its tenth bowl appearance during this period, in 1999 at the Micronpc.com Bowl. Men's and women's swimming and diving have each won two Atlantic Coast Conference Championships in the last three years, and the women's basketball team won the ACC regular-season championship in 2000. First-year student Cara Lane became our first female swimmer to earn an NCAA title in winning the 1,500-meter freestyle by nearly 11 seconds. Second-year student Ed Moses set two world records at the NCAA championships–in the 100- and the 200-meter breaststroke–before going on to win gold and silver medals at the Olympic Games in Sydney. Rower Charlotte Quesada was a finalist for the 1999 NCAA Woman of the Year Award. And our second varsity eight won an NCAA Rowing Championship in 1999 for the second consecutive year.
As we look to enrich the experience the University offers its students and to equip them to thrive in this new century, we will continue to demand the high standards of honesty that are so important to this community. We will sustain and refine the tradition of student self-governance and take steps to ensure that intellectual inquiry remains at the core of student life. At the same time, we will incorporate global perspectives into students' lives, encourage public service, and ensure that life within a diverse community plays a central part in the education we offer here.
Faculty
The University's faculty is an important source of its strength. In 1825 at Thomas Jefferson's University, eight faculty members were on hand to greet the first students. They were selected from some of the world's foremost universities, not simply because of their accomplishments but because of their enthusiasm and energy. Today's faculty–some 1,800 strong–share these traits. These scholars command a level of respect rarely accorded faculty anywhere.
• In the sciences, Donald F. Hunt, University Professor of chemistry and pathology; Richard C. McCarty, professor of psychology; and Andrew P. Somlyo, the Charles Slaughter Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biology, were elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• In the humanities, Katharine Maus and Jahan Ramazani, both of the English department, won Guggenheim Fellowships this year.
• George Garrett, the Henry Hoyns Professor of English, was awarded the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.
• Erik Midelfort, the C. Julian Bishko Professor of History, has received the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for his book, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany.
• Edward L. Ayers, the Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History, was appointed by President Clinton to a six-year term on the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
• Michael F. Holt, the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History, received a Lincoln Prize for The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War.
• Lisa Russ Spaar, poet and administrator of our Creative Writing Program, is one of six writers around the country chosen to receive this year's Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
• In law, Jeffrey O'Connell was named one of "The Lawyers of the Century" by The American Lawyer magazine.
Another trait that our faculty share with their forebears at the University is their dedication to working with students. Student-faculty interactions, both formal and informal, still shape our academic work. Alumni, employers who know our graduates, our students' parents, and others attest to the quality of learning that takes place under the faculty's guidance.
One reason for the success of our academic programs is our faculty's willingness, indeed their determination, to incorporate new forms of knowledge in the curriculum and to explore new ways of presenting it.
This year, the University launched a new liberal arts program in Media Studies,a comprehensive interdisciplinary program that focuses on electronic, print, digital, and film media. A Jewish Studies Program will be launched in 2001-02. The School of Engineering and Applied Science now offers a degree in computer engineering and has launched a weekend master's degree program in systems engineering for students in Northern Virginia.
The engineering school also teamed with the University's College at Wise to create a dual degree program, which allows students to earn a bachelor's degree in Wise and a master's degree in Charlottesville.
Refinancing the University
In December 1999, the Capital Campaign passed its fund-raising goal of $1 billion, one full year ahead of schedule. The upcoming conclusion to our seven-year Campaign for the University of Virginia marks the beginning of a new era in the University's history. The generosity of the campaign's 141,000 donors has allowed the University to advance Jefferson's vision despite the state's continuing budget problems.
The friends of the University have been unequivocal in their support for our work. This year's record level of giving was made possible by a magnificent contribution from longtime University supporter Frank Batten Sr. (Col. ‘50) of $60 million, as well as a number of outstanding contributions that we highlight elsewhere in the report.
The $1.2 billion in gifts, pledges, and deferred commitments received as of October 2000 include:• $836 million (two-thirds of the total) for the University's ten academic schools
• $114 million for athletics
• $58 million for the University Library
• $40 million for the Jefferson Scholars Program
• $18 million for the College at Wise
• $11 million for hospitals and clinics
• $9.1 million for preservation of the Jeffersonian Buildings and Grounds
• $5.3 million for the art museum
• $4.8 million for the Miller Center
• $2.8 million for the Alumni Association's Sullivan Endowment
• $1.6 million for the Health Sciences Library
The effects of the campaign are evident everywhere in the University. In the course of the campaign, $36 million has been added to the University's general endowment. The campaign has received commitments for 165 endowed professorships, 112 endowed fellowships, 593 endowed scholarships, and 331 other academic endowments. It has also transformed and renewed the environment at the University.
Physical Plant
In January 1819, the Lawn was a rough field bordered by several partially constructed buildings. By 1825, the Academical Village had taken shape. In 2000, the University is the size of a small city. It encompasses more than 3,450 acres of land in Charlottesville and around the state. It consists of no fewer than 577 buildings or major facilities, of which more than 100 have been built, substantially remodeled, or acquired in the last decade.
The campaign has funded more than 550,000 square feet of new and renovated buildings for the School of Law and the Darden School. On Central Grounds, it has enabled us to begin renovating the Science and Engineering Library in Clark Hall and to begin work on a laboratory wing for the Department of Environmental Sciences. It has also helped fund a biomedical research building for the University Health System. In April, we broke ground for both the Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture and the Albert H. Small Special Collections Library. Private funds will also help in the renovation of Fayerweather Hall, the studio art building, and an expansion to the White Burkett Miller Center of Public Affairs. Last fall, we opened the Timothy B. and Lisa Nelson Robertson Media Center in Clemons Library, a state-of-the-art facility that gives students and faculty access to a vast array of media resources, from films and television archives to audio recordings and CD-ROMs.
The campaign has enhanced the athletics facilities in ways small and great. The lights at Klöckner Stadium, the Snyder Tennis Center, Harrison Field, and the reconstruction and expansion of Scott Stadium at the Carl Smith Center–all of these improvements have come in the course of the campaign. The new stadium renovation has created a stunning facility that links the University's most modern and most traditional elements in wonderful new ways.
Envisioning Virginia 2020
These successes bring us to a critical juncture. We have learned how to live with less tax support. We have refinanced and reorganized our enterprise. One of the marks of our success is that Moody's Investors Service has upgraded its rating of our General Pledge Revenue Bond Issues to Aaa–the highest possible rating–based on our fiourishing endowment and low debt, the strong demand for our programs, and the University's strong overall performance.
The Board of Visitors has been engaged for almost a year in a careful analysis of goals for the future. We could declare victory with the official ending of the campaign in December 2000 and go back to business as usual. Comfortable though this choice might be for the near future, the growing vigor that is now evident in other universities would inevitably cause the University to slide backward relative to our peers. We could keep up the pace of the current campaign and work to maintain the relative position we now hold as one of the very best public universities. Or we can seize the opportunity that we have created and accept the challenge of entering the top tier of all universities in the country, public or private. This is the course we wish to pursue.
To think through these choices and to envision what the University should look like when it begins its third century, we have engaged in a strategic planning process called Virginia 2020: Agenda for the Third Century. In our planning we seek to develop the University as a center for theoretical and applied research in fields of strategic importance. Strategic advancement requires change driven by scholarship that serves the public interest.
The Virginia 2020 initiatives address this need in their emphasis on science and technology, international activities, public service and outreach, and the arts. Two years ago, we created planning commissions to study the steps we must take in each of these areas. Their reports were released to the University community this fall for comment and review. When finalized and approved by the Board of Visitors, they will provide a blueprint for strategic growth over the next two decades.
Related to this planning initiative is a program called Virginia 2020: A Century of New Leaders. Small groups of younger alumni, our future volunteer leadership, have collaborated in crafting a vision of what the University might be in the year 2020. While urging us to preserve our best traditions, such as student self-governance, the Honor System, and the accessibility of faculty, they also encourage us to harness the power of technology to transform the academic enterprise and to extend its reach beyond the Grounds.
Envision Virginia, which brings together regional volunteer leaders and persons directly responsible for University programs, has provided more general perspectives on how to gain the greatest possible benefit from the capital campaign. These conversations have contributed to what I take to be our common view that the future can be more exciting and more productive than even the best of what we understand of the past, if we commit ourselves to building it. These groups do not want to rest on their laurels. Rather, they argue for a future of vigorous effort and principled accomplishment.
Starting with 2000
The successes of recent years have led many of us to think boldly about the University's future. The campaign has brought more than financial support. Faculty and students describe it as a vote of confidence, and it may well be. Alumni and friends have inspired students and faculty to envision personal and institutional futures that are spacious and affirmative, futures in which we progress beyond even the highest accomplishments of the past.
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THE FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS 
of the Department of Drama, led the Commission on Fine and Performing Arts.
Long in need of improved facilities, the Studio Art Program will be moving to a new building thanks to a $9 million appropriation from the 2000 session of the General Assembly. Construction of the project will begin in early 2002 and will be the first undertaken as part of a new master plan for an arts precinct on and round Carr's Hill. Students shown above working on art projects. |
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Curry School Professor, chaired the Commission on Public Service and Outreach. AS A NATIONALLY RANKED public research institution, the University of Virginia has an obligation to enhance lives and change society in Charlottesville and throughout the Commonwealth as well as around the world. The Commission on Public Service calls for expanding the University's programs of service to government, industry, and other users, and increasing our public service activities in health, the environment, K-12 education, continuing studies, public policy, and other areas of endeavor. Among measures proposed by the commission are entering into local and regional partnerships to focus and energize the University's outreach efforts and elevating public service within the University's culture. Policy changes, realignment of financial and administrative resources, and opportunities for reward and recognition will help us accomplish this. Students will have new opportunities to perform public service as part of their educational programs. One way to reach out and improve health in minority communities is to encourgage more minority students to become physicians. In 1984, the University's School of Medicine launched the Medical Academic Advancement Program (MAAP), a pioneering initiative to make attend medical school a more viable alternative for minorities. According to Dr. Moses Woode, (above), associate dean for student academic support and strategic programs, more than six hundred MAAP alumni have either graduated from medical school or are currently attending one since the program's inception. |
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Professor of Computer Science and chair of the Commission on Science and Technology THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA has been primarily known for the excellence of its humanities programs and its graduate professional schools. The Virginia 2020 Commission on Science and Technology proposes to redress this inequity through a two-part strategy to achieve excellence in science and engineering. The commission identified a set of three focus areas for investment that leverage the existing strength of our institution in areas that society has judged to be critical to our future. At the same time, the commission has proposed a series of recommendations for strategic investment across all fields of science and engineering in such areas as faculty start-up funds, graduate student support, and seed funds for new initiatives. Exposure to top-notch science at U.Va. can transform the experience of our undergraduates. As an undergraduate, Peter Lewis (far right) had the opportunity to work in the lab of associate professor of microbiology Daniel A. Engel, studying the ways proteins produced by a class of viruses can lead to cancer. His experience in the laboratory not only gave Lewis firsthand exposure to the ways scientific knowledge evolves, it helped earn him interviews at a half dozen graduate schools. |
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INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES TO RAISE THE STATURE and effectiveness of international initiatives at the University and to incorporate an awareness of international issues across disciplines and throughout the curriculum, the Commission on International Activities advocates creating more opportunities for our students and faculty to study abroad, attracting more international students and scholars, and sponsoring additional international activities. Faculty research is increasingly conducted on a global scale. For instance, Deborah Lawrence, assistant professor of environmental sciences, travels to Indonesia, Mexico, and Costa Rica to study the ways that human activity in an ecosystem helps shape human disturbances today. She is shown above visiting a farm in Borneo to collect data on changes in soil chemistry. |
