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| Paul
Tudor Jones II |
Jones' $20 million gift puts arena
project on fast track
By Carol Wood
For
University alumnus Paul Tudor Jones II, coaching his daughters’
youth basketball team drove home the message that athletics “are
absolutely essential for everyone’s health and mental well-being.”
Jones,
who has supported U.Va. academic initiatives in the past, decided
it was time to make a difference somewhere new. On Monday, U.Va.
President John T. Casteen III announced that Jones had pledged $20
million to the Department of Athletics.
Jones’
gift, a 10-year pledge, will allow the department to fast-track
a basketball arena project, moving it quickly through the final
planning stages to groundbreaking. The announcement comes just four
months after an anonymous donor pledged an initial $20 million that
allowed the University to proceed with plans for the $125 million,
12,000- to 15,000-seat arena.
“Paul
Tudor Jones came forward with his customary generosity and business-like
approach,” Casteen said. “Paul has said more than once,
‘Let’s get things moving.’ His gift pushes us much
closer to doing exactly that, and will bring completion of the project
nearer than we had earlier imagined.
“For
many years he has helped to move the University forward in academics,
and now he is doing the same for athletics. All of us at the University
of Virginia are grateful to Paul — for both his generosity
and his unfailingly energetic support.”
Jones,
47, who graduated from U.Va. in 1976 with a degree in economics,
is chairman of the Tudor Group in Greenwich, Conn., the money management
firm he founded in the 1980s. Full
story.
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|
Trisha
Morrow
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| U.Va.
President John T. Casteen III (right) and Arts & Sciences
Dean Edward L. Ayers spoke at the Fall Convocation last Friday. |
Ayers: Why the university endures
Sabato receives Jefferson Award at Convocation
By
Staff Report
Larry
J. Sabato, the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Government and Foreign
Affairs at the University and one of its best-known teachers and
scholars, received U.Va.’s highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson
Award, at Fall Convocation ceremonies Oct. 26.
Convocation,
which marked the beginning of Family Weekend, also featured Edward
L. Ayers, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, who gave the
keynote address, and the conferring of intermediate honors on third-year
students.
The
Thomas Jefferson Award honors a member of the University community
who exemplifies in character, work and influences the ideals of
U.Va.’s founder.
“Without
his tremendous energy and passionate public-mindedness, the quality
of research and teaching at the University, and of political understanding
across the state and nation, would be poorer,” said President
John T. Casteen III, reading from Sabato’s award citation.
“His
contributions to students, to his profession as a prolific and distinguished
scholar … and to the public as an incisive and eminently sane
political analyst — all of these activities have made him indispensable.”
He was also honored for his quiet, behind-the-scenes efforts to
help people. Full
story.
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