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Letter to Alumni and Friends of the University

November 2001

Dear Alumni and Friends of the University:

Each fall I review the past year's work as preparation for writing this annual report to you. This is the twelfth letter of this kind that I have written. Our common experience of September 11 and events since have made this one the most difficult of all to compose. I have been tempted to write primarily about how students and faculty and staff have reacted to the attacks and their aftermath -- and I will do so toward the end of this letter because I think you will want to know and (to be blunt about it) because the news is very good indeed. But thinking about what I owe you by way of an accounting of the year's work and our University's condition, I have realized that the debt is something more than a summary of the most recent weeks. So let me begin by outlining developments that involve the University generally, and say that by any standard, this has been a red-letter year.

December 2000 saw the formal end of the capital campaign that has enabled the University to build new and already well-recognized academic strengths despite the state budget cuts of the early nineties. One of the largest and most successful efforts of its kind undertaken in any American university, this campaign generated substantial sums for improvements in academic programs, buildings, endowments, and scholarships. The final total for the campaign exceeds $1.43 billion. This total alone is, of course, great news. What may prove even more valuable in the future is the happy discovery of a vast network of women and men -- volunteers who are alumni, friends, faculty members, and students and their parents, who are now taking responsibility for envisioning, planning, and building the University of the future. This letter goes out to some 200,000 persons, of whom more than 142,000 took active roles in this campaign. To you, the University and I personally are more grateful than we can ever say. Thank you.

A wealth of evidence demonstrates the University's and the hospital and clinics' continuing worth to all of us. This year, U.S. News & World Report ranks us second among public universities behind California at Berkeley, with which we have played tag for several years. In separate national assessments, both the Medical Center as a whole and eight of its departments were ranked among the nation's top 100. Individual faculty physicians appear in unprecedented numbers in the new editions of the publications that list top practitioners by specialties.

This has been a banner year for recognition of the quality of faculty work. Funded research now exceeds $225 million, eloquent evidence of the high esteem of the national selection committees and review boards that award research support to individual faculty members. Brooks Pate, a young faculty member in Chemistry and a 1987 alumnus of the College, won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award in October -- an award that matters both for what it says about Brooks' pioneering work in sub-molecular structures and for what it says about the quality of young scientists among the faculty. Once again this year, students and recent graduates have had extraordinary success in the competitions for the major post-baccalaureate scholarships. And Larry Sabato, who received the Thomas Jefferson Award at the fall convocation, is, once again (and deservedly), the most frequently quoted college professor in America.

This year has seen many changes in the University's leadership. Those in the cohort of great deans, vice presidents, and faculty leaders who sustained us through the 1990s have now begun to move to other duties and (in some cases) to retirement as they have wrapped up their campaign duties.

To round out this summary of the year's high points: In collaboration with the College Foundation, the Board of Visitors has recently committed to replacing New Cabell Hall on its current site, and to developing a major new College building (and affiliated parking garage) to be built across Jefferson Park Avenue from the eventual new New Cabell Hall. At the same time, the Board approved the renovation of Cocke and Rouss halls for new uses -- projects whose eventual price (to be paid by a combination of state and donor moneys) is estimated to be $126 million when the work is completed.

At about the same time, the new arena, which will replace University Hall, continues to move forward on time and on track. With two commitments of $20 million each and a growing number of other gifts to support components of the work, the new facility is now in the middle stages of design. A volunteer oversight group that includes Pete Gillen and Debbie Ryan has identified a site across Massie Road from the McCue Center and is making rapid progress on the proposed design. This building will include space for both women's and men's basketball. Because, unlike University Hall, it will be air-conditioned and equipped with modern technology, it will accommodate concerts and other cultural events as well as conferences. Our goal is to occupy the new building no later than 2006, preferably in 2005.

Other major projects now in advanced planning or construction include research and teaching facilities for the Medical School, major Engineering buildings related to the VA 2020 science and technology initiatives, a rebuilt and vastly improved baseball stadium to be built around the existing field next to Klockner Stadium, buildings for the VA 2020 fine and performing arts initiatives, and new buildings in both the North Fork and the Fontaine research parks. Most of these projects have been privately financed, but several have also attracted state support. These include the Small Library and the Harrison Institute, which comprise the new special collections library (mixed funding); the final phase of the designs for the new Darden School and the Law School (financed by private donors); a new student dining hall to replace the Observatory Hill dining hall (financed by student fees); a five-story addition to the School of Nursing's McLeod Hall that will provide 30,000 additional square feet of teaching and research space (mixed funding); and the final phase of expansion of Clark Hall to accommodate state-of-the-art laboratories for Environmental Sciences and an expanded science-technology library (mixed funding).

My previous letters have included general summaries of faculty achievements, and this year there are many to report. It has seemed to me, however, that in light of the events of September 11, you may have special interest in current faculty work that has figured in the national response to terrorism. This summary is by no means complete, but the work described in the following paragraphs matters to all of us now in ways that it may not have prior to September 11.

Some names will be well known to most alumni for their work as consultants for governmental agencies, commentators for the media, and faculty members engaged on a daily basis with students here:

Faculty members whose names are (or are rapidly becoming) equally well known have taken significant roles in protecting the national information infrastructure against cyber-terrorism, in providing expert medical and scientific advice as the government has moved to counter bio-terrorism, and in interpreting the complex cultural, religious, and ethnic challenges that confront shapers of diplomacy, military strategy, and other aspects of the world after September 11.

Finally, a group of faculty members whose names may or may not appear in the media, but whose work bears directly on steps now being taken to build domestic security and improve preparedness.

As we near the end of this year 2001, many things about the University are very much the same as always. Leaves still flutter down from the sycamores in front of the Rotunda. Students push them along with their feet as they walk toward Alderman Library, and they listen as you and I did to the sounds of leaves crumbling underfoot. In this late part of the year, yellows, tans, and reds have replaced late summer's faded greens, and of the broad-leaf trees only the oaks and beeches seem still determined to hold onto last season's plumage. The chapel's bells ring each day as students make their way to the Corner or toward Rugby Road or back to classes or libraries or laboratories. The familiar sounds of professors lecturing and of students working together around seminar tables catch the ear as one walks through classroom buildings. We gather at football games here and at alumni meetings away from here and in less formal venues where Mr. Jefferson's University is known and loved. These elements of life here and in our extended community are especially sweet for their goodness and timelessness even in this year. Yet things and times have changed in ways that will themselves endure, and all of us know that truth just as we know our values and ourselves better than we did before September 11.

In the attacks of that day none were spared grief. We grieve for the deaths of those unknown to us, and those dear to us–five alumni, the parents of two current students, and friends and families of many members of the University community died on September 11. And we feel the loss of the peace shattered by the terrible events of that day. So within the apparent sameness of continuity of life here, the mood is different this fall. Although children (1,400 of them actually, costumed as everything from black cats to Snow White) gathered as they do every year on the Lawn at twilight for trick or treating, and other events proceed as they have and should, many here, including our students, display a powerful new sense of common purpose as they progress through the works and rituals of the fall.

A university like ours exists at the junction between the individual and society where it shapes and serves both. In the hours and days immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, faculty and students organized teach-ins on many issues, including the Middle East. A particularly powerful one occurred after dark on September 12 at the foot of the Lawn, where some 2,500 persons gathered. Like many other communities, we created a memorial to those who had died. Students from the School of Architecture designed a place near Memorial Gymnasium where we could attach notes, flowers, or other tributes to those who were lost. Over the next few weeks, people returned often to this spot to see how others had expressed their thoughts and emotions. By the thousands, students, faculty, and staff took part in blood drives, including one of our own at Onesty Hall.

Students stop me on my walks to say how very fortunate and sometimes how innocent they were prior to the attacks. They understand that no one, no human being, and no institution, can be fully prepared for so massive and vicious an assault, but they understand with sudden clarity a new aspect of Mr. Jefferson's intent to educate them to be and remain strong, free people. And they need to talk about this realization of why they are here. Similarly, no one could have predicted the ways in which students, faculty, and staff have participated in our national grief, sense of outrage, and growing determination to protect and sustain our republic. In silent gatherings in which students (and indeed many of us whose student days are long past) absorbed the enormity of these events and learned to grieve and feel outrage in ways unlike what generations since Pearl Harbor have known; in public forums and classrooms where issues range from personal recognition of reality to the strategies of sustaining national security in a new era; in earnest daily contact with faculty members and other students and visitors from Washington and abroad—the University and its community discovered new validity in the work intended from the beginning to be done here.

Today, as the weeks have passed and the nation has begun to learn new habits of diligence and new concerns, the University, like America generally, is resuming its daily life and daily rituals. Other more ordinary events have lately asserted pride of place in the University's attention. The state's budget crisis -- Virginia is experiencing a $1 billion shortfall in state revenue collections -- has added a note of financial uncertainty to the political uncertainty of recent weeks. Still, our University, like our republic, was founded on optimistic faith in the ability of free people and democratic institutions to set things right. What we do here confirms the durability and continuity of that faith, as also does the loyalty and generosity of our alumni and friends. I am grateful to all of you for support that over the years has made all the difference. And I am grateful that, as members of the University's family, you return year-in and year-out to sustain the human ties and recall to mind the first things that have made this place, its founder, and its values such powerful elements of our common culture. Best wishes for peaceful and joyous holidays.

Sincerely,

John T. Casteen III
President

Last Modified: 01-Oct-2007 16:26:49 EDT