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.
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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
support for the campaign is widespread among a number of
different University communities, including those who have
never been here as students. To date, 43 percent of the
dollars raised in the campaign has come from alumni, but
another 22 percent has come from non-alumni friends, including
nearly $20 million from non-alumni parents.
 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
| THE
VIRGINIA 2020 Commission on the Fine and Performing
Arts has embarked on nothing short of a cultural
transformation of the University. In twenty
years, the commission envisions the University
as a model of interdisciplinary collaboration
in the arts, a pioneer in the use of new technology
for creative expression and research, and
one of the nation's most productive and innovative
sources of new works. |
Robert
Chapel, chair of the Department of Drama,
led the Commission on Fine and Performing
Arts.
|
Among
the recommendations: expand and improve facilities
for the arts, add new faculty to strengthen departments
and meet a greater share of student demand for arts
courses, provide staffing and other resources to
enhance the art museum and the arts libraries, and
aggressively recruit students with exceptional artistic
talent as well as sound academic credentials.
The commission's goal: make the arts one of the
great strengths of the University of Virginia.
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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PUBLIC SERVICE TO IMPROVE LIVES
| 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. |
Rebecca
Kneedler, Curry School Professor, chaired
the Commission on Public Service and Outreach.
|
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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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.
Coordinating
activity in these areas and applying new resources
will allow the University to deploy new, innovative
programs in teaching and research, raise the
standing of science and engineering at the
University generally, and jump-start the process
of advancement across the sciences and engineering.
|
Anita
Jones, University Professor of Computer Science
and chair of the Commission on Science and Technology
|
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
|
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| The
University has already acted on the commission's
foremost recommendation by creating the post
of vice provost for international affairs. William
B. Quandt, above, the Edward R. Stettinius Professor
of Government and Foreign Affairs has been appointed
to fill it. |
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.
It also proposed new programs such as an International
Institute of American Studies, an Institute of American
Language, and a Center for International Medicine.
A new International Center will improve the services
provided to international students and visiting
scholars, including assistance with housing and
visas. In fall 2001, the University will open a
new residential college designed to give American
students the opportunity to live, dine, and study
with students from abroad.
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.
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