President's Report - Milestones 2001-2002

University of Virginia President's Report

Message from the President

Milestones

2001 - 2002 Report

Financial Report

uring its twenty-fifth anniversary celebration in the fall of 2001, the Office of African-American Affairs dedicated a new computer lab named in honor of William Harris, the University's first dean of African-American Affairs, and Robert Bland (Engineering '59), the first black student to earn a bachelor's degree at the University. Part of the library in the Luther P. Jackson Cultural Center, the lab is used by dozens of students each day, including participants in the office's acclaimed peer advising program. The program is a key factor in the graduation rate of African-American students at the University, now at 87 percent and consistently among the highest for a major public university.

Fall 2001| Spring 2002 | Summer/Fall 2002

2001
October

• Dr. Hallam Hurt (Medicine '71), professor of pediatrics at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and a much-honored neonatologist, receives the Women's Center's Distinguished Alumna Award.

• Robert S. Harris, an expert on corporate finance who joined the Darden School's faculty in 1988, becomes the school's seventh dean. A former vice president and chief learning officer for United Technologies Corporation, he served as Darden's associate dean for faculty.

• The Miller Center of Public Affairs publishes transcripts of secret tapes from the Kennedy White House that document the president's handling of the Cuban missile and Mississippi civil rights crises.

• The McIntire School of Commerce announces it will offer a master's degree program in Information Technology to students in Northern Virginia starting in spring 2002.

• At Fall Convocation, Larry Sabato (College '74), the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics, receives the Thomas Jefferson Award, the University's highest honor.

• The University celebrates completion of the $3.5 million restoration of Pavilion VII, the oldest building on the Lawn and home of the Colonnade Club.

• In conjunction with the fourteenth annual Virginia Film Festival, University artists present the Fringe Festival, three weeks of exhibitions and performances at a downtown warehouse. Marc L. Abraham (College '71) speaks at the first Darden Producers Forum on the financing of his blockbuster film The Spy Game.

November

• Dr. Francis S. Collins (College '70), head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, speaks to a full house of students and faculty at the Newcomb Hall Theater.

• Alice Goodwin and William H. Goodwin, Jr. (Darden '66), make the first of two gifts totaling nearly $10 million to accelerate clinical trials of promising cancer treatments.

• R. Edward Freeman receives the Beyond Grey Pinstripes 2001 Faculty Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Aspen Institute Initiative for Social Innovation and the World Resources Institute. Mr. Freeman is the Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration and director of the Darden School's Olsson Center for Applied Ethics.

December

• Thousands of students gather for the first-ever Lighting of the Lawn. More than 21,000 white lights outline the Lawn's columns, balconies, and balustrades.

• The University of Virginia Art Museum wins accreditation from the American Association of Museums.

hen the legal profession gives advice, the Law School listens. The School of Law has introduced a business track curriculum in response to suggestions from leaders in business and law who took part in the school's 175th anniversary conference in October 2001. The conference examined the future needs of the law and lawyers and how legal education should be reshaped to meet them.


	Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist addresses the conference marking the 175th anniversary of the School of Law.

Using existing connections with the McIntire School of Commerce and the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, the Law School business track offers new courses in finance and advanced accounting, as well as classes on mergers and acquisitions and venture capital. Specialty short courses will be offered by visiting lawyers and business executives. Practitioners of business law "need to be able to work with numbers as well as words," said Law School Dean John C. Jeffries, Jr. (Law '73).

The conference's keynote speaker was United States Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who discussed strategies for coping with the ongoing growth of caseloads in the federal appeals courts. Chief Justice Rehnquist, who has chosen more clerks from Virginia than from any other law school, is the father of alumna Janet Rehnquist (College '79, Law '85).

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