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Staying True
to our vision

This institution has achieved what it has today because those who cared about the University thought boldly about its future -- and because they showed the ingenuity, commitment, and courage to adhere to this vision even through difficult economic times. Today it is our turn. We are extending this legacy by envisioning and building a University for the year 2020.

We have made impressive strides toward meeting the goals outlined in the Virginia 2020 planning process, and at the same time we have conducted a complementary planning initiative called Envision. Its purpose, in part, has been to see where the goals of our schools and programs dovetail with larger institutional efforts arising from Virginia 2020. When we began our long-range planning process, the economy was flourishing, and our campaign was in high gear. The picture today is different, but it has not deterred us from staying true to our vision.

	A new studio art building is under design.

Virginia 2020: From Planning to Action

The Virginia 2020 plans have provided a clear course of action for adding new centers of excellence to the University's traditional strengths. Soon after the Virginia 2020 recommendations were accepted by the Board of Visitors in 2001, the University began to take decisive strides toward improving its programs in the fine and performing arts, science and technology, international activities, and public service and outreach.

Fine and Performing Arts: Building a Creative Environment

Faculty member William Sherman goes over plans for expanding the School of Architecture.

The Arts Grounds on Carr's Hill entered its formative stages this year. Feasibility studies and a landscape framework for all nine new, expanded, or renovated structures planned for the Arts Grounds have been completed, and the first project the new studio art building is in the design phase. Financed with a combination of state funding and a gift from the Peter B. and Adeline W. Ruffin Foundation, construction of the building could begin as early as 2003. Funding for the restoration of Fayerweather Hall, which will house the history of art program, is included in the general obligation bond measure that Virginia voters approved this fall. A new music building, which will contain flexible and acoustically isolated performance and teaching spaces, has begun to attract donor support, including $3.5 million from Kenneth L. Bazzle (College '53) of Atlanta, a member of the University's Council for the Arts and the College Board of Trustees, and $1.1 million from Anne and Alec Levin of Washington, D.C.

The Board of Visitors has approved plans to add a four-story wing of faculty offices and other improvements to Campbell Hall, home of the School of Architecture. The addition will provide space for thirty-six faculty members and administrators, a seminar room, an improved woodworking shop, and two conference rooms. Members of the architecture and landscape architecture faculties are collaborating with SMBW Architects of Richmond on the design of the school's expansion and renovation plans, which include systems for capturing solar energy. Construction is scheduled to begin in spring 2004.

These and other efforts to provide new and expanded facilities for the arts will be advanced by the $5 million Arts Grounds Challenge Fund, a gift from an anonymous donor. The fund will match other gifts of up to $1 million aimed at either launching or completing projects in the new arts district.

Recent progress in the arts includes the accreditation of the University of Virginia Art Museum by the American Association of Museums, the highest honor a museum can earn. Accreditation certifies that a museum operates according to standards set forth by the museum profession, manages its collections responsibly, and provides quality service to the public. Of the 8,000 museums nationwide, only about 750 are accredited. Accreditation will greatly facilitate the museum's ability to borrow works of art from other museums and individual collectors and to attract major traveling exhibitions.

The Department of Drama has received accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Theatre and is one of only thirty-six departments accorded membership in the University/Resident Theatre Association, which builds connections between graduate programs in drama and theatre professionals.

Science and Technology:
Fulfilling Our Potential

The University's Funding Excellence in Science and Technology (FEST) program is one of the first and one of the most productive offspring of Virginia 2020. Financed initially with $1 million from the president's office, FEST provides seed money to multidisciplinary research efforts that promise to yield groundbreaking results and that are likely to attract substantial grant support from external funding agencies. In 2001-2002, fourteen FEST grants were awarded to projects around the University, each with the potential to solve a major scientific or technological problem.

FEST has advanced the work of Thomas Skalak in biomedical engineering.

The FEST initiative has already borne impressive fruit. Thomas Skalak, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, received $100,000 for research using computer simulations and other techniques to understand the gene circuitry that controls tissue development and function. Thanks to work made possible by his FEST grant, Professor Skalak and a multi-disciplinary team of University researchers were able to attract a $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the growth of blood vessels and neural tissue and the development of blood vessels in the kidneys. This represents a thirty-six-to-one return on the University's investment. The recent state budget cuts have imperiled funding for FEST, which has prompted an initiative to seek private support for the project. The goal is to raise $500,000 a year for the program in the near term with the longer-range target of amassing a FEST endowment.

International Activities:
Extending Our Global Reach

This year the University raised its international profile in significant ways, increasing its presence in Europe, Asia, and most notably, southern Africa, where University faculty members have been conducting environmental research for more than twenty-five years. In recent months, the University has formalized this relationship by joining four universities in southern Africa to launch a research and education consortium called SAVANA, for Southern Africa-Virginia Networks and Associations.

	The SAVANA consortium affords opportunities for study abroad as well as research. U.Va. students taking part in the program pose before the Great Escarpment in South Africa.

This academic partnership, which comprises the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique, the University of Botswana, and the University of Venda and the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, is moving forward on a variety of fronts. It has placed a priority on upgrading existing field stations in critical ecosystems and on forming regional networks dedicated to environmental research. Through on-site instruction and distance-learning technology, it is linking the University to classrooms in the region, offering courses in environmental sciences and professional development programs for policy makers.

The University is mustering impressive technological and educational resources for this effort. Environmental Sciences Professor Stephen Macko and Research Assistant Professor Bob Swap created a class that was team taught in real time with colleagues in Mozambique and South Africa and that afforded live interaction among students on both continents. Bob Hutchison, chief telecommunications engineer for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and Gene Sullivan, director of telemedicine at the School of Medicine, devised an elaborate system to link all three schools. The signal coming from Mozambique, for example, was sent by satellite to the World Bank in Washington, D.C. From there it was transferred by an ISDN telephone line to Continuing and Professional Studies in Zehmer Hall, which in turn sent the signal over a local phone line to the Office of Telemedicine, which put the broadcast on the Internet so it could be received at Clark Hall 147.

Although the University of Virginia has long ranked among the top twenty-five institutions in the United States, it is less well known on foreign shores. This is about to change. One of the purposes of the new International Center for American Studies is to raise the University's visibility as a world-class institution. Launched this year under the leadership of Stephen Cushman, the Robert C. Taylor Professor of American Literature, the center will tap into the University's extraordinary strengths in the study of American history, literature, art, politics, law, religion, business, and other fields, as well as its innovative use of digital technology in the humanities and its incomparable collections of rare American texts, documents, and manuscripts. Combining these assets with the University's Jeffersonian heritage and its proximity to the nation's capital, the center will establish the University as a global hub of teaching and scholarship on all things American. In May, the center convened distinguished scholars from China, Turkey, Israel, Mexico, England, France, Italy, and Germany to discuss its programs, and it has begun making the University's digital resources more accessible to American studies specialists abroad.

Public Service and Outreach:
A Model for a New Era

The University's commitment to serving the common good manifests itself in many ways, from our programs for adult learners to the health care we provide the state and the nation to the thousands of hours of volunteer time contributed by our students. Our dedication to public service is also evident in our ongoing efforts to strengthen K-12 education. This is one reason the Carnegie Corporation has selected the University as one of four sites for an ambitious new teacher education program known as Teachers for a New Era.

Over the next five years, the University will receive $5 million through the New Era initiative to develop an innovative model of teacher preparation that includes coursework and mentoring at the University and during a teacher's first two years of service. Funded collaboratively by Carnegie, the Ford Foundation, the Annenburg Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, New Era will be a cooperative effort involving the Office of the Vice President and Provost, the Curry School of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences, and area school districts, where teachers will put these new concepts to work. University researchers will evaluate the effectiveness of the program with the aim of creating a series of evidence-based best practices that can be adopted by other major institutions that have teacher training programs.

Envision: Where We Are and Where We Intend to Be

On the heels of the Virginia 2020 planning process, we have launched Envision, a complementary planning exercise engaging faculty, students, alumni, and administrators in each of our schools, as well as the University Library and the Miller Center of Public Affairs. We have also held Envision sessions on the student experience and on our progress in achieving diversity in the University community. Led by Vice President and Provost Gene Block and Senior Vice President for Development and Public Affairs Robert Sweeney, this program has produced vision statements for each area. It also has helped University leaders see where the individual schools' core purposes and goals mesh with each other and with the priorities emerging from Virginia 2020.

A number of common themes have emerged from the sessions that point to the University's distinctive strengths, among them the paramount importance of the student experience, the faculty's desire to engage their students in intellectual exploration both within and outside the classroom, the integration of honor and ethical values into all aspects of University life, and the unique sense of place at the University. By helping us understand where we are and where we intend to be, Envision will shape the way we set our priorities and the way we represent the University to prospective students, parents, alumni and friends, and the many other citizens we serve.

The Envision process has also identified some ongoing, University-wide challenges that limit our ability to grow and improve. These include inadequate support for graduate students, the lifeblood of our research efforts and key partners in the educational process; insufficient and substandard facilities for many of our teaching and research programs; real and perceived administrative barriers to interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship; and the difficulty of recruiting and retaining faculty in a time of shrinking state resources. Summaries of the Envision sessions may be found on the Web at www.virginia.edu/provost/envision.

Building Consensus and Support

During the last twenty years, hardheaded planning, determined leadership, and the enthusiastic support of alumni and friends have transformed the University. But as our Virginia 2020 and Envision planning processes have revealed, there is still a great deal to accomplish. At the same time, the bar is continually being raised. The University's peers, with whom we vie for students, faculty, and resources, are continuing to invest in their academic programs. We must do the same.

To realize our vision, we will turn to our supporters, who made the recent campaign such an unprecedented success. We have analyzed our planning documents, we have tested the assumptions that underlie them, and we have begun to develop funding goals. With the help of our volunteers and benefactors, we will craft a strategy that continues to fulfill Jefferson's vision of the University as it enters its third century in 2020.