The New Century
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Members of the class of 1861 attend the University's centennial celebration. |
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In Jefferson's original plan the faculty, counseled by a Board of Visitors, governed the University. By the turn of the century, the school had grown larger and more complex, and the Visitors saw the need to appoint a president. When Woodrow Wilson, a University of Virginia law graduate yet to be president, declined the offer, they turned to Edwin Anderson Alderman, well known as an innovative educator in the South and a great orator across the nation. Alderman was inaugurated on Founder's Day, April 13, 1905. Within a year, Alderman had seen to the opening of a school of education at the University.
Alderman remained president until his death in 1931. He oversaw a university growing in size and reputation. Between 1904 and 1929, the faculty grew from 48 to 290 and student enrollment grew from 500 to 2,450. The University celebrated its centennial in 1921, commemorating the first Board of Visitors meeting in 1819 but forced to delay the ceremonies two years, until after the end of World War I. Eight hundred alumni returned to their beloved Lawn and made a parade of more than one hundred newfangled automobiles up Monticello mountain to pay homage to the founder.