University of Virginia

The University of Virginia (UVA or Virginia) is a public research university located in Charlottesville City and Albemarle County in Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his Academical Village, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its original governing Board of Visitors included three U.S. presidents: Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, the latter as sitting president of the United States at the time of its foundation. As its first two rectors, presidents Jefferson and Madison played key roles in the university's foundation, with Jefferson designing both the original courses of study and the university's original architecture. The original campus contains President Monroe's former residence and law office, today used as a residential college.

Now expanded to 1,135 acres (459 ha) of central campus, the modern university is composed of eight undergraduate and three professional schools: the School of Law, the Darden School of Business, and the School of Medicine. The university has been a member of the Association of American Universities since 1904.

The university's leadership, faculty, research staff, and alumni have included several United States presidents, foreign heads of state, Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, a Dan David Prize winner, Marshall Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, and 57 Rhodes Scholars—the most of any state university. Its alumni include 31 state governors (including fourteen governors of Virginia) and 33 United States senators. UVA students and alumni have founded companies such as Reddit, Skillshare, VMware, and Space Adventures.

Its athletic teams, the Virginia Cavaliers, have twice won the Capital One Cup for overall athletics prowess and compete in NCAA Division I as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

History

1800s

In 1802, while serving as president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson wrote to artist Charles Willson Peale that his concept of the new university would be "on the most extensive and liberal scale that our circumstances would call for and our faculties meet," and it might even attract talented students from "other states to come, and drink of the cup of knowledge." Virginia was already home to the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, but Jefferson lost all confidence in his alma mater, partly because of its religious nature—it required all its students to recite a catechism—and its stifling of the sciences. Jefferson had flourished under William & Mary professors William Small and George Wythe decades earlier, but the college was in a period of great decline and his concern became so dire by 1800 that he expressed to British chemist Joseph Priestley, "we have in that State, a college just well enough endowed to draw out the miserable existence to which a miserable constitution has doomed it." These words would ring true some seventy years later when William & Mary fell bankrupt after the Civil War and the Williamsburg college was shuttered completely in 1881, later being revived as primarily a small college for teachers until it regained university status later in the twentieth century. Jefferson envisioned his new university would "be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." He also pushed for the establishment of the planned university to prevent young Southern men from attending Northern colleges where they might be exposed to anti-slavery sentiment; the historian Leslie M. Harris describes the university as being founded partly as a "pro-slavery bulwark".

In 1817, three presidents (Jefferson, James Monroe, and James Madison) and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Marshall joined 24 other dignitaries at a meeting held in the Mountain Top Tavern at Rockfish Gap. After some deliberation, they selected nearby Charlottesville as the site of the new University of Virginia. The UVA Board of Visitors purchased just outside Charlottesville a farm that had once been owned by James Monroe. The Commonwealth of Virginia chartered a new flagship university to be based on the site in Charlottesville on January 25, 1819.

John Hartwell Cocke collaborated with James Madison, Monroe, and Joseph Carrington Cabell to fulfill Jefferson's dream to establish the university. Cocke and Jefferson were appointed to the building committee to supervise the construction. The UVA Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights is continuing to "seek opportunities to engage and acknowledge with respect that we live, learn, and work on [what once was] the territory of the Monacan Indian Nation." Like many of its peers, the university owned slaves who helped build the campus. They also served students and professors. The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers on Central Grounds was built to memorialize their lives and legacies. The university's first classes met on March 7, 1825.

Organization and administration

The university has several affiliated centers including the Rare Book School, headquarters of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, University of Virginia Center for Politics, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and Miller Center of Public Affairs. The Fralin Museum of Art is dedicated to creating an environment where both the university community and the general public can study and learn from directly experiencing works of different art. The university has its own internal recruiting firm, the Executive Search Group and Strategic Resourcing. Since 2013, this department has been housed under the Office of the President.

In 2006, President Casteen announced an ambitious $3 billion capital campaign to be completed by December 2011. During the Great Recession, President Sullivan missed the 2011 deadline, and extended it indefinitely. The $3 billion goal would be met a year and a half later, which President Sullivan announced at graduation ceremonies in May 2013.

As of 2013, UVA's $1.4 billion academic budget is paid for primarily by tuition and fees (32%), research grants (23%), endowment and gifts (19%), and sales and services (12%). The university receives 10% of its academic funds through state appropriation from the Commonwealth of Virginia. For the overall (including non-academic) university budget of $2.6 billion, 45% comes from medical patient revenue. The Commonwealth contributes less than 6%.

UVA's endowment is among the highest among universities in the United States. As of 2013, the University of Virginia was one of only two public universities in the United States that had a Triple-A credit rating from all three major credit rating agencies.

Although UVA is the flagship university of Virginia, state funding has decreased for several consecutive decades. Financial support from the state dropped by half from 12 percent of total revenue in 2001–02 to six percent in 2013–14. The portion of academic revenue coming from the state fell by even more in the same period, from 22 percent to just nine percent. This nominal support from the state, contributing just $154 million of UVA's $2.6 billion budget in 2012–13, has led President Sullivan and others to contemplate the partial privatization of the University of Virginia. UVA's Darden School and Law School are already self-sufficient. Hunter R. Rawlings III, President of the prominent Association of American Universities research group of universities, came to Charlottesville to make a speech to university faculty which included a statement about the proposal: "there's no possibility, as far as I can see, that any state will ever relinquish its ownership and governance of its public universities, much less of its flagship research university". He encouraged university leaders to stop talking about privatization and instead push their state lawmakers to increase funding for higher education and research as a public good.

Academics

The University of Virginia offers over 70 bachelor's degree programs, 94 master's degree programs, 55 doctoral degree programs, 6 educational specialist degree programs, and 2 first-professional degrees (Medicine and Law). UVA does not bestow honorary degrees.

Scholarships

The Jefferson Scholarship is a competitive merit scholarship. Around 30 scholars are selected annually from a direct application pool of 4,500 nominating schools, each able to nominate only one student. Covering all tuition, books, room and board, the scholarship also provides scholars finances for summer enrichment, independent research and study abroad.

Echols Scholars (College of Arts and Sciences) and Rodman Scholars (School of Engineering and Applied Science), which include 5% of undergraduate students, receive no financial benefits, but are entitled to special advisors, priority course registration, residence in designated dorms and fewer curricular constraints than other students have.

Full tuition scholarships are given to each in-state student from families earning under $100,000 per year. Each in-state student from families earning under $50,000 per year also receives free room and board. These scholarships are initiatives of President Ryan, who announced them upon his inauguration in 2018.

Research

The University of Virginia is the first and longest serving public member of the Association of American Universities in the American South, attaining membership in 1904. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".

According to the National Science Foundation, UVA spent $614 million on research and development in 2019, ranking it 44th in the nation and first in Virginia. Built in 1996, North Fork (formerly the UVA Research Park) is an extensive 3.7-million square foot, 562 acre research park nine miles north of UVA's North Grounds. It houses the UVA Applied Research Institute as well as many private R&D efforts by such firms as Battelle, The MITRE Corporation, Signature Science, and CACI.

UVA is also home to globally recognized research on hypersonic flight for NASA and other organizations. The United States Air Force, National Science Foundation, and National Center for Hypersonic Combined Cycle Propulsion have each also granted UVA researchers millions in funding for the university's ongoing broad and deep research into ultra-high velocity flight. Starting in 2015, a UVA team led by mechanical engineering professor Eric Loth began Department of Energy-funded research into an original design of offshore wind turbines that would potentially dwarf the size and scope of any being produced or researched anywhere else. The innovative design inspired by palm trees led to Loth being named to a Popular Science list of "The Brilliant Minds Behind The New Energy Revolution".

Student life

Student life at the University of Virginia is marked by a number of unique traditions. The campus of the university is referred to as the "Grounds". Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are instead called first-, second-, third-, and fourth-years to reflect Jefferson's belief that learning is a lifelong process, rather than one to be completed within four years.

Student-faculty interaction and connections

First-year students in the College of Arts & Sciences are required to take four Engagements, two per semester, with the goal of students expanding their thinking. However, students who are part of UVA's distinguished honors college, Echols, are exempt from the College of Arts & Sciences general education requirements. Therefore, Echols scholars do not have to take the four Engagements.

Select faculty live at Brown College at Monroe Hill, Hereford College, International Residential College, and in Pavilions on the Lawn. This living arrangement gives more opportunities for professors to invite students to lunches and dinners, which regularly happens, and creates chances for impromptu meetings and interactions between faculty and students around Grounds.

Reflecting this close student-faculty interaction at UVA, it welcomed Nobel laureate William Faulkner to a position as "writer-in-residence" in 1957. He had no teaching responsibilities, and was paid merely to live among the students and write. He was badly injured in a horse riding accident in 1959, and did not return to the state before his death in 1962. Faulkner then bequeathed the majority of his papers to Shannon Library, giving UVA the largest Faulkner archives in the world.

Global citizenship initiatives

UVA was previously the academic sponsor for Semester at Sea, a multi-country study abroad program conducted on a cruise ship.

The University of Virginia received the 2015 Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization, by the Association of International Educators. This award confirms the university's success and commitment in educating its students on a global scale as well as nationally.

In the fall of 2019, UVA started the Global Internships Program as part of their commitment to "high-impact educational experiences" and "global experiences", strategies outlined in UVA's Cornerstone Plan.

Student leadership opportunities

There are a number of UVA undergraduate leadership opportunities that are offered in addition to the standard student government or fraternity and sorority positions found at many other universities. They include UVA's secret societies and debating societies, the student-run honor committees, and the chance to be recognized as a fourth-year student at the pinnacle of student leadership by being asked to live on the Lawn.

Athletics

Virginia has ranked near the top of collegiate athletics programs in recent years. In 2015 and 2019, UVA won the nationwide Capital One Cup for overall men's sports excellence. The teams and athletes representing Virginia in college athletics have been dubbed the Cavaliers since 1923, predating the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers by nearly half a century.

In 2019, Virginia men's basketball won the NCAA Championship in March Madness, the single-elimination national college basketball tournament considered by YouGov polled American viewers (as of the same year) to be the most exciting collegiate sporting event. In 2015, when Virginia first won its first Capital One Cup its teams won the 2014 College Cup, the 2015 College World Series, and the 2015 NCAA Tennis Championships. When it repeated the feat in 2019, the program won both the March Madness tournament and the 2019 Men's Lacrosse Championship.

Virginia's athletics director is Carla Williams, the first African American woman to hold the position at any power conference university. The previous athletics director was Craig Littlepage, the first African American to have that title in the ACC. He held the position for sixteen years and, under his leadership, UVA added many significant hires who have demonstrated success near the top of their respective sports, including recent NCAA Champions Tony Bennett, Lars Tiffany, Brian O'Connor, and Todd DeSorbo, as well as former football coach Bronco Mendenhall. Among coaches who have longer tenures, George Gelnovatch has won two NCAA men's soccer national titles since 2009. Steve Swanson has led women's soccer teams to six ACC titles and 24 consecutive winning seasons. Kevin Sauer has led UVA women's rowing to two NCAA titles since 2010.

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