Dear alumni and friends

Despite my affection for university life, I’d often neglected its ceremonies in my earlier years. Always in a hurry to get on to the next thing, I never marched for graduation; I received my diplomas by mail. Prior to college I had taken my ideas of universities and colleges from TV and the movies where professors were either pretentious, with elbow patches, pipes, and sneers, or nutty, with pocket protectors and glasses held together by tape. Neither seemed exactly the role model I was looking for at 18.

But as I prepared to speak at Convocation this fall, I realized that my view of university life had changed a lot since then. Rather than being a fragile ivory tower, the university is probably the single most successful, adaptable, and useful institution devised over the last thousand years. Think how many supposedly real things have come and gone while the university endures, grows, and prospers; how many wars, inventions, and businesses have passed; and how many generations have enjoyed its rituals, its convocations, and graduations.

A university lasts because it embodies some of the best human instincts: curiosity, civility, tenacity, patience, and memory. A university is a place of institutionalized respect for each other’s curiosity and passion. It is a place where, every day, we push beyond the accepted, the known, the handed-down, to find out for ourselves.

I invite you to meet, in these pages, many people who embody that curiosity and passion. Consider two young physicists whose study of atomic particles represents the basic research on which invention builds; or an art historian whose scholarship about cultural antiquities forces collectors to wrestle with issues of ownership; or a senior sociologist whose knowledge of who we are as a country spans generations. In these pages we introduce students unafraid to paint on the walls and others whose research takes them abroad or into the fields of nearby farmers. And we salute those who leave this place intent on improving their world: alumni bringing emergency medicine to developing nations, simplified sign language to desperate families, drama to our lives, and normalcy to a country reeling from terrorism.

One privilege of being part of the U.Va. community is learning from the smart and energetic people who come here looking for the right questions if not always the full answers — people whose lives are interesting, whose passions push beyond the expected, and whose stories I hope you will enjoy reading.

Edward L. Ayers
Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History
Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences