Dear alumni and friends

When he wrote about a “broad and liberal and modern” education, Thomas Jefferson could have been describing our goal here in the College: to provide students with the general knowledge and intellectual skills that allow them to go out into the world and do amazing things. Our students pursue specialties within their majors, but the walls between traditional majors are increasingly breaking down as interdisciplinary programs attract more people every year. An Arts & Sciences education should prepare a student to travel any road.

This issue of the Arts & Sciences magazine brings you a small sample of alumni who’ve been away from here for less than a year. As you’ll see from the jobs they’ve chosen, the road sometimes makes an unexpected turn. Their journeys will no doubt take more twists and, let’s hope, lead them to the top of a hill or two. Some students arrive here knowing what they want, select a major accordingly, and find just the occupation, be it employment or further education, they plan for. Serendipity strikes in other cases, when young graduates end up happily doing something they never dreamed of.

You’ll also read more about our graduate students, this time the scientists who play a vital role in sustaining the caliber of research that goes on here. Another story describes the University’s plans to renovate a historic house for a science education center.

We profile alumni including an accomplished photographer, a television writer who’s made millions laugh, and a best-selling author whose art is certainly liberal. There are the stories of a student who uses film to explore important issues, another who has chronicled the role slaves played in the University’s early days, and a faculty member whose work with plants might someday tell us more about aging.

Finally, there’s an essay by an alumna who came here to make a career in academia but found that liberal arts study did for her just what it’s supposed to do when she chose a different path.

Whatever road you’re on, I hope it will bring you back to Charlottesville from time to time, and I hope to see you then.

Edward L. Ayers

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