Campaign for the College

This past summer the monthly A&S Online e-mail bulletin began a new feature: a question from the dean to alumni and other readers. I’ve been gratified by and fascinated with the responses. The answers are full of insight, humor, and wisdom, and they reflect a deep love for the University of Virginia.

Answers to the first of these questions — “If there were one thing we could do to strengthen the College, what would it be?” — yielded some themes: improved advising, higher faculty salaries, more support for graduate students, to name three. I was a little taken aback but also heartened; at the time, we were refining the Arts & Sciences priorities for the Campaign for the University of Virginia, which kicked off in September. Many of the responses pointed to exactly the needs the campaign is designed to meet.

The University aims to raise $3 billion, of which the College’s share is $500 million. On pages 6 through 9 of this issue, you’ll find a description of where that money is going in Arts & Sciences and examples of people who benefited in the past or benefit now from the kind of programs we plan to strengthen. The campaign focuses on the undergraduate experience because it stands as the core of the University of Virginia.

On almost every page of every issue of the Arts & Sciences magazine, you can read stories of people and programs that our unrestricted Annual Fund or other private philanthropy supports. During the campaign we will be more explicit in telling the story of how gifts make the College and Graduate School what they are today. By the time they walk the Lawn, our students all have been touched in some way by gifts from those who went before them.

We hope you’ll share our excitement about our dream of making an already wonderful undergraduate experience even better. And we’ll keep bringing you stories of the people who help make the University a place that evokes such strong loyalty and affection from its alumni and friends.

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