The history of the University of Virginia opens with its conception by Thomas Jefferson at the beginning of the early 19th century. The university was chartered in 1819, and classes commenced in 1825.
On January 18, 1800, Thomas Jefferson, then the Vice President of the United States, alluded to plans for a new college in a letter written to British scientist Joseph Priestley: "We wish to establish in the upper country of Virginia, and more centrally for the State, a University on a plan so broad and liberal and modern, as to be worth patronizing with the public support, and be a temptation to the youth of other States to come and drink of the cup of knowledge and fraternize with us." [1]
In 1802, while serving as President of the United States, 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". [2] Virginia was already home to The College of William & Mary, but Jefferson lost confidence in his alma mater, partly because of its religious stances and lack of courses in the sciences. [3] Although Jefferson had flourished under the tutelage of College of William & Mary professors William Small and George Wythe, his concerns with the College became great enough by 1800 that he wrote: "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." [4] Thus, he began planning a university more aligned with his educational ideals. [5]
The University of Virginia stands on a farm that had once been owned by American Revolutionary War veteran (and eventual fifth President of the United States), James Monroe. [6] Guided by Jefferson, the school laid its first building's cornerstone in late 1817, and the Commonwealth of Virginia chartered the new college on January 25, 1819. John Hartwell Cocke ted 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. [7]
In the presence of James Madison, the Marquis de Lafayette toasted Jefferson as "father" of the University of Virginia at the school's inaugural banquet in 1824. The university's first classes met on March 7, 1825. [8] Other universities of the day allowed only three choices of specialization: medicine, law, and religion. Under Jefferson's guidance, the University of Virginia became the first in the United States to allow specializations in such diverse fields as astronomy, architecture, botany, philosophy, and political science. Jefferson explained, "This institution will 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." [9]
An even more controversial direction was taken for the new university based on a daring vision that higher education should be completely separated from religious doctrine. One of the largest construction projects in North America up to that time, the new Grounds were centered upon a library (then housed in the Rotunda) rather than a church – further distinguishing it from peer universities of the United States, most of which were still primarily functioning as seminaries for one particular religion or another. [10] Jefferson even went so far as to ban the teaching of theology altogether. In a letter to Thomas Cooper in October 1814, Jefferson stated, "a professorship of theology should have no place in our institution" [11] and, true to form, the university has never had a divinity school; it was established independent of any religious sect. Replacing the then-standard specialization in religion, the university undertook groundbreaking specializations in scientific subjects such as astronomy and botany.[ citation needed ] (However, today UVA does maintain a strong religious studies department.[ citation needed ] A non-denominational chapel, notably absent from Jefferson's original plans, was constructed in 1890.)
Jefferson was intimately involved in the university, hosting Sunday dinners at his Monticello home for faculty and students until his death. So taken with the import of what he viewed the university's foundations and potential to be, and counting it amongst his greatest accomplishments, Jefferson insisted his grave mention only his status as the author of the Declaration of Independence and Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia. Thus, he eschewed mention of his presidency and national accomplishments in favor of being remembered for the newly established university. Until the 1890s students were all male, and until 1950 all were white. [12] : 18
In 1826, the nation's fourth president, James Madison, became Rector of the University of Virginia, at the same time America's fifth President James Monroe made his home on the Grounds (at Monroe Hill) and was a member of the Board of Visitors. Both former Presidents stayed at the university until their deaths in the 1830s.
The same year, 1826, poet Edgar Allan Poe enrolled at the university, where he excelled in Latin. [13] The Raven Society, an organization named after Poe's most famous poem, continues to maintain 13 West Range, the room Poe inhabited during the single semester he attended the University (he left because of financial difficulties). [14]
The School of Engineering and Applied Science opened in 1836, making it the first engineering school in the United States to be attached to a comprehensive university.
Initially, some of the students arriving at the University matched the then-common picture of college students; wealthy, spoiled aristocrats with a sense of privilege which often led to brawling, or worse. This was a source of frustration for Jefferson, who assembled the students during the school's first year, on October 3, 1825, to criticize such behavior; but was too overcome to speak. He later spoke of this moment as "the most painful event" of his life. The irresponsible behavior of the students culminated in the murder of Professor John A. G. Davis, Chairman of the Faculty, in 1840. [15]
According to a 96-page report published by the University in 2019, "slavery was “in every way imaginable...central to the project of designing, funding, building, and maintaining the school.” [16] The University of Virginia Press in 2019 published Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s University. [17] The University has erected a Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.
At the onset of the American Civil War the University of Virginia was the largest in the Southern United States and second nationwide only to Harvard University in number of students and faculty. [18]
The University was a center of pro-slavery thought: "In the 1850s, many justified southern universities—and especially the University of Virginia—because they defended slavery as a core part of southern values." [19] : 141 When Harriet Beecher Stowe's sister Catherine came to the campus in 1855, she was burned in effigy. [12] : 13
The university was a "hotbed of the Confederacy". Most of the students at the time supported secession, and some who opposed it believed that maintaining the Union was the best way to keep slavery intact. About 90% of the student body enrolled in Confederate military units. [20] [21]
In 1862, 18-year-old Confederate captain Gratz Cohen became the first known Jewish student. He was also elected president of the Jefferson Society. [22] He was killed three years later at the Battle of Bentonville. [23]
Unlike many other colleges in the South, the university was kept open throughout the conflict, although in 1863 and 1864 there were only about 50 students, most of them wounded Confederate soldiers. [24] In March 1865, Union General George Armstrong Custer marched his troops into Charlottesville, bringing with them the Emancipation Proclamation and freeing all the enslaved. Faculty and community leaders convinced Custer to spare the university. Though Union troops camped on the Lawn and damaged many of the Pavilions, Custer's men left four days later without bloodshed and the university was able to return to its educational routines.
Jefferson, ever the skeptic of central authority and bureaucracy, had originally decided that the University of Virginia would have no President. Rather, this power was to be shared by a Rector and a Board of Visitors. As the 19th century waned, it became obvious this cumbersome arrangement was incapable of adequately handling the many administrative and fundraising tasks that had become necessary to support the growing University. [25]
In 1904, Edwin Alderman resigned as President of Tulane University to take the same position at the University of Virginia. As the university's first president, he embarked on a number of reforms for both the university and the state of Virginia's public educational systems in general. A reform specific to the University of Virginia was one of the first school-sponsored financial aid programs in all of higher learning[ citation needed ] and, though primitive by today's standards, it included a loan provision for needy men who were unable to pay.[ citation needed ] Initially controversial and opposed by many at what had become a very traditional school, Alderman's progressive ideas stood the test of time. He remains the longest-tenured president in the university's history, having served for twenty-six years until his death in 1931. Alderman Library was named in his honor, though the library was later renamed to Shannon Library due to Alderman's associations with eugenics.
During World War II, Virginia was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. [26]
Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner became a writer-in-residence at the university in 1957, keeping open office hours until his death in 1962. He was named a Professor of English and had the title of "Consultant on American Literature to the Alderman Library". Faulkner donated a large collection of his manuscripts, typescripts, and correspondence to the William Faulkner Foundation, which he created, and the foundation in turn donated the manuscripts to the library upon his death. These and many further Faulkner-related materials reside in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library today. [27]
The University of Virginia began the process of integration even before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision mandated school desegregation for all grade levels, when Gregory Swanson sued to gain entrance into the university's law school in 1950. [28] Following his successful lawsuit, a handful of black graduate and professional students were admitted during the 1950s, though no black undergraduates were admitted until 1955, and UVA, like other Southern schools, continued to resist full integration until well into the 1960s. [28] The university was "later than even most southern universities" in admittng Black students. [12] : 18
The university first admitted a few selected women to graduate studies in the late 1890s and to certain programs such as nursing and education in the 1920s and 1930s. [29] In 1944, Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia, became the Women's Undergraduate Arts and Sciences Division of the University of Virginia. Until that time, the University of Virginia had not admitted women as undergraduates. In 1969, Virginia Scott, who lived in Charlottesville, sued the university in federal court for College of Arts and Sciences admission. John Lowe, who employed Scott and who had graduated from UVA's law school in 1967, took the case. Mary Whitney resigned from being Dean of Women to testify in support of female students. The trial was put on hold with a continuance, and during this the university's Board of Visitors accepted coeducation. [30] [31] In 1970, the Charlottesville campus became fully co-educational, and in 1972 Mary Washington became an independent state university. [32] In 1970, the first class of 450 undergraduate women entered UVA (39 percent), while the number of men admitted remained constant. By 2003 women comprised 55 percent of the undergraduate student body. [29]
The University of Virginia established its first and only branch campus, at Wise, Virginia, in 1954. The UVA Wise campus currently enrolls 2,000 students. As a public, four-year residential college located in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, The University of Virginia's College at Wise is recognized[ by whom? ] as one of the top public liberal arts colleges in the nation.
UVa–Wise is home to Virginia's only undergraduate degree program in software engineering. UVa–Wise offers 30 majors, 32 minors, seven pre-professional programs, and 24 teaching licensures.
For several consecutive years, students at UVa–Wise have graduated with the lowest debt load of any public liberal arts college in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report .[ citation needed ]
In 2004, as the result of a stark decrease in state support, the University of Virginia became the first public university in the United States to receive more funding from private sources than from the state with which it is associated. Thanks to a charter initiative that passed the Virginia General Assembly and was signed into law by then-Governor Mark Warner in 2005, [33] the university — and any other public universities in the state that choose to do so (currently Virginia Tech and William & Mary) – will have greater autonomy over its own affairs. [34] The university was subject to an audit by the state, which found that while the school met most of the goals established by the deal, the number of minority students enrolled in the university declined. [35]
Also in 2004, at the 100th anniversary of Alderman becoming President, UVA under President John T. Casteen III announced the AccessUVa financial aid program. This program guarantees the university will meet 100% of a U.S. student's demonstrated need. It also provides low-income students (up to 200% of the poverty line – as of 2009, about $44,000 for a family of four) with full grants to cover all of their educational needs, and it caps the level of need-based loans for all other students. This program was the first to guarantee full grants to students of low-income families at any public university in the United States.
Today, minority students are particularly successful at the University of Virginia. According to the Fall 2005 issue of Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, [36] UVA "has the highest black student graduation rate of the Public Ivies at 86 percent". The journal goes on to state that "by far the most impressive is the University of Virginia with its high black student graduation rate and its small racial difference in graduation rates".
The University of Virginia, together with Harvard University and Princeton University, ended its Early Decision and Early Action programs in September 2006, stating that such policies limit poor and middle-class students from competing on an equal footing with wealthier applicants. [37] [38] For its part, UVA noted that of 947 Early Decision acceptances for the Class of 2010, fewer than 20 of those students had applied for financial aid. [39] Non-binding early action was instated for the first time for the class of 2016 as "early action did not have the same impact on students of lower socioeconomic means because it is not binding". [40]
In 2010 the university welcomed Teresa A. Sullivan as the university's first woman President. [41] Two years later, during the spring of 2012, the first woman Rector Helen Dragas decided to remove President Sullivan. Instead of convening the Board of Visitors to discuss firing the President, Ms. Dragas secretly lobbied Board members in one-on-one phone calls, and then surprised President Sullivan in her office on June 8, 2012, with a demand for her resignation. [42] Rector Dragas convened a three-member Executive Committee meeting to accept the forced resignation, and then required Sullivan's subordinates to report directly to the Rector's office, effectively removing President Sullivan from any remaining management role. [43]
President Sullivan in a subsequent New York Times interview said she does not know why she was removed. [42] Professor Larry Sabato in the UVA Alumni Magazine called it "a midnight knifing", a "palace coup" to be reversed by "a grassroots rebellion". [44]
The resignation elicited strong protests, including a faculty Senate vote of no confidence in the Board of Visitors and Rector Dragas, [45] and demands from the student government for an explanation for Sullivan's ouster. [46] In the face of mounting pressure, including alumni threats to cease contributions, [47] and a mandate from Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell to resolve the issue or he would remove the entire Board, [48] the Board unanimously voted to reinstate Sullivan as president. [49]
In December 2012 the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools put UVA "on warning" that it risked losing its accreditation because President Sullivan's removal violated their standards for board governance and faculty role in decisionmaking. [50] [51] After the Board of Visitors changed its operating procedures so a minority of members could no longer control the board, the threat to U Va's accreditation was lifted. [52]
On November 13, 2022, three people were killed and two were wounded when former UVA football player Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. opened fire in Culbreth Garage around 10:00 pm. A large-scale manhunt was initiated by local and state law enforcement. [53]
On June 10, 1940, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the university's Memorial Gymnasium to watch his son Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. graduate, and to give the commencement address. Instead, "in this university founded by the first great American teacher of democracy" he made his impromptu "Stab in the Back" [54] speech denouncing the act of Italy joining beside Nazi Germany to invade Italy and France on that day. [55] (Graduation ceremonies are traditionally held on the Lawn, but rain had forced a move to "Mem Gym" for the Class of 1940.)
In the early 1960s, civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, Aaron Henry, Bayard Rustin, and others spoke at the university under the sponsorship of the Virginia Council on Human Relations, a student organization which presented speakers on Grounds who opposed the state's prevailing policy of racial segregation. John Lewis, Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee spoke in 1965 while his head was still bandaged from a police beating he received leading the first march from Selma to Montgomery.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at Old Cabell Hall in 1963 met with no resistance of any kind among the student body or administration. [56] He called for a doubling of black registrations at universities in the South. African-American enrollment has since been increased tenfold at the university. Five years later in 1968, when King was shot, the Rotunda flag was flown at half-mast and then-President of the University Edgar F. Shannon Jr., led a UVa memorial service in Cabell Hall. All classes at UVa were made optional during the service. [57]
To commemorate the United States Bicentennial in 1976, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II strolled the Lawn and lunched in the Dome Room of the Rotunda, one of five American sites she publicly visited.
The Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and several other Nobel Peace laureates stayed on Grounds for one week in 1998 while attending the university's historic Nobel Laureates Conference. [58]
On September 27 and 28, 1988, President George H. W. Bush convened the Charlottesville Education Summit. The discussions on furthering national education goals were led by then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, who would later be elected President in 1992 on a platform that promised economic and education reforms. The conference led to several reform proposals for the higher education system, which became the basis for Goals 2000 legislation, introduced into Congress in 1994 and signed into law by President Clinton on March 31, 1994. [59]
On August 25, 2012, the university refused an offer by President Barack Obama to hold a campaign speech on the Grounds. The reason cited was that the day the event was scheduled was the second day of classes for the 2012–13 school year, and would be too disruptive to the students and their class schedules. President Obama ended up speaking at the Downtown Mall Amphitheater located in downtown Charlottesville, well away from the university. This refusal did cause a bit of controversy and made some feel that the university was being disrespectful of the President, while others felt that the action was appropriate, and in the best interest of the students. [60]
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his Academical Village, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The 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 architecture. Located within its historic 1,135-acre central campus, the university is composed of eight undergraduate and three professional schools: the School of Law, the Darden School of Business, and the School of Medicine.
Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry was an American Democratic politician from Alabama who served in the state legislature and US Congress. He also served as an officer of the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War. He was a slave owner and supported the Southern cause.
William Holmes McGuffey was an American college professor and president who is best known for writing the McGuffey Readers, the first widely used series of elementary school-level textbooks. More than 120 million copies of McGuffey Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster's Dictionary.
The Rotunda is a building located on The Lawn on the original grounds of the University of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson designed it to represent the "authority of nature and power of reason" and modeled it after the Pantheon in Rome. Construction began in 1822 and was completed shortly after Jefferson's death in 1826. The campus of the new university was unique in that its buildings surrounded a library rather than a church, as was common at other universities in the English-speaking world. To many, the Rotunda symbolizes Jefferson's belief in the separation of church and education, and represents his lifelong dedication to education and architecture. The Rotunda was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and is part of the University of Virginia Historic District, designated in 1971.
Colgate Whitehead Darden Jr. was an American lawyer and Democratic politician aligned with the Byrd Organization who served as U.S. Representative from Virginia, the 54th Governor of Virginia (1942–46), Chancellor of the College of William and Mary (1946–47), and the third President of the University of Virginia (1947–59). The Darden Graduate School of Business Administration of the University of Virginia is named for him.
The Jefferson Literary and Debating Society is the oldest continuously existing collegiate debating society in North America. The society was founded on July 14, 1825, in Room Seven, West Lawn at the University of Virginia. Named for the founder of the university, Thomas Jefferson, the society regularly meets on Friday evenings at "The Hall" in the Lawn.
Brown College at Monroe Hill is one of three residential colleges at the University of Virginia. Originally named Monroe Hill College, Brown opened in 1986 as the first modern residential college at the University of Virginia. It was renamed Brown College at Monroe Hill in recognition of the endowment donated by the Brown family in 1994. The college is led by John T. Casteen, Principal. A number of faculty fellows from many departments and schools of the university maintain close ties to the college.
John Thomas Casteen III is an American educator. He served as president of the University of Connecticut from 1985 to 1990 and as Professor of English and president of the University of Virginia from 1990 through 2010.
Edwin Anderson Alderman served as the president of three universities. Edwin A. Alderman Elementary School in Wilmington and the Alderman dorm at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are named after him. The main library at the University of Virginia used to bear his name.
The Virginia Glee Club is a men's chorus based at the University of Virginia. It performs both traditional and contemporary vocal works typically in TTBB arrangements. Founded in 1871, the Glee Club is the university's oldest musical organization and one of the oldest all-male collegiate vocal ensembles in the United States. It is currently conducted by Frank Albinder.
John Lloyd Newcomb was an American educator. He served as the second president of the University of Virginia, ascending to the position after the death of Edwin Alderman. Newcomb, a member of the engineering faculty of the university, oversaw the university through the Depression and the Second World War and managed its physical expansion, including the building of Scott Stadium, the Bayly Art Museum, and Alderman Library.
Edgar Finley Shannon Jr. was a professor of English and president of the University of Virginia from 1959 to 1974. The University’s main library was renamed in Shannon’s honor in 2024.
Helen E. Dragas is a Virginia real estate developer and the CEO of the Dragas Companies. She is also a former member of, and rector for, the University of Virginia Board of Visitors.
The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia is a research library that specializes in American history and literature, history of Virginia and the southeastern United States, the history of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, and the history and arts of the book. The library is named after Albert and Shirley Small, who donated substantially to the construction of the library's current building. Albert Small, an alumnus of the University of Virginia, also donated his large personal collection of "autograph documents and rare, early printings of the Declaration of Independence." This collection includes a rare printing of the Dunlap broadside of the Declaration of Independence. Joining the library's existing Dunlap in the Tracy W. McGregor Collection of American History, Small's copy made U.Va. the only American institution with two examples of this, the earliest printing of the nation's founding document. It also includes the only letter written on July 4, 1776, by a signer of the Declaration, Caesar Rodney. The Albert H. Small Declaration of Independence Collection boasts an interactive digital display which allows visitors to view the historical documents electronically, providing access to children and an opportunity for visitors to manipulate the electronic copies without risk of damage to the original work.
The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers is a memorial in honor of those enslaved African Americans who built and worked at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In a unanimous vote on July 1, 2019, the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, established a new city holiday, Liberation and Freedom Day, to be celebrated on March 3. Union Army troops, under the command of Major General Philip Sheridan, arrived in Charlottesville on March 3, 1865, liberating over 14,000 enslaved workers. "Blacks were the majority race in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area." In the 1870 Census, the first one in which Charlottesville appears, its population was 2,838.
Maurie D. McInnis is an American author and cultural historian. She currently serves as the 24th president of Yale University, succeeding Peter Salovey on July 1, 2024. She previously served as the sixth president of Stony Brook University.
Isabella Gibbons was an enslaved woman serving as a cook at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Virginia. After she was freed in 1865 she became a teacher.
William Gibbons, was a formerly enslaved servant, who became a highly successful Baptist minister in Charlottesville and Washington, D.C. He was married to Isabella Gibbons.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Slavery, in every way imaginable, was central to the project of designing, funding, building, and maintaining the school.