May 31, 2025
Good morning, everyone.
So as I was sitting in the audience, I had two thoughts. The first is given that earlier ovation, the smartest thing I should do is say thank you. I hope you have a great day and sit down.
The second is I’ve realized that if I want to get a reaction from the crowd, I need to say one of two things, 1975...or 1985.
In any event, to my fellow alums, welcome back. I am thrilled to see so many of you here.
Congratulations, in particular, to our newest members of the Jefferson Society who are part of the class of 1975.
Do you see how this is going to work? I also want to echo the thanks to all who made today possible, including Lily West and her team at the Alumni Association, Mark Luellen and his advancement team, our Office of Major Events, and Cecil Banks, in particular, and all of you for being here.
I think everyone I’ve mentioned deserves a round of applause.
So I’d like to start by taking a moment to remember President Emeritus John Casteen.
Yeah, it’s worth applauding.
I imagine many of you knew him, or at least knew of him. And so you realize that the UVA community has lost a true giant.
In many ways, he shaped UVA into the place we know today. He helped make UVA both more accessible by committing to meeting 100% of the financial need of students. And he promoted excellence in research, teaching, and health care.
As he said, UVA should be a place of unapologetic ambition. And he helped to ensure that it was.
On a personal level, he was a true friend and an invaluable advisor to me, from our first call, when I was contemplating whether to take this job or our last visit when I went to see him in the hospital.
We are all the beneficiaries of his leadership. And I know he will be dearly missed.
So here’s the plan for this morning in my remarks. I’d like to take a few moments to talk about current events in higher education, given the blizzard of activity from Washington, DC, and then pull back a bit to talk about where we are as an institution.
I’m tempted to say that the theme of my remarks is captured in the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities, but that’s a little melodramatic.
In any event, after my remarks, I will sit down with our remarkable campaign chair, Peter Grant. You heard a little bit about him. I will say that even among our alumni, who I think are the most engaged and committed of any alumni of any university, Peter’s service to UVA stands out.
But perhaps most importantly, he is the kind of person you’re grateful to call a friend. And I’m looking forward to our conversation. But Peter deserves an enormous round of applause.
OK, part 1, the higher education landscape. This is a volatile time in higher education, to say the least. Between executive orders, notices, and decisions by federal agencies and proposed budget legislation that passed the House and now will be taken up by the Senate, we’re facing a number of challenges and uncertainties.
I’ll just mention a few key ones.
First, federal funding for research is at risk.
As of May 30th, the University had had 41 grants terminated, totaling an amount of $85 million. To put this in context, our faculty collectively secure hundreds of grants every year, and the overall external research funding that we have currently is over a billion dollars. These losses that we’ve experienced are a hit, for sure, but they’re not nearly as dramatic as across the board funding freezes that you’ve probably been reading about at other schools.
That said, we’ve created a contingency funding pool to help bridge the gaps or mitigate the decline in funding. What research funding will look like going forward is a little hard to answer at the moment. But I guarantee you that the current approach and current formula won’t be the same.
And we’re involved in conversations about trying to shape what the future of federal research funding will look like.
With respect to international students, earlier this week, the US State Department instructed all of its visa-issuing posts to pause scheduling new appointments for a student visa applicants as it develops new guidance. Department indicated the pause would likely be just for a few days.
Of our 1,000 incoming international students, about half already have their visas or have an appointment for a visa. The remainder are in various stages of the process. And we’re working closely with them and with schools to support them and to develop contingency plans. I’m optimistic that this will work out.
On the legislative front, the recent budget bill has, among other things, significant cuts to Medicaid, which would have a very big impact on our health system.
It also changes some of the rules around Pell Grants and other student loans, which could impact a number of our students who receive federal financial aid.
It’s hard to say at this point what the outcome is going to be after the Senate gets involved.
I will say one bright spot for public universities, including UVA, is that we are not included in the proposed endowment tax.
In addition to these actions, there have been executive orders on DEI and transgender care, along with resolutions by the Board of Visitors on the same topics. And we’ve been working on these issues as well.
Our approach to all of this has been multifaceted. We have a group working hard to stay on top of all the activity and to develop a response, or at least a contingency plan.
My colleagues have been working directly with those who have been impacted, whether faculty who have lost grants or international students who don’t yet have a visa. We’ve been communicating regularly with our community through various channels, including an FAQ page that we regularly update. We remain committed to both following the law and our values. And we are doing what we can to protect and preserve and advance the core activities of research, teaching, and patient care.
More generally, I will tell you that at every step of the way, there’s one question we ask that guides every decision we make, which has been true since I started as president. This is a question my team and I ask every day. What’s in the best interests of UVA? It’s not always easy to answer that question. And there are occasional disagreements about the right answer. But that question has been and will continue to be our North Star, which brings me to the second half of my remarks.
The waters are undoubtedly choppy at the moment for higher education, including for UVA. But UVA is a very strong ship.
Instead of just taking my word for it, I thought it might be useful to share some numbers and rankings that I think tell the story.
The first set of numbers are about applications, which, if you put it in business terms, gives you a sense of whether people are still interested in our product. I would say the answer is overwhelmingly yes.
Undergraduate applications have increased by 60%, 6-0 percent since 2018. To put this in absolute numbers, in 2018, 40,000 students applied for admission. This year, 65,000 students applied for 4,000 undergraduate slots.
I know.
10,000 of those of those applicants were from first-generation students. And in fact our applications from first-generation students have increased by 75% over just the last four years.
We have been named the number one public school for financial aid for four years in a row, which is a legacy of John Casteen.
And we remain one of only two public universities to meet 100% of a student’s financial need.
We were ranked number one in the country, whether public or private, for protecting and promoting free speech by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
We have the best four-year graduation rate of any public university at 94%.
95% of our graduates are working or pursuing additional education within three months of their graduation. And their average starting salary is $85,000 a year.
Our law and business schools are the number one ranked public schools in their category. And the law school is ranked fourth overall among publics and privates.
The School of Education and Human Development is ranked sixth in the country among all publics and privates.
Overall, we are ranked as the fourth best public university and the third best value among public universities. And I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be first in both of those categories.
Time Magazine recently ranked UVA as third among public universities in producing future leaders, up one spot from fourth last year. We have the number one ranked children’s hospital in Virginia. We received $500 million in external research funding for the first time ever last year. And we ranked first in student health services.
For the last two years, we’ve finished in the top five in the Directors’ Cup in athletics, which is an overall assessment of performance across the athletics department. And in case anyone’s counting, we have now won a total of 35 national championships, including-- and this is incredible-- five in a row for the women’s swimming and diving program.
We hit our campaign goal of $5 billion 18 months early and are closing in on six. In addition, we’ve had 250,000 individual donors to the campaign. To give you a sense of that number, there are 275,000 living alums. So the participation rate has been extraordinary. And as Mark mentioned, and this is really heartening to me, we broke the record for participation rates for the graduating class.
The College at Wise-- and if you don’t know about it, you should learn more about it because it’s an amazing place-- is thriving. Enrollment there has increased dramatically in the last three years. And their endowment is one of the strongest for small public liberal arts colleges.
The School of Continuing and Professional Studies, which also, I think, is worth paying attention to, especially in these days when people are switching careers-- I think it’s in the strongest shape it’s ever been. And it’s educating thousands of nontraditional, part-time students.
We also opened up a campus this fall in Fairfax, which is doing the same.
Beyond the numbers, I think it’s important to know that there are still an abundance of moments of joy on Grounds, from convocation, to Rotunda sing, to snowball fights on the Lawn, Trick or Treating on the Lawn, Lighting of the Lawn, streaking of the Lawn--that still happens--to final exercises and reunions. For all of the swirl and change in higher education, the core of this place, the lifelong relationships and friendships that are formed among and between students and faculty, the excellent teaching and mentoring, research, and patient care, student self-governance, the athletes and the researchers who push the boundaries of human possibility, these remain as strong as ever. And they remain the heart of this place.
I share all this not only because this is a tumultuous and uncertain time in higher education. But it’s also a time when trust in higher education is at a low point. It’s a moment when top universities are being criticized for being elitist, too costly or inaccessible, and as institutions that don’t care enough about free speech or the diversity of views.
Contrary to those criticisms, when I look at the numbers I just shared and all that’s happening at UVA, to me, it adds up to a university that is both excellent and accessible and one that is serving not simply traditional students, but older and part-time students, serving students from northern Virginia to far southwest Virginia, both in Charlottesville and in Wise, as well as students from all over the country and all over the world. I see a university that protects and promotes free speech, a University that is both good to be at and good to be from, a university where faculty are strong researchers, but also preparing students to lead, and a university that continues to attract the interest of more and more families and their children and continues to earn the support of alumni, parents, and friends.
We are not perfect. And there is plenty of room for improvement for sure. This is not a time to rest on our laurels by any means. We are also not completely insulated by the world outside of Charlottesville. And there may be difficult choices and decisions to make ahead. But make no mistake, this is a remarkable institution and one worth protecting.
And it is institution that has not just endured over the last several years, it has thrived. That we’ve been able to do so is because of the work of so many talented students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Presidents don’t actually do anything.
It’s these people who make this place what it is. This is a community like no other I have ever seen or experienced. And I remain as honored as ever to be a part of it. We will not always agree on the path forward, which is what you would and should expect in a large, passionate, and fiercely intelligent community that at its best feels like one large, raucous family.
But if we continue to dedicate ourselves in good faith to this place and to this community, I firmly believe that there is no challenge too great to overcome and no goal too ambitious to achieve. For all of you in the audience who have given your time and energy to UVA as students and current alumni, you have my deepest thanks.
And I hope you have a wonderful weekend reconnecting with friends and remembering what you love about UVA.
Thank you very much.