The Jefferson Trust presented 19 grants to students and faculty April 21, marking the end to an application process that began in October 2016. The Jefferson Trust, which is part of the Alumni Association, awarded $727,946 to support initiatives at the University.
Grace Grundy, chair of the grants committee for the Jefferson Trust, awarded the recipients their grants at a ceremony on the steps of the Rotunda.
“I … loved to see people bringing their parents, or their family, or people who are in their department to come support them,” Grundy said in an interview with The Cavalier Daily. “I think it was a big success because of the diversity of the crowd, and large crowd that we got.”
According to the trust’s website, decreased state financial support to the University led the Alumni Association to create the Jefferson Trust in 2006, with the intention of providing unrestricted funding to students and faculty. Wayne Cozart, executive director of the Jefferson Trust, said discretionary money from the state continues to go down.
“The Alumni Association felt that it would be valuable to create an entity that could provide essentially what is start-up money, early stage development money to move exciting new programs forward,” Cozart said. “When we look back at the last 12 years, we definitely have been able to do that in a lot of different ways and it has gained the support of the provost, of the president and all of the schools realizing that those dollars simply aren’t available otherwise.”
Grundy said much of University funding cannot be used towards funding projects because it is budgeted for other purposes, necessitating the Jefferson Trust.
“This is an opportunity for a group that’s starting up that may not have been able to get their foot into the budget process,” Grundy said. “They don’t maybe have enough proof for their project, or they want to do something that’s never been done before that’s hard to get into the budget process. They’re able to come to us and get funding that is unrestricted and not part of U.Va.’s set budgeting every year.”
The Jefferson Trust reviewed applications for grants in October to decide which groups to send to the next level. In January, those groups present their proposals in front of the Jefferson Trust board, after which the board selects who to give the funds to.
“I kind of preside over that process — the initial reading, and then preside over the meeting in January,” Grundy said. “This is the icing on the cake to actually give them out, since we’ve done a lot of work for it in the months prior.”
The University Guide Service was one such group to receive a grant. The grant, worth $60,000, will allow UGS to create a “virtual tour” for students to experience the University from their computer screens. Third-year College student Hollie Chenault and fourth-year College student Nick Richardson led the process of applying for a grant.
“Creating something that is extremely accessible for prospective students to come is pretty incredible that students all the way in China can actually view U.Va. as if they’re here,” Chenault said. “Whether it’s through just clicking around on their computer or using a virtual reality headset, they can really see what U.Va. has to offer and they’re not at some disadvantage because they can’t come and see it themselves.”
Richardson, a former UGS chair, said he wanted to increase UGS’s outreach and make the tours more expansive. He found a third-party virtual tour service, UVisit, but seeing that the $15,000 price tag was not feasible without support, he decided to apply for a Jefferson Trust grant.
“The Jefferson Trust has their set criteria,” Richardson said. “Once we looked at the criteria and we looked at what we wanted to do, we realized there was a lot of overlap between the two. We spent the first half of fall semester putting together this grant application and creating a coalition of different offices around the University that would support it.”
Cozart said although the Office of Admission strongly supported the initiative, it was the UGS who spearheaded the efforts.
“Again, something that at most institutions would be handled administratively comes out of a strong student group who really saw the need for that and has seen the opportunity elsewhere,” Cozart said. “I think it’s going to be very valuable to us, particularly for students who are far away or in international countries.”
On the faculty side, Assoc. English Prof. Christopher Krentz was awarded a $45,000 grant for the Disabilities Studies Initiative, which seeks to raise awareness of disability on Grounds and is currently comprised of eight people.
“We’re trying to start conversations on Grounds, awareness on Grounds, of disability, not just as a medical condition, but as an identity,” Krentz said. “The Jefferson Trust very generously came through with a grant to allow us to hire a graduate student administrative assistant, part time, and some funding for events, like speakers and film screenings, so we’re very grateful for that support.”
The Solar Car Team of the Engineering School was awarded a $20,771 grant. Fourth-year Engineering student En De Liow, Solar Car Team leader, said he thinks the Jefferson Trust saw value in their initiative because it is a “learning platform” for many different types of students.
“We have students from McIntire, we have students from the [Architecture] School, as well as Engineering of course, and the College,” Liow said. “We’re trying to impact as many students as we can from a wide view, and of course it’s inherently an engineering project, but we also want our members to go beyond their engineering field and get to know the communication skills, the leadership skills, even stuff like event planning.”
Cozart said the trustees were very excited about the student-run initiative.
“Their energy was palpable,” Cozart said of the Solar Car Team. “[We’re] really excited about that as a possibility. And it also shows that we are somewhat unique in that we give grants to students, as well as to faculty members and administrators.”
Amy Bonner, grants administrator for the Jefferson Trust, said in the coming years the Jefferson Trust hopes to add trustees to the board and raise the endowment to $2 million in grants per year.
“Our hope is that we will be able to continue to grow,” Bonner said. “And using our success stories as kind of the vehicle of that. We talk to our donors and potential donors about the successes of our grants, we talk to potential grant applicants about other projects that have succeeded and what’s made them successful. We’ve learned a lot in our 11 years.”
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