After 18 months of preparation and planning, University officials formally announced the establishment of the College Foundation, a group of alumni dedicated to supporting the aims of the undergraduate and graduate College programs, at a ceremony Friday afternoon on the steps of Old Cabell Hall.
The foundation's top priorities include recruiting first-rate faculty and graduate students and creating the Digital Academical Village, which is an initiative to integrate technology and the humanities. It also hopes to build a new fine arts precinct on Carr's Hill, provide for the advancement of scientific research, revitalize the College's aging infrastructure and globalize the College curriculum by establishing contacts in Asia, Africa and Europe.
In the past 10 months, the College Foundation sponsors have raised $77.7 million earmarked for the College.
Using the money raised by the foundation, the University will become "an institution second to none," ranked among the best of all public and private colleges, President John T. Casteen III said.
The nine founding sponsors who have given $5 million or more include Halsey M. Minor, Frank Levinson, Wynnette Levinson, Kenneth L. Bazzle, John H. Birdsall III, Thompson Dean, U. Bertram Ellis Jr., David Gibson and the Peter B. and Adeline W. Ruffin Foundation.
University officials previously announced the donations from Ellis, the Levinsons and Minor but did not specify that they were part of the College Foundation at the time of the announcement. Minor's contribution of $25 million is the largest donation in the history of the College.
Nau said the alumni who contributed "challenge our fellow alumni to respond as we have" to provide the foundation with the momentum it needs to reach its goals.
The College Board of Trustees began planning for the College Foundation in June 1999. Since then, University officials have been "mobilizing the loyalty and the ardor of [the University's] alumni base," College Dean Melvyn P. Leffler said.
"College alumni are exceedingly generous when they are asked to support the University," said John L. Nau, a 1964 College alumnus and chairman of the foundation's development committee.
The alumni have been generous with their donations because they see "liberal arts as the core of a great University," Leffler said.
The foundation's goals "mesh beautifully" with Casteen's vision of the University in the year 2020, as laid out in his Virginia 2020 plan. The plan mentions initiatives including the fine arts precinct and revamping the College buildings, Leffler said.
Leffler attributed much of the credit to Nau, Christine P. Gustafson, a 1982 College alumna and foundation president, and Alan Y. Roberts, a 1964 alumnus and foundation vice president. These individuals led the effort to establish the foundation because of their desire "to set the College on a trajectory to greater eminence than we have ever before experienced," Leffler said.
Sen. George Allen and University Rector John P. Ackerly were also in attendance at Friday's ceremony. Allen was the keynote speaker at the foundation dinner Friday night.
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