The Board of Visitors’ Advancement Committee met Friday to discuss the University’s upcoming bicentennial plans and fundraising progress.
Plans are already underway to celebrate Oct. 6, 2017, the 200th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone in Pavilion VII. University President Teresa Sullivan said there are many ways the University could take advantage of the bicentennial to improve the school, including new renovations and reassessed spending patterns.
“We don’t want this to just be a birthday party. We want it to be a lot more not only in terms of celebrating the best of our past, but also in terms of thinking about what our third century will look like,” Sullivan said.
The bicentennial improvement planning is being broken down into four quadrants, the first of which is to assemble the third century faculty that the University needs to have. The Board discussed creating bicentennial endowed chairs which could relieve the operating budget, as more of the faculty budgets could be shifted to endowments and away from annual spending.
The second quadrant is to create new need-based scholarships with more generous giving policies.
“In truth, gaining admission to U.Va. is so difficult these days that those are really merit based scholarships because you need outstanding achievement in high school to get here,” Sullivan said.
The issue could be addressed by setting aside additional funds for AccessUVA, she said.
“If we could create a billion dollar budget for AccessUVA that would essentially relieve our annual budget of the cost of providing need based financial aid, and that would be a good thing for the future,” Sullivan said
Quadrant three is based on developing programs that benefit both the student and public communities. The Miller Center is already interested in bringing in the very best speakers in politics, law and business and talking about things that are important for the coming century.
Finally, quadrant four is concerned with the renovation of buildings on Grounds. The Board will approach the Commonwealth to encourage the state to pick up some or all of the cost for them.
Kari Evans, executive director of the bicentennial, said she encourages students to come to a brainstorming session Oct. 7 to generate further ideas for the bicentennial, as well as ways to bring the community together for the occasion.
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