Deeper Exploration: The Undergraduate Experience
Isabelle Brantley (American Studies, Spanish '07)With the support and generosity of the College’s alumni, parents and friends, we are defining a new form of engaged undergraduate education. We are cultivating a community of discovery that brings together eminent senior professors and gifted young scholars. We are creating an environment that supports and inspires their efforts to generate knowledge and share it with the world.
We are living the ideal of a research-intensive, undergraduate-focused university. We are balancing a respect for tradition with a thirst for innovation. And we are preparing generations of young men and women for leadership, citizenship and a public life built on a foundation of honor, ethics, and community.
Here’s how we will enhance the undergraduate experience:
A vibrant educational experience
Campaign gifts will strengthen undergraduate research, creativity and discovery; establish fifth-year programs that allow deeper exploration of targeted subjects than is possible in a conventional major; encourage study abroad; and create new courses. In short, campaign donors will enable our students to take full advantage of attending a major research institution without sacrificing the opportunity to be part of an intimate intellectual community.
Transforming the first-year experience
With more than 2,000 courses available each year, the riches of the College of Arts & Sciences can be daunting to a beginning student. To introduce students to the range of disciplines and experiences available in the College, we will reinvent undergraduate academic advising.
Relying on a mixture of individual faculty advisors, teams of experienced students and new forums for learning, we will present the purposes, guiding ideas and opportunities of a first-rate liberal arts community. During their first two years, undergraduate students have access to the full range of our courses, from small seminars to the lecture classes offered by some of our most sought-after professors.
Deeper exploration
In their second and third years, students will learn about the range of possibilities that await them in majors they have not yet explored. We will help inform their decisions about where to study abroad and what internship possibilities best serve their needs.
In their fourth year, students will prepare for their next destinations — their chosen careers, international study, public service, or graduate or professional school.
And as their undergraduate studies draw to a close, our students will have the chance to demonstrate their skills in research, analytical thinking, language proficiency and artistic creativity through final projects and capstone experiences across their majors.
The South Lawn Project
The most ambitious undertaking on the University of Virginia’s Central Grounds in a century, the South Lawn Project is an ensemble of new buildings designed to accommodate today’s teaching and research priorities while paying respect to the Jeffersonian architecture of the nearby Academical Village. A 100-foot-wide terrace across Jefferson Park Avenue connects the South Lawn Project with the Central Grounds. At the south end of the terrace is a circular plaza that sits atop a commons building, with an exterior stair leading to the garden areas below. A conservatory containing lounge spaces and a café with three-story glass walls is framed by two west-facing porches that serve as entrances to two perpendicular wings of buildings that house the departments of History, Politics and Religious Studies. The 109,000 square foot project will see 12,000 student visits every day.
