4,000 new stories begin: Meet UVA’s Class of 2029

Charlotte Fetzer was filling out her application to the University of Virginia in her Roanoke home when her mother told her something incredible.

Fetzer already knew her Uncle Chuck – Charles Woodard – graduated from UVA in 1995 with a degree in aeronautical engineering. It was one of the reasons she was applying.

She also knew he had followed his dream to fly for the Navy, and that three years after graduation, he died when his EA-6B Prowler jet crashed while trying to land on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the waters off Norfolk. His body was never recovered.

Fetzer’s parents had always loved the name Charlotte. “It was a feminine version of my uncle’s name, Charles. So, they liked that, too,” she explained.

Charlotte Fetzer, center, is a graduate of Cave Spring High School in Roanoke. Her uncle Charles Woodard’s love for the University was one of the reasons she applied to UVA. An ROTC student who graduated in 1995, he died in an aircraft carrier accident three years later. (Contributed photos)

It was the next thing her mother told her that she didn’t know. “I was also named Charlotte because my mom and dad believed if my uncle had ever had a little girl, he would have named her Charlotte after Charlottesville, because he loved UVA so much.

“He loved being a Hoo,” she went on. “When they still dressed up for all the football games, he had a Wahoo-colored tie he would wear. He loved everything about it.”

Fetzer, a kinesiology major, never got to meet her mother’s brother, but she will carry his memory with her as she embarks on her first year as a member of the Class of 2029.

Meet UVA’s Newest Students

Nearly 5,000 first-year and transfer students are joining the UVA family. They come from 98 countries. The youngest is 16 and the oldest is 64. Nearly 66% are from Virginia. Fifty-three percent of UVA’s transfer students come from Virginia community colleges.

In a survey, nearly 92% of first-year students said they’ve participated in community service. Almost 77% said they had listened generously to someone with a different opinion, and 71% tutored a sibling, friend or classmate.

“We are proud of every class we enroll, but there is something magical about this group,” Dean of Admission Greg Roberts said. “It’s not the numbers or statistics, though they are impressive. It’s the individual stories like these that stand out the most to us as we read applications. We couldn’t be more excited about our first-year and transfer Hoos.”

‘My parents had a rule…’

Preston Brown hails from Chevy Chase, Maryland, where he grew up learning to love music, engineering and the outdoors.

“My parents had a rule that we had to learn one instrument,” said Brown, who chose the piano. “I’ve played a lot of Bach and Beethoven. The melodies between the hands and just the style of music that they create is very beautiful and very rhythmic in a way that is not only really pretty to listen to, but I’ve had so much fun playing it.”

Preston Brown, fifth from left, is an outdoor enthusiast. After his summer orientation session, Brown joined a group of incoming first-year students for a UVA Rec-sponsored camping and hiking trip in Shenandoah National Park. (Contributed photo)

This summer, he completed an internship at a prosthetics lab in Silver Spring, Maryland. “That experience has been really interesting in terms of being able to see applications of engineering and how it can actually help real people, … how the work you do can transform into impacting someone’s life.” He is considering a major in mechanical or aerospace engineering.

The Browns traveled to so many parks Preston and his sister Caroline became Junior Rangers, collecting skills and patches from places like Yellowstone, Acadia and Yosemite national parks. Last summer, he went to Alaska’s isolated Talkeetna mountain range for several weeks of hiking and ice climbing.

Brown plans to join the Outdoors at UVA club and wants to hone his climbing skills. “I tried the climbing gym at orientation when they had the rec center night. That was so much fun,” he said. “It’s a really nice gym and I’m very much looking forward to going there.”

‘There’s a lot of crashing’

The first time UVA Today reached out to Bridget Ciambotti, she couldn’t talk because she was in France and the Netherlands competing for the USA Cycling Junior Women’s National Team.

Bridget Ciambotti competes for the USA Cycling Junior Women’s National Team. This summer, she raced in France and the Netherlands. (Contributed photo)

Ciambotti grew up in Charlottesville. She fell in love with biking when she was 8 and joined a mountain biking team. She enrolled at The Miller School in the ninth grade because of their cycling program.

“It’s very unique to have a high school with such a good cycling program, with riders from all over the world and all over the country,” she said. “The director of the program actually coached me from a young age because he also helped run the local mountain bike group I was with.”

Ciambotti learned to balance schoolwork with cycling, because racing took her away for weeks at a time. “I was going all over the country. I went to Arizona and Texas, and then I missed three weeks when I was in Europe,” she said.