University of Virginia President Emeritus John T. Casteen III, who led the University for 20 years and was known for growing UVA’s student body, faculty and global reputation, died Tuesday after a brief bout with pancreatic cancer. He was 81.
Casteen, the University’s seventh president, served longer than any president but the University’s first, Edwin Alderman, and is widely viewed as one of the most consequential figures in the history of the University.
“John Casteen is simply inseparable from the story of UVA,” President Jim Ryan said. “As president, he transformed UVA into a world-class university. As a teacher, mentor, colleague and friend, he was beloved. This is a sad day for all those whose lives he touched, including mine, and I extend my deepest condolences to Betsy, his children, and his entire family. John will be remembered as an ambitious, wise and devoted leader whose legacy will endure at the University of Virginia.”
Casteen is credited with growing the University’s endowment from $488 million to $5.1 billion to insulate the institution from significant state budget cuts in the early 1990s.
Casteen speaks at the 2002 Final Exercises. (University Communications photo)
Casteen’s administration also admitted more women, international students and minority students while adding 20 new degree programs. As the visionary behind AccessUVA, he oversaw dramatic increases in financial aid, opening UVA to students who previously could not have considered attending. To this day, UVA reviews admissions applications without a family’s income playing any role, and maintains its commitment to meet the full, demonstrated financial need of all undergraduate students.
Casteen’s dedication to diversifying the student body led the University to create a leadership award in his name.
Born Dec. 11, 1943, in Portsmouth, Casteen enrolled in the University at 17, the first member of his family to attend college. He earned three English degrees. After receiving his doctorate, Casteen worked briefly in University administration before accepting a teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley.
Casteen returned to UVA in 1975 to become the dean of admission. In 1982, he accepted the position as the state’s secretary of education. In 1985, Casteen was named president of the University of Connecticut, where he served five years before again returning to UVA to assume the same position in Charlottesville.
Upon his retirement in 2010, former UVA Rector W. Heywood Fralin called Casteen “the father of our modern University.”
Leonard W. Sandridge, who worked with Casteen more than 20 years, said Casteen’s experience as a first-generation student moved the president to make a UVA education possible for students of modest means.
“He had an appreciation of what education could do for you, and he demonstrated that for himself,” said Sandridge, who in 44 years with the University rose to the position of executive vice president and chief operating officer before retiring. “Therefore, he wanted to make sure he did everything he could to make it available to everyone else. That’s why financial aid was so high of a priority for him.”
While serving as UVA’s president, Casteen also taught English and earned the title of University Professor. Casteen stepped down as UVA president on Aug. 1, 2010, at the end of his second decade of service.
“The thing I would say about John is that, in everything he did and everything he considered in his role as president and in his other positions at UVA, was first and foremost what is best for the University,” Sandridge, who considered Casteen both a friend and mentor, said. “He wanted to make it the best it could be, and he expected those who worked for him to have the same viewpoint and outlook – to put the University first.”
Rector Robert Hardie said Casteen’s legacy at UVA is unmatched.
“It is impossible to overstate the contributions John Casteen made to this university and how profound a loss his passing is for his family and for the community he loved and served so well,” Hardie said. “As we remember him, we will rightly focus on his many accomplishments as president, but that legacy is matched, if not exceeded, by the incredible impact he made on the lives of so many people here at UVA and around the world. He will be dearly missed.”
According to his obituary, Casteen is survived by a large, loving and blended family, including daughter Elizabeth Ingeborg Casteen; sons John Thomas Casteen IV and Lars Löfgren Casteen; brothers Dennis and Tim Casteen; stepdaughters Alexandra Taylor Foote and Elizabeth Laura Robinson; and 12 grandchildren.
A small service for family and friends will be held at Grace Church in Keswick, with a public memorial at the University later this spring. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations in any amount to AccessUVA, the scholarship Casteen founded to support undergraduate students who need financial support to attend the University.
