Hi, everyone.
I hope this message finds all of you, your families, and your friends safe and well.
We just finished classes this week, and I would like to mark the occasion by taking
a moment to thank all of you—our faculty, staff, students, and alumni.
This has been an extraordinary semester, in every sense of the term.
It has, in many ways, been extraordinarily challenging.
While the number of COVID-19 cases in our community hasn’t risen as dramatically as
we had feared, we now have two dozen patients being treated in our Health System.
Members of our community have been infected and some of our alumni have died from the
disease.
The economic impact of this pandemic has meant that we have had to make difficult decisions
across the University, especially within the Health System, which has been hurt financially
because it has been so well-prepared medically for COVID-19 patients.
At the same time, many of our employees have had to juggle work and family, faculty have
had to adjust their courses and course plans to teach online, and our students have
had to adjust to being both at home and online.
All that said, in extraordinary times, extraordinary institutions do extraordinary things.
And this 200-year old institution is extraordinary.
It survived the Civil War, two world wars, and the Korean and Vietnam wars.
It survived 9/11 and the 1918 Flu pandemic.
In fact, UVA didn’t just survive these crises and others—it has managed to thrive over
time.
And so it is and will be with this pandemic—which poses a challenge unlike any other we've
seen in our lifetime.
We have risen to meet this challenge, which is to say that you--our students, faculty, staff,
and alumni—have risen to meet it.
You have faced this challenge with extraordinary dedication, creativity, and compassion.
To cite just a few examples from literally hundreds:
Members of the library staff scanned and delivered more than 64,000 pages of content to students
and faculty.
Teams from the architecture and engineering schools worked together to create a new way
to make face shields for doctors and nurses treating COVID-19 patients.
Faculty not only taught their classes in new and challenging ways but continued to mentor
and advise students, including a faculty member from the college who has spent two hours a
day for the last couple of weeks helping a student fine tune her thesis over video chat—something
I learned from a letter sent to me by a grateful parent.
A team of UVA employees and volunteers has provided aid to hundreds of furloughed contract
workers—and a group from the Law School volunteered to help them apply for unemployment
benefits.
A team of UVA faculty, lab professionals, and staff created the first local test in
Virginia for COVID-19, and they can now test hundreds of people a day, not just those from
UVA and Charlottesville but across the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Two Health System employees traveled to Tennessee to bring back a robot that is now being used
to sanitize up to 6,000 N-95 masks per day, so that they can be reused.
You have also supported each other all along the way, making it abundantly clear just how
strong and connected this community is at its best.
A group of students created Hoos Helping Hoos, a network that connects students who need
assistance with members of the community who can offer it.
And staff from Student Financial Services and Student Affairs have worked together to
distribute nearly a million dollars in assistance to students in need.
Construction crews working on the new UVA Health wing lined up at 6:30am to cheer
health care workers on their way to work or leaving their shifts.
A group of alumni and parents in China came together to donate and ship 20,000 surgical
face masks to the Health System.
Members of the University Guide Service and Black Student Alliance have reached out to
admitted students to tell them all about UVA.
Finally, talented singers, dancers, musicians, and artists in our community have helped lift
our spirits as part of our digital “Arts on the Hill” program.
For all of this and more, you have my profound thanks and the thanks of my colleagues Liz
Magill, our provost, JJ Davis, our COO, and Craig Kent, our EVP for Health Affairs.
The semester isn’t entirely over, as papers and exams and grading still await, but thank
you—and congratulations on making it this far.
It hasn't been easy; it hasn't been perfect; and our work is not complete.
But it's nonetheless been inspiring to be a part of this community, as it continued
its inevitably imperfect pursuit of high ideals during a uniquely challenging time.
As we look ahead, I know that many, if not all of you, are eager to know what the fall
will look like.
I am as well.
We will certainly be open and offering courses; that much is clear.
Our hope is that we will have students back on Grounds and that we will be teaching our
courses in person.
We are working night and day to figure out how we might do that safely.
We are also making contingency plans in case not all students can be here in person and
in case some courses will need to be online.
This is a complicated task, but we have a remarkable group of faculty, staff, and students
working on it.
We will keep you posted on our progress and expect to announce our plans for the fall
in mid-June.
We already know that next fall will call on us to summon once again the flexibility,
creativity, and resilience that carried us through this semester.
Runners tend to overuse marathon analogies, so I apologize in advance for ending this
message with yet another, but I can't resist.
If you’ve ever run a marathon, you know that at about mile 11 or so you start to realize
that marathons are long, and they are hard.
But you tell yourself, repeatedly, that there is a finish line, and that you will get there,
even if you can’t yet see it.
You just have to keep running, one step at a time.
And you have to remind yourself that you’re not actually in this alone—you know you’ll
get support and encouragement from your fellow runners and spectators.
We are at mile 11 in this pandemic.
There is still a long road in front of us, and at times it will be hard.
But there is a finish line ahead, even if we can’t see it yet.
We will cross that line together, supporting each other the whole way.
When we do cross that line, we will likely be a little tired and sore, and maybe even
a bit bruised.
But we’ll better and stronger for the experience, and we’ll share a bond that won’t soon
be broken.
Thank you, and be well.