Another year, another 365 days of incredible things happening around the University of Virginia.
Let's take a quick look back at some of the things we've done.
We kicked off the year with the Rotunda opening up after a 2-years of renovation.
Poet and Professor Rita Dove had a mural of her poem, “Testimonial” painted on the corner.
Academy Award winning actor, Bryan Cranston and Grammy winning DJ, 9th Wonder both paid
a visit to UVA to share with students their successes, their failures, and the value that
exists in the Arts.
Two UVA alums and founders of the clothing company, Two Blind Brothers - were both
honored by Ellen Degeneres for their work benefiting blindness research.
Our 1991 Alumna Margot Shetterly’s book, “Hidden Figures”, inspired the production
of the Oscar nominated film.
UVA alum and veteran Captain Humayun Khan was honored at the Rotunda for his service
in the Iraq War.
Our Charlottesville traditions continued to be a huge success.
Thousands of kids dressed up ready to enjoy the Fall festivities of Trick or Treating on the Lawn.
The 13th Annual Pancakes for Parkinson’s raised over 65 thousand dollars for the
Michael J. Fox Foundation.
And for its 16th year, Lighting of the Lawn continued to bring the Charlottesville community
together for a night we won’t soon forget.
UVA’s APOGEE spectrograph was delivered to Chile where it will help astronomers see
the stars and space like never before.
On the business side of things, The Board of Visitor’s established a 300 million dollar
endowment for student scholarships to give more people the opportunity to learn at this University.
Our own Larry Sabato kicked off the Leonard and Jerry Sandridge Bicentennial Scholars
Fund with a significant donation.
The Rotunda wasn’t the only thing that got a new look this year, the former student bookstore
on the Corner has now been renovated into 1515, a new space for student life and academics.
Our 4th-year students continued to excel on a national scale, as we had not one, but two
Rhodes scholars in Aryn Frazier and Lauren Jackson.
But, they aren’t the only ones going over to England next year.
Joining them will be, Emily Cox, UVA’s first ever Ertegun Scholar.
Our Virginia athletes had some incredible successes this year.
The Men’s Tennis team won their 6th national indoor championship.
Leah Smith dominated the swimming world yet again, winning a Gold and a Bronze Medal at
the Rio Olympics followed by earning her 13th ACC title.
And after a wildly successful year in the NBA, 2016 graduate Malcolm Brogdon had his
jersey retired at the John Paul Jones Arena.
For the graduating class of 2017, we owe a lot of this success to each of you.
You have all left some pretty big shoes to fill but we’re excited to see what each
of you go on to do in the world.
It’s hard to believe that all of this happened in just one, short year at UVA, but if there is one thing
we can be sure of, it’s that next year is bound to be just as great.