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From the President

For the Power of "Useful Knowledge"

The University of Virginia was the last of Jefferson's great creations, one of only three for which he asked to be remembered. His aim was to prepare young people who would come after him to carry on the work of the Republic and to equip them with knowledge equal to the task. We continue to fulfill this mission today. The kind of education we offer, an education built on what Jefferson termed "useful knowledge," has never been more important than it is now and will be as our students move forward into the world.

This campaign’s purpose is to ensure that excellence thrives in public higher education, and specifically in this place where the concept of knowledge as the foundation for human freedom first took root in our hemisphere. Through this effort, we will generate, for our era and the next, that useful knowledge that matters most to our culture and our economy. We will focus on our most important product: women and men of uncommon achievement; honorable, responsible, intellectually powerful, and broadly knowledgeable citizens ready for effective engagement in public life—for the power and happiness that Jefferson saw as the benefits bestowed by the mastery of useful knowledge.

When he described his university as the "future bulwark of the human mind in this hemisphere," Jefferson set a high mark. He did that deliberately, thoughtfully. With this campaign, we also reach deliberately and thoughtfully for a new mark, one never before imagined.

—John T. Casteen III