University of Virginia Library

This letter is intended for all of the members of the Board of
Visitors of the University, but I address it to you as their chairman.

At the conclusion of the Summer Session in August, 1974,
approximately eighteen months hence, I shall have completed fifteen
years as President of the University of Virginia. That seems to me to be
an appropriate term of service in this capacity, and indeed in the
current experience of American universities it is an extended one. I
write accordingly to request you to plan for me to be relieved of my
duties as President at the end of August 1974.

As you know from your reading of my recent Report, I believe the
state of the University to be thriving and vigorous to unprecedented
degree. The quality of the Faculty and student body is notably
enhanced, and it is a daily pleasure to be associated with them as
individuals. The University of Virginia has advanced conspicuously as a
national center of excellence in graduate and graduate professional
studies. Its academic publishing house, established just ten years ago,
and numerous scholarly and scientific activities of national significance
are flourishing. New buildings and facilities for arts and sciences and the
professional schools have recently been completed or are now under
construction. Racial integration and full coeducation are firmly
established in policy and practice. The Committee on the Future of the
University has completed a major study of the size and other aspects of
the years immediately ahead, and the Board of Visitors has acted to
establish enrollment projections and the role of the University for the
remainder of the decade. By the summer of 1974 the self-study under
the provisions of the Southern Association will have been completed
and the incoming President will have the immediate benefit of its
recommendations and those of the visiting committee.

Although some stringency may be anticipated, the University is
fiscally sound and in a stronger financial position than many of its
leading academic competitors for educational excellence. The General
Assembly have demonstrated the pride that they properly take in the
University of Virginia, and I have confidence in the provisions that they
will make for the future. I shall be responsible for the next biennial
budget and see it through the 1974 legislature – working with a new
governor, so that the next President can commence his duties in the
first year of the bennium, with a year in which to become familiar with
his duties before he has to appear before the committees of a biennial
legislature and secure the regular University appropriation.

During the past fourteen years in an office which makes heavy and
continuous demands, I have been fortunate to experience good health.
It appears to me wise to relinquish the office to another while I am still
in full force of physical vigor, and with unimpaired enthusiasm, and
strength of mind and spirit, and to time my relinquishment of office, so
that there will be no loss of momentum in the forward progress of the
University.

The University has been blessed throughout my years of service with
a strong and dedicated Board of Visitors, whose guidance and support
have been indispensable to me in everything I have tried to do, and
whose personal friendship and association I shall always cherish.

I shall ever be grateful for the opportunity and privilege of having
served you and the University of Virginia. I wish to pass on my duties
to another while I am still enjoying them as I do. My family are growing
up. I wish to become better acquainted with them, and they need more
of my daily attention than they have before. And finally at the end of
fifteen exciting and gratifying years in one capacity I wish to return to
another – to my first love of teaching and scholarship – which is a
continuing tradition and practice among administrative officers of this
university and one which I think is an element of its great strength.

The greatest strength of this University from the time when
Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe served together as Visitors has been the
stature of its board members. The continuing high character of the
Board and my affection and respect for its individual members give me
complete confidence in the future of the University under my
successor. You have all been generous in your many kindnesses to me
and my family, and I shall greatly miss the regular association with you
when my responsibilities are terminated at the beginning of the
1974-75 academic year.