University of Virginia Library

STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT EDGAR F. SHANNON, JR.

The first order of business was to hear a statement from President Edgar F. Shannon, Jr. who read aloud the following letter addressed to the Rector:

Mr. Joseph H. McConnell

Rector of the University

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, Virginia

Dear Mr. Rector:

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 an 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 biennium, with a year in which to become familiar with his duties before he has to submit a biennial budget, and a year-and-a-half 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 as President are terminated at the beginning of the 1974-75 academic year.