The University serves Virginia, the nation, and the world by preparing responsible citizen-leaders; advancing, preserving, and disseminating knowledge; and providing world-class patient care.
All gifts of any kind help secure the University’s place as a premier institution of learning and make it possible for our students, faculty, and researchers to shape a brighter.
You can give to all 12 schools across Grounds. The possibilities are endless for supporting our students, faculty, and programs. Together, we will find the way forward.
You can join the growing number of alumni and friends who invest now in the University’s future by including UVA as a beneficiary of their wills, charitable trusts, and retirement plans. Gifts like these can offer you and your family significant tax benefits as well as greater financial flexibility in meeting your personal and philanthropic goals.
Through Honor the Future, the Campaign for the University of Virginia, we are building on our strong foundations to support the president’s vision: to become the best public university by 2030 and one of the very best in the world.
SCHOLARSHIPS
Sandra Wicks Lewis (Col ’72) smiles as she points to a photo in her Suffolk, Virginia home. Standing amidst a soothing backdrop where the James River and Chesapeake Bay come together as one, she adopts a similar tranquility when she speaks.
“You can’t really see me,” she said. “I’m right behind my mother.” She points to another photograph. “There. That’s me.”
A young Lewis in a plaid dress walks up the brick stairs of Venable Elementary School holding her mother’s hand. She looks small in front of towering, white Ionic columns. She stares straight ahead between two doors. Lewis will step through them on September 8, 1959. She is one of 12 African American students in Charlottesville to integrate that day following the aftermath of Massive Resistance.
Lewis is an indelible, if unlikely, figure in Virginia’s transformative history. She has participated in some notable firsts: first class of integrated students in Charlottesville, and one of the first African American women to graduate from the College of Arts & Sciences in 1972.
She remains modest despite accomplishing so much. The way Lewis tells it, she owes her successes to the hard work of her parents and grandparents – those who paved the way for her victories.
And she is eager to give back in their honor. In addition to the longtime support of several efforts across Grounds, she and her husband, Lemuel (Col ’69, Darden ’72), recently established the Lemuel E. and Sandra Wicks Lewis Bicentennial Scholars Fund for the College of Arts & Sciences.
As she sits in a comfortable University of Virginia chair between her beloved piano and artwork, Lewis contemplates why she has such an affinity for scholarships. Her speaking is deliberate now – as if she’s distilled her memories over decades into powerful concentrations of words.
“My father worked at the University of Virginia Hospital for 40 years. I feel like he was a pharmacist, but he never got the title. He was always called a pharmacy assistant,” she said. “But he always loved UVA. He loved the football team.”
“He knew how limited he was, how far he could go. But he still loved the University. When I graduated, the only thing I remember about that day is receiving my degree and going out and seeing my father in tears.”
“I knew what that meant to him. I knew about his father and his grandfather who worked at the University. And here his daughter was graduating.”
Lewis feels the same way about scholarships – the feeling she had when she saw her father that day when she graduated. A goodness she can’t describe.
Having followed behind her mother in elementary school and then behind her father at UVA, Sandra Lewis leads the way for future generations to achieve their own successes.
