UVA’s Honor the Future campaign has raised more than $4 billion to date, fueling student scholarships, endowed faculty positions, facilities and many other priorities of the University strategic plan. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)

The campaign has enhanced UVA’s vibrant community, its culture of service, and the collaborative curiosity of its faculty and students. From hundreds of endowed scholarships and professorships to a new School of Data Science; from an institute for the study of democracy to promising research in specific diseases; the campaign gives essential momentum to the University’s strategic ambitions.

One of the campaign’s signature achievements is the creation of endowed scholarships and professorships. The Bicentennial Scholars program paired donor contributions with institutional matching funds to establish more than 500 endowed scholarship funds for undergraduate and graduate students.

In one of many remarkable examples, David and the late Jane Walentas donated $100 million for first-generation Jefferson Scholars who achieve academic excellence while demonstrating leadership potential and resilience. David Walentas, one of the nation’s most successful self-made entrepreneurs, is a 1961 undergraduate alumnus of UVA and a 1964 graduate of its Darden School of Business. He was the first in his family to attend college. The bulk of the gift – $75 million – is committed to scholarships and fellowships for first-generation students, with the remaining $25 million dedicated to fellowships and professorships through the Jefferson Scholars Foundation and Darden.

Among the many gifts benefitting students, David and the late Jane Walentas donated $100 million for first-generation Jefferson Scholars. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)

Additional endowed scholarships include those for students transferring from Piedmont Virginia Community College, those from underserved and underrepresented communities, students from Southwest Virginia, and those from middle-income families.

Groups of alumni and friends combined their philanthropy to create scholarships for medical students from diverse backgrounds, graduate students pursuing public service in the School of Law, and future educators studying at the School of Education and Human Development. University leaders said all these philanthropic efforts – and hundreds more – help UVA recruit the very best students from all walks of life, regardless of their financial means.

Similarly, the Bicentennial Professorships program has raised more than $420 million in gifts and matching funds. It includes inaugural University Professorships, funded by the family of Thomas A. Saunders III, to attract and retain internationally recognized faculty in science.

“The opportunities for future generations of students and faculty at UVA have increased exponentially, thanks to the generosity of our steadfast supporters and engaged community,” Honor the Future Campaign Chair Peter Grant said. “The Honor the Future campaign has laid a strong foundation for the strategic plan initiatives and will sustain the future of this University for years to come.”

Generous donors have provided gifts in support of health and medical priorities, from promising cancer research to brain-related initiatives to addressing the national nursing shortage. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)

Donors to Honor the Future also have made inspiring commitments to the UVA Cancer Center, creating the Translational Orphan Blood Cancer Research Initiative Fund. The Manning Family Foundation’s generosity includes support for research in autoimmune Type 1 diabetes and scientific exploration of the pathogenesis of infectious diseases.

Gifts from Joanne and Bill Conway to the School of Nursing will expand enrollment and help address workforce shortages nationally. The Conways have given nearly $50 million to support nursing at UVA, including a gift announced this month that will, among other benefits, provide at least 175 need- and eligibility-based scholarships to undergraduate and graduate students.

Elsewhere, an alumnus who majored in environmental sciences created a fund for research into the marine environment, which will attract further funding from foundations keen to support solutions to the challenges of a warming climate.

The momentum created by UVA’s strategic plan also drove philanthropic gifts to create courses focused on economic solutions for Appalachia, support an ongoing cohort of exceptional students with financial need studying engineering, and foster interdisciplinary research in cybersecurity.

Philanthropy provides critical support to key capital projects across Grounds, including the major renovation to Alderman Library, shown here. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

Service is core to the UVA educational experience. Campaign donors created fellowships at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and at the School of Law to support students committed to careers in public service.

When public-sector internships vanished in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, philanthropy made possible the 22nd Century Scholars initiative, a virtual internship program launched by the Center for Politics. The paid internships, funded entirely by private donations, placed more than 50 undergraduates on virtual projects at the Center for Politics, the Miller Center for Public Affairs, the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, the Batten School and the UVA Democracy Initiative’s Deliberative Media Lab.

UVA’s culture of service is epitomized by the Humayun Kahn Memorial Scholarship, created as one of the campaign’s Bicentennial Scholarships. U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Kahn, a 2000 graduate of the University’s ROTC program, was killed in Iraq while protecting the hundreds of people in his compound. The scholarship’s first recipient, Eric Jang, will graduate in 2023 and plans to enlist in the Marine Corps.