UVA Strategic Plan Residential Culture White Paper
Daniel Bluestone, Beth Meyer and Bill Sherman, School of Architecture
July 2013
Preface
On the Saturday morning of Reunion weekend in early June 2013, President Sullivan spoke of
the University’s values and its future ambitions to a group of alumni gathered in Old Cabell Hall
auditorium. In that talk, she evoked “the sense of place” that binds students, faculty and alumni to
the University of Virginia. Sullivan suggested that the experience of this sense of place is more than the
physicality of buildings and landscapes. It is tied to the relationships that develop and the values that
are lived in space, over time here on Grounds. We believe the University of Virginia must tie its
Strategic Plan drivers to this concept of lived space, and to the full sense of residential life in a
twenty-first century academical village (Strategic Plan drivers #1, 2, 4). We urge the University
administration to consider strengthening UVA residential life beyond its narrow conception as a
“face-to-face teaching” or improved advising protocols. We advocate a larger, more pervasive,
more robust academical village that extends beyond the 19th century historic grounds to include
a dozen new residential colleges across Grounds that will house second, third and fourth year
undergraduates as well as graduate fellows and associated faculty
This ambitious vision will support most of the drivers listed in the current Draft Strategic Plan.
The Housing and Educational Gap at UVA
Among the top 35 universities in the United States, the University of Virginia stands fifth from
the bottom in the percentage of its undergraduate population living in college housing. When
prospective students and their parents visit the University they nearly always visit the Lawn. At
the core of the Academical Village they see a powerful image of community and loco parentis--
there are the homes of the professors in the pavilions, flanked on all sides by one-story student
rooms; there is the historical site of the library in the Rotunda and dining halls on the ranges--
all provided in a beautiful historic setting that seamlessly merges buildings and landscapes,
community and pedagogical pursuit. Today it is hard to square this vital and alluring image with
the reality that the University only accommodates 41% of its undergraduates in college housing.
We are doing this despite abundant evidence that college students are much more likely to thrive and
form enduring engagement with place, by living and dining at density in housing provided by their
colleges. UVA lacks the ability, or has lacked the desire, to pursue important models that have
been adopted across the United States. Elsewhere, American universities and colleges are
envisioning university housing not as simply a place that provides a bed, a roof, and daily meals,
but as an important venue for both formal and informal education—living and learning
communities that can house meetings between students and faculty, accommodate short
courses, and provide a venue for social and cultural development.
Community
The legacy of Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village demonstrates the significant advantages of
a University constructed around the idea of living and learning in a coordinated, pedestrianoriented,
and richly integrated environment. UVA is not alone in this early concept of idealized
living. Most of our Ivy League “peers” evolved with similar collegiate traditions of quadrangles
and later residential colleges. However, many of our private and public competitors have
advanced the quality of their institutions in part through the careful attention directed toward
residential arrangements and student life. Harvard’s faculty of Arts and Sciences, not its Facility
Management Division or Housing Office, recently announced an ambitious plan to renew its
undergraduate houses (http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/07/house-renewal-ready-forlaunch/).
Princeton, for example, houses 98% of its students on campus, and it is perhaps not a
coincidence that they have one of the highest alumni giving rates in the nation. Beyond
simplistic financial indicators, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, the Honors College at Michigan, and
other institutions demonstrate their commitment to a real sense of community through the
investment in substantive issues of academic life for their students.
A Question of Institutional Values?
The roots of crisis of under-housing at UVA run deep. In June, 1857 “On Motion of Mr. Baldwin
it was “Resolved that in the opinion of this Board it is inexpedient for the University to undertake the
building of additional dormitories, or boarding houses for the accommodation of students, un less & until
it shall appear that suitable & sufficient accommodations will not be afforded by private enterprise on
reasonable terms & that it is the true policy of the University to confine its operations in building to such
edifices as shall be required for the accommodation of its Professors, or for public purposes.” Boarding
houses and fraternity houses were the primary sites for upperclass living prior to the growth of
the University in the mid to late twentieth century. The strictures of state financing have
certainly compounded this problem in recent years—as the University has expanded it has not
received the requisite funds to support the full dimensions of that growth.
In the context of housing this narrow approach to housing and growth is unwarranted. Our
peer institutions, many of them public universities, offer several models. At some, bonds sold
for housing construction are paid off with the dedicated stream of revenue from student rents.
Recently there have also been important initiatives whereby private developers take on the
entire cost of providing housing in exchange for long-term leases on university land and the
ability to rent to students. With this model, university staff often assume the responsibility for
advising, and for stewarding living-learning initiatives.
Changing the Culture of Residential Life at UVA
Currently, UVA houses all first year undergraduate students. However, limitations on space
are such that students are pushed towards the exits and the confines of small-group apartment
living almost as soon as they arrive. They are significant cultural pressures to sign leases for a
second year resident in October of their first semester at UVA. Indeed, rather than broadening
their social horizons students often end up seeking off-Grounds housing with friends they knew
in high school—losing the advantages of the social and cultural diversity that they encounter in
university housing. This has been the case for forty years as we know from our own
perspectives as faculty, as well as a former UVA residential college principal, an alum, and the
parent of a current UVA undergraduate.
The most straightforward way to effect cultural change in housing at UVA would be to extend the
requirement for on-Grounds residence from the first year to the first and second years. This would
provide the requisite cohort to support an expanded private (or public) housing program on
University Grounds. This vision is not intended to frustrate residence in fraternity or sorority
houses (which is generally a third year experience). The expansion of the on-Grounds housing
requirement could easily lead to residence in fraternities and sororities for the 30% of UVA
undergraduates who are members. Many of these Greek organizations are physically on or
immediately adjacent to Grounds; some have a degree of engagement with University
supervision and living-learning and service-learning opportunities. We also assume that after
two years of residence on-Grounds, many third and fourth years students will opt to stay in
University housing.
Additional benefits of a renewed commitment to Residential Culture
An additional advantage of housing second years is that it would be a means to address the
current weakness in student advising. We know that we do a great job advising first year
students. We also are moving towards better advising of students in their third and fourth
years once academic advising within departments are in full sway. However, we do less well
with second year students. Housing these students on-Grounds, and including them in an
extended community of upperclass and graduate students as well as faculty, would make for
much stronger continuity in academic advising (Strategic Plan driver #2). These informal
encounters will introduce students to the research lives of graduate students and faculty,
increase opportunities for cross-disciplinary innovation, and “strengthen the University’s
creative, scholarly capacity to advance knowledge” (Strategic Plan driver #3). This community
of students, staff and faculty will also open up opportunities for witnessing, and engaging in,
ethical leadership in the classroom as well as in the residential halls and dining halls (Strategic
Plan driver #4). Like the recent experience of events and programs sponsored by Open
Grounds where faculty and students across our eleven schools are meeting one another and
initiating new intellectual and research trajectories, the Residential Colleges will contribute to a
stronger intellectual culture at UVA.
By shifting the second year undergraduates from apartments and houses within the city to
university residential colleagues, hundreds of residential units will open up for rental, and
perhaps purchase, by UVA staff and faculty. This will improve the neighborhoods around the
university, increase the quality and quantity of staff and faculty housing options within walking
distance to Grounds, and slow the physical decline in the city’s neighborhoods due to long term
rentals and delayed, or minimal, maintenance by landlords. As we begin a decade of intense
faculty recruitment to replace a large number of senior professors, the more we can contribute
to the “sense of place” that exists in Charlottesville, the more attractive our search efforts will
be (Strategic Plan driver #2).
Looking forward
The status quo is not serving our University well. Limiting the Strategic Plan to programs,
pedagogy and policy will not catalyze our community to a higher level of excellence. Developing
a more engaged and creative approach to housing, student life, and community represents a
worthy investment. It builds on our legacy but is forward thinking. It supports most of the
Strategic Plan drivers by integrating place with policy, pedagogy and programs.
If we hope to become a great university, not only a top ten public institution, but in the top ten
among all schools nationwide, we will only realize our full potential by paying careful attention
to the intersection between academic aspirations and physical arrangements for student living
on Grounds. Every institution of higher education will be innovating with on-line learning and
hybrid teaching. Only UVA was founded around the idea of an “academical village.” We should
see that legacy as more than a tie to the past. It should unleash our potential as a radically
different kind of residential undergraduate college within a research university. There are
significant policy implications surrounding this issue. Some of these may be daunting to
consider; however, the larger positive impact that a substantial move in this direction could
present to this University is worthy of all of our efforts to realize it.
We urge you to incorporate these ideas into the Univesity’s Strategic Plan that is shaping up in
Madison Hall this summer, and we welcome your questions or comments about these ideas.
U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT TOP 35 NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES
% OF FIRST YEAR AND UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS HOUSED
1. Harvard University (MA) 100%; first years; 99% of all undergrads
2. Princeton University 100% of first years; 98% of all undergraduates
3. Yale University(CT) 100%; 88% of all undergrads
4. Columbia University (NY) 100% of first years, 94% of all undergrads
4. University of Chicago 100% first years, 55% for All Undergrads
6. MIT 100% first years; 90% of undergrads
6. Stanford University (CA) 100%; 91% of all undergrads
8. Duke University (NC) 100%; 82% of all undergrads
8. University of Pennsylvania 100%; 63% of all undergrads
10. California Inst. of Technology 100%; 95% of all undergrads
10. Dartmouth College(NH) 100% of first years; 86% of undergrads
12. Northwestern University 99% of first years ; 65% of all undergrads
13. Johns Hopkins University 99% of first years; 54% of all undergrads
14. Washington U. in St. Louis 99% of first years; 79% of all undergrads
15. Brown University(RI) 100% of first years; 85% of all undergrads
15. Cornell University(NY) 100% of first years; 57% of undergrads
17. Rice University(TX) 98% of first years; 72% of all undergrads
17. University of Notre Dame(IN) 100% first years; 80% of all undergrads
17. Vanderbilt University(TN) 100% of first years; 83% of all undergrads
20. Emory University(GA) 100% of first years; 70% of all undergrads
21. Georgetown University (DC) 100% of first years; 67% of undergrads
21. UC—Berkeley 95% first years; 26% of all undergrads
23. Carnegie Mellon (PA) 99% of first years; 66% of all undergrads
24. UCLA 93% of first years; 35% of all undergrads
24. Univ of Southern California, 98% of first year; 38% of all undergrads
24. University of Virginia 100% of first years; 41% of undergrads
27. Wake Forest 100% of first years; 68% of all undergrads
28. Tufts University (MA) 99% of first years; 64% of all undergrads
29. University of Michigan 97% first years; 34% of undergrads
30. UNC—Chapel Hill 100% first years; 46% of all undergrads
31. Boston College 99% first years; 85% of all undergrads
32. NYU 91% first years; 50% of all undergrads
33. Brandeis University 96% of first years; 74% of all undergrads
33. William and Mary 100% of first years; 72% of all undergrads
33. University of Rochester 99% of first years; 83% of all undergrads
UVA Fifth from the Bottom (in terms of Housing Students) of the Top Ranked Universities
24. University of Virginia 100% of first years; 41% of undergrads
24. Univ of Southern California, 98% of first year; 38% of all undergrads
24. UCLA 93% of first years; 35% of all undergrads
29. University of Michigan 97% first years; 34% of undergrads
21. UC—Berkeley 95% first years; 26% of all undergrads