“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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Reminiscing About the University of Virginia
I went to the University of Georgia. As far as I know, none of my fellow UGA students ever wanted to talk with their professors outside of class. If a student saw a faculty member at all in a setting outside the classroom, it was an accident.
My first year at the University of Virginia was academic year 1979-1980. Back then, the drinking age was 18, and our school had a keg party for our students shortly after classes began in the fall. As I stood around drinking beer and talking with my students, one thing stood out in my mind. They wanted to know me as a person, not just as a professor.
Looking back on my 25 years of teaching at UVA, the thing that I miss most is not the historic place where I taught. Tourists flocked to UVA from all over the world to marvel at Mr. Jefferson’s university and take pictures. I practically lived there. I’m not kidding. Just ask Katie, Melanie, and Rebekah. They will tell you.
UVA was a second home to me. It was the place where I taught and interacted with brilliant students. I knew them, and they knew me. I saw them as part of my extended family. We were there together, and we had a job to do. It wasn’t like any other university that I knew about. We were different, and we knew it. Being different made us better.
The UVA Rotunda is the centerpiece of Mr. Jefferson’s Academical Village. It attracts more tourist attention than any other building at UVA. I love the Rotunda. It’s beautiful and amazingly designed, but the thing I miss most about the Rotunda is the dinners we had in the Dome Room for student groups with which I was involved. Dome Room dinners were the culmination of most of the programs I ran. The students enjoyed those dinners as much as I did. Charlottesville dignitaries would give their eye teeth to be invited to a Dome Room dinner, but few of them ever get an invitation.
Carr’s Hill is the UVA president’s home. While I taught at UVA, presidents were part of the team. Frequently when we brought in important guests, we would have a dinner at Carr’s Hill with the president and talk about things in general. Of course, the president had cocktail parties for various reasons. I was invited, but in 25 years, I never went to one of them.
Cocktail party chatter doesn’t interest me, but those dinners were different. Around the dinner table, we had some great conversations with some amazing people who let down their hair and spoke freely. Every year, I get an invitation to Carr’s Hill for a cocktail party for retired faculty. I have not been to one yet.
UVA was founded in 1819, but we didn’t have a president until 1905. Faculty ran the university. When I went to UVA, administrators were faculty members who took a break from teaching and research for a while to perform administrative duties. In my 3rd year at UVA, I was appointed assistant dean. In my 4th year, I was appointed associate dean.
Being a dean never interested me, but I enjoyed those jobs because I had the opportunity to help improve our school. Thankfully, Bill Shenkir was dean. He understood UVA’s heritage and its mission. He knew that we were there to nurture students, not to indoctrinate them. The same was true for faculty. We were there to help them develop their ideas, not to tell them what to think and how to think.
Herb Stein taught in the Economics Department at UVA during those years. He had been Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for Presidents Nixon and Ford. I got to know Herb well. In my 4th year at UVA, he came by my office one day and told me that he had been asked to recommend someone for a business school dean’s job at a major northeastern university, and he wanted to recommend me. I told him, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not interested in leaving UVA.”
Job-hopping is not my thing. Besides, like I said, UVA was different and better.
More than anything else about UVA, I miss the students. It is gratifying to think that I played a small part in helping to develop some great leaders. My job wasn’t to tell them want to do. My job was to help them accomplish their objectives.
After 25 years, it was time for me to move on, and that’s what I did. I’m doing the same thing now that I did then, but my subject matter and my audiences are different. UVA was a great training ground for me.
In 1981, Chuck Robb was elected Governor of Virginia. He asked me to be his Policy Advisor for Regulatory Reform. I served in that capacity for 4 years, but I still taught and did my research at UVA. During those days, I worked about 100 hours a week.
Because of my work with Robb, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce asked me to serve on its education committee. Rich Sorensen, the business school dean at Virginia Tech, also served on that committee. I liked Rich. He would have fit in nicely at UVA.
Rich asked me to join the faculty at Virginia Tech, and he offered me a Pamplin chair. I think the year was 1985. At that time, I was an associate professor at UVA. I was honored by Rich’s offer, but I turned him down. As I said, UVA was a second home to me, and UVA students were part of my extended family. It would have been like getting a divorce. I hate divorce, but I must admit that things change. Sometimes, divorces are necessary.
I wasn’t promoted to chaired professor at UVA until 1992. I’m not complaining. Very few faculty members are ever promoted to chaired professor. I was a chaired professor for 13 of my 25 years at UVA.
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
