Edward Ayers inaugurated as ninth UR president

BY LINDA EVANS
Editor, RichmondNow

As the University of Richmond inaugurated Edward L. Ayers as its ninth president April 11, he vowed to be a steward of the University in keeping with those who have gone before and fulfill "our responsibility to future generations."

A crowd of nearly 4,000 alumni, trustees, faculty, staff, students, parents and friends of the University listened as Rector George W. Wellde Jr. presented the "charge to the president," and Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust officially introduced Ayers as Richmond's new leader.

Chancellor E. Bruce Heilman turned over to Ayers the University mace, "a symbol of the president's authority," and Chancellor Richard L. Morrill placed on him the Presidential Chain of Office, which supports a medallion inscribed with a replica of the University's official seal and symbolizes the Office of the President.

Faust lauded Ayers as the ideal choice to lead the University at this time, calling it a perfect union. "A happier confluence of qualities you couldn't have found," she said. "If Ed Ayers did not exist, the University of Richmond would have wanted to invent him."

In his inaugural address, Ayers, a historian and scholar of the South, described the University's humble 1830 beginning in a schoolhouse on a farm called Dunlora.

Through the years, the University was fortunate, he said, to have "extraordinary partners," such as Robert Jepson, Carole and Marcus Weinstein, and the Robins family, whose support "is abundant in our landscape and in the strength of our programs."

"Today, thanks to all those whom I've mentioned and countless others, we occupy a special place in American higher education, combining the intimacy of a small, liberal arts college with the creativity of a university."

But the history of buildings, programs and campuses is not the only history we inhabit, Ayers said. "There is still more we should remember, and celebrate and embody." Going back to 1830, "we see a common purpose that stretches across 10 generations to ourselves."

As Richmond College's first president Robert Ryland declared, this would be a "Baptist college in no narrow, bigoted sense." He was true to his words. When other schools around the nation excluded or limited attendance by Jews, Richmond College welcomed them. By the early 20th century, Richmond was also welcoming students from abroad, including many from China, Brazil and Norway.

The experience for African-Americans was different, Ayers said. For 100 years after emancipation, they could not be students at Richmond, "just as they could not be students at the historically white public universities of Virginia."

Things slowly changed, and in 1964, the first black students enrolled in evening classes at University College, the predecessor to the School of Continuing Studies. In 1968, the first African-American student to live in a residence hall enrolled. "After that, the number of black students at the University slowly increased."

Slowly, too, "we have attracted Americans from other under-represented groups," said Ayers.

Looking to the future, the president said a strategic plan, now in draft stage, contains five principles that have "crystallized out of hundreds, maybe thousands, of conversations" and from responses to a question he posed upon arriving on campus last July: "What do we want the University of Richmond to be known for as we move forward?"

The five principles upon which he expects the University to focus in the next five years include:

• Diversity—integrating students, faculty and staff of different backgrounds, experiences and ideas more fully into one community. "But we are not merely reacting to external forces in promoting diversity," Ayers said. "We are stewarding one of the best parts of our legacy-the commitment to opportunity and a tradition of welcome that has characterized this institution in many ways for generations.
  
  
• Affordability—"because that is both one of our oldest traditions and one of our greatest needs for the future." Ayers said generations of young men and women have come to Richmond on scholarships and led lives of "remarkable achievement. ...While it will be challenging to maintain and expand this tradition of affordability, we will do it."
  
  
• Integrating higher education in a way that is done nowhere else—By focusing on our core academic enterprise, "we will offer our students avenues to connect arts and sciences with business. We will invite law professors to teach undergraduates and invite law and graduate students to take advantage of the rich offerings elsewhere in the University," said Ayers. "We can build from our unique configuration of schools a broader academic experience than is possible at most liberal arts institutions."
  
  
• A distinctive student experience outside the classroom—"Our traditions here are clear," said Ayers. "This place has always been about human connection, about educating the entire person." He cited a "remarkable network of international collaborations, ... laboratories and research opportunities accessible to undergraduates in a way that is rare anywhere else," a chaplaincy that provides a sense of personal care, support and spiritual sustenance, and athletic teams that embody what is best about intercollegiate sports.
  
  
• Preparing students for lives as engaged citizens—The institution as a whole "will become a more fully engaged citizen in the community where we live," said Ayers. Students are engaged in public health, public schools, community development and pro bono legal work, he said. "We will sustain and build upon our tradition of making this a university for Richmond as well as of Richmond."

Ayers said achieving the University's aspirations will be hard but thrilling work. "It will require all of us associated with the University to contribute our energy, our ideas, our honesty, our good will, our imagination. But there is a tradition of that here, too."

Special photo section: The Inauguration of Edward L. Ayers