The Board of Visitors, the group that oversees the university, met in conjunction with the first day of class Thursday, Aug. 24. Rector Edward Bersoff called the group to order only an hour after students stumbled into their first 8 a.m. classes.
Early in the open portion of the meeting, university president Eugene P. Trani announced VCU’s high placement on a list of best urban colleges.
“Seated prominently on that list is Virginia Commonwealth University,” Trani said. “One more indication that VCU is at peace with the community.”
Evan Dobell, President of the New England Board of Higher Education and author of the study, said VCU has really been a model since it backed out of a plan to expand through the Oregon Hill neighborhood.
He credited both Trani and former provost Roderick McDavis, now president of Ohio University, for working with the community.
“No one is doing it. VCU is doing it,” Dobell said. “The passion to which VCU approached their commitment is admirable.”
He pointed to Harvard for a recent example of town-gown discontent. The Cambridge City Council refused building permits for the John F. Kennedy presidential library, forcing the project to move into a Boston suburb 10 miles from campus.
“After 400 years, the city council got tired of Harvard,” Dobell said. “They never gave back.”
VCU has a tight relationship with City Hall and a commitment to serve the community “that is not duplicated often in the American higher education system.”
Dobell looked at all two- and four-year colleges and universities located in cities – no college towns need apply. Two two-year colleges made the list as did 13 private colleges.
“The historic economies of downtowns has changed dramatically. What’s left is higher education and hospitals. VCU is both. They are the urban developers of the future,” he said.
> Also in the open portion of the meeting, Trani said undergraduate enrollment of just over 19,000 students surpassed projections.
“We’re up in almost every category,” he said.
He noted Virginia students from outside the Richmond area fueled the growth. About 900 freshmen came from Richmond in 2006, the same as in 1995. But the whole freshmen class grew from 1,690 in 1995 to 3,568 today. Four-hundred and ten freshmen came from out of state, many from Washington, D.C., Maryland, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina.
“What has happened in that decade is we have gone from a commuter school to a residential institution,” Trani said.
A major current was the internationalization of VCU. Trani mentioned the evolving affiliations with 15 overseas institutions including Dublin University and the University of St. Petersburg in Russia. He hopes to bring in another thousand passport students and 650 visiting foreign scholars.
He mentioned the new combined Ph.D. in media, art and text, a combined program of the English Department, the School of Mass Communication and School of the Arts. The program currently enrolls a dozen students.
“As VCU has moved on the frontiers of the life sciences, we are also going to move on the boundaries of mass comm, advertising, art and writing,” Trani told the board.
>Trani and board members who have visited the School of the Arts campus in Doha, Qatar, spoke high praises of the institution.
“I think the only city with more construction going on than on campus is Doha,” Bersoff said.
Trani said VCU was “the poster child” for academics reaching out to the Middle East.
“We are a major part of our public policy. This is the most liberal Arabic country. Following us has come Cornell, Texas A&M, Georgetown, Carnegie Melon.”