Edwin Alderman - at The University of Virginia

At The University of Virginia

In 1904, the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia invited Alderman, then president of Tulane University, to become the first president of the University of Virginia. Since its founding in 1819, Mr. Jefferson's University had been governed by its Board of Visitors, but increasing discord between Visitors and the faculty, as well as the rising administrative burden of dealing with expanding academic departments and burgeoning student enrollments, led to the decision to move forward with the creation of the office of the president.

Alderman was not the first choice for the new office. After considering other candidates, including Virginia Law graduate Woodrow Wilson, the BOV had first invited its former member George W. Miles, a colonel who had served on the staff of Virginia Governor James Hoge Tyler. The faculty opposed Miles' nomination and he was forced to withdraw. Other candidates were proposed, including Francis Preston Venable (who had succeeded Alderman as president of the University of North Carolina), but Alderman was unanimously chosen as the consensus candidate on June 14, 1904. He began to serve in the fall of 1904 but was not formally inaugurated until April 13, 1905 (Thomas Jefferson's birthday, which was then as now celebrated as Founder's Day).

The University changed in several significant ways under Alderman's guidance. First, he focused new attention on matters of public concern, creating departments of geology and forestry, adding significantly to the University Hospital to support new sickbeds and public health research, created the Curry School of Education, established the extension and summer school programs, and created the first school of finance and commerce at the school. He then restructured existing programs, separating the former “academic department” into the College of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in accordance with a growing move to standardize college educations by the Association of American Universities. The enrollment of the school greatly increased under his administration, as well, going from 500 regular session students in 1904 to 2,200 in 1929.

Alderman also laid the financial groundwork for the University's future, during the first years of his presidency establishing its first endowment fund and leading the fundraising of almost $700,000 to meet a $500,000 challenge grant from Andrew Carnegie. By the end of his presidency the endowment would increase to $10 million.

He spent two-thirds of his long term at the University of Virginia physically disabled after a bad bout with tuberculosis.