Explore Retold

Georgia O'Keefe

Famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe studied at the University of Virginia every summer from 1912 to 1916, taking courses designed for art teachers and teaching some classes of her own. A recent exhibit at the Fralin Museum of Art highlighted the ways that O'Keeffe's time at the University was transformative to her career.

Early Women

Approximately 30,000 women earned degrees, diplomas and certificates at the University prior to full co-education in 1970.

Hidden Nurses

Driven by a critical nursing shortage after World War II, nursing department director Roy Carpenter Beazley established a yearlong (licensed practical nurse) program with Charlottesville’s black vocational high school, Jackson P. Burley High. The program offered local students a path into nursing in the '50s and '60s before desegregation. LPN nurses were not allowed entry into UVA because of their race, but they went on to help desegregate UVA Hospital. Their presence and experiences were the first steps toward integrating the nursing profession. In 2019, the Hidden Nurses" were officially acknowledged as UVA alumni as part of a ceremony recognizing the nurses whose stories had, heretofore, remained in the shadows.

Pearls

The tradition of dressing up for football games—“guys in ties, girls in pearls”—was a signature element of the UVA game day experience for generations of alumni. Now, spectators are commonly found in more casual attire casual attire.

“The Society of Alumni”

A charter was granted to the Society of the Alumni of the University of Virginia, as it was then known, in 1873. Today, the UVA Alumni Association connects, informs, rewards, serves and invests in alumni and our University by building strong bonds and affinity on and beyond Grounds.

Graduation Tassel

UVA graduates "walk the Lawn," a tradition filled with great pride and fanfare. One symbol of Final Exercises is the color of the tassels, which represent principle fields of learning. The School of Engineering and Applied Science is represented by orange tassels. In 2019, nearly a third of undergraduate and graduate students at UVA Engineering are women, outpacing national averages of 21 and 25 percent respectively.

Kathryn Thornton

After being selected by NASA in May 1984, Kathryn Thornton (Grad '79) made four space flights between 1989 and 1995 - one on Space Shuttle Discovery, two on Endeavour, and one on Columbia. She spent over 975 hours in space and is the second American woman to walk in space.

Pencil

While well over 50% of the School of Architecture students identify as female, this number drops drastically in the professional field. manifestA, a student organization that seeks to advance the agency of women in architecture, was founded at UVA in 2018 and works to challenge the gender gap within the discipline and profession of architecture.

SHE sticker

UVA's Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights seeks to cultivate a University community where the asking, sharing and respecting of a person's chosen personal pronouns is common practice. They created pronoun buttons and stickers to sustain the practice of sharing, asking for, and respecting chosen personal pronouns, which are often seen today around Grounds.

Kente Cloth Stole

The kente cloth stole recognizes the accomplishments of graduating black students. Students receive stoles made of kente cloth imported from West Africa during the Donning of the Kente ceremony, held annually during Final Exercises and sponsored by the Office of African-American Affairs.

Rita Dove

Rita Dove is among the nation’s most celebrated poets, serving as Poet Laureate for the United States and Commonwealth of Virginia, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1987, and amassing more than 25 honorary degrees. She has worked as a high-profile professor at the University of Virginia since 1989, teaching in the creative writing department, and now serves as the Commonwealth Professor of English.

Cavalier Daily

In September 1970, the first class of undergraduate women entered the College of Arts and Sciences at UVA. Though there were many female students on Grounds, full coeducation began to change the landscape of student life at the Unviersity. In the summer of 1970, historically male dorms were made female. Steve Grimwood wrote in this article for the Cavalier Daily: "For those who have never been in a suite of the new dorms, the bathrooms contain one urinal. What do we do with the one urinal? Rumor has it that housing decided to leave the urinals, but add a bouquet of flowers to each. This solved the problem neatly."

“Sisterhood” at the Special Collections Library

“Sisterhood: Cultural Portraits of African-American Women,” is a 2020 Black History Month original exhibition at the Small Special Collections Library on the 400-year redemptive odyssey of African American womanhood, 1700s-2000s. From auction blocks to corporate boardrooms, this distinctive exhibition emphasizes the commonality of their praiseworthy lives and the events they shaped.

Honor Gavel

Student self governance and honor are some of UVA's most enduring traditions, which uphold and support the Community of Trust. The Honor Committee elected its first female Chair, Nancy Lyons (Eng '82), in 1981 and its most recent female Chair, Faith Lyons (Comm '17), in 2016. The Honor gavel signifies the ways that students shape the University of Virginia during their time on Grounds.

Nursing Students

Nursing has a longstanding legacy at the University of Virginia. The acceptance of female students into the hospital training program in 1901 marked the University’s first significant commitment to the education of professional women. To read more about the exceptional history of Nursing at UVA, visit Mr. Jefferson's Nurses.

Female Students and Alumnae

Today, women make up 53% of current student population and nearly 48% of the total living alumni population.

Lawn Room Key

In 1972, Cynthia Goodrich (Col '73) moved into 28 East Lawn, becoming the first female Lawn resident. More women received invitations to live on the Lawn the following year, and today, women comprise slightly more than half of the residents on the Lawn.

Final Exercises

"The women in the first coeducational, undergraduate College classes set their sights on ambitious goals and met—-or surpassed—-them in their years here. Disregarding the precedent of the previous 150 years, these determined coeds excelled in the classroom and took leadership of a wide range of extracurricular activities. By the time they graduated beginning in 1972, these women had gained entry into organizations, societies, and leadership positions that had been closed to females for most of the University’s history. Leaving their indelible mark on the University, these coeds established that women were 'here to stay'." Breaking and Making Traditions Exhibit, UVA Special Collections Library.

Enduring Traditions

Final Exercises in 1975 included about 550 female graduates.

Serpentine Walls

In 2013, President Teresa Sullivan formed the President's Commission on Slavery and the University to explore and report on UVA's historical relationship with slavery and enslaved people. The commission released a report in 2018 that elaborates on and acknowledges UVA's previously hidden history. One finding of the report found that the serpentine walls were originally constructed at a height to hide the life and labor of enslaved workers from the view of students and professors.

Georgia O'Keefe
Early Women
Hidden Nurses
Pearls
“The Society of Alumni”
Graduation Tassel
Kathryn Thornton
Pencil
SHE sticker
Kente Cloth Stole
Rita Dove
Cavalier Daily
“Sisterhood” at the Special Collections Library
Honor Gavel
Nursing Students
Female Students and Alumnae
Lawn Room Key
Final Exercises
Enduring Traditions
Serpentine Walls

The history of the University of Virginia is not complete without women’s stories. 2020 is a unique moment in time at UVA: the 100th anniversary of a 1920 Board of Visitors resolution allowing some women to enroll in select graduate and professional programs and the 50th anniversary of full coeducation in 1970. Approximately 30,000 women earned degrees, diplomas and certificates at UVA before 1970. Today, women make up the majority of the student population.

The image above is made up of objects, documents, and photographs reflecting the transformation of women’s experiences at University of Virginia. There is so much more to the story that the items represented here; they capture just a hint of the deeply nuanced and ever-evolving history of women at UVA.

This image was created in partnership with designer Robin Verrier and the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.