is steeped in both fields. Last summer, she was awarded a research fellowship allowing her to work in the lab with a biology pro- fessor studying applications of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which causes crown gall disease in plants. In January, she joined other students, faculty and alumni in


Anthony Russell says the value that students gain from liberal arts is the ability to interpret and write critically about complex issues.


Roane, whose art focuses on


mixed media and illustration, says her team became so enthusiastic about its proposal for how to use art to enrich “the entire popula- tion, rather than just an arts district,” that she hopes it might be considered by city leaders.


Losing ground Nationally, liberal-arts studies


are losing ground to programs that tie degrees more directly to jobs at graduation, a consequence of rising college costs and student debt.


So many programs have been


cut that the Association of Ameri- can Colleges & Universities and the American Association of Uni- versity Professors issued a joint warning last year about the threat to courses once universally viewed as central to the intellectual life of academia. “We are fighting the good


fight,” says Anthony Russell, associate professor of English and coordinator of the Italian Studies Program at UR. He chaired a committee on creativity, innova- tion and entrepreneurship that proposed collaborative courses and projects for students and faculty across disciplines to work on real-world problems. The value that students gain


downtown Richmond for an intensive two-day session called Arts in the Life of a City. The pro- gram was part of Arts & Sciences NEXT, a program that uses case studies on a variety of topics that help students explore contempo- rary issues in ways that show how their education might translate to a career.


from the liberal arts, he says, is the ability to interpret and write critically about complex issues. Students learn problem-solving skills that are important for today’s workforce, he says. That’s not always clear to the


public, he says. “Because liberal- arts colleges cost so much, par- ents want to see more tangible, quantifiable skills in their student when they graduate.” Tuition alone at UR in the


2019-20 academic year will be $54,690. The estimated cost of


attendance, including tuition, books, room and meals, will be $69,750.


Promise to Virginia The university’s endowment


— thanks to a $50 million gift from Richmond business leader E. Claiborne Robins in 1969 when the institution was strug- gling to survive — was valued at more than $2.5 billion as of June 30.


That financial underpinning


has allowed the university to be one of the few in the nation with a “need-blind” admission policy. The term refers to schools that do not consider an applicant’s financial situation in deciding admission. The university’s total enrollment this year is more than 4,000, with 80 percent of under- graduates coming from outside Virginia. To make the school more


accessible to middle-income students, UR awards full scholar- ships to Virginians with parental income of $60,000 or less. For the current school year, 30 first-year students received the scholarships, with 103 recipients overall in the entire student body. Since the income thresh-


old was raised from $40,000 to $60,000 for fall 2014, the program, known as Richmond’s Promise to Virginia, has made 422 awards, including recurring scholarships to students who continue to study at the univer- sity, according to Cynthia Price, director of media and public relations.


Preparing for work Price points to an array of


programs designed to prepare students for the work world, such as the Queally Center, which integrates career services with the


www.VirginiaBusiness.com VIRGINIA BUSINESS | 55


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