From President Scott C. Beardsley: Finding Shared Ground
During Final Exercises in May, I spoke to the 8,053 graduates in the Class of 2026 about the importance of finding shared ground.
From the podium, looking out at a sea of graduates and their proud families—more than 15,000 people on Saturday and 20,000 on Sunday—I could see clearly the shared ground.
On days like Final Exercises—joyful, exuberant, and, yes, a little warm—common ground is easy to find. There are days, however, when overcoming division is more challenging, and even more important.
I know a little something about this. I grew up in Alaska and arrived at college alone, several thousand miles from home, with one suitcase and no familiar faces. My tennis teammates asked if I had lived in an igloo and jokingly called me “Polar Beardsley.” As an engineering student at Tufts, I had to find shared ground—fast.
Through my work in places like Abu Dhabi, Caracas, Tokyo, Warsaw and Cairo, I learned that starting a new job or project often requires walking into rooms of strangers, in places you’ve never been, in languages you don’t understand, to work on problems in unfamiliar contexts.
There are two ways to approach that challenge. You can focus on what is different or negative, which can stall progress. Or you can focus on commonality. The shared ground. Our common humanity. What unites us.
This is not new wisdom. In an 1811 letter to his granddaughter Cornelia, Thomas Jefferson shared a dozen “Canons of Conduct.” Rule No. 10 was “Take things always by their smooth handle.”
Jefferson wasn’t suggesting we avoid hard things; he was suggesting how to approach them. You can start with the rough, serrated edge of division, or you can start with the smoother side of commonality.
In May, I encouraged our graduates to walk through life looking for shared ground rather than the sharp edge of difference. Here at UVA, we continue to do the same.
Our “Grounds for Conversation” events, where students, faculty, staff and alumni gather for conversations over coffee, have turned up plenty of shared ground.
There is a shared sense of pride in the university’s mission and success. As I mentioned in my last letter, there is also consensus around key challenges and opportunities, such as making a college education more affordable for more families; taking a thoughtful approach to AI; increasing global experiences to prepare our students for a global world; investing in our faculty and our research capabilities; and equipping UVA Health, already a $4.4 billion premier health system treating nearly 1.8 million patients annually, to meet ever-growing demand. There are also opportunities to make our Grounds feel more connected—physically, but also intellectually and virtually—to encourage cross-disciplinary research and partnerships, an initiative we are calling Connected Grounds.
Our task now is to build on the shared ground we have uncovered with a sustainable plan for the future. This summer, we launched a comprehensive university strategic planning process led by a committee representing a cross section of the university. As it should be with a large and complex organization like UVA, this process will be rigorous and deliberate. We will take a careful look at the university’s two main engines—the academic entities and the health system, a combined $7.1 billion enterprise—and several key drivers for those engines, including world-class asset management strategies, bolstered by a continued AAA credit rating; UVA’s strong global brand and reputation; our vibrant UVA community; and UVA’s role as an institution of public service and economic anchor in the Commonwealth of Virginia and beyond.
If we focus on fundamentals—our engines and the drivers that keep them running at peak performance—we will ensure we are doing everything we can to support the university’s mission well into the future.
After we recently marked America’s 250th birthday and reflected on Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence, preserved in two original copies here at UVA, staking out that shared ground is more important than ever. I am grateful to everyone who has played a part in this process so far, and most especially to the people in our UVA community who show up each day ready to look for shared ground and help this special place succeed.
Scott C. Beardsley
President of the University of Virginia
