3. Thomas Jefferson built a university
By the time Thomas Jefferson left the presidency after eight years in office, he had grown disgruntled with the leading college in Virginia, his own alma mater, the College of William and Mary. Jefferson was a deist, forever suspicious of clergy of all kinds, and the influence of the church on the curriculum at William and Mary – it was even a factor in teachings of mathematics – was the source of Jefferson’s disillusion. Jefferson gather several of the leading citizens of Virginia, including James Madison, a sitting president of the United States, and obtained a charter for a new University of Virginia. Jefferson himself designed the campus, which he called the Academic Village, and most of the buildings.
Jefferson supervised much of the construction, either visiting the site personally or watching through a telescope from atop Monticello, dispatching messages via slaves. He also supervised the development of the curriculum, hired most of the professors, and established the requirements for entry and for graduation. He served as the University’s first rector, supervising its Board of Visitors (which included James Madison and James Monroe) and recording the minutes of the early meetings in his own hand. Jefferson made clear that there was not to be a professor of divinity at the University of Virginia, though the school today boasts the largest department of religious studies in the United States, part of the College of Arts and Sciences.