Essay

Hope for a New Year

snowflakes falling on the lawn with the Rotunda in the background

owever you look at it, 2025 was a hugely consequential year for UVA’s global community. Our international students, faculty, and staff navigated fear and uncertainty in a rapidly shifting immigration landscape. Globally-oriented researchers faced new challenges as federal research funding was abruptly cancelled. Students aspiring to careers in international public service faced new doubts as the federal government laid off large numbers of diplomacy and development workers. And a range of persistent international conflicts and unfolding humanitarian disasters like Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, strife in Gaza, the civil war in Sudan, and recent flooding in southeast Asia touched many of us on Grounds.

However you look at it, 2025 was a hugely consequential year for UVA’s global community.

And yet, signs of hope and resilience abounded. The vast majority of our international student community persisted and prevailed against the frequent obstacles that stood in their path to enrollment here. The UVA community warmly welcomed them and other international newcomers through such initiatives as our VISAS Café. Belying the common narrative that the United States is turning inward, enrollment in the University’s popular Global Studies program continued to surge, and we smashed all previous records for participation in study abroad programs with more than 3400 students.

This year, our Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation recalibrated its funding and offered to fill gaps left by canceled federal research grants. We concluded the first year of our innovative Global Educator Opportunity (GEO) Fellowship grants, which brought global practitioners and experiences into classrooms on Grounds to enrich our teaching with more global perspectives. Our Center for Global Health Equity concluded an agreement with UVA’s Medical Center and School of Medicine to coordinate clinical experiences for our medical residents and students alongside undergraduate researchers at nine locations around the world. And as the year ends, UVA is on the brink of expanding the focus of its Shanghai office beyond China to the nations of Pacific Asia, opening its first ever office on the African continent in Cape Town, South Africa, and readying a new study abroad center in Vicenza, Italy.

This fall, we convened a working group of students, faculty, and staff to develop a new mission statement for the Office of Global Affairs to guide and sustain us through the challenges that will no doubt continue:

UVA Global cultivates learning, research, collaboration, and intercultural exchange on Grounds and beyond to prepare our students and enable our faculty to engage thoughtfully, ethically, creatively, and sustainably with our increasingly complex and interdependent world.

As we look ahead, the lessons of this consequential year are clear. Global engagement at UVA is not a luxury or an abstraction – it is central to who we are and to the impact we seek to have in the world. Even amid uncertainty, our community has demonstrated an enduring commitment to openness, inquiry, and connection across borders. Guided by our renewed mission statement and sustained by the dynamism and dedication of our students, faculty, and staff, UVA Global enters the coming year resolved not only to endure, but to lead - with purpose, partnership, and hope.

With best wishes to all for a joyous, restful, and global holiday season,