Helping a client think about a substantial charitable contribution to the school, I was given an “insiders” tour yesterday and left the campus highly-impressed.  CNU started in 1960 as a two-year branch of the College of William and Mary and became a university in 1992.  Sitting on a massive 260 acres between Warwick Avenue and the James River, the relatively new buildings are simply beautiful.  If you wanted to design a college that looked like the perfect college, it would look like Christopher Newport University.

We were drowning in factoids about CNU’s many, surprising successes, but the ones that most impressed me were (1) it was a conscious decision to limit the student population to only five thousand students and (2) they receive eight thousand applications each year for only 1,225 openings.  Led by former U.S. Senator Paul Trible, who obviously works the levers of government quite well, I will be excited to follow CNU’s future progress.

Whenever you meet a kid attending CNU . .. congratulate him/her!