Move over, Thomas Jefferson. The University of Virginia may soon be better known for its modern-day alums than for its 19th century architect.

It seems the university is fertile ground for cyber-sages. A recent list of U.Va. tech heads includes: Timothy Koogle, CEO of Yahoo!; Harry Motro, CEO of Infoseek; Todd Wagner, CEO of Broadcast.com.; Halsey Minor, CEO of CNET; Shelby Bonnie, vice chairman of CNET; U. Bertram Ellis, CEO of iXL; Michael McQuary, COO of MindSpring; Allison Abraham, COO of iVillage; Mark Templeton, president of Citrix Systems Inc.; Lawton Fitt, managing director of Goldman Sachs; and Al Berkeley, president of Nasdaq.

hese not-so-geeky graduates were unearthed in the course of the university's billion-dollar capital campaign. The development office was trying to involve younger, high-profile alumni when it stumbled upon the vital statistics.

"We started by looking at who were the most successful younger alumni, basically age 30 to 45," explains Bob Sweeney, U.Va.'s vice president for development. "And as we started pulling this list together, it really surprised us how large a number of the well-known, emerging Internet companies were headed by U.Va. alums or had an alum in a key position."

Six months ago, University President John Casteen convened a meeting with several of the prominent young alumni "to talk about what was going on at the university, how it influenced their careers and what was the relationship between" the university and success on the Internet.

"There was no specific pattern," Sweeney adds. "You would think they would be from the engineering or business programs, and some of them were, but they were also from the College of Arts & Sciences and the law school, it was really spread out."

Sweeney says the successful alumni pointed as inspiration to some of the Jeffersonian principles on which the school was founded: self-governance; responsibility; respect for privacy and merit; the importance of information and knowledge; and a creative, collaborative atmosphere among students and faculty.

his revelation inspired U.Va. to convene the e-summit@virginia on Nov. 12 and 13 in Charlottesville. The event will be an information forum on the virtual world from a Jeffersonian perspective, plus a celebration of the success of Virginia alumni on the net.

According to an invitation, the summit "will engage the panel, university students and audience in a lively discussion on theoretical and practical implications of Internet technology, and the rights and responsibilities of business leaders and private citizens."

"We knew this event would have significance for our students and our faculty if we filtered the questions through our founder's ideals," says Sweeney. "Now, we think it might have some national implications, too."

And that's not just PR-speak from a university VP. PricewaterhouseCoopers asked U.Va. if it could come on board as a sponsor and brought Fortune magazine aboard, too.

hat's some heavy-hitting backup for a debate, but rest assured, Thomas Jefferson would have expected no less.

— MA