The Virginia Governor’s Office today announced the appointment of Charles S. Reed Jr. ’11 of Sterling to the University of Mary Washington Board of Visitors. In addition, Sharon Bulova of Fairfax and Edward B. Hontz of Stafford have been reappointed to second terms on the board. The appointees will serve four-year terms, which will expire June 30, 2024. Reed succeeds Deidre Powell White, who has moved out of state.

A member of UMW’s James Farmer Legacy Council, Charles S. Reed Jr. first became familiar with the late civil rights leader and former Mary Washington history professor when he took a first-year seminar on Dr. Farmer’s life and legacy. The class propelled Reed to numerous leadership positions at Mary Washington, including president of the Black Student Association, vice president of Brothers of a New Direction and treasurer of the campus finance committee, as well as a role on UMW’s Advisory Council on Diversity and Community Values. As a student, he received the Citizenship Award for Diversity Leadership, the James Harvey Dodd Scholarship in Business Administration and the Emerging Leaders Diversity Scholarship.

In May 2011, Reed represented the Commonwealth of Virginia as part of PBS’s 50th anniversary commemoration of the 1961 Freedom Rides. Selected from nearly 1,000 applicants, he was one of 40 college students nationwide to earn a seat on the bus, joining several of the original Freedom Riders to travel the same route they took half a century earlier. Though he missed his own commencement ceremony for the trip, Reed called the 10-day experience “life-changing.” Read more.

The University of Mary Washington is a premier, selective public liberal arts and sciences university in Virginia, highly respected for its commitment to academic excellence, strong undergraduate liberal arts and sciences program, and dedication to life-long learning. The university, with a total enrollment of more than 5,000, features colleges of business, education and arts and sciences, and three campuses, including a residential campus in Fredericksburg, Va., a second one in nearby Stafford and a third in Dahlgren, Va., which serves as a center of development of educational and research partnerships between the Navy, higher education institutions and the region’s employers.