Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts university in Lexington, Virginia. Established in 1749 as the Augusta Academy, the university is among the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States.
Washington and Lee's 325-acre campus sits at the edge of Lexington and abuts the campus of the Virginia Military Institute in the Shenandoah Valley region between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Mountains. The campus is approximately 50 miles northeast from Roanoke, 140 miles west from the state capital of Richmond, and 180 miles inland southwest from the national capital at Washington, D.C.
Washington and Lee was originally a small classical school, and was founded as the Augusta Academy by Scots-Irish Presbyterian pioneers, though the university has never claimed any sectarian affiliation. In 1796, shortly before the end of his second term as U.S. President, George Washington endowed the struggling academy with a gift of stock, one of the largest gifts to an educational institution at that time. In gratitude, the school was renamed for Washington, the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, president at the 1787 Federal Constitutional Convention, and first President of the United States.
In 1865, shortly after his April 9 surrender to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union Armies, former Confederate States Army General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee served as president of the college for five years until his death in 1870, when the college was thereafter renamed the "Washington and Lee University".
One of the oldest institutions of higher education in the American South, W&L is the second-oldest in the Commonwealth of Virginia .
The university consists of three academic units: the college itself; the Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics; and the School of Law. The university hosts 24 intercollegiate varsity athletic teams which compete as part of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association .
