I find it interesting that it is very hard to find information about many of these commissioners. While many names are common within every American household such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and a few others, many are not. Part of the problem may lie in the fact that these signatures are not complete names. However, it's still strange that these men would be chosen to commission UVA and not have information be easily found today.

I wonder whether "Projectiles" referred to the more classical thought of calculating trajectories, designing weapons, or other theoretical projects or if this is a more practical training in how to use the existing weapons of the time. The authors seem to assume that it is obvious what projectiles specifically refers to, but that may have been lost in the elapsed time.

The first part of this clause outlines that UVA is not going to be a place of meritocracy; it is for those that wish to become distinguished in their future as a scholar. It follows with a suggestion, that these people may also come from backgrounds not traditionally fit for academia. In this age, there was no public school and only the wealthy children were put into schools. But here, Jefferson and the other founders are suggesting that these kids may also be the future scholars and they should make specific accommodations in their curriculum for these children. I think this is realized to this day with programs such as "Access UVA" which give financial aid to all those that need it to come to UVA.

Such topics are interesting to be included in a general curriculum. I believe it supports the idea that when the school was being founded, the goal was to create scholars instead of specialists. We coin this today as a "liberal arts" education. However, today we do not study things such as optics because they are no longer needed for the average person - no longer are telescopes, looking glasses, and glasses something that people use, develop, repair, etc. Instead, people specialize in such fields. This is required because the knowledge barrier to get into such fields is so much higher today due to the massive buildup of knowledge.