Virginia Wesleyan University to be renamed Batten University

Next year, Virginia Wesleyan University will officially change its name to Batten University.

The new name, which will take effect on July 1, 2026, honors Virginia Beach philanthropist Jane Batten, a former chair of the Virginia Wesleyan Board of Trustees, and her family, who have supported the Virginia Beach private university for decades.

Promoting the new name, the university’s website says the renaming honors a decade of progress, the philanthropic legacy of the Batten family, and the university’s “bold future.”

“There is no other visionary philanthropist like Jane Batten,” VWU President Scott Miller said in a statement. “Her progressive thinking and innovative vision for this university have made it what it is today.”

Nancy DeFord, chair of the university’s board, made the announcement Wednesday afternoon during a celebration of the Batten family’s legacy. Jane Batten’s involvement with Virginia Wesleyan dates back to 1978, when her daughter Mary enrolled. Jane Batten began serving on the school’s board of trustees in 1981, and in 1995, she became the first woman to chair the board.

In 1998, Jane’s husband, Frank Batten Sr., the billionaire former CEO of Landmark Communications and co-founder of The Weather Channel, honored her service to VWU with a gift to the university that created the $22 million Jane P. Batten Student Center, which opened in 2002.

Frank Batten Sr., who died in 2009, built the national media enterprise Landmark Communications, which once owned more than 50 newspapers, including the Virginian-Pilot, Daily Press and Roanoke Times in Virginia. Batten chaired the Associated Press in the 1980s and co-founded The Weather Channel, which Landmark sold in 2008 for $3.5 billion to NBCUniversal. Other Landmark holdings included real estate website Homes.com, which was sold for $156 million in 2019 to Arlington County-based CoStar Group.

The Battens would continue to make gifts to Virginia Wesleyan, including endowing faculty positions and student scholarships. In 2015, Jane Batten made a major contribution to the university, aiding the $20 million Greer Environmental Sciences Center, which featured an adjacent geothermal field, greenhouse, and garden. The following year, she established and endowed the Batten Honors College.

More recent initiatives funded by Jane Batten include a 2020 collaboration between VWU Global Campus and Lakeland University in Tokyo, as well as the Jane P. Batten & David R. Black School for International Studies, which opened in 2024.

She also provided one of two lead gifts to relocate the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art from the Virginia Beach Oceanfront to VWU’s campus, with the new museum slated to open in early 2026.

Last year, Batten donated $100 million to establish the William & Mary Batten School of Coastal and Marine Sciences. She and her family have also made significant donations to the University of Virginia, Old Dominion University and Virginia Tech

Scholarships bearing the Batten name have helped thousands of students, VWU said. The university based its most recent 10-year plan on Jane Batten’s ideals and credits it for helping drive significant growth in VWU’s enrollment, academic offerings, facilities and global reach.

Chartered in 1961 as a private liberal arts college, Virginia Wesleyan is situated on a 300-acre campus in Virginia Beach and has about 2,100 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs. The university also has a Tokyo campus and instructional sites at two correctional centers in Chesapeake. Next year, the Sentara College of Health Sciences will be integrated into the university, pending accreditation approval.