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In the most recent (2004) survey of the Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies, Inc., the Virginia Tech College of Engineering ranks eighth nationally for the number of undergraduate degrees awarded. “America's Best Colleges 2007” survey, released by U.S. News & World Report in August 2006, ranks Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering's undergraduate program 17th in the nation among all accredited engineering schools that offer doctorates, and ninth at public universities. The Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, ranked the highest of all Virginia Tech graduate departments, at eighth. The graduate survey also ranked Tech's aerospace engineering, environmental engineering, mechanical engineering programs in the top 20, and electrical engineering, materials engineering, and computer engineering in the top 30[http://www.collegiatetimes.com/news/1/ARTICLE/6891/2006-04-11.html]. In addition the Pamplin College of Business's undergraduate program was ranked 37th overall among all 418 U.S. undergraduate programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International and 24th among all public institutions.
In the most recent (2004) survey of the Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies, Inc., the Virginia Tech College of Engineering ranks eighth nationally for the number of undergraduate degrees awarded. “America's Best Colleges 2007” survey, released by U.S. News & World Report in August 2006, ranks Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering's undergraduate program 17th in the nation among all accredited engineering schools that offer doctorates, and ninth at public universities. The Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, ranked the highest of all Virginia Tech graduate departments, at eighth. The graduate survey also ranked Tech's aerospace engineering, environmental engineering, mechanical engineering programs in the top 20, and electrical engineering, materials engineering, and computer engineering in the top 30[http://www.collegiatetimes.com/news/1/ARTICLE/6891/2006-04-11.html]. In addition the Pamplin College of Business's undergraduate program was ranked 37th overall among all 418 U.S. undergraduate programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International and 24th among all public institutions.

Interestingly, the university's academic community has coined an interesting word associated with the distribution of old test and study materials. Within the Virginia Tech community old tests and study guides are referred to as '[[koofer | koofers]]',<ref>http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs2604/SummerI_2003/Notes/KooferPolicy.pdf</ref> <ref>http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs1704/fall.98/koofers/FinalExamKoofer.pdf</ref> a word that has its origin in the word '[[coffer]]' and originated from the students at a now defunct extension of the university at [[Bluefield College]].


==Campus==
==Campus==

Revision as of 05:32, 4 December 2006

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)
File:VTSeal.gif
MottoUt Prosim (Latin, "That I May Serve")
TypeLand-grant
Established1872
Endowment$408.6 million (June 2005)
PresidentCharles W. Steger
Students28,000
Undergraduates21,400
Location
Blacksburg
,
Virginia
,
United States
CampusSuburban, 2,600 acres
AthleticsDivision I Atlantic Coast Conference, 17 varsity teams
ColorsBurnt Orange and
Chicago Maroon
MascotHokie Bird
Websitewww.vt.edu

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, better known as Virginia Tech (also formerly known as VPI), is a public land grant polytechnic university in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. Although it is a comprehensive university with many strong departments, the agriculture, engineering, architecture, forestry, and veterinary medicine programs are considered to be among its strongest. It is also one of only two universities in the country with a full-time military component within a larger civilian university.

In addition to its research and academic programs, Virginia Tech is known for its campus and location in the New River Valley of southwestern Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a part of the Appalachian Mountains. The university's public profile has also been raised significantly in recent years by the success of its football program.

History

In 1872, the Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of a small Methodist school called the Olin and Preston Institute in rural Montgomery County with federal funds provided by the Morrill Act. The Commonwealth incorporated a new institution on that site, a state-supported land grant military institute called the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.

Under the 1891-1907 presidency of John M. McBryde, the school reorganized its academic programs into a traditional four-year college setup (including the renaming of the mechanics department to engineering); this led to an 1896 name change to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute. The "Agricultural and Mechanical College" section of the name was popularly omitted almost immediately, though the name was not officially changed to Virginia Polytechnic Institute until 1944 as part of a short-lived merger with what is now Radford University. VPI achieved full accreditation in 1923, and the requirement of participation in the Corps of Cadets was dropped from four years to two that same year (for men only; women, when they began enrolling in the 1920s, were never required to join).

VT Presidents of
Virginia Tech
Charles L. C. Minor 1872-1879
John L. Buchanan 1879-1882
Thomas N. Conrad 1882-1886
L. L. Lomax 1886-1891
John M. McBryde 1891-1907
Paul B. Barringer 1907-1913
Joseph D. Eggleston 1913-1919
Julian A. Burruss 1919-1945
John R. Hutcheson 1945-1947
Walter S. Newman 1947-1962
T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. 1962-1974
William E. Lavery 1975-1987
James D. McComas 1988-1994
Paul E. Torgersen 1994-1999
Charles W. Steger 2000-

VPI President T. Marshall Hahn, whose tenure ran from 1962 to 1974, was responsible for many of the changes that shaped the modern institution of Virginia Tech. The merger with Radford was dissolved in 1964, and in 1966, the school dropped the two-year military Corps training requirement for its male students. In 1973, women were allowed to join the Corps; Virginia Tech was the first school in the nation to open its military wing to women. One of Hahn's more controversial missions was only partially achieved. He had visions of renaming the school from VPI to Virginia State University, reflecting the status it had achieved as a full-fledged public education & research university. As part of this move, Virginia Tech would have taken over control of the state's other land-grant institution, a historically black college in Ettrick, Virginia, south of Richmond, then called Virginia State College. This plan failed to take root, and that school eventually became Virginia State University. As a compromise, VPI added "and State University" to its name in 1970, yielding the current formal name of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The new acronym of VPI&SU was derisively spoken as Vippy-sue by some students and Hahn detractors. In the early 1990s, the school quietly authorized the official use of Virginia Tech as equivalent to the full VPI&SU name. Many school documents today use the shorter name, though diplomas and transcripts still spell out the formal name. Similarly, the abbreviation VT is far more common today than VPI or VPI&SU, and appears everywhere, from athletic uniforms, to the university's Internet domain name vt.edu.

Admissions

For the fall 2006 freshman class, Virginia Tech received 19,046 applications. Approximately 21 percent of the freshman class was filled by early decision candidates. Grades and SAT scores continue to rise. The typical fall 2006 freshman had a high school grade point average of 3.80 on a 4.0 scale, with a middle range of 3.38 to 3.95. The average cumulative SAT score was 1231, with a middle range of 1140 to 1330. However, the gradepoint average for accepted freshmen for fall of 2006 has increased to a range of 3.54 to 4.01. SAT scores remain the same.

[1]

Academics

Virginia Tech offers 60 Bachelor's degree programs and 140 Master's and Doctoral degree programs through the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, the College of Architecture & Urban Studies, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, the Pamplin College of Business, the College of Engineering, the College of Natural Resources, the College of Science, and the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences offers the only two-year associate's degree program on campus, in agricultural technology. The ten most popular majors for the incoming class of 2005 were University Studies (Undeclared), General Engineering, Business (Undeclared), Biology, Communication, Psychology, Marketing, Political Science, Animal and Poultry Sciences, and Architecture.

Virginia Tech boasts one of the best higher education programs in the country. In 2006, it was ranked among the top 100 higher education institutions in the United States. Its College of Engineering is ranked as one of the top 20 engineering programs in the country and its College of Architecture is ranked as one of the top ten in the nation in Design Intelligence's2005 survey and 4th in the 2004 survey. The Times, a national newspaper in the UK, ranked Tech as one of the top 200 universities in the world.

In the most recent (2004) survey of the Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies, Inc., the Virginia Tech College of Engineering ranks eighth nationally for the number of undergraduate degrees awarded. “America's Best Colleges 2007” survey, released by U.S. News & World Report in August 2006, ranks Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering's undergraduate program 17th in the nation among all accredited engineering schools that offer doctorates, and ninth at public universities. The Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, ranked the highest of all Virginia Tech graduate departments, at eighth. The graduate survey also ranked Tech's aerospace engineering, environmental engineering, mechanical engineering programs in the top 20, and electrical engineering, materials engineering, and computer engineering in the top 30[1]. In addition the Pamplin College of Business's undergraduate program was ranked 37th overall among all 418 U.S. undergraduate programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International and 24th among all public institutions.

Interestingly, the university's academic community has coined an interesting word associated with the distribution of old test and study materials. Within the Virginia Tech community old tests and study guides are referred to as ' koofers',[2] [3] a word that has its origin in the word 'coffer' and originated from the students at a now defunct extension of the university at Bluefield College.

Campus

Main article: Virginia Tech campus
Burruss Hall, signature building on the Virginia Tech campus.

The Virginia Tech campus is located in Blacksburg, Virginia. The central campus is roughly bordered by Prices Fork Road to the northwest, Plantation Drive to the west, Main Street to the east, and 460-bypass to the south, though it has several thousand acres beyond the central campus. The university has established branch campus centers in Hampton Roads (Virginia Beach), the National Capital Region (Falls Church - Alexandria, Virginia), Richmond, Roanoke, and the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon.

On the Blacksburg campus, the majority of the buildings incorporate Hokie Stone as a building material. Hokie Stone is a medley of different colored limestone, often including dolomite. Each block of Hokie Stone is some combination of gray, brown, black, pink, orange, and maroon. The limestone is mined from various quarries in Southwestern Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama, one of which has been operated by the university since the 1950s.


Virgina Tech also has one of the top dining programs in the country.( Currently ranked #2 by the Princeton Review) It has seven dining centers which included Squires food court (Au Bon Pan & Sbarro), Owens Food Court, Hokie Grill (Chic-fil-A, Pizza Hut, Cinnabon), D2 & DXpress, Shultz & Shultz Express, Deets Place, and the high end West End Market. Virginia Tech also has a catering center, Personal Touch Catering.

Athletics

Main article: Virginia Tech Hokies
File:VT Emblem.gif

Virginia Tech's sports teams are called the Hokies, except for the swim team which uses a variant ("H2Okies", a play on the chemical formula for water). Tech teams participate in the NCAA's Division I-A in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which the school joined in 2004 after leaving the Big East.

The word "Hokies," which originated from the Old Hokie spirit yell, is often used interchangeably with "Fighting Gobblers" to refer to the sports team, fans, students, or alumni, although the former is the official usage. The word "Hokies" originated in the 1890s; see Hokies for more information. The school mascot is the Hokie Bird, a turkey-like creature. The teams were originally known as the "Fighting Gobblers," and the turkey motif was retained despite the name change.

The stylized VT (the abbreviation for Virginia Tech) is used primarily by the athletic department as a symbol for Virginia Tech athletic teams. The "athletic VT" symbol is trademarked by the university and appears frequently on licensed merchandise, and is occasionally referred to colloquially as the "square root of one" for its resemblance to that mathematical figure.

During the early years of VPI, a rivalry developed between it and Virginia Military Institute. This rivalry developed into the original "Military Classic of the South," an annual football game between VMI and VPI usually held on Thanksgiving Day in Roanoke, Virginia. That series ended after the 1984 season; VMI had elected to play at the Division I-AA level after the NCAA's 1982 divisional split for football, and the schools' wide disparity in size had led to a similar imbalance in results. Another long-standing rivalry, with the University of Virginia, strengthened concurrently with Tech's growth spurt of the 1960s and 1970s; the Cavaliers are now the Hokies' primary program-wide athletic rival.

Virginia Tech's fight song, Tech Triumph, was written in 1919 and remains in use today. Tech Triumph is played at sporting events by both the Virginia Tech band, The Marching Virginians, and the Corps of Cadets' band, the Highty Tighties. The Old Hokie spirit yell, in use since 1896, is familiar to all Virginia Tech fans.

Virginia Tech's football team plays home games in Lane Stadium, considered one of the loudest stadiums in the country and recognized in 2005 by rivals.com as having the best homefield advantage in the country.[4] The team has a long history of a wide variety of traditions that foster increased participation by the fans, the corps of cadets, and the bands.

Head coach Frank Beamer has become one of the winningest currently active head coaches in Division I-A football with 178 wins following the 2005 season. The Hokies currently have the fifth longest bowl streak in the country, having participated in bowl games in each of the last 13 seasons. Since the 1995 season, the Hokies have finished with a top-10 ranking four times, won four conference championships (three Big East and one ACC), and played once for the national championship, losing to Florida State University 46-29 in the 2000 Sugar Bowl. Annually, Virginia Tech plays its traditional rival, the University of Virginia, for the Commonwealth Cup.

Virginia Tech's men's basketball team has seen a resurgence of fan support under coach Seth Greenberg. Prior to Coach Greenberg's arrival in Blacksburg, the Virginia Tech men had not had a winning season since the 1995-1996 season when they had received a bid to the NCAA tournament.

Virginia Tech's women's basketball team, led by coach Beth Dunkenberger, is a fixture in postseason play, having received a berth to the NCAA tournament each of the last four seasons. Virginia Tech's women have been in postseason play every year since the 1997-98 season, Bonnie Henrickson's first season as the head coach of the Hokies.

Both basketball teams play their home games in Cassell Coliseum.

Virginia Tech's recently retired baseball coach, Chuck Hartman, finished his career as the fourth winningest coach in Division I baseball history with a 1,444-816-8 record, including a 961-591-8 mark in his 28 seasons at Tech.

Affiliated institutions

The Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, founded in 1978, is a separate institution on the same campus, funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia and the state of Maryland and jointly operated by VT and the University of Maryland. VMRCVM and VT jointly operate an equine center in Leesburg, Virginia, and VMRCVM has a small operation on the University of Maryland's College Park, Maryland campus.

In 2003, a school of osteopathic medicine called the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) opened in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, an office park adjacent to, and owned and operated by the university as a local business incubator. VCOM is incorporated as a private, non-profit institution with no state interest, but it is very closely affiliated with Virginia Tech on an operational level.

In 2002, a biomedical engineering program, called the School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (SBES), was created as a cooperative venture between Virginia Tech and Wake Forest University. SBES offers opportunities to undergraduates and grants M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering.

Virginia Tech has recently developed a relationship with the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond located in Richmond, Virginia. The relationship consists of a joint degree program between the VT College of Science and Richmond Law, which allows a student entering VT to earn both a B.S. from VT and a J.D. from Richmond in a total of six years.

Distinguished alumni

Sports

Baseball

Basketball

Football

Military

Business, government, and academia

Research computing

In 2003, Virginia Tech created a supercomputer which ranked as the 3rd fastest in the world. The system was made from 1100 dual processor Power Macintosh G5s and cost US$5.2 million. The supercomputer, called System X, was disassembled shortly after it was ranked in order for it to be replaced with Apple's rack-based servers which consume both less space and power.

Internet networking research is an important part of Virginia Tech's history. It has participated in Suranet, Internet2, Abilene, the Lambda Rail and other such networks. Virginia Tech also participates in the management of Net.Work.Virginia and the Mid Atlantic Crossroads.

Points of interest

References

  1. ^ Information can be verified at http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/story.php?relyear=2006&itemno=406
  2. ^ http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs2604/SummerI_2003/Notes/KooferPolicy.pdf
  3. ^ http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs1704/fall.98/koofers/FinalExamKoofer.pdf
  4. ^ Lane Statium rating by Rivals.com
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