Campaign Priorities

Virginia Tech has outlined the following funding priorities in which we will concentrate our future effort. Gifts made to any of these areas will affect lives on all corners of this campus and around the world.

 

Academic Excellence

We will strengthen and pursue our vision of academic excellence, for the academic experience is at the heart of all we do. We must create and sustain endowed chairs and professorships at levels that will allow us to compete not only with other universities for the attention of the world's brightest minds, but with the private sector as well. Only by so doing can we attract and retain the caliber of faculty and researchers so critical to our current success, as well as our promising future. We must provide faculty fellowships to give these remarkable educators the intellectual breathing room they need to develop innovative classroom and research techniques, and lead the university's charge to a bold future. Our graduate programs must be bolstered and enriched, in order to nurture the kind of productive study and collaboration that generates superior scholarship and innovative and practical research results. And finally, we must invigorate our libraries, creating the physical facilities and bringing both print and electronic resources to a level befitting the university of the future, while recognizing the special role that our libraries play at the intersection of intellectual curiosity and existing knowledge.

 

The Undergraduate Experience

Today's undergraduate students come to us with both greater need and greater potential than ever before. They are a product of a generation in which knowledge -- the sheer quantity of what can be known -- has increased exponentially, and advances in technology and pedagogy have given them untold opportunities to benefit from that knowledge. But, just as their opportunities have increased, so too, has the cost of educating this generation to these high standards.If the university is to succeed in inventing the future, it will do so, in part, because of its ability to attract, enrich, and engage these thirsty young minds. Accordingly, we will enhance the undergraduate experience by moving decisively to address the growing gap between tuition and the actual cost of a university education by devoting significant resources to both need-based and merit-based scholarships. We will enrich the lives of our undergraduates with significant support for study-abroad options and multicultural initiatives. And we will honor the longstanding traditions embodied by the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets and our athletic programs. For Virginia Tech, this is not a radical new path forward. It is an extension of a proud tradition into a bold and exciting future.

 

Research Facilities

We live in an age in which the demands of the research process are undergoing great change. Today, the most successful research efforts are collaborative, and likely to combine ideas and insights from across a wide array of disciplines. This kind of collaboration does more than generate results. It generates new fields of knowledge, new hypotheses, and an even greater demand for testing those hypotheses. If innovation is to be our outcome, we need modern, well-equipped research facilities to serve as the incubators for such innovation. In recognition of the role that modern, well-equipped facilities play in the kinds of cross-disciplinary research efforts that yield such great dividends for the university and the world, we will finance construction of leading-edge research and academic facilities across a wide variety of disciplines -- from veterinary medicine to life sciences to architecture. Unlike more traditional structures, these buildings will be flexible enough to bring together an astonishing array of multidisciplinary groups currently scattered across campus, as well as serve the needs of future collaborative groups that we have yet to imagine.

 

Virginia Tech and the Community

Without a clear focus on the world beyond its campus, no great university can reach its full potential for positive change. Virginia Tech has always made, and will continue to make, vital academic and cultural contributions to its many constituencies. Today, we stand poised to further enhance the quality of life for our students, faculty, and staff, as well as the surrounding region, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world. Our comprehensive arts initiative is designed not only to enrich the life of the university, but to bring an unprecedented level of engagement with the arts to the region. Support for our beloved Hokie athletics programs will raise our visibility and prominence on the national stage, and provide the loyal Hokie Nation with a deeper source for pride. We will expand our efforts to both improve our campus infrastructure, and explore new ways to capitalize on the natural beauty of our campus and surrounds. In addition, we will work to preserve campus landmarks having meaning to our community: Solitude and Lane Hall. Further, we will reach beyond the boundaries of our campus through our far-reaching and aggressive outreach initiatives, strengthening our leading role in the transfer of knowledge and expertise between the university and society, to the benefit of both.

 

President's Discovery Fund

Piloting a great and comprehensive institution requires a sure and steady hand and a definitive, well-plotted, and strategically mapped course of action. But today, more than ever before, successfully leading such an institution toward even bolder dreams requires more. It requires a keen sense of the lay of the land, and an uncanny vision for what lies just beyond the horizon, what opportunities a pattern of decisive and aggressive action may give rise to.In order to prepare the university to capitalize on such unforeseen opportunities, we will endow the President's Discovery Fund. This stream of unrestricted funding will give the leaders of our great university the latitude and resources to make bold decisions, and drive us toward our promising future. Whether supplementing available funds for hiring the world's finest minds, implementing innovative cross disciplinary programs, or simply providing the funds necessary to secure available matching grants, the President's Discovery Fund will give Virginia Tech the ability to sustain and build upon our current competitive advantages and act decisively as new strengths are discovered. This institutional nimbleness will, in turn, encourage bold action and allow us to bring our vision and our dreams of the future to life.