Since its founding in 1872, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, popularly known as Virginia Tech, has evolved into a comprehensive university of national and international prominence. As Virginia's largest university with 28,000 students (including off-campus) and about 180 degree programs, it is an institution that firmly embraces a history of putting knowledge to work. That tradition is rooted in our motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), and our land-grant missions of instruction, research, and solving the problems of society through public service and outreach activities.

Instruction

Our eight colleges (agriculture and life sciences, architecture and urban studies, Pamplin business, engineering, liberal arts and human sciences, natural resources, science, and veterinary medicine) offer more degree programs than any other university in the state. Virginia Tech is also one of the nation's leaders in developing and using new instructional technologies.

Research

With annual research expenditures of about $248 million, Virginia Tech consistently ranks among the top 50 research universities in the United States. With more than 100 research centers, the university also ranks among the top institutions in industry-supported research and near the top 10 in the number of patents issued each year. The university's faculty and students are involved in more than 4,000 research projects in fields ranging from biotechnology to bioinformatics, from the environment and energy to food and health, and from transportation to computing information.

Public Service

As part of its outreach mission, Virginia Tech is involved in a multitude of economic development and community, state, national, and international development projects. For example, it helps global marketing efforts, investigates better uses for strip-mined land, helps clean the Chesapeake Bay and other state waterways, and directs reforestation in Senegal.

Outreach efforts focus on education and the dissemination of knowledge in the global society in which we live. Professionals, organizations, and communities tap Virginia Tech's vast resources, expertise, and research results through hundreds of continuing education programs, all part of Outreach Program Development. Virginia Tech has a long history of providing innovative distance learning techniques, such as satellite videoconferencing, multimedia, interactive video, interactive computer conferencing, and web-based courses to meet the various needs of working adults and other nontraditional students.

Virginia Tech manages more than $30 million in funded economic development projects in 27 countries and encourages faculty members to develop global course content and study abroad opportunities for students. In 2002-03, 2,089 students from 113 foreign countries studied at Virginia Tech, and more than 800 Virginia Tech students participated in study abroad programs.

Virginia Cooperative Extension, operated jointly in the commonwealth by Virginia Tech and Virginia State University, has been helping people improve their economic, cultural, and social well-being for 90 years now. With 107 city/county offices and tens of thousands of volunteers, Extension reaches and teaches countless Virginians annually.

Interesting Facts

• The university currently has an annual budget of about $726 million.
• Virginia Tech produces 40 percent of the Ph.D.s in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
• Virginia Tech is an international leader in technology. All campus facilities, including residence halls, have high-speed connections to voice, data, and video communications. Additionally, the university was the visionary leader of the internationally recognized Blacksburg Electronic Village, connecting the town and campus with each other and to the world. More recently, it constructed the fastest university computer in the world.
• Virginia Tech, through the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, is one of three public universities in the country that offers the combined advantages of a military-style leadership development program, through the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, and a traditional civilian academic and social life.

Among the university's rankings and awards:

• U.S. News & World Report ranked Virginia Tech 32nd among national public universities. Of all universities - public or private - it ranked Tech 73rd.
• U.S. News & World Report ranked the university's undergraduate engineering program 17th in the nation (11th among public universities), its graduate engineering program 32nd, and the Pamplin College of Business undergraduate program 39th. Seven individual graduate engineering programs were ranked in the top 30 of their kind.
• The Corporate Research Center was cited for best practice of technology transfer in a national study.
• U.S. News & World Report ranked Virginia Tech's graduate program in public affairs number 26 nationally, its graduate program in public management administration 13th, and its graduate program in vocational and technical education 5th.
• The National Science Foundation ranked Virginia Tech's $68.7 million agriculture and natural resource research program ninth in the nation.