Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)
Virginia Tech (VT), formally Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI), is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six regions statewide, a research center in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, and a study-abroad site in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland. Through its Corps of Cadets ROTC program, Virginia Tech is a senior military college.
Virginia Tech offers 280 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to some 34,400 students; as of 2015, it was the state's second-largest public university by enrollment. It is ranked among the top 50 universities in the United States for total research expenditures, top 25 in computer and information sciences, and top 10 in engineering, the latter two of which are the highest rankings in the state, and manages a $522 million research portfolio. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".
VT has produced two Rhodes Scholars, four Marshall Scholars, 38 Goldwater Scholars, and 131 Fulbright Scholars. Among its alumni are eight Medal of Honor recipients, 97 flag officers, governors of two U.S. states, two astronauts, and one billionaire. Three Nobel laureates and one MacArthur Fellow have received a degree or served as faculty members at the university. As of 2015, VT had more than 240,000 living alumni worldwide.
The university's athletic teams are known as the Virginia Tech Hokies and compete in Division I of the NCAA as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
In 1872, with federal funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862, the Reconstruction-era Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of Preston and Olin Institute, a small Methodist school for boys in Southwest Virginia's rural Montgomery County. That same year, 250 acre of the adjoining Solitude Farm including the house and several farm buildings on the estate were acquired for $21,250 from Robert Taylor Preston, a son of Governor of Virginia, James Patton Preston. The commonwealth incorporated a new institution on the site, a state-supported land-grant military institute named Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.
Virginia Tech's first student, Addison "Add" Caldwell registered on October 1, 1872, after hiking over 25 miles from his home in Craig County, Virginia. A statue, located in the Upper Quad of campus commemorates Add's journey to enroll. First-year cadets and their training cadre re-enact Addison Caldwell's journey every year in the Caldwell March. They complete the first half of the 26-mile march in the fall and the second half in the spring.
The first five presidents of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College served in the Confederate States Army or the Confederate government during the Civil War as did many of its early professors including the first Commandant, James H. Lane, a VMI graduate and former Confederate General who taught civil engineering and commerce at the college and is the namesake of Lane Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, built in 1888. Its third president, Thomas Nelson Conrad, was a notorious Confederate spy who ran a covert intelligence gathering operation from a home in the heart of Washington, D.C.. Its sixth president, Paul Brandon Barringer, was a son of Confederate General Rufus Barringer and a nephew of Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Daniel Harvey Hill.
In a nod to this southern heritage the Confederate Battle Flag was traditionally waved by cheerleaders at Virginia Tech football games and the Highty-Tighties played Dixie as a fight song when the Hokies scored a touchdown. A large Confederate flag also hung inside Cassell Coliseum where Virginia Tech basketball games are played. Since 1963, "Skipper", a replica of a Civil War cannon has been fired at football games by members of the Corps of Cadets when the team scores. The Confederate Flag was also prominently featured on all Virginia Tech class rings. The display of the Confederate flag at athletic events ended in the late 1960s after Marguerite Harper, a black woman attending Virginia Tech on a Rockefeller Scholarship for culturally disadvantaged students, was elected to the student senate during her sophomore year and made a successful resolution to end the practice. Following the resolution there was a large demonstration in opposition to the removal of the Confederate flag. The campus was covered in Confederate flags and Dixie was blasting from dormitory windows. Harper and her white roommate received hate mail and threatening phone calls, but the resolution stood, and the display of the rebel flag ended in 1969. The Confederate flag on Virginia Tech class rings became optional in 1972 and could be left off of the ring at the student's request. The Confederate flag has since been removed from class ring designs entirely.
Under the leadership of seventh president Joseph Dupuy Eggleston, who held the position from 1913 to 1919, the university established a Reserve Officer Training Corps to support national efforts during World War I.
In 1917, physics professor Charles E. Vawter, Jr. (son of Charles E. Vawter, who had served on the VPI board of visitors from 1886 to 1900), shot Stockton Heth, Jr., a scion of one of Montgomery County's wealthiest families, in his campus home on faculty row. Heth, who lived at Whitethorne, an antebellum mansion on a 1,500-acre estate near Blacksburg, later died of his wounds. Due to the Heth family's wealth and political connections, Vawter's position as head of the VPI physics department, and the extramarital affair that led to the shooting, the resulting murder trial was one of the most sensational in Virginia history (Vawter was acquitted, and left the school). Eggleston attempted to suppress news of the affair in the media with considerable success, most likely due to world events that stole the headlines in the spring of 1917, rather than his efforts to protect VPI's reputation.
Virginia Tech offers 280 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to some 34,400 students; as of 2015, it was the state's second-largest public university by enrollment. It is ranked among the top 50 universities in the United States for total research expenditures, top 25 in computer and information sciences, and top 10 in engineering, the latter two of which are the highest rankings in the state, and manages a $522 million research portfolio. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".
VT has produced two Rhodes Scholars, four Marshall Scholars, 38 Goldwater Scholars, and 131 Fulbright Scholars. Among its alumni are eight Medal of Honor recipients, 97 flag officers, governors of two U.S. states, two astronauts, and one billionaire. Three Nobel laureates and one MacArthur Fellow have received a degree or served as faculty members at the university. As of 2015, VT had more than 240,000 living alumni worldwide.
The university's athletic teams are known as the Virginia Tech Hokies and compete in Division I of the NCAA as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
In 1872, with federal funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862, the Reconstruction-era Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of Preston and Olin Institute, a small Methodist school for boys in Southwest Virginia's rural Montgomery County. That same year, 250 acre of the adjoining Solitude Farm including the house and several farm buildings on the estate were acquired for $21,250 from Robert Taylor Preston, a son of Governor of Virginia, James Patton Preston. The commonwealth incorporated a new institution on the site, a state-supported land-grant military institute named Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.
Virginia Tech's first student, Addison "Add" Caldwell registered on October 1, 1872, after hiking over 25 miles from his home in Craig County, Virginia. A statue, located in the Upper Quad of campus commemorates Add's journey to enroll. First-year cadets and their training cadre re-enact Addison Caldwell's journey every year in the Caldwell March. They complete the first half of the 26-mile march in the fall and the second half in the spring.
The first five presidents of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College served in the Confederate States Army or the Confederate government during the Civil War as did many of its early professors including the first Commandant, James H. Lane, a VMI graduate and former Confederate General who taught civil engineering and commerce at the college and is the namesake of Lane Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, built in 1888. Its third president, Thomas Nelson Conrad, was a notorious Confederate spy who ran a covert intelligence gathering operation from a home in the heart of Washington, D.C.. Its sixth president, Paul Brandon Barringer, was a son of Confederate General Rufus Barringer and a nephew of Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Daniel Harvey Hill.
In a nod to this southern heritage the Confederate Battle Flag was traditionally waved by cheerleaders at Virginia Tech football games and the Highty-Tighties played Dixie as a fight song when the Hokies scored a touchdown. A large Confederate flag also hung inside Cassell Coliseum where Virginia Tech basketball games are played. Since 1963, "Skipper", a replica of a Civil War cannon has been fired at football games by members of the Corps of Cadets when the team scores. The Confederate Flag was also prominently featured on all Virginia Tech class rings. The display of the Confederate flag at athletic events ended in the late 1960s after Marguerite Harper, a black woman attending Virginia Tech on a Rockefeller Scholarship for culturally disadvantaged students, was elected to the student senate during her sophomore year and made a successful resolution to end the practice. Following the resolution there was a large demonstration in opposition to the removal of the Confederate flag. The campus was covered in Confederate flags and Dixie was blasting from dormitory windows. Harper and her white roommate received hate mail and threatening phone calls, but the resolution stood, and the display of the rebel flag ended in 1969. The Confederate flag on Virginia Tech class rings became optional in 1972 and could be left off of the ring at the student's request. The Confederate flag has since been removed from class ring designs entirely.
Under the leadership of seventh president Joseph Dupuy Eggleston, who held the position from 1913 to 1919, the university established a Reserve Officer Training Corps to support national efforts during World War I.
In 1917, physics professor Charles E. Vawter, Jr. (son of Charles E. Vawter, who had served on the VPI board of visitors from 1886 to 1900), shot Stockton Heth, Jr., a scion of one of Montgomery County's wealthiest families, in his campus home on faculty row. Heth, who lived at Whitethorne, an antebellum mansion on a 1,500-acre estate near Blacksburg, later died of his wounds. Due to the Heth family's wealth and political connections, Vawter's position as head of the VPI physics department, and the extramarital affair that led to the shooting, the resulting murder trial was one of the most sensational in Virginia history (Vawter was acquitted, and left the school). Eggleston attempted to suppress news of the affair in the media with considerable success, most likely due to world events that stole the headlines in the spring of 1917, rather than his efforts to protect VPI's reputation.
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