Board approves reorganization of academic programs and new college name; authorizes university to convey ownership of the Northern Virginia Center

Editor's note: This story has been updated with the correct dates for the next meeting of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

At its quarterly meeting held today in Blacksburg, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors authorized the university to finalize negotiations to convey its interest of the Northern Virginia Center to the City of Falls Church.

This real estate transaction will provide financial support to advance the university’s work to realign programs in Northern Virginia around core research strengths and clear the way for the City of Falls Church, Fairfax County, and partners to move forward with an important project to develop a mixed-use district around the West Falls Church Metro station.

As part of a broader redevelopment project in Falls Church, Virginia Tech is planning to establish a center for smart construction in Falls Church in collaboration with top national commercial construction firm HITT Contracting. Read the full story.

The board also approved a resolution to reorganize the colleges of architecture and urban studies, engineering, and liberal arts and human sciences and to approve the renaming of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies to the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design. Formal adoption of these changes are pending approval by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Read details on the changes.

Each year at the spring board meeting, the university traditionally brings a tuition and fee rate recommendation to the board to incorporate the outcome of the General Assembly session into the rate development process. However, as of today’s meeting, the General Assembly has not yet completed the state budget, and as a result, the university does not have complete information to develop tuition and fee rates for the 2022-23 academic year. Once a final state budget is approved, the university will finalize a tuition and fee recommendation to be reviewed by the board at a future meeting.

The board also approved a resolution on compensation for graduate assistants for the 2022-23 academic year. Graduate assistants provide a valuable service to the university and contribute to the advancement of the university’s strategic vision. For a second consecutive year, Virginia Tech will advance the stipend scale for graduate assistants by providing a stipend increase of 5 percent, effective Aug. 10, 2022. Graduate assistants will continue to receive tuition remission, a stipend supplement of $458 to help mitigate university assigned costs, and the university will pay 88 percent of the annual premium cost of the basic health insurance plan.

In other actions, the board approved an $8 million planning authorization to complete designs through working drawings for a new Pamplin College of Business building. The Campus Master Plan and the Six-Year Capital Outlay Plan include a new building for the Pamplin College of Business as part of the university’s Global Business and Analytics Complex.

The new Pamplin building is envisioned as an approximately 104,000-gross-square-foot, four-story structure that will connect with the Data and Decision Sciences Building (currently under construction near Prices Fork Road and West Campus Drive) through a common area and provide expanded, modern educational space sufficient to meet demand for the business programs. The total project budget is approximately $80 million, and the funding plan calls for entirely non-general fund support.

At Sunday’s full-board information session, Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of the Innovation Campus, provided board members with an update on the initiative. Scott Midkiff, vice president for information technology and chief information officer, spoke on the university’s IT transformation project; and Vice President for Student Affairs Frank Shushok Jr. and Bob Broyden, associate vice president for campus planning capital financing, shared a high-level vision for a proposed Student Life Village potentially located on the northwest side of campus.

At the full board session Monday, the board announced the selection of the 2022-23 undergraduate and graduate student representatives. Jamal Ross, a senior majoring in political science and politics, philosophy, and economics in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, will be the undergraduate student representative. Anna Buhle, a third-year medical student at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, will be the graduate/professional student representative.

Ross and Buhle will serve one-year terms beginning July 1. An article introducing the new student representatives will be published in VTx.

The board approved resolutions appointing five faculty members to endowed professorships or fellowships, 18 individuals were honored with emerita or emeritus status, and 77 faculty research leaves were approved. Individual stories on these appointments and honors will be published in the Virginia Tech Daily.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors will be June 6-7, 2022 in Blacksburg. More information on the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors may be found online.