Looking back: 23* things we learned and did in 2023

John Jackson

21 Dec 2023

Ink and watercolor of the Topping Out ceremony at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus — A doodle by Steven White '92 captures the final steel beam placed on the 11th floor of Academic Building One, site of the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus, which is due to open in 2024.

Virginia Tech marks the end of the 2023 calendar year with many achievements and milestones. Here are 23 things, in random order, that stood out this year.

A 37-foot steel beam was signed by hundreds of workers as well as alumni, university leaders, faculty, community supporters, and partners involved in the design and construction of Academic Building One of the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus. Afterward, it was hoisted to the 11th floor and secured on the northeast side of the building.
Linsey Marr, the Charles P. Lunsford Professor and a University Distinguished Professor, was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, a highly prestigious award commonly called a “genius grant.” Marr was later featured on “60 Minutes” in a segment detailing the transmission of infectious diseases via airborne particles.
His Excellency Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi, president of Botswana, visited Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus in March. His appearance is believed to be the first time an international head of state visited Blacksburg.
The Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets first admitted women to its ranks 50 years ago, in the fall of 1973, with the formation of L Squadron, an all-women unit. Virginia Tech was the first military college — including service academies — to admit women, doing so without a court order that forced several other military colleges to allow women decades later.
For the eighth consecutive year, Virginia Tech was named a Diversity Champion in the 2023 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award selection from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine.
Throughout the year, Virginia Tech students studied abroad in over 50 countries on all seven continents.
More than 16,000 Hokies participated in Giving Day, raising more than $9.6 million for the university. The totals exceeded numbers of 15,787 and $8.4 million in the 2022 Giving Day.
Researchers in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are experimenting with a new approach to stop the spotted lanternfly, an invasive species responsible for billions of dollars in damage to crops and forests. The researchers are calling upon dog owners to use their pets’ scent work skills to sniff out spotted lanternfly eggs.
The Moss Arts Center, which marked 10 years of performances in 2023, welcomes over 30 professional artists to Blacksburg each year. In addition to the ticketed public performance, most artists who come to the Moss Arts Center participate in a customized range of rich experiences beyond the stage and gallery that connect artists with people from across Southwest Virginia — on-campus and off — including Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff; students from pre-kindergarten to high school; and community members.
President Tim Sands kicked off Homecoming weekend with a $500 million fundraising effort to launch Virginia Tech Advantage, a multiyear commitment to offer a broad educational experience to undergraduate students from Virginia who have financial need.
In addition, Sands introduced Virginia Tech Global Distinction, a commitment to institutional excellence across research, teaching, and engagement that makes the university a destination for the best faculty, students, and partners from the commonwealth, the nation, and the world.
Earlier this year, Virginia Tech was named the anchor institution for the Virginia Alliance for Semiconductor Technology, a statewide network to advance research, capitalize on economic opportunities, and cultivate a robust and diverse workforce in the development and production of semiconductors.
The Virginia Tech women’s basketball team reached the Final Four in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament for the first time in program history.
At one point in the new interactive theater piece “This Is Not a Scam!!,” a member of the ensemble cast delivered a poignant monologue about the relationship between older people and a quickly vanishing piece of technology: the landline phone. The sentiment spoke to the experiences of many real people who have fallen victim to telephone scams.
Researchers in the Pamplin College of Business examined the varied reactions to artificial intelligence (AI) by analyzing partisan media sentiment. The researchers found that articles from liberal-leaning media have a more negative sentiment toward AI than articles from conservative media.
The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine established a Department of Neurosurgery. Medical students will now have new avenues to focus on neurosurgery in their research, a major point of emphasis in the school’s curriculum.
Graduate and doctoral students explored dance as a way to communicate and interpret their research. Rachel Rugh in the School of Performing Arts, in partnership with the Center for Communicating Science, runs the Virginia Tech workshop for students as inspired by the international Dance Your Ph.D. competition run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In Southwest Virginia, two Virginia Tech undergraduates worked with a local voter registrar to improve the locality’s security score by more than 10 percent.
Plastics and soaps tend to have little in common when it comes to texture, appearance, and, most importantly, how they are used. But there is a surprising connection between the two on a molecular level: The chemical structure of polyethylene — one of the most commonly used plastics in the world today — is strikingly similar to that of a fatty acid, which is used as a chemical precursor to soap.
Students in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences collaborated to find out if walking shelter cats improved their chances of being adopted.
Graduate students from a variety of disciplines participated in a Flip the Fair event, which brought the students to the Melrose Branch Library in Roanoke to present their research to be judged by elementary schoolers.
University Libraries' Cheesy Nights tradition grew as it served up a record high 6,252 grilled cheese sandwiches during finals week of the fall semester.
In a study published in Nature Communications, Assistant Professor Sora Shin described the role of a molecule in the brain responsible for triggering overconsumption of comfort foods after a threatening event.