Meet a Hokie: Ryan King
Ryan King is the 2019 Graduate Student Representative to Virginia Tech's Board of Visitors. He's a fourth year Ph.D. student in the translational biology, medicine and health program at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. King joined the Board of Visitors in an effort to advocate for students working on extended campuses.
[00:00:02]
>> I am a fourth year P.h.D candidate in the the translational biology medicine and health program. When I first came to Virginia Tech I wanted to kind of be a little bit more involved because when I was undergrad, I really wasn't involved with student governance in any way and I regretted a bit of that.
[00:00:18]
I wanted to advocate a little bit more for services for students on extended campuses. It was kind of like we were a secondary thought to Virginia Tech, at least that was the students' perception. When I got this position, I realized there's actually a lot of work that's being done to try to advance the cause for students on extended campuses.
[00:00:35]
I think that myself and probably a lot of students are quite naive to what actually happens to run a university. I'd never realized that was as big and complex as it truly is. I've learned through interactions that I get to have with the higher administration at Virginia Tech that student voices are really valued and I think sometimes that's lost because you hear students, or I have been a student that walks around griping about some issue and you're like nobody's paying attention, nobody's paying attention.
[00:01:02]
And it's been great to actually see, no they pay a lot of attention when these student opinions come in, they are heard.