The story below is from our March/April 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
From “the global center of technology excellence” at its Innovation Campus in Alexandria, all the way to making sure you have a safe bicycle helmet, Tech is making its mark on the world.
Prominent Roanoke couple Heywood and Cynthia Fralin sent a strong message to our part of the state and beyond in December, when their charitable trust made a record $50 million donation to the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. Tech had never received a gift larger than half that size.
One result: The research center’s blossoming—which has played a major role in the total reinvention of Jefferson Street between Williamson and McClanahan—will now be under the nameplate of The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.
More broadly, according to the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center: The economic benefit from the Roanoke health sciences campus will grow from $214 million today to $462 million within eight years and create 828 new jobs—averaging $90,000 per year—over that same timeframe.
Heywood Fralin, chairman of Medical Facilities of America, said at the announcement: “I hope many others will come forward to support this emerging academic health center, because when it comes to Roanoke’s future, there is no bigger story.”
Overstated? Listen to another long-time advocate for Roanoke and its future. Warner Dalhouse, retired bank executive, director emeritus at Carilion Clinic, says this of the Virginia Tech/Carilion venture in Roanoke: “It is the most transformative thing to happen in the Roanoke Valley since the railroad came [in the 1880s]. In the next 10 years, it will be more so.”
And if those perspectives are the measure of Tech’s impact on Roanoke, then what is the overall scale of what’s going on at the entity still officially known as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University?
In a word: colossal. Consider just a few recent Tech national-scale developments in addition to the Fralin gift:
• Amazon, one of richest and most influential businesses anywhere, determined to place one of its two huge new facilities in Arlington, at least in part because a few years ago Tech decided to spend $1 billion on a million-square-foot facility in neighboring Alexandria, at which the future best and brightest of Amazon can be trained.
The Innovation Campus, says Tech President Timothy Sands, “will be the global center of technology excellence and talent production—where highly skilled students, world-class faculty, smart ideas, and forward-thinking companies will meet to propel the commonwealth and the region forward. It’s a watershed moment.”
Dean of Engineering Julia M. Ross puts it this way: “As a result of the Amazon project, students will have the opportunity to work with and learn from a company on the forefront of innovation and technology development, providing them with tremendous career opportunities at Amazon and beyond.”
• Dr. Marc Edwards, University Distinguished Professor who put Tech on the national map with his work on the Flint, Michigan water crisis, has become the country’s go-to expert in the field, to the extent that he, along with Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of Flint, was one of 10 finalists for Time magazine’s 2016 Person of the Year. His list of awards and recognitions have come from the likes of Smithsonian Magazine and The American Society of Civil Engineers.
• The contributions of more than 100 Tech students and faculty over several years propelled the United States’ lone entry in the 2018 Solar Decathlon Middle East to first place among more than 60 entrants. Tech’s FutureHAUS win was the result of the combined efforts and research from Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies, College of Engineering, Myers-Lawson School of Construction, Pamplin College of Business, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, College of Science.
There’s so much more. A glance at just a few superlatives from among Tech’s 10 colleges.
• The Virginia Tech-Wake Forest Center for Injury Biomechanics (CIB) has developed a system for rating protective sporting gear that is becoming universally accepted and causing something of a revolution in sport safety. Check your bike helmet’s effectiveness here: helmet.beam.vt.edu/bicycle-helmet-ratings.html
• The Transportation Institute—once the “Smart Road”—is internationally recognized for its safety and efficiency breakthroughs in automobiles and trucks, especially, but now airplanes, too.
• The DREAMS Lab (Design, Research, and Education for Additive Manufacturing Systems) is where 3D printing is getting jaw-dropping responses from industry.
• USAToday College and College Factual have repeatedly ranked Tech as the best university in the nation for studying natural resources and conservation.
• The College of Architecture and Urban Studies’ School of Architecture and Design is regularly ranked among the top 10 in the nation.
• The Master of Information Technology program is rated in the top three nationwide by U.S. News & World Report and CyberDegrees.org.
Joe Wheeler, co-director of Tech’s Center for Design Research characterizes the Tech explosion this way: “Our motto is ‘Invent the Future,’ and the digital revolution is next. This is just the beginning. Virginia Tech is in a position to explore what the possibilities really are.”
Wheeler says even he is amazed at the complexity of partnerships produced within and outside the university. He cites FutureHAUS as one example, and talks about “the energy, passion and drive of young minds” to set the design, environmental and construction industries on their ears.
How has all this come to pass? Ray Smoot, former CEO of the Virginia Tech Foundation, was at Tech when John Pratt contributed $10 million to Tech’s endowment, the largest gift ever at that point. Assets grew and pretty soon investment was bringing in more money, even though, says Smoot, “they were not done for investment reasons, but for programmatic reasons.”
In 1962, new President Marshall Hahn, who was only 35 at the time, “had an expansive view of what the university could become,” says Smoot. “He was the right man at the right time and we had a tidal wave of [Baby] Boomers coming in. He saw a significant opportunity to build research.”
Smoot says research investment is now $500 million.
“In the process, it became an economic engine for the region and the state in general,” says Smoot. “Tech has solidified and reinforced its position as a major research university … History has taught us that Tech is an institution always striving to do more.”
A succession of “just right for the moment” presidents, beginning with Hahn, has propelled Tech to the fore among the nation’s research universities. Beginning with Hahn and running through the solid administrations of William Lavery in 1975 (with a $50 million capital campaign goal, Lavery’s team raised $118 million), the energetic James McComas, the academic Paul Torgerson, the visionary Charles Steger and to current president Tim Sands, who has brought in a pile of money and influence.
As president, Sands was initially faced with opportunities which Tech “moved to implement,” he says, giving the distinct impression that Tech has been a beneficiary of the right president at the right time.
“Hahn put us on the track we’re on today,” he says. “Steger and [Ed] Murphy [of Carilion are responsible for the] Alexandria project, without which there would be no Amazon.” They also imagined and put into place the Virginia Tech-Carilion concept against huge institutional and cultural odds.
Tech has had the cyber initiative, for some time, according to Sands.
“Carilion added the medical,” he says, pointing out that when he interviewed for the Tech job, he was immediately attracted to “transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary structures already in place [putting Tech] way ahead of its time.”
With its co-op program, Tech was sending industry-ready students into the workplace with no debt, according to Sands.
“In some cases [Tech was] blazing trails, if not being first, then being in the first group,” he says. It was a classic case of what he calls hands on/minds on.
The $50 million gift and the state’s whole-hearted support of the medical school and research institute, Fralin says, “will change the nature of the Roanoke Valley and the New River Valley. [Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Executive Director Michael] Friedlander has 30 research teams now and that will double to 60, 400 people to 800, all headed by PhDs, making six figure salaries. What is now $125 million in research will go to $300 million in five years. That money will be spent in Roanoke.”
The large numbers “are snowballing,” says Dalhouse. “Soon, you won’t recognize this was a railroad town with blue collar workers.”
The medical school, Dalhouse says, is “unique in America with [physicians] having a research requirement.”
Fralin, meanwhile, envisions a Roanoke Valley of 500,000 to a million people (“depending on what level we want”) living smack dab in the middle of what’s basically a mid-sized country town now. Friedlander sees similar expansion “if we do this right … There’s no reason we can’t be as successful as [the University of Alabama-Birmingham, which is where he worked before VTC].” That expansion is legendary; UAB, in Alabama, stands for the University that Ate Birmingham, cracks Friedlander.
“We need enthusiastic support from the people who live here,” says Fralin. He sees government support “for buildings, equipment, creating structure with bond funding … the dividends would be overwhelming. The average income could be $90,000, where it is $35,000 now … It would raise the level of the quality of life with that income.”
Friedlander, of whom Fralin says, “I’ve never met a better recruiter,” stresses that the jobs would benefit locally.
“You think of bringing in people from the outside, but that’s just 10 percent or so. The vast majority already live in the area.”
At VTC, says Friedlander, it’s collaborative, “tightly integrated with what goes on at Tech. We are all deeply involved. I’m a professor of biological science and we work with the college of engineering, the veterinary school, agriculture and live sciences …our students are part of the greater university. We are deeply imbedded with Tech. If we were free-standing, we would not realize this [level of] success.” The medical college has graduated five classes—42 graduates in each class—and all of the graduates have been matched with positions.
Carilion Clinic CEO Nancy Agee, who, along with former Carilion CEO Murphy and former Tech President Steger, was party to the initial negotiations with Tech, sees “a lot of hard work and keeping our eye on the ball” as coming to fruition. “It’s no easier [than it has been], but it seems easier.” The Fralin gift “is transformative. Heywood captured the vision early and became so engaged … You can’t describe the importance of that much of a gift.”
Tim Sands, Agee says, “has been a great partner. It’s simpatico. We constantly see each other’s culture.” Agee becomes almost tearful when speaking of the legacy she will leave eventually.
“I wish my parents were here to see it. It has taken vision, guts, resources and it’s sometimes hard to believe. It was a partnership many didn’t think would work.”
Director Tom Dingus has been at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute virtually from the beginning and he has seen it evolve from the “Smart Highway” with a staff of 15 people, including students, into an internationally impactful program with 520 workers and eight buildings. It has a $50 million budget, half of which comes from private industry with a lot to gain from its programs. Among its 100 sponsors are 14 car manufacturers “that everyone could name,” Dingus says. It’s the largest transportation institute in the country.
“That’s interesting because people often don’t understand what it is or where it is,” says Dingus. “They don’t know who we are.”
They’re finding out: the VTTI is, he says, “making a big impact globally. We’re saving a lot of lives.”
The economic impact is equally eyebrow-raising. “When we started,” says Dingus, “we told the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors we hoped to eventually have an economic impact of $100 million. We do that every two years now.”
The VTTI road bed has been approved as a flight-testing facility. It is also ground zero for testing driverless vehicles, one of the hottest items in the automotive industry.
The College of Natural Resources and the Environment is the evolution of the agriculture department: cow college. That department has moved—as the need arose—to forestry research, forestry and wildlife and on to the environment and natural resources.
“It has allowed us to remain contemporary,” says Paul Winistorfer, dean of the College of Natural Resources and Professor of Wood Science and Forest Products. “Academic programs need to change, to upgrade curriculum and to modernize courses.”
Tech now offers a bachelor’s degree in water management and prominent among its researchers is Prof. Marc Edwards. He and Michigan State pediatrician/professor Mona Hanna-Attisha were honored by Time magazine as being among the nation’s most influential people. They figured out what was happening to Flint, Michigan’s water and the story became a national sensation. They were the 2016 commencement speakers at Tech. Edwards’ team earned a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. EPA.
Among projects in the college are those dealing with packaging systems where wood is the largest source of materials. Packaging is the third-largest sector in the world economy, says Winistorfer. “We must solve the renewable materials problem for the planet. Tech plays a central role in meteorology,” he says. That’s climate change and it “means saving lives” … again.
Tech has had the No. 1 forestry program in the U.S. for the past four years, Winistorfer says, and because Virginia is 65 percent forest, it results in $20 billion added to the economy.
All this has resulted in a doubling in enrollment in the college during the past five years. It has 1,050 undergrads and 300 graduate students.
Associate Dean Jack Lesko puts the problem/solution where it belongs: first.
“Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering continues to recruit top faculty talent that drives innovations in research and education,” he says. “Future state-of-the-art facilities will expand our ability to compete for and attract top faculty talent and external research funding from the federal government and industry. This growth has been driven by the demand state-wide, nationally and internationally, for engineering degrees. This in turn has made getting into Virginia Tech and the college more competitive, attracting some of the best students.”
It has also led to grumbling from Virginia families seeing their daughters and sons being rejected for admission, often in favor of foreign nationals, who pay a premium to attend.
Tech’s Master of Information Technology program, which runs through the College of Engineering and Pamplin College of Business, is ranked second in America by U.S. News and first by cyberdegrees.org for online master’s degrees. The MIT degree covers Health Information Systems, Software Development, Information Security, Business Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Networking, and Telecommunications, quite a cross-section for a student graduating into a competitive world. Lesko calls it “a hands-on education.”
It’s not just the graduates who benefit, either, says Lesko, because the “increases in research benefit the region.”
Glenda Scales, an associate dean for Global Engagement, Chief Technology Officer and Director of Engineering Online, says: “Online learning provides a flexible schedule that many working professionals need. Having access to prominent faculty and current topics in a virtual environment is instrumental in growing the field. Growth is about continually evolving the learning process and delivery systems. We are committed to that evolution. … We strive to position ourselves as an elite competitor.”
Because sport is at the center of so much of American life, Tech’s Helmet Lab and Center for Injury Biomechanics has absorbed a high-profile role in ensuring safety, especially of the head where injuries can be devastating. The center is a leader with its development of a rating system for safety equipment, first noted with its improved football helmets.
Stefan Duma, director of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, says the evolution has been strong.
“We were a pioneer in concussion [research] related to football helmets” and that has evolved into head equipment for a variety of sports like hockey, women’s lacrosse, bicycling, soccer and just about anything else that involves a helmet. The studies began with college athletes, but have broadened to include children and cover all the way through the pros.
Tech’s improved designs are passed along to manufacturers of helmets, who are partners in the academic research.
“They’re on campus every day,” says Dumas. Research is funded privately for the most part, much of it with foreign money. “Europe is a big player, but it goes far beyond that.”
Research is even helping change rules in sports to better protect players, says Duma. The research is popular with the students, who rub elbows regularly with athletes. “They love it. It is very rewarding.”
Tech’s FutureHAUS is one of its “Oh, wow!” projects that has brought international acclaim to the university.
“If we take the house to the Consumer Electronics Show next year, it will cause a sensation,” says Joe Wheeler. The CES is the world’s largest technology show, held in Las Vegas annually.
Tech’s engineers and architects have partnered with other segments of the university for years to win a huge collection of major awards for innovation, not only in the U.S., but in Europe and most recently in Dubai. Industry provides expertise, ideas and cash to help develop improvements in the building industry.
“We can’t be in the business of development, but we can consult and advise,” says Wheeler.
3D printing of items like water faucets will become standard in housing construction. “With chemistry and new materials, there have been some amazing patents,” says Wheeler. Star Trek stuff.
Construction involves modular building at the component level, says Wheeler, and smart construction continues its startling evolution.
Says Wheeler: “We have such amazing resources here [in architecture and engineering] that we really can do anything.”
That could apply anywhere on the campus of our monster just down the road, VPI & SU.
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