Land-Grant Mission

Introduction

Virginia Tech is home to one of the nation’s premier comprehensive agricultural and life sciences programs. Our premise in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is that a thriving college can help create thriving communities. A thriving college is one that includes: a diverse, innovative, and creative world-class faculty; talented and forward-looking staff and students; a diverse student body; state-of the-art facilities; and engaged stakeholders and alumni. Achieving these elements allows the college to solve current and emerging problems, to make positive impacts on people and their work and lives, and ultimately to create thriving communities around the world. This ambitious vision is aligned well with Virginia Tech’s commitment to Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) and the efforts to advance Virginia Tech’s Beyond Boundaries Initiative.

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences already provides undergraduate and graduate students with an outstanding education, but it is important that we continue to evolve and pursue new approaches to teaching and learning that ensure our graduates are prepared to address the challenges of a diverse and changing world. The Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station and Virginia Cooperative Extension, along with many community and industry partners, offer the college a tremendous opportunity to expand student experiential learning. The research and extension programs on and off campus (including campus research laboratories, college farms, agricultural research and extension centers, and local extension offices), and our partnerships with numerous community organizations and industry firms around the world offer great opportunities to immerse students in solving complex, real-world problems, to provide them with the transferable skills needed for success in their professions, and to be productive members of society. We aspire to provide every student in the college the opportunity to engage in such experiential learning while pursuing their degree.

Our land-grant mission demands that the college’s research programs be relevant in addressing local, national, and global needs. The college must anticipate and respond to emerging issues important to our diverse stakeholders. Although the college relies on significant federal and state funding, annual levels of federal Hatch and Smith-Lever capacity funding and state funding are no longer sufficient to maintain today’s research and extension programs, let alone meet future needs. Similarly, state support of the instructional mission has not kept pace with levels needed to provide students with a high-quality educational experience. These trends require us to be innovative, reallocate funds and develop new approaches for funding programs and operations. Our faculty and staff have been successful in growing extramural grant funding, but we must continue to enhance and leverage this creativity and competitiveness to diversify our research funding portfolio and pursue support well beyond traditional approaches and sources and better match the needs of our stakeholders. Our extension programs will focus on programs that are high-need, research-based, and can be delivered effectively to diverse audiences across the Commonwealth.

An effective land-grant college requires a sustainable resource base, a commitment to its core mission, and a culture of continuous improvement if it is to meet society’s changing needs and capitalize on emerging opportunities. It also requires an environment that is supportive of a diverse and inclusive community and whose members embrace Virginia Tech’s Principles of Community, InclusiveVT, and the college’s core values. Ongoing and open communication within the college, as well as with the external stakeholders of the organization, is essential. The college must capitalize on the scholarly creativity and productivity of its diverse faculty, staff and students; it must use its resources wisely in order to carry out the land-grant missions; and it must routinely monitor its progress in achieving its goals and milestones.