Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ("Virginia Tech") is a public land-grant university founded in 1872, serving, according to its mission statement, "the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world community." It is taxpayer-supported.
It has 26,370 students on-campus, about 17% of whom are graduate students. It has a strong sports and engineering programs, resulting in much larger percentage of male students than most colleges: 58.1% male and 41.9% female. Many of its students are from foreign countries.
Its English Department has received some attention after one of its seniors, Seung-Hui Cho, massacred 32 students and faculty on April 16, 2007. Cho had written and submitted as coursework disturbing papers that, in hindsight, appear to reflect an unstable person obsessed with violence.
VPI was founded in 1872 as the Virginia Agricultural and Mining College, with 132 students, a president and three professors: one each in English; natural philosophy and chemistry; and technical agriculture and mechanics. By 1895 the student body had grown to 400 and the name was changed to "The Virginia Polytechnic Institute."[1]
Military training has always been a feature of Virginia Tech, which is one of six designed senior military colleges in the United States.[2] All students were cadets when it opened in 1872.[3] VPI is
Notes and references
- ↑ Heatwole, Cornelius Jacob (1916), A History of Education in Virginia, pp. 204-7
- ↑ The others are Norwich University in Vermont, North Georgia College and State University, Texas A&M, The Citadel in Charleston, SC, and Virginia Military Institute.
- ↑ Tech Corps of Cadets: History