TEDxVirginiaTech

The art of improvisation.
Emotion, the new musical instrument.
How snakes fly.
More passion, less pedagogy.
Why nuns don’t have mid-life crises.

Now those are ideas worth spreading.

Twenty-one faculty members, alumni, and students spoke on those topics and more at the TEDxVirginiaTech event on Nov. 10 on campus. Centered on the theme of "knowing," all 21 speeches from the independently organized event are online.

Virginia Tech's year-long celebration of the Morrill Land-Grant Act's 150th anniversary wouldn't be complete without Abraham Lincoln. Chris Elledge (finance '92) played the part at several events, including the National Capital Region Fall Family Day on Nov. 3 at the Northern Virginia Center in Falls Church, Va. Later that day, Elledge visited the Lincoln Memorial, where he was surrounded by passers-by for photographs. The Newport, Va., resident is a systems administrator at the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library.

Dubbed "The Ultimate Hokie" because of his passion for Virginia Tech, Justin Graves (sociology '12), a paraplegic who has been reliant on a wheelchair since age 3, was missing out on a quintessential Hokies tradition—hiking to the Cascades Falls in nearby Giles County, Va.

In the spirit of the Virginia Tech motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), more than a dozen Hokies carried Graves on a makeshift stretcher or on their backs up two miles of trails that are decidedly not wheelchair-friendly.