Class of 2001 scores highest ever
First-year students required to have computers in 1998
Team's aircraft design wins third place
CNBC spotlights student investors' success
Current events conversations down
English class holds Depression-era fish fry
Tech's entering class has the highest SAT scores in the university's history. Average scores for the Class of 2001 were 15 points higher than those for last year's first-year students.
The average combined SAT score for the Class of 2001 is 1167. The average high school GPA was 3.5 on a 4.0 scale. Applications for admission to Tech this academic year hit an all-time high at 17,200, pushing admissions standards to a new high.
Virginia Tech President Paul Torgersen has announced a plan to require all incoming students to own a personal computer beginning in the fall 1998 semester.
"We believe that it is essential that every Virginia Tech graduate be computer literate. It needs to be just like reading and writing -- part of one's very nature," Torgersen says.
Virginia Tech will be one of the first major public universities to require computer ownership of all students. Currently, about 11,000 of the more than 20,000 Virginia Tech undergraduates are required to own computers sometime during their college career. The Pamplin College of Business, the College of Engineering, and the departments of statistics and computer science require ownership upon entering college. The College of Architecture and Urban Studies requires computer ownership by the junior year.
University officials estimate that about 80 percent of students now arrive with computers.
More than 300 Virginia Tech courses have some component of web based or computer based instruction and an increasing number are exclusively web based. Some students are able to continue studies over the summer from their homes.
The university will set platform and software standards. Recommended packages are likely to cost $1,500-$3,000. Students with financial need can include computer costs in financial aid formulas. Personal computers will continue to be available in university computer labs, but these facilities are expected to shift from preparatory training to more specialized applications.
VenTure, an amphibious sport utility aircraft designed by a team of 30 undergraduates from the Virginia Tech College of Engineering, took third place in the 1997 General Aviation Design Competition. The contest is sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration.
VenTure is designed to land on water and taxi onto land. It can also land on a standard runway through a hydraulic retraction landing system. The VenTure has yet to be built, but the team of aerospace, mechanical, and industrial systems engineering students has tested a model in a wind tunnel.
The students shared a $1,000 cash reward. The team's faculty advisor was James Marchman of the aerospace and ocean engineering department.
Wall Street pros have nothing on a group of Virginia Tech student investors. The successes of Tech's Student-managed Endowment for Educational Development (SEED) was featured in a CNBC television story in September.
In 1994, the Virginia Tech Foundation allowed SEED to invest $1 million. The investments proved so successful that the foundation gave the organization another million to manage in 1996. SEED now boasts a portfolio worth $3 million, showing a $1-million gain since the initial investments.
SEED is Tech's No. 1 equity manager, in terms of growth. Membership in the group is competitive, and business majors comprise the majority of students in the investment team.
Tech students are talking less about current events, international issues, and class topics than they were three years ago, according to the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ).
The CSEQ is administered by Tech's academic assessment program every three years to gauge how students spend their time. Many colleges and universities throughout the nation use the questionnaire.
Students indicated that they talk with other students about current events 49 percent of the time (a 14-percent drop), while conversations on international relations comprise 16 percent of their talk time (an 11-percent drop), class topics 42 percent (a 13-percent drop), and social and ethical issues related to science and technology 26 percent of the time (an 11-percent drop).
Student conversations about current events, international relations, and the economy are lower than national norms for other research universities. Two responses were significantly higher, however. Conversations about computers and scientific principles were up to 48 percent (an 11-percent increase) and 43 percent (a 7-percent increase), respectively.
"Hot fish! Good hot fish!" was the cry heard in the parks of cities in the Depression as people tried to make a living selling the fish they'd caught. Now Nikki Giovanni's Harlem Renaissance class at Virginia Tech welcomed students to campus with "the Saturday Night Fish Fry on Thursday Afternoon."
The fish fry was always on Saturday night during the Depression, says Giovanni, who holds the Gloria D. Smith Professorship in Black Studies and is a professor of English. People all over the country would fish all week and fry them up on Saturday nights. Fish sandwiches cost 25 cents, which is what the flounder on white bread cost Tech students on the Drillfield Sept. 25. As a special treat, food operations manager Aldora Green made hoe cakes, a sort of hush puppy, to go with the fish.
The Harlem Renaissance class discusses Depression-era fish fries, and money from the Gloria D. Smith Professorship allowed them to offer the sandwiches at Depression prices.