Virginia Tech Alumni Association News - Spring 2001

Opening New Gateways for Our Alumni

When returning to campus in person or visiting electronically, our alumni will be welcomed back in new ways. Here are three examples of how alumni can expect to be greeted.

Perhaps the most meaningful project that our Alumni Association will undertake in the 21st century is the construction of the first Alumni Center that will be part of a new Alumni and Conference Center complex. This is described and illustrated in greater detail in the pages immediately following. Virginia Tech is among the top 50 university alumni programs in the nation. Yet, Tech is the only one among those 50 that does not have a traditional alumni center. Therefore this project has been elevated among the university's top priorities, with many years of careful planning and preparation for a campaign to make it possible.

What will distinguish Virginia Tech's new "home" for alumni is its combination with a new hotel and conference center welcoming individual visiting alumni as well as conference and other educational groups.

This can be possible ONLY with the financial support and participation of our alumni in the recently launched campaign. The new center will serve as a distinctive campus landmark in classic Hokie stone to greet alumni at the Price's Fork Road entrance to campus. Its "living room," university museum, lodging rooms, and dining and conference spaces are planned on a scale to accommodate the university's growing number of alumni - now 165,000. Its distinctive stone gateway will welcome alumni entering from Duck Pond Drive.

The following five pages about the new center attempt to convey the critical value of this facility to the entire university. As Virginia Tech advances to new levels of excellence in producing the best graduates, making valuable research discoveries, providing public service, and fielding nationally ranked athletic teams, our alumni will share in the pride of their alma mater. The new Alumni and Conference Center will serve as a hub of many activities and symbol of that pride for all alumni. The campaign has been designed to provide one-third of the total construction cost to leverage another two-thirds in debt-financing. No state general funds can or will be designated for constructing this facility.

A Hokie Stone gateway has been completed recently at the entrance to campus on Blacksburg's Main Street. Two large curved walls of Hokie stone (one pictured below) flank the Alumni Mall entrance. This gateway was made possible by support from most of the classes of the 1990s, which collectively committed portions of their class dues treasuries to this project. The new structure completes the Alumni Mall entrance to campus, leading to the beautiful archway of new Torgersen Hall framing a view of the War Memorial pylons at the end of the Drillfield. Our special thanks to the leaders of the participating '90s classes for their vision and generosity in making this gift possible.

Finally, a new kind of gateway greets you and all alumni who visit via the Internet. The Alumni Association's portal page, introduced last year, is at www.alumni.vt.edu. It offers a number of features to welcome and serve alumni, such as alumni links, university news articles, weather reports, stock quotes, Tech merchandise, and a national brand stores shopping village. And there is a special new feature we urge you to visit the site and use - the Alumni Gateway. This is a password-protected feature that is personally secured for every alum and offers access to several university services and informational features. For example, alumni may access their official alumni record profile and make updates and additions. Many alumni, for whom we have accurate email addresses, receive the popular monthly "VTNetLetter." To send this, we must rely on self-updates of email addresses, which often change more than once in a given year. To insure that you receive our published magazines and netletter, please visit www.alumni.vt.edu to update, as necessary, your email address, residential address, and also employment address and phone information. This new Alumni Gateway is designed to help you maintain a closer relationship with those aspects of the university in which you have an interest, or in which you may choose to learn more.

Gateways for our alumni are very important. Help us build more of them and open new vistas to your university.