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As the 20th century closes, Virginia Tech can be proud of the progress it has made in becoming one of the major land-grant research institutions in the country. While currently highly ranked in many important areas, the level of educational excellence provided by our university continues to be challenged by changing times, changing needs, and a changing populace. Perhaps the most important and consistent features of the work we must do to meet these challenges can be summed up in two words: access and quality.
It is expected that Virginia Tech will continue to increase its contributions to the commonwealth's difficult but important task of making higher education available to all citizens who qualify to participate. If we are to maintain our leadership role at local, state, and national levels, access must be both a motivating factor for and an expected outcome of the work we do in the next decade. Further, we should be clear about how access to educational opportunity plays itself out in an environment of changing demographics, funding circumstances, technological advances, research priorities, and teaching and curricular imperatives. Our capacity to increase access will depend in part on our ability to address the growing range of differences in the cultural and economic backgrounds of our students, staff, and faculty.
Quality is another important area of focus for us. Our commitment for the new century to position this university among the top 30 institutions of its kind is not only an appropriate goal, but also a fundamentally necessary one. Continued support by parents, employers, donors, and policymakers will depend in large part on our ability to demonstrate value to a variety of constituencies. One indicator of excellence used by these constituent groups is the type of student we graduate. More and more, our graduates are expected to be both technically and interpersonally effective as contributors and leaders in their chosen professions. Therefore, in addition to the discipline-based skills they acquire in the course of their experiences at Virginia Tech, we must guarantee that our students have an opportunity to develop competencies in interpersonal relations and to broaden their knowledge and skills through positive exposures to multicultural perspectives. Our students will be poorly prepared for the global economy if they do not have multicultural competencies.
The University Diversity Strategic Plan is our guide to assuring that issues of equity, diversity, and multiculturalism are ongoing considerations as we implement our important academic, research, and outreach goals and initiatives. One of the reasons for Virginia Tech's success to date is our ability to be thoughtful about what we want to do, to take responsibility for getting it done, and to hold ourselves mutually accountable for making reasonable progress over a specified period of time. This plan provides us with an opportunity once again to demonstrate the efficacy of this process.
I call on all members of the university community to be thoughtful, responsible, and accountable for making Virginia Tech an institution that provides a high quality education in an environment that is welcoming, nurturing, and equally beneficial to all.
Sincerely,
Charles W. Steger, President of Virginia Tech
A Message From the President | A Message From the Vice President | Statement of Understandings | Acknowledgements |
Contents | Welcome | Mission and Vision | Goals and Tasks | Climate and Status Data | VT Core Values | Print
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Office of Multicultural Affairs - Virginia Tech 332 Burruss Hall, Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061-0176 |
Telephone: 540-231-1820/TTY 540-231-9460 FAX: 540-231-1818 Email: multicultural@vt.edu Web: http://www.multicultural.vt.edu/ |