Va. Tech surpasses $1 billion fundraising goal

By Tonia Moxley

BLACKSBURG 

It weathered the deepest and longest recession since the Great Depression. And even the worst school shooting in U.S. history didn't derail the $1 billion "Campaign for Virginia Tech: Invent the Future."

It took nearly a decade, beginning in 2003, but fundraisers exceeded that lofty goal, raising a total in pledges and cash of $1,112,703,977, Tech President Charles Steger announced to donors Saturday.

And the state's largest land-grant university feted about 1,000 of those benefactors at a formal, invitation-only banquet held on the grounds behind the Holtzman Alumni Center.

"The accomplishments we love to celebrate simply would not be possible without the generous support of all of you," Steger told the group.

The scholarships funded by donations make it possible for any student who can meet Tech's tough admissions criteria to attend, "regardless of their resources," he said.

During the planning phases, consultants told university officials to expect to raise, at most, $800 million.

But they didn't factor in the love friends and alumni have for the university, said Betsy Flanagan, vice president for development.

And the entire Hokie Nation — not just the big donors — was invited to celebrate at a universitywide open house held Saturday from 10a.m. to 3 p.m.

Blacksburg Transit shuttles circled campus, ferrying alumni, parents and others to more than 60 venues displaying Tech's cultural, artistic and scientific projects, programs and ambitions.

Many, such as the Ware Advanced Engineering Laboratory, highlighted the effects of philanthropy and government and commercial support on education and research.

There, in the old upper quad laundry facility made over in 1998 through a donation by alumnus Joseph F. Ware Jr., teams of undergraduate engineering students showed off their award-winning research and development projects.

EcoCAR team leader Jesse Alley, a 24-year-old graduate student, worked with undergraduate engineering students to demonstrate the hybrid ethanol-electric vehicle they built over the past three years.

It can travel up to 40 miles on its fully charged, plug-in battery system, making it perfect for about 75 percent of the average driver's daily needs, Alley said. When the charge gives out, a more traditional ethanol-fired engine takes over, allowing a driver to make long-distance trips, too.

The team won first place in June in the national EcoCAR Challenge, a three-year competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors.

Several other projects were also on display, including Tech's Baja Team, which competes in annual off-road races with vehicles engineered to make efficient use of Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engines.

The Ware lab is "the best opportunity undergraduate engineering students have to get hands-on experience," said Daniel Lamb, a senior mechanical engineering student and co-captain of the Baja Team.

Lamb said the Baja group is looking forward to defending its 2010 first-place win at the 2011 Winter Mini Baja race set for February at Michigan Technological University.

Some of the alumni present Saturday, such as Bertice Walker of the class of 1957, were stunned by the advances they saw, including just how large the campus has grown.

"I think it's just fantastic," Walker said.

The retired electrical engineer chuckled as the shuttle he was riding to the Inn at Virginia Tech rolled past Patton Hall, where he said in his student days both the engineering and architecture programs could fit.

Today, architecture is a school unto itself, and engineering has grown into a college.

Despite it's growth, though, the campus remains beautiful, Walker said.

"It's one of the prettiest campuses in the country — in summer and fall. But not in January and February," he said, chuckling again.

During Blacksburg winters, as most Hokies know, the leafless trees and limestone buildings sometimes seem to make the sky grayer and the air colder.

Just as a Tech degree is as much about memories as about classes, so a billion-dollar campaign is about more than money, Flanagan said.

To accomplish the task, Flanagan said officials had to identify energetic and influential volunteers from all over the United States to lead the effort in several regions. Donations and pledges — many of them earmarked for certain programs and projects — have come in from places as far apart as New York, Texas and Los Angeles.

And through those volunteer efforts, Tech has identified more alumni to serve on boards and committees, she said, as well as to continue to work in their regions to raise contributions for continuing needs.

The Center for the Arts, the signature engineering building and the Virginia Tech Carilion Medical School and Research Institute are just three large projects that will require future support, she said.

Tech has been working on the $1 billion Campaign for Virginia Tech since summer of 2003 and has pushed forward despite the April 16, 2007, campus shootings that took the lives of 33 students and faculty.

Then came the bank and mortgage meltdowns of 2008, which spun the country into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But Hokies kept giving.

Historically, Tech's pledge default rate hovers around 2 percent, Flanagan said. And she expects that rate will hold true for this campaign, she said.

The final tally given Saturday includes every dollar raised and every pledge scheduled to be fulfilled between 2003 and this year, she said. Some of those pledges were made before 2003.

In November 2010, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that 36 universities across the country, including Tech, were raising funds for campaigns of between $1 billion and $4.3 billion.

Stanford University had already raised 104 percent of its goal of $4.3billion, then the largest campaign goal in the country, according to the report.

The completion of Tech's campaign Saturday came after announcements in October that Case Western Reserve University and the University of Rochester would start billion-dollar fund drives.