Virginia emerged as a winner in the fierce, nationwide competition to house a headquarters for Amazon. The Commonwealth stepped up with a standout higher education package, including a new Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria, which will be located less than two miles from Amazon’s new location in Arlington.
However, how does that affect the Virginia Tech Blacksburg Campus? This topic was discussed at the March Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce Eggs and Issues meeting on Thursday.
VT Associate Vice President for Innovation and Partnerships Dr. Brandy Salmon explained the winning proposal to 85 chamber attendees.
When Dr. Timothy Sands became VTs president, he refreshed thinking about VT’s service to the Commonwealth and developed ways to strengthen VTs presence in Northern Virginia or NoVA. According to Salmon, VT is officially in 100 different areas of Virginia. When Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, declared its intention to build a second headquarters, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership began collaborating to provide a proposal.
Salmon said, “VDEP facilitated this process with a purpose: to put the best foot forward from different parts of Virginia.”
To do this, VDEP looked at amenities, quality of life and, the key driver, talent. While NoVa has the richest talent pool in the state, their region has 30,000 cybersecurity jobs still open. So, VDEP reached out to universities. VT, as the fourth largest STEM university, took a giant leap forward with its proposal on enrollment growth, faculty increases and programs in computer science and software engineering, both on a NoVA Innovation Campus and here in Blacksburg.
The VT Innovation Campus has morphed from the Cornell Tech concept located on Roosevelt Island in New York City to a graduate education and research facility for the digital age by integrating academics and practitioners to excel at imagining, researching and building digitally-enabled products and services. VT’s concept molded into a higher education packet that was added to the Amazon proposal.
Salmon commented, “This was a powerful path.”
That component of the proposal worked as Amazon announced in November 2018 that its second headquarters would be coming to Arlington, VA. With the passing of the Virginia General Assembly legislation and then signed into law by Governor Ralph Northam, a $750 million deal was sealed recently.
Virginia Tech has initiated a $1 billion Innovation Campus in Arlington and will triple the university’s footprint in NoVA. There are plans for academic and research facilities, partner space dedicated to startup and corporate facilities, housing for students and faculty, along with retail and support spaces. Virginia Tech and the state each committed to raise $250 million for this initiative. Half of this $500 million is budgeted for the computer science and software engineering programs for graduate masters’ and PhD degrees.
Salmon said, “What is unappreciated is that half of the $500 million will be coming to Blacksburg.”
This money will be used to build up the computer science and software engineer programs and supporting capital project locally to produce 2,000 more software undergraduates and hire 140 faculty members. These numbers fit into VTs enrollment projections over the next decade to reach 30,000 total undergraduates and 10,000 total graduate students.
Salmon said, “This will ignite undergraduates here to follow this degree on a path to work at technology companies or to the graduate program on the Innovation Campus.”
Salmon noted that Google and Micron are already located in NoVa. Many companies in NoVA have said they are willing to have a presence near the Blacksburg VT campus, like in the VT Corporate Research Center, to encourage technology research and to attract student talent that they are so desperate to hire. Like the CRC, space will be leased on the Innovation Campus to co-house research and implementation. Universities like VT want to encourage the flow of ideas to be implemented into small businesses.
Salmon said, “Money follows great ideas and people.”
The timeline since the Amazon announcement has been for VT to form a team to earnestly work on the plans. Building of the Innovation Campus is hoped to start in two to five years. This team will be very thoughtful of the programs and key research needed. For both campuses, faculty will need to be hired. Strategic partnerships with state and federal government entities, companies and non-profits will be planned out. Supporting liberal arts programs are already being considered since technology advances requires policies and ethics. Technology influences humans and society, so there will be challenges to be studied and taught on both Virginia Tech campuses.
