Tag Archives: dean

Alan Grant, dean

Dear Colleagues,

More than 500 4-H teens, volunteer leaders, and Extension agents were on campus June 15-18 for the 95th annual State 4-H Congress. The following week, Virginia Tech hosted over 2,000 members and guests from across the state at the 89th State FFA Convention.

On June 28, 97 of the commonwealth’s best and brightest high school students came to campus for the Virginia Summer Residential Governor’s School for Agriculture program that ran through July 25. The program allows students to interact with and learn from faculty and staff. It is always a pleasure seeing these young people enjoying our campus and learning more about agriculture and the life sciences during the summer.

About 250 volunteers attended the 28th Annual Master Gardener College June 24-28. The educational program featured tree-steward training and session topics such as food preservation and fermentation, arboriculture, home vegetable production, emerging technologies such as using drones for risk tree assessment, and online resources for managing urban trees. Continue reading →

Alan Grant, dean

Dear colleagues,

One of my favorite times of the year is centered on the spring commencement activities. I had the pleasure of awarding diplomas at this year’s commencement, as well as attending the CALS Outstanding Student awards ceremony and many receptions honoring our graduates. More than 700 undergraduate students and nearly 100 graduate students received degrees.

Hope Wentzel received Virginia Tech’s 2015 College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Outstanding Senior Award. A dean’s list student, she is a member of several honor societies, is a Pamplin Scholar, and received numerous scholarships including the C. Gordon Thornhill Animal and Poultry Sciences Merit Scholarship, the John Lee Pratt Study Abroad Scholarship, and a Phi Beta Delta Scholarship for study abroad. She completed four agriculture-oriented trips abroad in Nicaragua, Nepal, Brazil, and Chile and plans to return to Chile after graduation. Other outstanding seniors from each department were recognized for their academic achievements, leadership, and experiences beyond traditional course work. Continue reading →

Alan Grant, dean

Dear Colleagues,

It is always a pleasure to host the annual Alumni Awards Ceremony and Dinner where we recognize and celebrate our outstanding and remarkable alumni. More than 250 guests attended the ceremony and 190 attended the dinner at this year’s event on March 20. Fourteen of our 31 award recipients were from out-of-state. Heartiest congratulations to all of our extraordinary alumni who were honored this year!

The following morning, the CALS Alumni Organization Board met for their annual retreat. Department heads gave short updates at breakfast. Later in the morning, James Anderson from Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education led a lively discussion on diversity and inclusion and introduced the group to several exceptional CALS students and who then joined us for lunch. We continued the discussion following lunch and listened to their perspectives as minority students joining the college from various parts of the country. Their overwhelmingly positive experiences and the subsequent conversations with the group were thought-provoking and productive. The CALS Alumni Organization, directed by Jamie Lucero, has developed a number of events and activities that offer many opportunities for the alumni to stay engaged with the college.

Continue reading →

Associate Dean Saied Mostaghimi

Saied Mostaghimi, associate dean for research and graduate studies, is the guest columnist this month. 

Dear colleagues,

Great progress has been made in recent years in increasing graduate student enrollment in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Currently we have a graduate student enrollment of approximately 570 students, and the college’s strategic plan aims to increase the number of graduate student enrollment to 850. Overall, the university’s strategic plan to increase the total number of graduate students by 1,000 provides an opportunity for the college to garner more resources to achieve its strategic plan goal. A brief summary of initiatives developed by CALS to enhance graduate student enrollment include:

Dean’s Graduate Research Assistantships

CALS increased the number of hard-funded research assistantships to 50 as well as the stipend level. These assistantships are distributed to the academic units based on their potential to increase their Ph.D. enrollment. In return, the units receiving these assistantships commit to increasing their current Ph.D. enrollment within the next three years by a factor of two times the number of the Dean’s Assistantships they receive. Continue reading →

Alan Grant, dean

Greetings,

Since this is our first Insights message in 2015, I hope everyone had a nice holiday season and that the new year and spring semester are off to a great start. Many thanks to those who were able to join the recent Deans’ Open Forum. The Open Forum is an opportunity for the college community to hear general updates, highlights and, information from our academic, research, Extension, and international programs offices in the college. If you were not able to join us in Fralin Auditorium or online for the Forum, you can listen to the recorded session. Many thanks to Carl Estes in CALS-IT for assisting with the WebEx presentation.

I encourage everyone to take some time to review the 86 diversity initiatives that are posted on the InclusiveVT site. These 86 initiatives have been developed by colleges and other senior management areas of the university. Four of these initiatives were submitted from CALS and are being implemented by various groups in the college. Many will have opportunities to become engaged in the activities and discussion that result from these. The CALS Diversity Council and CALS Communications and Marketing will also be helping.

Many people from the college and university attended the Virginia Agribusiness Council’s Annual Legislative Banquet in January. Several of us also attended the Virginia Tech annual legislative breakfast with President Sands in Richmond. These events provided us an opportunity to become more acquainted with our legislators and industry stakeholders, and to thank them. We also learned more about legislative issues impacting higher education, VCE, VAES, and the industry. We are hopeful that our legislators are doing everything they can during the 2015 General Assembly Session to protect Agencies 208 and 229 from further budget reductions. We were pleased with the announcement that Ed Jones (VCE Director) and Jennifer Gagnon (Forest Res & Environ Conserv, CNRE) were recipients of the Agribusiness Council’s Land-Grant Award. The awards will be presented to them later this year. Congratulations Ed and Jennifer!

Best wishes for a safe and successful 2015!

Sincerely,

Alan Grant
Dean