On January 3, 2007 Virginia Tech along with Carilion Health System announced the
creation of a new medical school that will be a joint venture between the two
organizations. The first class is scheduled to be admitted in either 2009 or
2010. The new medical school will have approximately 40 students per class,
making it a very small medical school. It will be located in Roanoke next to the
Carilion Health System hospital.
Campus
The Virginia Tech campus is located in Blacksburg, Virginia. The central campus
is roughly bordered by Prices Fork Road to the northwest, Plantation Drive to
the west, Main Street to the east, and 460-bypass to the south, though it has
several thousand acres beyond the central campus. The university has established
branch campus centers in Hampton Roads (Virginia Beach), the National Capital
Region (Falls Church - Alexandria, Virginia), Richmond, Roanoke, and the
Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon.
On the Blacksburg campus, the majority of the buildings incorporate Hokie Stone
as building material. Hokie Stone is a medley of different colored limestone,
often including dolomite. Each block of Hokie Stone is some combination of gray,
brown, black, pink, orange, and maroon. The limestone is mined from various
quarries in Southwestern Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama, one of which has been
operated by the university since the 1950s. An example of architecture
incorporating Hokie Stone is Torgersen Bridge, a relatively new building on
Virginia Tech's campus.
Virginia Tech also has one of the top dining programs in the country; it is
currently ranked #2 by the Princeton Review. It has seven dining centers which
included Squires food court (Au Bon Pain & Sbarro), Owens Food Court, Hokie
Grill (Chick-fil-A, Pizza Hut, Cinnabon), D2 & DXpress, Shultz & Shultz Express,
Deets Place, and the high end West End Market. Virginia Tech also has a catering
center, Personal Touch Catering.
The University is protected by its own Police force, the Virginia Tech Police.
