Over the past two weeks, our community has been subjected to an ongoing series of threatening and harassing messages. These messages have been posted on websites and been e-mailed to a few individuals across campus. The messages have been disruptive to our community and have resulted in understandable concern for our safety and security.

Virginia Tech will honor the community of survivors of April 16, 2007.

The 2010 General Assembly adjourned March 14, one day later than scheduled, after grappling with the greatest decline in state revenues since World War II that necessitated serious budget reductions in all areas of state government. In the end, the General Assembly was able to protect higher education from reductions beyond those presented in former Gov. Tim Kaine's introduced budget, and also to provide some good news for state employees with respect to furloughs, benefits, and compensation.

For the thirteenth consecutive semester, the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets is bringing back corps graduates who have recently returned from a combat deployment to speak to the regiment.

Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources will host an open house to showcase its programs and projects on Tuesday, April 6, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Latham Ballroom in the Inn at Virginia Tech on the Blacksburg campus.

Joseph A. Whittaker, president-elect of Sigma XI, the Scientific Research Society, is the keynote speaker for the eighth annual Undergraduate Research and Prospective Graduate Student Conference on Tuesday, April 6.

To the university community,

Two Virginia Tech professors are leading research teams that will work with scientists and small-scale farmers in South America and the Caribbean to increase food production, improve soil quality, and reduce risks associated with climate change.

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors will hold its quarterly board meeting at 1:15 p.m. Monday, March 22, in the Board Room of Torgersen Hall (Room 2100) on the Blacksburg campus.

Bruce Holland of New Church, Va., has been inducted into Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Hall of Fame, which honors those individuals who exemplify career accomplishment and for their service to the college and university.

The Lyric Theatre presents the Virginia premiere of "For Memories' Sake" on March 27 at 3 p.m. and March 29 at 7 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Department of Theatre and Cinema at Virginia Tech.

They have been called "financial weapons of mass destruction" and blamed for a number of catastrophic losses and bankruptcies. New research by a finance professor at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business, however, counters the popular perception of derivatives as dangerous tools and investments.

University of Chicago professor Kerwin Charles will give a lecture, "Race and Wealth: Income, Expenditure, and Public Policy," on Thursday, March 18, 2-3 p.m., at Alumni Assembly Hall, Inn at Virginia Tech.

Hokies United -- the Virginia Tech student-driven volunteer effort organized to respond to local, national, and international tragedies -- is selling Hokies Helping Haiti T-shirts at the University Bookstore on campus and the Volume Two Bookstore on University City Boulevard in Blacksburg.

The Virginia Tech Alumni Association and the Office for Diversity and Inclusion will host the Black Alumni Reunion at the Virginia Tech campus on March 18-21.

Poor air quality apparently affects the running times of women in marathons, according to a study by Virginia Tech civil and environmental engineer Linsey Marr.

Virginia Tech has been recognized by the Arbor Day Foundation in their Tree Campus USA program since the program's inception.

Students at Virginia Tech's Unmanned Systems Laboratory are perfecting an autonomous helicopter they hope will never be used for its intended purpose. Roughly six feet long and weighing 200 pounds, the re-engineered aircraft is designed to fly into American cities blasted by a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb.

Ryan McManamay of Blacksburg, Va., a doctoral student in fisheries and wildlife sciences at Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources, is the Ph.D. recipient of the 2009 Jimmie Pigg Memorial Outstanding Student Achievement Award.

The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) has reaccredited the undergraduate curriculum of Virginia Tech's Department of Food Science and Technology, reaffirming the department's place as a leader in contributing to food quality, safety, marketability, and availability.

Virginia Tech has scheduled a test of its emergency notification system on Tuesday, March 16 at 10:50 a.m., the same day the Commonwealth of Virginia will hold a statewide tornado drill.

Virginia Tech is taking a significant step toward establishing a new campus overseas through the execution of an agreement with a large private sector group. The proposed Virginia Tech, India campus will be located on at least 30 acres in the state of Tamil Nadu in southeast India initially encompassing a 70,000-square-foot campus facility. Master's and Ph.D. programs are planned for approximately 300 students in engineering and the sciences.

Marc Edwards and Simoni Triantafyllidou of Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, along with colleague Dr. Dana Best of Children's National Medical Center, published a 2009 article in "Environmental Science and Technology" (ES&T) that demonstrated a major increase in childhood lead poisoning of Washington, D.C., children during the 2001-04 lead-in-water crisis.

"Recent catastrophic earthquakes in Haiti and Chile have once again reminded us that our world view must include extreme events and their impacts. We know that the United States is particularly vulnerable due to its large populations living and working in high risk areas: seismic zones, coastal and riverine flood plains, and urban terrorist targets. Catastrophic events can and will happen here," John Harrald, research professor, Virginia Tech Center for Technology, Security, and Policy, warned yesterday during his testimony at a subcommittee hearing of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Virginia Tech's newest theme housing program, SERVE, was launched this fall by the Center for Student Engagement and Community Partnerships, which began operations in July 2008 to more effectively promote the university's land-grant mission and to help students live "Ut Prosim" (That I May Serve).

"Recent catastrophic earthquakes in Haiti and Chile have once again reminded us that our world view must include extreme events and their impacts. We know that the United States is particularly vulnerable due to its large populations living and working in high risk areas: seismic zones, coastal and riverine flood plains, and urban terrorist targets. Catastrophic events can and will happen here," John Harrald, research professor, Virginia Tech Center for Technology, Security, and Policy, warned yesterday during his testimony at a subcommittee hearing of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Eight Virginia Tech undergraduate students have been selected to be 2010 ACC Undergraduate Research Scholars.

Virginia Tech will celebrate its fourth annual Jewish Awareness Month March 15 through April 12.

Virginia Tech Provost Emeritus John M. Perry, of Blacksburg, died Tuesday, March 2, 2010. He was 84 years old.

Michael J. Friedlander, the Wilhelmina Robertson Professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience and the director of Neuroscience Initiatives at the Baylor College of Medicine, has been named founding executive director of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.

Jacquelyn E. Bruhn, of Fairfax, Va., a first-year student majoring in biochemistry in the College of Science, died Feb. 27, 2010, following an automobile accident.

Four teams of students from Virginia Tech's industrial design program in the School of Architecture + Design swept the five award categories at an international design competition that included professional industrial designs.

Wall Street Journal columnist and best-selling author Peggy Noonan will give the Cutchins Distinguished Lecture at Virginia Tech on Thursday, March 25, 7:30 p.m., in Burruss Auditorium.

Virginia Tech and Blacksburg have teamed up to submit a joint application for Google's recent push to build ultra-high speed fiber networks in a number of locations across the country.

Small business owners and business development professionals have given high marks to the "Online Business Guidebook," produced by Pamplin College of Business and other students at Virginia Tech.

You are what you eat; and, a collection of books at the Virginia Tech Libraries dedicated to just that pursuit is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

The Big Build will kick off construction of a house on March 1 on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, and six weeks from now a family in nearby Pulaski will have a brand new, environmentally friendly home.

Matthew Vollmer, an advanced instructor of creative writing and a graduate advisor in the Department of English at Virginia Tech, has been awarded a $25,000 Literature Fellowship in Prose from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine, part of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, has partnered with the U.S. Animal Health Association (USAHA) to create mentoring, education, and networking opportunities for veterinarians and veterinary students.

The mountains of Blacksburg will come alive with music this summer as luminaries from the opera and chamber music worlds gather to coach and mentor a new generation of superstar performers. The two-week festival -- Viva Virginia -- starts June 21 and includes concerts, lectures, and master classes open to the public.

In a paper appearing in the Feb. 24 issue of the "Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A," Virginia Tech Engineering Science and Mechanics Professor Hassan Aref, and his colleague Johan Roenby at the Technical University of Denmark shed new light on the chaotic motion of a solid body moving through a fluid.

After year one of a five-year grant intended to support the education of young women about careers in information technology in the Appalachian region, Virginia Tech researchers report that their project has impacted 365 people; or one person per day.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will speak on March 3 at a workshop on international trade of agricultural products in Norfolk, Va. The governor's remarks at the conference's opening luncheon will be his first major speech on agricultural issues since assuming office as the commonwealth's top elected official.

The second annual 3.2-Mile Run in Remembrance will kick off Virginia Tech's 2010 Day of Remembrance on Friday, April 16, 2010.

A graduate student in Virginia Tech's electrical and computer engineering department has been awarded a $10,000 Ford engineering scholarship from the Golden Key international honor society. The international organization awards only four such scholarships annually.

Cornel Sultan, assistant professor of aerospace and ocean engineering in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, is the latest faculty member at the university to learn he has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award.

Math-based computer models are a powerful tool for discovering the details of complex living systems. John Tyson, professor of biology at Virginia Tech, is creating such models to discover how cells process information and make decisions.

Bruce Pencek, assistant professor and college librarian for the social sciences at Virginia Tech, has been named the 2010 recipient of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Law and Political Science Section (LPSS) Marta Lange/CQ Press Award.

A team of five Virginia Tech students from the Colleges of Architecture and Urban Studies and Engineering won first place in the 2009 Associated Schools of Construction/Associated General Contractors Region II Heavy-Civil competition in Jacksonville, Fla.

A preliminary schedule of public events and campus activities has been announced as Virginia Tech plans for its 2010 Day of Remembrance.

C.E. Andrews, a Pamplin College of Business alumnus and former partner at Arthur Andersen, will give the guest lecture at the 19th Annual Symposium on Business Ethics on Monday, March 1, at 7 p.m. at Virginia Tech's Burruss Auditorium.

An assistant professor with the Virginia Tech College of Engineering has won a $750,000 federal grant to formulate a mathematical framework that can track the spread of pandemics among populations and malware across wireless computer networks, as well as how a blackout occurring on one major power grid can cause a cascade of additional neighboring networks to fail.

Virginia Tech reported 396.7 million dollars in expenditures for fiscal year 2009, which ended June 30, to the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Grammy Award nominee and Stellar Award winning gospel artist Kim Burrell will perform March 20, at 5:30 p.m. in Burruss Hall auditorium at Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech's Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science and the Virginia Water Resources Research Center are co-sponsoring this year's Spring 2010 Water Seminar Series.

Five Virginia Tech undergraduate students from Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus are spending the spring semester in the National Capital Region to work as interns on Capitol Hill.

The Virginia Tech Foundation has received a grant award from the U.S. Department of Commerce Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) to extend Virginia's open-access fiber optic backbone into the central Appalachian region of the state.

Virginia Tech's Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy will feature two days of practice, research, and poster sessions showcasing the best pedagogical practice and research in higher education today.

Virginia Tech was recently cited by 24/7 Wall Street as having among the best managed endowments of colleges and universities for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009.

Virginia Tech's Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy will feature two days of practice, research, and poster sessions showcasing the best pedagogical practice and research in higher education today.

All operations in Dietrick Hall (D2, DXpress, Deet's Place, and the Dietrick General Store) are closed due to a utility issue.

Virginia Tech physicist Patrick Huber has been named as the recipient of a prestigious Early Career Research Award (ECRA) from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Former NBA player and Pamplin alumnus Wayne Robinson will provide the keynote address at the Pamplin Multicultural Diversity Council's fifth annual Diversity Conference on Saturday, Feb. 27.

Due to inclement weather conditions, the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg will be closed on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010 until 9:30 a.m.

Cadets from military schools across the country will meet at Virginia Tech from Feb. 11-13 for the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets 2010 Leadership Conference.

Judy S. Riffle, professor of chemistry and director of Virginia Tech's Macromolecular Science and Engineering program, has been elected a Fellow in the Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering (PMSE) division of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

As Americans yearn to understand more about Haiti and learn how they can help, six Virginia Tech scholars with intimate knowledge of Haiti will give short presentations on Feb. 10 at Virginia Tech.

Cadets from military schools across the country will meet at Virginia Tech from Feb. 11-13 for the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets 2010 Leadership Conference.

The Virginia Tech Athletics Department has announced that Virginia Tech students will be admitted free of charge to the men's basketball game on Saturday, Feb. 6, until all seats are occupied.

Due to inclement weather conditions, the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg will be closed on Friday, Feb. 5, 2010.

Dennis Hong, an associate professor with the Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, will headline an Engineers Week industry banquet in Lynchburg, Va., on Feb. 18.

Martinsville attorney Kimble Reynolds Jr., an alumnus of Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business, will present a Wachovia Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, Feb. 18.

Danfeng Yao, an assistant professor in the computer science department at Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, will use a $530,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant to develop software that will differentiate human-user computer interaction from that of malware.

The world has lost its best hugger. The incomparable Morgan Dana Harrington was torn from us on October 17, 2009.

Virginia Tech University Distinguished Professor Robert J. Bodnar's innovative work has led to his being named Virginia's Outstanding Scientist 2010 by Gov. Bob McDonnell and the Science Museum of Virginia.

Virginia Tech students will have the opportunity to earn both the Master of Business Administration and Master of Industrial and Systems Engineering within the same two-year period in a new cooperative program established by the Pamplin College of Business and the College of Engineering.

Romesh C. Batra, Virginia Tech professor of engineering science and mechanics, is a 2010 recipient of the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award sponsored by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) and Dominion, an energy company based in Richmond, Va.

Virginia Tech was ranked eighth "best value" public university for 2010, according to "The Princeton Review," who teamed with USA Today, to present its list, "'The Princeton Review' Best Value Colleges for 2010."

Maura Borrego, Virginia Tech assistant professor of engineering education, is a 2010 recipient of one of two Virginia Outstanding Faculty Rising Star Awards sponsored by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) and Dominion, an energy company based in Richmond, Va.

For more than three months, the entire Virginia Tech community, along with thousands upon thousands around the world, has held out hope for the safe return of Morgan Harrington.

The Virginia Tech Lumenhaus, an innovative, solar-powered house designed, constructed, and operated by students and faculty for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, will be exhibited in Times Square in New York City Jan. 27-31 and will be featured on ABC's Good Morning America on Thursday, Jan. 28.

Yang Cao, an assistant professor in the computer science department at Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, has won a $550,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award to develop computer simulation methods that will better understand the complex, discrete, and stochastic cell cycle model.

Virginia Tech has been invited to demonstrate innovations developed for the university's solar house entry to the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, at the 13th Annual Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee Kickoff Technology Policy on Tuesday, Jan. 26.

Hokies United has harnessed the energy and ideas of the more than 100 people who met last week to mobilize. The group says they are determined to generate post-earthquake donations, start a public-education campaign, and begin coordinating relief trips to Haiti.

Compounds developed by researchers at Virginia Tech, have proven effective in destroying breast cancer cells when used with lasers developed by Theralase Technologies (TSX-V: TLT) out of Toronto. Theralase, an international manufacturer of laser medical devices, reports that its patented photodynamic compounds (PDCs) developed at the university, when used with its lasers, destroy breast cancer cells in pre-clinical trials.

The "plant destroyer" Phytophthora is decimating California oaks and threatening soybean crops. It turns out it is also implicated in human respiratory diseases. Virginia Bioinformatics Institute researchers have discovered how pathogen proteins enter the cells of plants and animals. The research is the lead story of the "Virginia Tech Research" winter 2010 magazine.

Marion F. Ehrich, professor of biomedical sciences and pathobiology in the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, has received the 2010 Merit Award from the Society of Toxicology for her many contributions to toxicology throughout her career.

Due to inclement weather conditions, Virginia Tech will close all offices at 3:30 p.m.. Classes on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg will be canceled beginning at 3:30 p.m., on Thursday, Jan. 14. Canceled classes will not be rescheduled and all university events scheduled this evening have been canceled. University staff designated emergency personnel must report as instructed by their supervisor.

Due to the weather, Dining Services will close earlier than normal tonight at 8 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010. At this time, we expect to resume normal operating hours tomorrow; however, if that changes an update will be posted.

A Virginia Tech geophysicist has been invited to spend time over the next three years at a German university as part of a program designed to attract the world's leading scientists to that country.

Virginia Tech received a gold award for its Alternative Transportation programs, in the Best Workplaces for Commuters (BWC) Race to Excellence in December 2009.

Due to inclement weather conditions, administrative offices at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg will be closed until 10 a.m. on January 22, 2010. University staff designated emergency personnel must report as instructed by their supervisor.

A Virginia Tech-led team of almost 20 partners has won $3.8 million in federal stimulus money to train workers for new, green jobs in the construction industry.

Celebrating what would be Martin Luther King Jr.'s 81st birthday, Virginia Tech's Center for Student Engagement and Community Partnerships is deploying teams of volunteers to help the region's daycare centers.

In his new book "Birthright," Virginia Tech professor of history A. Roger Ekirch brings to life an extraordinary story of intrigue and scandal, corruption, betrayal, and redemption.

Dear Virginia Tech friends and family,

The earthquake in Haiti, as all of you know, is creating almost unbelievable devastation with tens of thousands of people killed and hundreds of thousands seeking security, housing, and medical care.

GenBioOrg, an organization for students in Virginia Tech's Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology Ph.D. program, is hosting an invited speaker series for the spring 2010 semester that will feature an opening talk by John Glass, professor in the J. Craig Venter Institute's (JCVI) Synthetic Biology Group.

The cracked steam line discovered Friday has been repaired.

Andrea Wittenborn, assistant professor, human development, is heading a research team conducting the Strengthening Bonds Couples Therapy Study to treat depression and marital problems (dyadic distress) in married/committed couple relationships.