Besides being the means by which individuals demonstrate their competence, research and its expression through publication, patents, and other means, pays direct benefit to society. Basic research opens our understanding of the physical universe in both its celestial and microscopic dimensions and in its inorganic and organic forms. Applied research generally depends on basic work and brings to the marketplace or other points of distribution agencies of direct human benefit. Research in the humanities and the social world increases our understanding of the human situation and of our shared cultures. Not a year passes in which the catalog of Virginia Tech's contributions in all these areas is not noteworthy and of demonstrable benefit.
Research also rewards the researcher.
It is a principal means by which faculty members structure their own continuing education. It informs and sharpens their instruction by inspiring their curiosity and excitement and by giving them knowledge both of substance and of changing research methods which they then share with students. Our performance of our service mission determines whether we succeed as a land-grant institution. To this traditional mission the challenges of industrial production, of post-industrial economic and social life, and of environmental stress have added a plethora of challenges which the university's reduced but not dispirited Extension faculty members address every day in every region of the commonwealth. Increasingly service to our larger community has become a responsibility of every member of our faculty regardless of the nature of individual appointments.