These include its location in southwest Virginia, land-grant origins, military traditions, technical orientation, and outstanding strengths of individual programs which have defined its mission and its public perception. The Goals and Values Which Derive from Tech's Identity Virginia Tech's unique role in higher education and in the state of Virginia suggest several institutional missions. We refer to these as instruction, research, and public service because in many contexts this is a useful distinction, but we must be constantly aware that in much of the best work that goes on in the university, there is great cross-fertilization and synergy among these functions. At bottom, what binds our activities together is a commitment to excellence in the many activities of learning and discovery. Let us take a minute to reflect on why each of these missions is so critical to the vitality of Virginia Tech.
Teaching is at the heart of a university's purpose.
It is what distinguishes a university from a research institute responsible only to itself and its funding agencies. Teaching is a principal means by which the university returns the investment of the commonwealth's taxpayers and its own students. For those whose primary responsibility is teaching, scholarship and research take place in praxis and are measured by the extent to which their practitioners are successful in engaging students in the process of gathering, assessing, analyzing, synthesizing, and applying information. It is critical that the faculty value and respect the undergraduate experience as a critical time in which young people display both great potential and great needs. If we succeed in our teaching mission, the university will annually graduate thousands of young persons who have come to campus ready to learn and who have left eager, equipped, and sufficiently skilled to contribute to every aspect of our scientific, commercial, civic, and cultural life.