Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech (VT), formally Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI),[9] is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. In 1872, with federal funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862, the Reconstruction-era Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of Preston and Olin Institute, a small Methodist school for boys in Southwest Virginia's rural Montgomery County. That same year, 250 acres (100 ha) of the adjoining Solitude Farm including the house and several farm buildings on the estate were acquired for $21,250 from Robert Taylor Preston, a son of Governor of Virginia, James Patton Preston.[21][22] The commonwealth incorporated a new institution on the site, a state-supported land-grant military institute named Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.[23]

Virginia Tech's first student, Addison "Add" Caldwell registered on October 1, 1872, after hiking over 25 miles from his home in Craig County, Virginia. A statue, located in the Upper Quad of campus commemorates Add's journey to enroll.[24] First-year cadets and their training cadre re-enact Addison Caldwell's journey every year in the Caldwell March. They complete the first half of the 26-mile march in the fall and the second half in the spring.[25] During Thomas Nelson Conrad's tenure as president, the college switched from semesters to the quarter system, which remained in place until the late 1980s. Under the 1891–1907 presidency of John McLaren McBryde, the school organized its academic programs into a traditional four-year college and a graduate department was founded. The evolution of the school's programs led to a name change in 1896 to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute. The "Agricultural and Mechanical College" portion of the name was popularly omitted almost immediately; in 1944, the name was officially changed to Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI).[33] In the early 1990s, university administration authorized the official use of Virginia Tech as equivalent to the full legal name