The university also has educational facilities in six regions statewide, a research center in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, and a study-abroad site in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland.

In a nod to this southern heritage the Confederate Battle Flag was traditionally waved by cheerleaders at Virginia Tech football games and the Highty-Tighties played Dixie as a fight song when the Hokies scored a touchdown.

Harper and her white roommate received hate mail and threatening phone calls, but the resolution stood, and the display of the rebel flag ended in 1969.

Under the leadership of seventh president Joseph Dupuy Eggleston, who held the position from 1913 to 1919, the university established a Reserve Officer Training Corps to support national efforts during World War I.

[24] Eggleston attempted to suppress news of the affair in the media with considerable success, most likely due to the Russian Revolution and the US declaration of war on Germany that stole the headlines in the spring of 1917, rather than his efforts to protect VPI's reputation.

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.

[27] In 1953, under the leadership of President Walter Stephenson Newman, VPI became the first historically white, four-year public institution among the 11 states in the former Confederacy to admit a black undergraduate.

[29] During Hahn's tenure, not only did the university graduate its first Rhodes Scholar, W.W. Lewis, Class of 1963,[30] the requirement for male students to participate in the Corps of Cadets for two years was dropped in 1964.

[32] Tensions on campus reached the boiling point several days following the Kent State Shootings when on May 12, 1970, a large mob including students and a number of non-student anti-war protesters enraged by the Kent State incident and angered by the administration's disciplinary actions in response to a number of recent infractions by protesters including; vandalism of university property, a series of potentially dangerous fires set on campus, breaking and entering into a university building, and a sit-in in Cowgill Hill, seized Williams Hall and barricaded themselves inside.

[33] The administration responded quickly calling in law enforcement and early the following morning Virginia State Police forced their way into Williams Hall and began rounding up the protesters.

[34] Desperate for additional farmland for the support of teaching, research, and extension programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Virginia Tech acquired Kentland Farm on December 31, 1986.

Virginia Tech secretly traded about 250 acres of research orchards adjacent to a commercial area that would soon become Christiansburg's main shopping district to a group of developers for the historic but long fallow 1,785-acre Kentland property.

[36] Lavery developed a reorganization plan for the troubled Athletic Department, and Frank Beamer was hired to replace Bill Dooley as head football coach, but with negative publicity continuing to swirl within and around the university, he announced his resignation on October 16, 1987, effective December 31, 1987, to prevent polarization of the campus.

It prompted many states to introduce legislation to prohibit public colleges and universities from banning concealed weapons on campus for permit holders.

On December 8, 2011, a campus police officer Deriek Crouse was fatally shot by Radford University student Ross Truett Ashley, 22, before he took his own life.

In December 2016, Governor John Kasich signed a bill into law that lifted Ohio's statewide ban on firearms on college campuses, leaving the decision to the institutions.

The Innovation Campus will focus on computer science and software engineering, with specializations in areas including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data analytics.

Virginia Tech also waived the requirement that freshmen live on campus for the 2019–20 school year, leased an off-campus Holiday Inn, and converted its on-campus hotel to house students.

[90] These laboratories include an asphalt lab, fully equipped garages, instrumentation bays, and a machine shop for working on VTTI's vehicle fleet.

Notable green spaces include the Hahn Horticulture Garden, Virginia Tech Duck Pond, and the old-growth forest, Stadium Woods.

[101] The university has established five branch campuses:[102] Virginia Tech's presence in the Washington Metropolitan Area links regional graduate education and outreach programs that are consistent with the university's strategic research areas of excellence: energy materials and environment, social and individual transformation, health, food, and nutrition, and innovative technologies and complex systems.

The university has established collaborations and partnerships with local and federal agencies, nonprofit research organizations, businesses, and other institutions of higher education.

PCEF maintains a 2,000-acre (810 ha) natural forest reserve, 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) of protected coral reef, freshwater lagoons and coastal mangroves.

The center's location in Riva San Vitale, Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton of Switzerland, is also close to major northern Italian cities such as Milan.

[120] Notable among these are student-lead production oriented clubs, such as radio station WUVT-FM, newspaper The Collegiate Times, and literary magazine Silhouette.

Men's sports include baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field and wrestling.

Eight alumni have been awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest award bestowed by the United States armed forces: Antoine August Michel Gaujot, Julien Edmund Victor Gaujot, Earle Davis Gregory, Herbert Joseph Thomas, Jimmie W. Monteith, Robert Edward Femoyer, Richard Thomas Shea, Jr., Gary Lee Miller; their names are inscribed on a marble cenotaph at the center of War Memorial Court on the Blacksburg campus.

[131] Many VT alumni have also served in civilian leadership roles: Chet Culver, 41st governor of Iowa; William Dodd, ambassador to Germany; Linda Swartz Taglialatela, ambassador to Barbados; Rob Wittman, member of the House of Representatives; Tony McNulty, member of Parliament for Harrow East; Deborah Hersman, 12th chairperson of the National Transportation Safety Board; Regina Dugan, 19th director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; John H. Thompson, Director of the United States Census Bureau; Lawrence Koontz, Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, and William K. Barlow and Matt Lohr, members of the Virginia House of Delegates.

These include children's book author and Newbery Medal recipient Kwame Alexander; author and former NASA engineer Homer Hickham; jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd; business executive Donaldson Brown; Boeing president and CEO Dave Calhoun; Norfolk Southern president and CEO Alan Shaw and television news anchor Hoda Kotb.

Notable Virginia Tech athletes include Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Frank Beamer, Allan Bristow, Kam Chancellor, Bimbo Coles, Dell Curry, Ace Custis, Renee Dennis, Jim Druckenmiller, Terrell Edmunds, Tremaine Edmunds, Bud Foster, Kendall Fuller, Kyle Fuller, Chuck Hartman, Sally Miles, Charles Moir, Johnny Oates, Bruce Smith, Tyrod Taylor, DeAngelo Hall, Isaiah Ford, Angela Tincher, and Michael Vick.