Pamplin: An Abstract History
Founded in 1852, Virginia Tech is marking its 150th anniversary, or Sesquicentennial, through worldwide commemorations to honor its past and celebrate its future. Though not quite 150 years old, the Pamplin College of Business has made worldwide impacts worth celebrating. December 2022 is Pamplin’s Sesquicentennial spotlight month. Join the college in looking back at the moments in Pamplin’s history that have led the college to become one of the nation’s greatest in business education.
The first bachelor’s degree in business at Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute, the university that would come to be known as Virginia Tech, was offered in 1925, with the first master’s degree offered in 1931. A school of business was formally established in 1961 with 28 faculty members and 823 students. Business became one of the colleges of the university in 1965, receiving accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business in 1966.
Pamplin Hall: A home for the College of Business
Commerce Hall, constructed in 1957, housed the business college. The building was renamed Pamplin Hall in 1969 to honor Robert Boisseau Pamplin Sr., a 1933 alumnus and member of Virginia Tech's Board of Visitors. Pamplin Sr., who passed in June 2009, was president and CEO of Georgia-Pacific and founded the R.B. Pamplin Corporation.
In 1988, the original building was renovated, and a new structure was connected to the old building by an atrium, roughly doubling the size of Pamplin Hall. One can still see the Hokie Stone exterior of the old building in the atrium. The atrium and other spaces were renovated in 2014 to provide students with more room to study and foster informal interactions with peers and faculty members.
In 1986, the college was named for Pamplin Sr. and his son, Robert B. Pamplin Jr., in recognition of their lifetime accomplishments, service to Virginia Tech and its college of business, and their philanthropic support. Pamplin Jr., a philanthropist, minister, author, and recipient of Virginia Tech's only honorary bachelor's degree, is chairman, president, and CEO of the R.B. Pamplin Corporation of Portland, Oregon. He was once named the country's outstanding individual philanthropist.
Advancing Pamplin’s impact and innovation in Northern Virginia
Launched in 1997, Virginia Tech’s Northern Virginia Center oversees the management of Pamplin’s graduate programs, including the Evening and Online MBA, Master of Science in Business Administration - Concentration in Hospitality & Tourism Management (MSBA-HTM), Master of Information Technology, and Executive Ph.D., and the Business Information Technology - Cybersecurity Management and Analytics undergraduate program — the only Virginia Tech undergraduate degree program outside Blacksburg.
The 232,000 square-foot facility is the university’s primary teaching location for graduate programs in the greater Washington, D.C., metro area, and is located next to the West Falls Church Metro station on the Orange line.
Announced in 2018 as part of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s successful bid to attract Amazon’s HQ2 to Northern Virginia, the Innovation Campus will unite industry, government, and academia in dynamic project-based learning and research to shape the way emerging technologies influence society, driving a new era for the greater Washington D.C., metro area’s tech ecosystem. Located in the Potomac Yard area of Alexandria, Va., the first academic building in the Innovation Campus has already broken ground, with the 11-story building scheduled to open in 2024. At its full build-out, the Innovation Campus will host approximately 750 master’s and 200 doctoral students and graduate 550 master’s and 50 doctoral candidates annually.
Pamplin College of Business centers
The college established two centers in 2014-15. The first, the Apex Center for Entrepreneurs, previously known as the Apex Systems Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, seeks to inspire and empower Virginia Tech students to turn their passion, purpose, and ideas into action. Their portfolio of programs is interdisciplinary and provides any Hokie, from any major and any year, the opportunity to engage in all phases of the entrepreneurship and new venture development process, while encouraging alumni to interface with the next generations of entrepreneurs.
In 2018, the Apex Center was named one of the best emerging entrepreneurship centers globally by GCEC (the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers). In 2022, Virginia Tech was ranked a top 25 program nationally for entrepreneurship by The Princeton Review for the second year in a row. In addition, in 2022 Virginia Tech was ranked No. 4 in the Southeast region by Entrepreneur Magazine, making Virginia Tech the only ranked school for entrepreneurship in Virginia.
Established in 2015, Pamplin College’s Center for Business Analytics (CBA) is a pioneer in the emerging field of business analytics research and education. CBA serves as a driving force within Virginia Tech in the creation of collaborative relationships with students, faculty, and corporate leaders to advance best practices in this field. CBA also leads curricular initiatives for students with interests in business analytics and builds synergistic partnerships within the Virginia business community. CBA operates the Master of Science in Business Administration with a Business Analytics concentration (MSBA-BA), a one-year graduate program where students tackle a real problem faced by a sponsoring company.
Global Business and Analytics Complex
Soon, the Pamplin College of Business will call a new complex home, as the Global Business and Analytics Complex (GBAC) continues to take shape. Announced in 2016, GBAC is a $250 million Boundless Impact presidential priority project to erect two new academic buildings near the prominent northwestern entrance to the Virginia Tech Blacksburg campus and two living-learning communities anticipated to be built in the proposed Student Life Village. The complex’s academic buildings are expected to provide roughly 220,000 square feet of space for teaching, research, and collaboration by faculty and students from multiple colleges, along with industry, with a focus on data analytics and decision-making in a transdisciplinary approach.
The entire Pamplin community will be located throughout GBAC. The Data and Decision Sciences Building, under construction and anticipated to open ahead of the fall 2023 semester, will serve a mix of select students and faculty from the College of Engineering, College of Science, and Pamplin.
Nearly 100 years ago, a small land-grant college in rural Virginia offered its first degree in business. Today, that single degree has grown into a world-renowned business college with campuses and classrooms throughout the Commonwealth, instructing over 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students across seven departments: Accounting and Information Systems, Business Information Technology, Finance, Insurance, and Business Law, the Howard Feiertag Department of Hospitality & Tourism Management, Management, Marketing, and the Blackwood Department of Real Estate.
Virginia Tech’s motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), is reflected in all that Pamplin does and will continue to do, though it is appropriate to remember another Latin motto, sic parvis magna (from small beginnings come great things).