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August 24: The Pamplin Pulse

Special Introduction to The Pamplin Pulse

Dear Pamplin community,

Welcome to the inaugural edition of our new monthly newsletter, The Pamplin Pulse: News for the Pamplin College of Business Community. The vision for the Pulse is to provide you with a platform to share current happenings from within the college with all our alumni and friends to build community and further engagement. You can expect to receive the Pulse 10 times a year on an academic year schedule. We have designed the Pulse to offer more frequent informational communications, to elicit your feedback, and to invite your involvement.

Special appreciation goes to our award-winning student organization, PRISM, who designed the Pamplin Pulse logo, and to my fellow members of the Pamplin Advisory Council’s Communications Task Force. We hope that you enjoy the first issue of the Pulse and that you will feel more informed about all things Pamplin and more connected to something we are fortunate to share: our Pamplin heritage.

We would love to have your feedback as well as future story ideas. If you have any suggestions or comments they would be appreciated, please send them to PamplinNews@vt.edu.

Thank you and Go Hokies.

Jim Hatch
Chair, Pamplin Advisory Council Communications Task Force

Dean's Corner

Graduate recieving diploma

As Pamplin welcomes its students back to the classroom, the environment they are returning to is vastly different than the one they left just five short months ago. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has altered the look and feel of campus life, allowing fewer opportunities for face-to-face interactions with faculty, staff, and fellow students. Our faculty has worked tirelessly over the summer to ensure that the classroom experience, while different, continues to meet the high standards of a Pamplin education. 

Pamplin classes will range from in-person to fully online with most using a mix of the two. No matter the format, our faculty will work to engage students, we are not simply prerecording lectures or putting cameras in classes. Pamplin faculty have taken the time to redesign courses using feedback from students and other faculty. We used national best practices and a task force to create guidelines for online learning to increase interaction with students. I was recently invited to attend Deloitte University’s higher education business dean conference where I participated in roundtables with many of our peer and aspirational business colleges. Pamplin was recognized for our innovation in making systemic, substantive, and creative changes in our teaching deliverables under COVID conditions.

Beyond formal classes, we are offering a range of educational experiences, including interactive virtual events with alumni speakers, increasing our footprint with the University’s Hokie Connect online mentorship platform by encouraging our students to take advantage of the power of networks with classmates/peers and alumni. Now is also a time of social change. There is a heightened sense of racial and social injustice that has not been seen in recent history. We recognize that this is a time where we need to listen and learn from the experiences our constituents have had. To see and hear how race, class, and gender issues have impacted lives. It is not just our students who are learning. Businesses across the country are grappling with similar dialogues in the workplace.

In this inaugural issue you will read about a landmark donation made to the Global Business and Analytics Complex, a facility that will fundamentally change education and research at Virginia Tech for the better and will be Pamplin’s new location on campus; a Marketing course that will provide students with the tools needed to ensure their mental well-being in a stress-filled world; the top ranked new Program in Real Estate, its dynamic expansion and the Real Estate Advisory Board members that are propelling it (and Pamplin) to being #3 in the country; and the creation of Pamplin ENGAGE, a new Pamplin initiative to hire and train more than 100 top students as undergraduate teaching assistants to improve course design and the communications between students and their professors. In this story we learn why one company donated through a new national business model it invented to help make ENGAGE a reality.

I am excited to begin the fall semester because of, not despite, the challenges it will bring. Unprecedented times allow for unprecedented successes. The Pamplin Hokie spirit is strong because of our community. Thank you all.

Let’s Go…

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Top Story

Donor Spotlight

Engagement

  • Article Item
    Program in Real Estate ranked nationally, adds board members
    Program in Real Estate ranked nationally, adds board members , article

    While much of the world was forced to slow down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Program in Real Estate has had a busy few months. The program recently received the honor of being named as the #3 best undergraduate real estate program in the nation. The program’s Industry Advisory Board also appointed five new members.

Faculty Spotlight

  • Article Item
    Current events have you stressed? Marketing has a course for that
    Current events have you stressed? Marketing has a course for that , article

    Thermometer to check for fever. A pulse oximeter to measure blood oxygen levels. Hand sanitizer to prevent infection. Mask to prevent asymptomatic spread. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed many of us into amateur epidemiologists, no matter our true vocation. But what about our mental health during this stress-filled time? What tools do we have to ensure that our mental well-being is just as fit as our physical well-being?

Upcoming Events

Select recent appearances of Pamplin College of Business faculty, students, and alumni in the news.

For more information, please contact pcobevents@vt.edu.