NEWS

GRADUATE PROGRAMS WELL RANKED BY U.S. NEWS
Graduate programs in education and engineering at Virginia Tech fared well in U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Graduate Schools 2006" survey released April 1. The Career and Technical Education graduate program climbed to third in the nation after being ranked fifth among vocational/technical graduate specialties for the last four years. The program has been a top-10 selection for 11 straight years. The overall ranking for the Virginia Tech College of Engineering rose this year from 32nd to 31st and achieved a rating of 18th among engineering schools at public universities. Individual engineering graduate programs ranked in the top 30 are industrial (eighth), civil (11th), environmental (12th), aerospace (13th), mechanical (20th), materials (26th), and electrical (29th). To see all the rankings, go to http://www.USNews.com.

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN WINS NCARB PRIZE
A Virginia Tech team has been awarded the NCARB Prize (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards) for the Creative Integration of Practice and Education in the Academy. This unique set of courses was developed by Kathryn Clarke Albright, AIA, associate professor and foundation program chair in Virginia Tech's architecture program in the School of Architecture + Design. Thirty-three entries, representing 26 colleges and universities, were juried for the 2005 NCARB Prize. Virginia Tech's winning entry, "Chicago Studio," a set of architecture classes, provided an alternate model for a traditional upper-level design studio. The studio is built around a series of integrated, collaborative courses that introduce daily professional-practice activities in an urban setting. Student teams create a collective master plan for one of three sites along the Chicago River; each student then designs a building for that master plan.

NEW NETWORK TO CONNECT VA UNIVERSITIES TO NATIONAL RESEARCH
Gov. Mark R. Warner announced on March 21 the creation of VORTEX, a broadband optical fiber network that will connect Virginia's universities to new national and international research networks. "VORTEX will provide Virginia's academic researchers with new cyber infrastructure tools and will enable access to the fastest networks in the country," Warner said. "These tools are essential if our schools are to compete for major science and engineering projects." VORTEX is the creation of the Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership, a regional consortium including Virginia's doctoral universities: University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, George Mason University, Old Dominion University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the College of William & Mary. It will link these Virginia research universities to the National LambdaRail, a new national optical research backbone for scientists, engineers, and innovators (http://www.nlr.net/).