Discussions on higher education issues, universitywide priorities frame quarterly board meeting; final design for Mitchell Hall approved

Lee Learman, dean of the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, leads members of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors on a tour of the facility in Roanoke during the board’s August meeting. Photo by Ryan Anderson for Virginia Tech.

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors held its latest quarterly full-board meeting Sunday through Tuesday at the W.E. Skelton 4-H Educational Conference Center in Wirtz and at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke.

Following an orientation session Sunday morning, board members engaged in a retreat to discuss issues facing Virginia Tech and higher education in general. To begin the retreat, three experts led a conversation on generative artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on higher education and society more broadly: Naren Ramakrishnan, Virginia Tech’s Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering and director of the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics; Scott Hartley, co-founder and managing partner of Everywhere Ventures, a pre-seed venture capital firm, and best-selling author of “The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World”; and Rishi Jaitly, professor of practice and Distinguished Humanities Fellow at Virginia Tech, where he leads the Institute for Leadership in Technology. Read full story here.