Seventh-graders from Shawsville Middle School will visit Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus on Tuesday, Oct. 23, for “Dream Big: Imagine Yourself in Graduate School.” The event is hosted by the Graduate School in coordination with Montgomery Country Public Schools.

To prepare for their visit, students took an online interest survey and will visit labs and graduate programs aligned with their responses. Each student will visit three different fields of study, and spend time with graduate students. They also will have the opportunity to tour the Blacksburg campus. They will eat lunch with graduate students from various disciplines and can participate in interactive experiments conducted by the Chemistry Department. 

The school district is developing follow-up activities to help the students plan for their futures, mapping out what high school courses they would need to take to potentially work or study in a field that they found interesting during their Virginia Tech visit.

Graduate School Childcare Coordinator Marin Riegger, who organized the event, said if it is successful, the Graduate School will include Auburn Middle School in 2019, and then Christiansburg Middle School.

“We have had wonderful participation from 13 different areas at Virginia Tech, and are thrilled to welcome these kids, from our own community, to our campus,” Riegger said. “Outreach events like Dream Big are what the mission of Virginia Tech, as a land grant institution, is all about.”

For more information about the event, contact Marin Riegger at mriegger@vt.edu.

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