VT College of Science Quarterly August 2014 Vol. 3 No. 1 Feb. 2015 | Page 3

Class of 2019
sets record for
undergraduate
applications
Virginia Tech received a record number of
undergraduate applications for the Class of
2019. The almost 22,500 freshman applications received to date is a 7.6 percent increase
over last year’s
by
total of 20,897.
“As a land-grant Div. of Undergraduate Education
institution, we
are committed to increasing access to higher
education,” said President Timothy Sands. “As
we attract a larger and more diverse pool of
talented and high-achieving students from
the commonwealth and around the world,
the university hopes to meet the challenge
of expanding access so we can continue to
produce more degree recipients in STEM and
health fields as well as in other areas such as
the university’s programs in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.”
Virginia Tech’s seven colleges with undergraduate degrees are innovating and reimagining their programs of study to meet the
employment and education demands of the
21st century.
“Our diverse programs of study – particularly
our new majors in packaging systems and design, water, multimedia journalism, criminology, and neuroscience, among others – have
increased interest from prospective students,”
said Wanda Hankins Dean, vice provost for
enrollment and degree management. “These
interdisciplinary programs prepare graduates
for fields with strong job demand and fulfilling
career paths.”
In addition to innovative programs of study
and Virginia Tech’s community of service, according to Dean, the record is due to Virginia
Tech’s collaborative strategic enrollment management planning and a highly personalized
admissions process.
The Office of Undergraduate Admissions
notifies regular decision applicants of admissions decisions by April 1. Students must reply
by May 1.

Alison Matthiessen

Bruce Wallace, left, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Biological
Sciences, with fellow
biologist George Simmons, Alumni University
Distinguished Professor
Emeritus, in the 1980s.

In memoriam: Bruce Wallace
Bruce Wallace, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological
Sciences at Virginia Tech and Professor
Emeritus of Genetics at Cornell University, died Jan. 12 in Blacksburg at the
age of 94.
Born and raised in McKean, Pennsylvania, he received his bachelor’s degree
in zoology in 1941 from Columbia
University. He served in the Army during World War II as a statistical control
officer under Robert McNamara. After
the war he received his doctoral degree
from Columbia in 1949.
He took a position at, and later was
assistant director of the prestigious
Biological Laboratory at Cold Spring
Harbor, New York. In 1958, he joined
Cornell University, where he was a professor of genetics until retiring in 1981
to take a position in the Department of
Biology at Virginia Tech.
He became a University Distinguished
Professor of Biology in 1983 and remained an active member of the faculty
until he retired in 1994.
Wallace was a world-renowned
pioneer in the study of the genetics of
natural populations.
In 1970 he was elected to the National
Academy of Sciences. He was a member
of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and served as president of the
Genetics Society of America, the American Society of Naturalists, the Society of
the Study of Evolution, and the American Genetics Association, and was also
an editor of Evolutionary Biology.
He wrote more than 100 research
articles, mostly in the field of popula-

tion genetics using Drosophila as a genetic
model. He also wrote more than 15 books,
many translated into other languages.
During his later years, he increasingly
focused his attention on