Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, popularly known as Virginia Tech (VT), is a private chartered and public land-grant and sea-grant university with the main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, with other research and educational centers throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, the National Capital Region, and international locations in Switzerland and the Dominican Republic.

Founded in 1872 as an agricultural and mechanical land-grant college, Virginia Tech is a research university with the largest full-time student population in Virginia and one of the few public universities in the United States that maintains a corps of cadets. The university is one among a small group of polytechnic universities in the United States which tend to be primarily devoted to the instruction of technical arts and applied sciences.

The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

Virginia Tech has the largest number of degree offerings in Virginia, more than 125 campus buildings, a 2,600-acre main campus, off-campus educational facilities in six regions, a study-abroad site in Switzerland, and a 1,700-acre agriculture research farm near the main campus. The main Virginia Tech campus is located in the New River Valley in the valley and ridge physiographic region of the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, a few miles from the Jefferson National Forest in Montgomery County.

The Board of Visitors is the governing authority for Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The Board is composed of 14 members, 13 of whom are appointed by the Governor. The 14th member is the President of the Board of Agriculture and Consumer Services, who serves ex officio. Each year, an undergraduate student and a graduate student are selected through a competitive review process to serve as non-voting representatives to the board.