VIRGINIA TECH Comprehensive AI Governance & Activity Inventory
Abstract
A public-source inventory of artificial intelligence governance, teaching, research, and operations at Virginia Tech. Evidence snapshot date: September 26, 2026. The document records what the university has said and done publicly about AI as of that date. It is not an audit, maturity assessment, or scorecard. Part I covers ten institutional domains: governance architecture, policy infrastructure, teaching and learning posture, tool ecosystem and procurement, academic integrity, research governance, library and information literacy, infrastructure investment, public statements, and an evidence archive. Part II contains 21 unit dossiers, one for each college, school, institute, or administrative division with documented AI activity, using a uniform six-part structure: Governance & Policy, People, Teaching & Curriculum, Tools & Technology, Research & Scholarship, and Events & Programming. Sources are entirely public: institutional web pages, news releases, faculty profiles, grant databases, policy documents, and public filings. The inventory uses no FOIA-obtained material and includes no interview data. Major claims carry a URL; claims that could not be tied to a public URL are marked as such in the text. The phrase "Not publicly documented in available sources" denotes absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. This inventory is one of several companion reference documents produced from a broader study of 53 American universities, alongside an inventory for William & Mary, a peer benchmark of 23 BOV-adopted national peer institutions, and a Virginia public-source reference guide covering 30 four-year institutions. It stands as an independent reference document and is not derivative of the related working paper Governance Without Readiness: How 53 American Universities Responded to Generative AI. Intended for institutional researchers, governance staff, faculty senates, journalists, and policy researchers seeking a citable baseline of Virginia Tech's public AI footprint. Version 5.1 advances the evidence snapshot from June 10 to September 26, 2026 and incorporates developments verified through the new snapshot date. All additions carry primary-source URLs in the Evidence Archive and unit Sources lists. Content changes Governance: the AI Futures Working Group appointed by President Sands (vision statement published August 20, 2026; co-chairs Dixon and Jaitly; roster and facilitation by Strategic Affairs), and the AI Working Committee roster published on the Division of IT governance site (co-chairs Tomlin and Sippel, sixteen members, August 7, 2026), with the committee's first documented act and the governance page's April 30, 2026 rewrite recorded as the page states them. Tools: HokieAI (Cloudforce NebulaONE, OpenAI models, metered, approved for all data risk levels short of export-controlled data; DoIT notice August 10 and VT News feature August 23, 2026); the September 23, 2026 tools page (ChatGPT Edu pilot concluding December 2026, Copilot Chat at high risk, platform-as-a-service section, Panopto); the Rolai pilot's published non-renewal; the AI meeting assistant guidance. Teaching: the university-wide 18-credit AI minor (fall 2026), round-two AI curriculum grants (December 4, 2026 deadline), the August 13, 2026 AI Teaching Symposium, the Universal Design for Learning Day, Pamplin+ with its required first-year AI literacy course, and the Human-Centered Futures Council in CLAHS. Research and infrastructure: the SIRC Considerations revision of May 19, 2026; the $20 million NSF Programmable Cloud Laboratory Node; DOE Genesis Mission selections; Jefferson Lab and the High Performance Data Facility; the Owl cluster expansion; the Pediatric Health AI Innovation Hub and the Jeffrey Modell Center; VTCSOM's 2026-2029 strategic plan commitment; the CDRS Collaborative Research Grants; the counter-UAS center; the Data Center Summit. Leadership: Sands' April 9, 2026 announcement; Daniel Sui's transition and Kevin Pitts' interim appointment (announced September 24, effective September 28, 2026); Warren Dixon as dean of Engineering; Tom Martin at ICAT; Kirk Cameron's Boeing professorship; Mehul Sanghani's return to the Board of Visitors; Division of IT and ARC title changes. State context: HJ 32 (2026 Session) directing a JLARC study of AI in Virginia higher education; Executive Order 51 and SB384/HB797 retained from Version 4.1.0. Method Before release, the 2026 additions were verified cold, from the cited pages back to the text, by AI agents that had not drafted them; quotations were checked mechanically against retrieved page text where the pages could be reached, and the findings were corrected in this version. Negative findings are bounded to the pages searched. Retained figures from earlier versions were re-sourced against current institutional pages. Sources More than 600 unique URLs across the Evidence Archive and unit Sources lists. Document length: 74,390 words. Suggested citation for this version Turner, T. (2026). Virginia Tech: Comprehensive AI Governance & Activity Inventory (Version 5.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19670612
