Virginia Tech just completed a new Corps Leadership and Military Science (CLMS) building, which includes a war games simulation room and a new museum.
The three-story building is designed to tell stories, including about the history of the cadets at Virginia Tech, explained Major General Randal Fullhart, Commandant of Cadets, during a recent tour.
“What you’re seeing there is the cross cannons, which is a symbol for the skipper crew. That fires the cannons at our parades at the football games,” he said, pointing out small medallions that are on the edge of some of the light fixtures. One shows the outline of a dog. “Here’s our four-legged ambassador Growley,” said Fullhart, indicating one design that depicts Growley, the Cadet’s canine ambassador—a Labrador retriever.
Other symbols surround the building. Eight lights hang in the lobby’s atrium, representing eight core values of Virginia Tech’s Corps of Cadets program (eight pylons are also depicted on a war memorial on Virginia Tech’s campus).
When Virginia Tech opened in 1872 as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, every student was a cadet.
The new CLMS building cost $52 million, which Fullhart said was funded by private donations, and is where all cadets now have classes.
Junior Alex Arriza, the Cadet Command Sergeant Major, said the best part is learning alongside other students, training to serve in different branches of the military. “And makes it so we have a center space for all the Cadets,” Arriza said. “And also if you just look around, the architecture here is just beautiful. It’s a building you walk into and are just amazed by.”
Virginia Tech’s Corps of Cadets has grown in recent years. A new residence hall also opened this year, and the program now has space for 1,400 cadets. Currently the university has 1,240 cadets, including 442 freshmen who started this semester.
The new CLMS building also includes a museum which will be open to the public, after Sept 8. An official ribbon cutting ceremony will take place that day, during a reunion of corps graduates.
