Founders Day

Ruffner Medal

In 1976 the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors authorized the William H. Ruffner Medal to recognize individuals “who have rendered unusually distinguished services to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.” The medal is named in honor of William Henry Ruffner, Virginia’s first superintendent of instruction, who had taken a stand as early as 1856 for a practical system of agricultural education. In his role as state superintendent, he served on Virginia Tech’s first governing board for a decade. He also chaired a committee that planned the organization and instruction of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, the school known today as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. D. Lyle Kinnear, in his book The First Hundred Years, calls Ruffner “a towering figure, perhaps the towering figure, in shaping the early destiny of the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College . . . .”

Ruffner Medal recipients are determined by a faculty-staff-student committee selected by the board of visitors. Recipients of the university’s highest award: