The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Global Programs Office connects students and faculty to the world. Meaningful international engagement opportunities allow faculty and students to serve globally, enrich communities at home and abroad, and develop partnerships to address the most-challenging issues faced by society.
CALS in the World
Thompson (right) recently led a group of faculty on a trip to Kenya, where CALS Global is building partnerships to improve food security.
The Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences — which has long been a leader in empowering people around the world to produce sustainable food while increasing productivity — will become an even larger knowledge platform when it presents the Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Report® in 2019.
The GAP Report is a call to action, urging world leaders to invest in proven strategies to produce food, feed, fiber, and biofuel in a sustainable manner to meet the demands and needs of a growing world. The report’s findings are presented each year to an international audience in Des Moines, Iowa, at the World Food Prize/Borlaug Dialogue. In previous years, the report was produced by the Global Harvest Initiative.
“The college is well positioned to serve as a host for the report given the breadth of its programs in food, agriculture, and nutrition and its emphasis on addressing global food security issues,” said Tim Sands, president of Virginia Tech. “The college’s initiative to grow public-private partnerships, its investment in international programs, and the new Innovation Campus in Alexandria, Virginia, all benefit the GAP Report and its stakeholders.”
CESAAM and Egerton University leadership collaborated with faculty from Virginia Tech on a two-week-long trip to Kenya that was the capstone of the year-long CALS Global Opportunity Initiative.
CALS Global launched a new partnership in 2017 with the Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Agriculture and Agribusiness Management (CESAAM) at Egerton University. CESAAM is a World Bank-funded African Center of Excellence with the mission to improve food security along the agricultural value chain.
Masha Niv, the vice dean for research and development at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, speaks with Tom Thompson, associate dean for global programs at the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, about developing partnerships between the two universities.
Virginia Tech and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are leading the charge to grow safe and nutritious food for a growing global population. Both are working to address the challenge of securing safe and healthy water for people around the world. And both are preparing a new generation of leaders to tackle these and many other issues that lay ahead.
CALS in Service
Virginia Tech President Tim Sands explains how the university works inside the commonwealth and across the globe to help increase crop yields while reducing the use of toxic chemicals.
About CALS Global
- The mission of CALS Global is to create partnerships, discover opportunities, and empower success — to serve globally.
- The vision of CALS Global is to ensure that CALS is recognized worldwide as a premier destination for agriculture and life sciences.
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