From left: Pamplin Dean Richard E. Sorensen, Pamplin undergraduate career services director Stuart Mease, and Dominion philanthropy manager Cindy Balderson in Pamplin Hall.
BLACKSBURG, Va., Nov. 8, 2010 – Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business has received a $40,000 gift from the Dominion Foundation to help Pamplin students with their career search.
“We are appreciative of Dominion’s investment in our plan to better connect our employers to our students and vice versa by using innovative technologies that Generation Y and the private sector expect,” said Stuart Mease, Pamplin’s director of undergraduate career services.
The gift will be used specifically to create a Web application to match students with their ideal employer and employers with their ideal recruits. “This system will generate leads and provide a user-friendly experience where both students and employers can be identified based on specific preferences,” Mease said.
Pamplin students continue to be popular among employers, with five of the college’s majors routinely among the 10 majors most sought after by recruiters visiting campus, according to the university’s career services office. The college’s Business Horizons career fair, organized annually by Pamplin undergraduates, attracted more than 130 employers this fall.
The college was among 16 higher education institutions in the state to receive gifts of up to $40,000 from the Dominion Foundation for projects that focused on work force knowledge and skills and energy conservation.
“We see the importance in funding and cultivating the innovative studies that are happening at our colleges and universities and their potential for the future,” said William C. Hall Jr., a vice president of Dominion and president of The Dominion Foundation.
The Dominion Foundation’s focus areas include preservation of natural resources, work force development and education, diversity initiatives, neighborhood and community development, and basic needs for food and shelter.
Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of approximately 27,600 megawatts of generation. Dominion operates the nation’s largest natural gas storage system and serves retail energy customers in 12 states.
Virginia Tech’s nationally ranked Pamplin College of Business offers undergraduate and graduate programs in accounting and information systems, business information technology, economics, finance, hospitality and tourism management, management, and marketing. Pamplin emphasizes technology and analysis that improve business, entrepreneurship that leads to innovation and innovative companies, international opportunities for learning and research, and an inclusive, collaborative community. It is named in honor of two alumni: the late Robert B. Pamplin, retired chairman of Georgia-Pacific, and businessman, author, and philanthropist Robert B. Pamplin Jr.