History

The School of Public and International Affairs was approved by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors in 1996 as a collaboration of five departments and programs in two colleges to develop interdisciplinary instruction, research and outreach initiatives related to public policy, planning, and administration and globalization and international development. This collaboration did not have direct line responsibility to any one college and was dependent on funding from contributions from member departments and colleges. Founding departments Urban Affairs and Planning (UAP) and Public Administration and Policy (CPAP) in CAUS and Political Science, Geography, and International Studies in CAS, were joined by Science and Technology Studies and Agricultural and Applied Economics in 2000.

SPIA developed innovative instructional programs including undergraduate specializations shared by several majors, the Washington Semester program, the London Semester program, SPIA-designated undergraduate and graduate courses, and cross-listed courses. Along with faculty from Political Science and Geography, UAP developed the Master of Public and International Affairs. SPIA developed the Public and International Affairs (PIA) stream in the Environmental Design and Planning Ph.D. program. In research and outreach, SPIA members developed a number of interdisciplinary centers and institutes, such as the Institute for Community Health, the Institute for Social Assessment of Information Technology, and the Institute for Innovative Governance.

As a result of university reshaping and in an effort to build on this foundation to further develop Virginia Tech’s programs in public and international affairs to national prominence, SPIA became a hard school in CAUS effective August 2003. Founding departments UAP and CPAP became programs within the school and a new third program, Government and International Affairs (GIA), was created as a result of the transfer of six FTE faculty positions from the former College of Arts and Sciences. The six FTE include two FTE transfers from Sociology, one FTE transfer from Geography, and six 0.5 FTE transfers from Political Science. This group of programs integrates the scholarly approaches and professional practices drawn from diverse disciplines represented by existing and newly transferred faculty as well as future new hires to develop SPIA into a nationally recognized operation.

SPIA is administered by a Director who reports to the CAUS Dean. The Director is advised by a SPIA Executive Committee made up of the three program chairs along with one other faculty member from each program.