Festival history

The Virginia Tech Science Festival

We've been celebrating science with science festivals on the Virginia Tech campus since 2014.

In 2014, the Science Museum of Western Virginia and Virginia Tech collaborated to head up the Virginia Science Festival. A week of festivities included a kickoff festival in Blacksburg, events every evening, and a grand finale in Roanoke. Other communities in the state also coordinated local festivals.

At the 2024 Virginia Tech Science Festival, we collaborated with the Virginia Tech Department of English for a poetry contest to celebrate our wondrous planet with odes. We proudly present our winners.

In 2015, the second Virginia Science Festival featured festivals all over the state again, with Roanoke and Blacksburg festivals held on the same Saturday. The Maker Festival at the Northern Virginia Higher Ed Center kicked off. A number of meet-the-scientist events were held in downtown Blacksburg.

2016 saw the inaugural Virginia Tech Science Festival, as interest and funding for a statewide festival waned. The Roanoke community hosted a School Preview Day the week prior to the Blacksburg campus event. The Maker Festival grew. The STEM Summit joined in the Week of Science for programming for STEM educators in the region.

2017 was another successful year for the VTSF. The Nutshell Games and keynote presentation from Christopher Emdin were energetic additions to the festival programming.

In 2018, the festival hosted Nutshell Games with the Center for Communicating Science again. Festival organizers were recognized by the Virginia Tech Center for Autism Research for outstanding efforts in creating an inclusive, autism-friendly environment.

2019 celebrated advances of women and science with both the theatrical production Hedy! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr in the spring and a fall festival that featured Miss Virginia winner Camille Schrier, whose talent was a science demonstration and who went on to win the title of Miss America. Over 100 exhibits were presented to the public, as well as another iteration of the Nutshell Games.

2020 marked the COVID edition of the Virginia Tech Science Festival. The organizing team maintained safe, two-way conversations between scientists and learners by hosting teleconferenced Meetups between learner groups and scientists before the official festival date. Edited videos of these teleconferences were unveiled to the public on the festival day. The Nutshell Games participants produced their own videos to continue that tradition as well.

In 2021, COVID continued to affect how festivals could happen, so the festival shifted to small field trips for one school at a time that visited with five to six presenters. This model worked well and became the new basis for Hokie for a Day field trips' academic experience. Meetups continued with classrooms. Six presentations were held in the Cube for very small audiences and live-streamed to the public on the Saturday event.

2022 saw the festival return to an in-person, public Saturday event serving school systems and the public alike.

Elementary category winner
Ode to Wonder
By Marcus Shippee, third grade

Something that is not uncovered yet
Something that is missing
Imagination

So much that you can think of
Create
And have more wonders about it

You do the act of wondering in your head
But also with your limbs

When I wonder
I’m at that place
Investigating

Wonder feels like a mystery
that needs to be uncovered

Wonder makes me want to push through
Whatever comes my way

Adult category winner
DREAMS FROM THE SEAFLOOR An Ode to the Secret Ocean
By Caroline Foltz

Lo! Those liquid mines of silver-flicker, Pooling thick beneath the ocean rot
With glittery strings of oiled liquor
And the brittle of dreams long forgot.
Here swells a sunken wave
Of ancient wind through tidal veins,
Receding deep into its watery grave
To the blackened heart of mythos’ plains.
Here breathes a primordial bath,
The gleaming iris of crystalline Styx
Where Genesis whispers of bated wrath
Like flood cresting o’er a pupil eclipsed.
Here seeps the soft histories, those
Fantasies bloomed from wrinkled sponge
Whose formless threads of floating ambrose Spin on languid midnight tongues.
Wherein slow liquid this artery slips
Of an earth encircled, subcutaneous
Flows a current flush for little podded ships
To enlight the mystery of foreign depths.