Triangle Area Alumni Chapter Challenge

Helping others is what Hokies do — can you step up to help an incoming first year student from the Triangle area?

Each year chapters around the world rally together to raise money for student scholarships. They make a difference for Hokies just starting their journey at Virginia Tech, helping to offset the costs of books, tuition, even travel to and from campus.

During the pandemic, our ability to gather and raise funds has been severely limited.  This campaign allows us the opportunity to rally around local students.  You can support a new Hokie from our area by making a gift to our chapter’s crowdfunding campaign today! Don't forget to take advantage of any matching contributions that your employer may offer. 

The Triangle Chapter would like to recognize two of our many awesome students who are embracing the spirit of Ut Prosim both on campus and here in the Raleigh-Durham area helping the local chapter.  

The first is Madeline Musaus, a senior graduating in a few weeks majoring in Clinical Neuroscience with minors in Medicine and Society and Psychology.  She is a 2017 graduate of Ravenscroft and lives in North Raleigh.  She has been an active student on campus and in the local community volunteering as a medical scribe at the Bradly Free Clinic in Roanoke and a Hospice volunteer throughout Montgomery County.  She was President of the MEDLIFE Club and a Student Ambassador for the School of Neuroscience.  

Madeline took an active role in managing a number of local Triangle chapter functions over the last few years, including the annual Freshmen student send-off picnic and speaking to local high school students on her VT experience at VT Admission’s hosted events.  She also created a strategic document outlining the concept of how the chapter could be more meaningful to more local alums if it targeted events based on an alum’s life-cycle stage (recent graduates, alums with young kids, emptynesters, etc.).

Madeline was recently awarded the 2021 College of Science Undergraduate Researcher of the Year based on the strength of her research in the Ubiquitin-Proteasome system and the regulation of DNA methylation in the hippocampus and amygdala during memory formation. This resulted in seven academic research publications, including two as lead author in the Journal of Neuroscience and Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

Madeline’s thoughts: “I was drawn to Tech for its school spirit, sense of community, the beautiful campus, pregame tailgates, and the School of Neuroscience.  The University has given me every opportunity to grow as a student, researcher, and a person.  The Triangle chapter has played a pivotal role for me with helping to me to understand the importance of Ut Prosim.  If you are not in a position to give a gift of money for a donation to the scholarship fund, maybe you will consider the gift of giving a couple of hours of your time to the chapter this year.”

The second student the Triangle Hokies would like to recognize is Shannon Aikens, a sophomore who is majoring in Computational Modeling and Data Analytics. She is a graduate of Sanderson High School and was the winner of the 2019 Chapter Scholarship Award. She has volunteered to become our newest Student Representative to the Chapter leadership team.

Shannon was one of just forty Freshman students that was admitted into the Calhoun Discovery Program, an Honors College experiential learning program that focuses on technological innovation for societal impact. She has had the honor of working on real-world problems with companies like Boeing, Caterpillar, and General Electric. She has worked on a team that created a virtual reality training program for manufacturing workers and her team was featured in the Wall Street Journal last fall. This year, she has been working on automating the supply chain process of large companies so they can track and distribute their parts using real-time data.Shannon has also spent considerable time with her undergraduate research as part of the DataBridge Lab. Her research involves looking into the resources and funds that support online learning to determine if it is sustainable in the long-term. She was recently honored with induction to the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society for being in the top 7.5% of her class.

Your donations are going to scholarship money for local students like Madeline and Shannon 

Together Triangle Hokies are trying to raise $1,000. Will you help? 

Gifts of any size matter and it's a chance to help your community.  Donors to our scholarship fund through this page will be thanked with a special Virginia Tech alumni sticker so you can let everyone know that you care about supporting the Hokie experience!

Plus, chapters from all over are challenging Hokies in their neighborhood to raise money for students from their own backyard. Who will be the first chapter to meet their goal?

Don’t miss your chance!