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Student Engagement

Get involved with something you’ve always loved or try something entirely new. No matter what you’re majoring in, there are many opportunities to get involved with arts-related student groups and clubs.

Find Student Groups with GobblerConnect

Discover unique opportunities at GobblerConnect! Find and attend events, browse and join organizations, and showcase your involvement.

Arts and Culture Organizations

Art Reach

Art Reach is Perspective Gallery’s community outreach program, which provides visual arts experiences to students and experiential learning opportunities to gallery assistants and interns.

Black Student Alliance

The Black Student Alliance at Virginia Tech promotes a greater understanding of Black culture among students, employees, and community members at Virginia Tech through diverse programs that showcase the educational and artistic contributions of African Americans.

Center for Humanities

The Center for Humanities advances research based on humanistic methods of scholarship among faculty and students in arts, human-centered social sciences, and humanities fields working in their disciplines and collaborating with faculty across the university. This support of research foregrounds the human-centered approaches to scholarship that will be broadly impactful both within and beyond the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.

College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Ambassadors Program

This program provides over 3,000 volunteer hours to the college and the college departments each year. Student ambassadors build their leadership skills and resumes and get a unique networking experience, interacting with faculty, administrators, staff, parents, alumni, and prospective students.

Cultural and Community Centers

  • American Indian and Indigenous Community Center: The American Indian and Indigenous Community Center (AIICC) serves as a community gathering area and study space. The space hosts an expanding library of over 200 books, CDs, and DVDs, many of which were donated by faculty, staff, and Indigenous communities. The space also includes a variety of Indigenous art, historic artifacts, and ceremonial pieces representing the cultures and traditions of several Indigenous communities.
  • Asian Cultural Engagement Center: The Asian Cultural Engagement Center (ACEC) advocates for the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) communities, including Virginia Tech faculty, staff, students, and alumni. It also aims to educate the campus community on issues centered around or related to those communities.
  • Black Cultural Center: The center is an important component of Virginia Tech’s efforts to create a welcoming and inclusive campus and provides educational programs, exhibits, meetings, and receptions, as well as a comfortable space for community-building and for studying.
  • El Centro - Hispanic and Latinx Cultural and Community Center: El Centro is the Cultural and Community Center for the Latinx community at Virginia Tech. This is a support space for all the people that identify themselves as Latinos or Hispanos, for the people interested in our culture, and for all our allies. El Centro works with the Latinx Library, which hosts over 500 texts in multiple languages for all ages.
  • LGBTQ+ Resource Center: The LGBTQ+ Resource Center aims to advance, through education and advocacy, the rights and well-being of all Virginia Tech LGBTQ+ communities locally, across the Commonwealth of Virginia, and around the globe. The center works to provide space, acknowledge and celebrate intersectionality, cultivate leadership, and engage in activism in the spirit of Ut Prosim.
  • Intercultural Engagement Center: The center is an important component of Virginia Tech’s efforts to create a welcoming and inclusive campus community by providing students, faculty, and staff opportunities to come together across differences in order to deepen understanding, develop the capacity for difficult dialogue, and create community.

Itraab Arabic Music Ensemble

Founded in 2014 as a project of Moss Arts Center and led by ethnomusicologist Anne Elise Thomas, the ensemble explores traditional and contemporary repertoire from the Middle East, North and East Africa, and Gulf regions. Open to all Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff, as well as members of the community, the ensemble performs vocal and instrumental music representing art, folk and popular musical styles.

Moss Arts Center Ambassadors

The Moss Arts Center Ambassadors are a group of dedicated student volunteers who work together to build arts connections across the Virginia Tech campuses. Members help curate Moss programs, including performances, community events, and student art exhibitions.

Music Ensembles

  • Bands: With three different concert bands, the Department of Music offers wind and percussion performance opportunities for all Virginia Tech students, from music majors preparing for professional careers to non-majors who want to continue playing in a band in college. 
    • Concert Bands
      • Wind Ensemble
      • Symphony Band
      • Campus Band
    • Athletic Bands
      • The Marching Virginian
      • Hokie Pep Band
      • Regimental Band (i.e., The Highty-Tighties; open to Cadets only)
    • Honor Band
  • Brass and String Ensembles: Directed by applied faculty, students gain insight into the common practices and challenges associated with ensemble performance on their instrument. Through work in an ensemble, students develop key skills that are readily transferable to larger groups (such as orchestra, wind ensemble, jazz ensemble, etc.).
    • Low Brass Ensemble
    • Horn Choir
    • Trumpet Ensemble
    • Low String Ensemble
  • Chamber Ensembles: Performing chamber music at a high level is an essential part of becoming a professional musician. Students study and create chamber music coached by faculty with experience as professional performers in chamber music groups. Chamber ensembles regularly perform in master classes for the world’s leading musicians, such as Yo-Yo Ma; the Emerson, Brentano, and Ying quartets; and the Turtle Island String Quartet; the Berlin Philharmonic and Imani Winds quintets; and Third Coast Percussion.
  • Choirs: The Virginia Tech Choirs sing the finest choral repertoire across all time periods and genres. In addition to their own concerts, the choirs regularly collaborate with the Blacksburg Master Chorale and Virginia Tech Philharmonic for performances of major works with orchestra.
    • Chamber Singers
    • Tech Men
    • Women’s Chorus
  • Jazz Ensembles: Open to all Virginia Tech students by audition
    • Virginia Tech Jazz Ensemble: Directed by Jason Crafton, the Virginia Tech Jazz Ensemble is the flagship ensemble of the Virginia Tech jazz studies program. The group performs advanced big band literature of the past and present, with particular emphasis on new music by leading composers in the field.
    • Virginia Tech Jazz Lab Band: Directed by Kyle Hutchins, the Virginia Tech Jazz Lab Band is a large ensemble performing traditional jazz big band repertoire, such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, and Buddy Rich. Concerts are presented throughout the year both on and off campus.
    • Virginia Tech Jazz Workshop: Directed by Cyrus Pace, the Virginia Tech Jazz Workshop fields three to four small groups every semester. Combos typically consist of a rhythm section and up to four horns, providing opportunities for jazz students of all ability levels to develop their performance skills in small group communication and jazz improvisation.
  • L2Ork: Contemporary intermedia ensemble Linux Laptop Orchestra (L2Ork, pronounced “lork”) mixes traditional orchestra with increasingly accessible human-computer interaction technologies for the purpose of exploring expressive power of gesture, communal interaction, discipline-agnostic environment, and the multidimensionality of arts.
  • Music for the Stage: Opera and Theatre: Solos and scenes traverse the rich canon of 16th-century opera through modern-day Broadway. Students intensively study both musical and theatrical aspects of their assigned scenes, which then culminate in a fully staged public performance. Past repertory has included Sound of Music, Dido and Aeneas, Hello Dolly, La Traviata, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Marriage of Figaro. Suggested skills include classical and/or musical theatre vocal training and the ability to read music.
  • New Music Ensemble: An experimental music research lab under the artistic direction of Kyle Hutchins, the New Music Ensemble focuses on the discussion, artistry, and performance of experimental music after 1970, including free and structured improvisation, graphic notation, contemporary performance practice, interactive multimedia, and music in the expanded field. The group has premiered over 35 new works by student and professional composers and sound artists. 
  • Percussion Ensemble: Virginia Tech Percussion Ensemble, directed by Annie Stevens, is a university ensemble open to music majors and non-majors by audition in the fall semester. The group performs a wide body of repertoire, from classical transcriptions and chamber works to traditional West African drumming music and large percussion orchestra pieces, and features several guest artists throughout the year. Students have the opportunity to participate in master classes with visiting guest artists. 
  • Virginia Tech Philharmonic Orchestra: Virginia Tech's symphony orchestra, the group of music majors and non-majors from across the university is a 21st-century symphony orchestra focusing on standard repertoire, as well as works from underrepresented composers on a high artistic level.

Virginia Tech Digging in the Crates

VTDITC Hip-Hop Studies at Virginia Tech (i.e., Virginia Tech Digging in the Crates) is a practitioner-focused, student-driven, culturally responsive community engagement program that prioritizes experiential learning. The multifaceted and ever-evolving program was co-created by a diverse transdisciplinary team. The program has iteratively developed since the fall 2016 semester and has hosted more than 700 events.

Virginia Tech Union

Virginia Tech Union provides quality educational and social entertainment that represents the diverse culture of Virginia Tech’s students and community and enhances Virginia Tech students’ out-of-classroom experience through leadership and volunteer opportunities.

XYZ Gallery

XYZ Gallery is a student-run venue located in downtown Blacksburg dedicated to showcasing student and local talent via art, design, performance, and other artistic media.