Theodore J. Settle

Virginia Tech University

Biographical Abstracts

Ted’s scholarly contributions include his ability to name previously unrecognized issues that congeal interest in community engagement scholarship topics and his talent for bringing together university and community leaders to define shared agenda and advance best practice. His focus and insight about partnerships grew out of the Kettering Foundation’s National Issues Forum and affected his work. Specifically, Ted is very collaborative in style and applies community engagement scholarship principles with fidelity and passion. The following collaborative project examples reflect these qualities.

• Founding and developing the Engagement Academy for University Leaders and capturing sponsors (APLU, AASCU, and CUMU), which is arguably the premier for professional development venue for reaching more than 500 CES leaders over the past eight years.
• Providing leadership in creating APLU’s self-assessment tool for economic development.
• Creating a representative, statewide organization for economic development leaders from Virginia’s public universities, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, Virginia Business magazine, and the Virginia Community College System, which advanced best practice and contributed to Rolls Royce’s decision to locate a $500 million jet engine plant in Virginia.
• Hosting Virginia economic development professionals to learn about Virginia Tech’s research strengths in local communities(e.g., biotechnology, information technology security, nanotechnology) and working with these communities to integrate this capacity into proposals for companies being recruited to their regions.
• Leading three large proposals funded by federal agencies (EDA and DOL), which included significant community, university and corporate involvement and partnership.
• Serving on a three person APLU team exploring policies and programs to advance university workforce development roles with the US Assistant Secretary for Labor.