| Ward Burton Visit Highlights Wood Week |
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| Written by Scott Lawrence | |
| Friday, 07 September 2007 | |
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Virginia Tech College of Wood Science and Forest Products is in the process of holding their annual Wood Week on campus this week. Virginia native and NASCAR Nextel Cup Series driver Ward Burton was on hand yesterday to sign some autographs and meet some of his fans on the Drillfield at the Wood Week Career Fair.
Burton, a South Boston native now drives the #4 State Water Heaters Chevrolet Monte Carlo for Abingdon, Virginia based Morgan-McClure Motorsports. “A good friend of mine, Ken Morgan a graduate of Tech, has a great business not far from where I live and he knows about my relationship with conservation and management institution in the Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation,” said Burton. “He asked if we could come and we were lucky enough to work it into the schedule and thanks to Larry McClure for providing the car and it has been great fun to meet everybody.”
The Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation is a 2000 acre preserve along 8.5 miles of the Staunton River and this project is known nationally for its environmental impact as a standard on how to preserve our natural resources. The Foundation has been around since 1996.
Burton was there from noon to 1 p.m. signing autographs and taking pictures with fans as this is a huge NASCAR loving part of the country. A show car was brought out and it was a hit with young and old alike.
The Career Fair for the college was going on also and there were companies from all across the nation in attendance scouting for potential employees. Dr. Paul Winistorfer, the department head of the College of Wood Science and Forest Products was very pleased and excited for the career fair. “Ward is a great environmentalist and forestry proponent and a friend of our program,” said Dr. Winistorfer. “We are out here on the Drillfield today with about 50 companies from California, Mississippi, Michigan because the wood and forest product industry in Virginia is a 25 billion dollar industry. It is a huge industry that needs students from all disciplines like engineering, marketing and business as well as our (Wood Science) program. We decided to put our industry in front of the student body in a bigger way because we have a 100% placement rate and the industry needs students from all disciplines.”
Quite a few companies who have operations on this side of Virginia were also in attendance. Georgia Pacific, which as a plant in Big Island in Bedford County, and MeadWestvaco, which has the huge paper mill in Alleghany County were two of the local big name companies in attendance. “The folks from Dreaming Creek Timber Framers are right here in Floyd. We have a number of other local companies here,” stated Dr. Winistorfer. “Virginia is blessed with great natural resources. . . for our students there are great opportunities to stay in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic region to work in the industry.”
Wood Week will close with some scholarship presentations on the weekend. For more information on Wood Week and the College of Wood Science and Forest Products, visit the department website at www.woodscience.vt.edu/woodweek.
For more pictures please visit our photo gallery located on our home page. Photos by David Grimes.
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