Alum donates $16M to Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech has received a $16 million commitment from alumnus David Kellogg to back the Blacksburg university’s philosophy, politics and economics program he began supporting five years ago.

After graduating from Virginia Tech with an electrical engineering degree in 1982, Kellogg worked for the CIA and then became an executive with Decision-Science Applications, a federal contractor focused on defense research. In 1998, he founded IT firm Solers, which specialized in software and systems engineering. Reston-based federal contractor Peraton acquired Solers in 2019, and today, Kellogg leads proprietary trading firms he founded or cofounded.

Philosophy, politics and economics, or PPE, is an interdisciplinary field of study at Tech that examines how ethical principles, political institutions and economic systems intersect to shape societies and influence individual and collective decision-making. The university introduced a PPE minor in 2015 and a major in 2017, and today has more than 225 students enrolled in the programs.

Kellogg helped launch a research center in 2020 to support PPE, and his new gift permanently names it the David H. Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

“The gift commitment will allow the center to maintain and strengthen its current personnel, programs, and activities,” Kellogg Center Professor and Director Michael Moehler said in a statement. “It will enable the center to work on increasing its footprint over time in alignment with college and University goals.”

The funding from Kellogg is an estate gift in the form of an endowment through which funds become available over time. Moehler noted that the gift provides a certain level of stability for the center’s operations but added it would be “premature” to say exactly how the center may extend its footprint.

In a statement, Kellogg said the staff and faculty in the electrical engineering department at Virginia Tech taught him “how to think, how to analyze, to be careful and deliberate and not take shortcuts — and that worked out.”

The Kellogg Center hosts annual public lectures featuring Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, prominent legal scholars and moral, political and economic theorists.

“Democracy will not function without an informed public, and the public seems insufficiently informed at present,” Kellogg said. “We need people to think for themselves to become engaged and responsible citizens.”

The center supports research and is home to five core faculty members and more than 50 affiliated faculty. Moehler says the center conducts interdisciplinary research that is “socially relevant.”

“Our interdependent and globalized world faces a wide range of individual and collective decision-making problems that often cross the boundaries of academic disciplines,” he said. “Questions concerning market processes, government intervention, taxation, healthcare, sustainability, international relations, global trade, and justice involve both positive and normative elements, are multidimensional, and can be addressed adequately only through interdisciplinary analysis. The center provides such analysis.”

Moehler added that Virginia Tech PPE graduates have successfully pursued careers in management, marketing, consulting, industry, investment banking, finance, business administration, law, journalism, government, public administration, public policy, think tanks, healthcare, international affairs, international development and nonprofit organizations.

The center oversees two undergraduate degree programs in PPE, and its affiliated faculty conduct research in multiple fields.