Charles W. Steger; led Virginia Tech through aftermath of mass shootings

Charles W. Steger, who shepherded Virginia Tech to national prominence and unprecedented growth but whose tenure as president was shadowed by a gunman’s slaying of 32 people on campus during one of the deadliest shooting rampages in recent U.S. history, died May 6 at his home in Blacksburg, Va. He was 70.

The university announced Steger’s death, but a spokesman had no immediate word on the cause.

With Steger at the helm from 2000 to 2014, Virginia Tech expanded enrollment, raised more than $1 billion in private funding, bolstered its reputation as a scientific research powerhouse, and joined the Atlantic Coast Conference to gain wide exposure in football, basketball and other sports. Virginia Tech’s 15th president held three degrees from the public land-grant university and profoundly shaped its development at the outset of the 21st century.

“Not many of the hundreds of leaders who have led American universities in modern times have influenced their institutions as powerfully as Charles Steger influenced Virginia Tech, or as gently and wisely,” John T. Casteen III, president emeritus of the University Virginia and a contemporary of Steger, said in a statement.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said he knew Steger “not only as an advocate for Virginia Tech, but for educational opportunity for all Virginians, at every level.”

A defining moment came midway through Steger’s tenure, on April 16, 2007, when a gunman killed 32 students and faculty members before taking his own life.