Jane E. Johnston, 2021

As one of the longest serving Virginia Tech employees, Jane Johnston has no shortage of stories to tell. Johnston started at Virginia Tech in 1955  at age 17, after graduating from a small high school in Craig County. She was hired as the department head secretary in the aeronautical engineering department by Robert Truitt, the department head at the time. She worked full-time until 1965, typing tests, quizzes, exams, class tickets, student schedules, and theses for students.

After she moved from Blacksburg to New Castle in Craig County after 1965, Johnston started working part-time in the department in her current position as a program support technician. She still works a few days a week in the department, maintaining student records, performing graduation analyses, and advising undergraduate students.

Over the years, Johnston has witnessed several historical events in the university, including Virginia Tech becoming the first traditionally white southern school to graduate an African-American student in 1958, Charles Yates, who later became a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering.

She has experienced changes, such as the school transition from a small Corp of Cadets institution to a more diversified university. As the longest serving employee in aerospace and ocean engineering, she has worked with more than eight different department heads and has seen the department change its name several times. One thing that has remained the same: she has always worked in the same department and in Randolph Hall for the past 66 years.

Another aspect that has not changed is Johnston’s passion for helping students and coworkers. Throughout the years, she has helped hundreds of students organize their academic schedules in order to graduate on time. She has been at the heart of aerospace and ocean engineering since its inception, and it is quite amazing that she has been a part of AOE students’ lives for six decades.

One of Johnston’s passions is history and tradition, which has carried over into her work. In 2004, Johnston co-authored an article with previous department head Bob Walters, which reviewed the history of the aerospace engineering department. This article is now included as a chapter in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics book, “Aerospace Engineering During the First Century of Flight.”

Johnston’s passion for history goes beyond the department and her professional work. She is also a genealogist, historian, founding member, and a director for the Craig County Historical Society.

Johnston has co-compiled three books on Craig County and the Civil War. She regularly creates booklets, titled “In and Around Craig County,” which are about different routes around Craig County, including a full genealogy of the families that lived on those routes.