University of Iowa graduate Steven Grubbs has bought his childhood school, passed bills as an Iowa House representative, and most recently started his very own company, VictoryXR, which recently modeled the Tippie College of Business in virtual reality.

Born October 20, 1964, in Hill City, Kansas, Grubbs and his family moved to Davenport, Iowa, where he attended HM Perry School in the 1970s. After he graduated from West Davenport High School, Grubbs came to the UI.

Grubbs was elected to UI’s Student Senate his freshman year and would become Senate President just a year later in his sophomore year. He said his time in UI student politics was some of the most challenging times of his political career.

“It was the toughest politics I ever engaged in. I’ve worked on six presidential campaigns, been in the legislature, but nothing was as tough as the University of Iowa,” Grubbs said. “Something about students in politics.”

Grubbs received his undergraduate degree in finance and completed his law degree while working in the Iowa House of Representatives. From 1990 to 1996, Grubbs spent four out of the six years serving as Chairman of the House Education Committee.

Grubbs was able to pass legislation for a technology school fund that allowed school districts to connect their buildings to the internet and buy computers.

“The governor had set aside a big chunk of money to improve schools in Iowa, and I took that money and changed direction with it and suggested that we use it to get advanced technology in schools,” he said.

Additionally, the legislation allowed for increased flexibility in how the schools utilized the newly acquired funds.

“For some schools, that meant getting hooked up to the internet,” he said. “For most schools, that meant getting computer labs, but we gave the school districts a great amount of flexibility on how they used those dollars.”

Grubbs first experienced virtual reality in 2015 after using a VR headset. He said the experience began the thought process of how this technology could be used for education.

“I thought, wow, what a great way to make learning more interesting, and so we set off,” he said. “We launched our company in 2016 and had our first product in the marketplace in January of 2017.”

VictoryXR would expand to fit the online learning format, which also developed into creating college campuses online. An employee of VictoryXR, Cassie Hauschildt, explained that virtual realities’ true capabilities are still being discovered.

“I think a lot of people think VR is just a game… you really have to hone in that there’s the opportunity for so much more,” Hauschildt said.

Work in this field led to the idea of a “metaversity,” which is defined as a digital replication or duplicate of a real-life university’s physical environment. In addition, these spaces can have areas that do not exist in the real world.

This duplication is what VictoryXR did for the Tippie College of Business. James Chaffee, chief operations officer for the Tippie College of Business, said the excellent work VictoryXR did when collaborating to create the virtual campus.

RELATED: UI announces ‘Metaversity’ virtual reality campus

“I can’t tell you how much [Steve] loves this university. He’s just over the moon with this place,” Chaffee said. “You go into the virtual environment, and you see the Pentacrest, you see Phillips Hall, and you see all these other spaces. They added that because Steve just wanted more.”

Chaffee said the UI would continue its collaborations with VictoryXR.

“A number of them are alums, which really helps because they have a passion for the college,” Chaffee said.

Hauschildt said plans for the future could include the development of spaces for neurodiverse students who experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways. She said this could be helpful for students who are easily overstimulated.

Above all of Grubbs achievements, he iterated that his time at UI was some of the most valuable for him. Along with his two degrees from the university, Grubbs’ wife has a degree in journalism and went to law school at UI.

“In our household, we have four degrees from Iowa. The environment really helped me grow as a person. The extracurricular activities allowed me to hone my skills, and so my education was extremely valuable,” Grubbs said.