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There’s a lot going on here, much of which will affect you directly in one way or another.
The Roanoke Valley’s educational component is in an almost-constant state of flux, sometimes trailing national trends, often moving closer to the front.
The most recent dramatic advance is the Regional Acceleration and Mentoring Program, or RAMP, a business accelerator that is the rage in technology corridors nationally. RAMP, however, is not the only movement on the knowledge train.
Consider these:
• Roanoke College and Hollins are celebrating simultaneous 175th birthdays. Hollins University just introduced a new president, its 12th.
• Roanoke City Schools’ graduation rate continues its impressive improvement, up more than 30 percentage points.
• Jefferson College and Virginia Tech Carilion Medical College & Research Institute (VTC) are expanding their influence almost geometrically, the latter earning an international reputation.
• Virginia Western Community College’s megatronics program is attracting the attention of the business community.
• The valley’s for-profit post-secondary schools offer job training that results in a lot of jobs.
• The choice of public and private elementary and high schools in the valley remains impressive, with college preparation a primary goal.
• A new business incubator in Vinton, headed by the estimable Annette Patterson, is taking care of special clientele, with instruction from seasoned business professionals as a central goal.
• Roanoke’s Higher Education Center has a new director—only its second—and the same impressive educational mission that has served nearly 100,000 people so far.
Here is a look at the components:
RAMP
The brand new Regional Acceleration and Mentoring Program showed it was dead serious when it recently went outside its normal channels and appointed Blacksburg’s Mary Miller, 66, to direct its initial course.
Miller, owner of Interactive Design and Development, a successful software company, has been head of the Roanoke Blacksburg Technology Council, and her involvement in business in the region has been impressive. She’s a member of the Virginia Tech College of Engineering Academy of Engineering Excellence and knows just about everybody who’s anybody in the region. She has a reputation for being a mentor and she sees RAMP as eventually becoming a regional program.
RAMP is not a new idea, though it is new for this area.
“We take a company with a product and accelerate its development,” says Miller. “Incubators [like the new one in Vinton] are a great place to start, but once they hatch, they need the tools to accelerate. The model plays out” the business plan. “The Roanoke Valley is late to the table; there are hundreds of [RAMP-style programs nationally]. … We have what we need here to get to the next level. We have all the players. We have the schools. Everybody is all in.”
The immediate challenge, Miller says, is “to pick the right companies the first time out of the gate.”
Samantha Steidle of Virginia Western Community College, who helped initiate the program, says the Roanoke Valley model is “still evolving. We want to grow it to what it needs to be, let it grow organically.”
The RAMP facility on Jefferson Street downtown has a number of offices, three to five of them on the third floor reserved for the business—the best of the region’s start-ups—who qualify for the program.
“We’re going for quality,” says Steidle.
The program intends to “create mentorships, venture capital networks and educational programs surrounding them. I taught this concept at Virginia Western as the Stanford model,” says Steidle. The program comes under the VWCC workforce development umbrella.
“Colleges are constantly trying to figure out how to collaborate and not compete,” she says. “If they are not aligned, who hurts is the student.”
The program offers an eight-week course centering on “turning ideas, research and technology into a product or process customers will need, want and pay for.”
Roanoke Higher Education Center
When Tom McKeon, the only director the Roanoke Higher Education Center had known in its 17 years of operation, retired late last year there was little doubt about Kay Dunkley, a ball of intellectual energy, becoming his successor, Jan. 1. It was a natural, fluid move to the executive desk of the organization that is home for 14 Virginia-based colleges and universities in the heart of Roanoke.
The Higher Ed Center has been the source of nearly 100,000 degrees, certificates and workforce training programs. It employs 310 people and its economic impact has been estimated at $32 million. Wythe County native Dunkley, who grew up on a farm, was the director of the Virginia Tech component, one of its center’s largest, and was a graduate of both Tech and Radford University.
Almost immediately upon her arrival, the center announced a $5 million, 8,000-square-foot expansion of the Claude Moore Education Complex, home of the popular culinary arts school for Virginia Western.
Dunkley talks of developing “human capital in our region” and says, without hesitation, “I have been preparing for this job all my life and I didn’t even know it. It’s just fun.” It also puts to use Dunkley’s skills in “organizational structure, streamlining processes, working with staff,” she says. “I thrive on having different stakeholders” and there are plenty at the Education Center.
Dunkley’s vision of the future includes “looking at other institutions: what programs are currently needed” and what can they provide? “We want to be hot and heavy in the workforce non-credit arena.” She also wants to “ratchet up the foundation board and go after funding.”
Hollins University and Roanoke College
Pareena Lawrence was introduced as Hollins University’s 12th president in July, replacing the revered Nancy Gray, who had held the president’s chair since 2005. Gray’s mark was indelible, especially in areas like the university’s endowment, its support of single-sex education and the strength of its nationally-ranked theater department.
Both Hollins and Roanoke are celebrating 175 years of operation in 2017 and have had a year-long observation. Mike Maxey, who like Gray is the 11th president of his school, remains the popular president of Roanoke College.
Liberal arts colleges like Hollins and Roanoke, says Gray, are “preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, technology that’s not yet there.”
Gray guided Hollins through a sometimes difficult period, especially when the economy went in the tank in 2008. Hollins’ endowment—at a time when Harvard was losing $25 billion—lost only a small fraction of its value (the best performance in Virginia). Gray was given significant credit for the performance.
Lawrence says, “Enabling more students to have access to transformative educational opportunities, as I have had, has been the core to my life choices. However, it wasn’t until I was contemplating the presidency of Hollins that it hit me that everything in my life, each experience, was preparing me for this extraordinary opportunity.”
Lawrence, 49, has been at Augustana College, a 156-year-old, nationally ranked liberal arts college in Illinois, since 2011 as provost, overseeing Augustana’s strategic plan and an innovative set of student services, including development initiatives.
In just seven years at the helm, Maxey has helped institute an intellectual inquiry core curriculum with 80 courses at Roanoke College; re-opened and renovated four residencies; and opened the huge new Cregger Center, an athletic and entertainment complex.
Virginia Western Community College
VWCC’s emphasis on engineering and megatronics “is designed to challenge the student with hands-on instruction in mechanical, electrical and computer systems in preparation for the Siemens Mechatronics Systems Certification,” according to the college, creating a highly-skilled technician who can work with modules and components in complex megatronic systems. That is desirable to a number of industries looking to expand or re-locate in this area.
President Robert Sandel has pushed hard for the community college to link with areas and meet their educational needs for the past few years and with a number of new offerings and physical improvements has upgraded the image of VWCC—often considered a trade school in the past—considerably. In fact, engineering students with good grades are now being accepted at Virginia Tech, which would have raised a lot of eyebrows in years past.
VTC and Jefferson College of Health Sciences
A medical education in the Roanoke Valley has become not only possible on an international scale, but also a great economic development issue since the inception of the Virginia Tech Carilion Medical College & Research Institute and the considerable upgrading of Jefferson College.
VTC is small (165 students) by medical college standards, but its impact has been anything but. In 2016, the college had 4,600 applicants for 42 open spots. Dr. Aubrey Knight, associate dean of student affairs explains the attraction: “We have a deliberate and robust research curriculum. Students are required to have a research project. … Our curriculum is patient-centered [and] problem-based. Even as the students are learning the basic science of medicine, they are doing so in the context of a patient and a patient problem.”
Virginia Tech expects to invest $100 million in health sciences and technology in the coming few years, including construction of a $67 million building doubling the size of the research facility. It is all part of a plan to create a health/science center in Roanoke. Tech plans to move some of its bio-medical engineering and neuroscience programs to VTC. That’s 500 to 1,000 students, faculty and scientists, including 25 new research teams (there are half that now). The idea is to attract investors who would initiate new companies or open offices for large firms.
Jefferson College, once a small part of Carilion’s education initiatives, has become something of a fast-moving educational train of late. In 2017, it added doctoral programs in nursing practice and health science for the first time. It is also creating a School of Graduate and Professional Studies for its 250 grad students.
JC was a nice little medical college in the 1980s, turning out nurses, offering two-year associate degrees and certificates to about 200 students. Increasing demand, says President Nathaniel Bishop, helped create the higher levels of study.
Jefferson College now has 1,000 students from 32 states, and 25 programs, all at its Elm Avenue campus. The educational component of Carilion has always been a primary interest of Carilion CEO Nancy Agee, who was once a nurse at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
Other Colleges
The college opportunities in Roanoke are relatively extensive.
• American National University, which began as a small business college (National Business College) in 1886, now has 30 locations in six states, all headquartered in Salem. It offers diplomas, associate and bachelor’s degrees. It is described as “a post-secondary and unaccredited education institution.”
• ECPI University claims students can earn a bachelor’s degree in 2.5 years and an associate in 1.5. It offers programs as wide-ranging as cloud computing, criminal justice, health science and culinary arts.
• Virginia Western Community College’s culinary arts program in downtown Roanoke has become immensely popular.
• Miller-Motte Technical College, housed at Tanglewood Mall in Roanoke, offers health care disciplines, massage and cosmetology.
Public Schools
Perhaps the most interesting story in pre-college education in the Roanoke Valley is the rise of Roanoke City’s two high schools, which only a few years ago languished with a graduation rate of 54 percent. In 2016, for the 9th straight year, Roanoke City schools’ on-time graduation rate has increased, this time to 87 percent.
This has been a steady improvement under the guidance of Superintendent Rita Bishop, who pointed to that improvement as her top goal when she took the job in 2007 and the rate looked hopeless.
“I am probably prouder of our graduation rate than just about anything,” Bishop said in 2015, when Roanoke’s schools broke their record at 86 percent graduation. When Bishop was hired by the district the rate, she admitted, was “absolutely deplorable.” One of Bishop’s first major efforts was opening Forest Park Academy, an alternative education school designed for high school students at risk of dropping out.
Overall, Roanoke Valley schools have solid graduation rates—Roanoke County 94.1 and Salem 94.9—and have been known for that for some time.
The Roanoke Valley Governor’s School for Science and Technology, which accepts students from the entire Roanoke Valley (including surrounding counties) is “a regional public school for motivated students in grades 9 through 12 who want to learn all they can about science, mathematics and technology. Students come from seven local school districts around the Roanoke Valley— 269 students from seven localities. Costs are covered by the school districts and the Virginia Department of Education,” according the school’s literature. The emphasis is heavily on STEM learning and students spend half a day at the school and half a day at their home schools, studying traditional curriculum.
The Community College Access Program (CCAP) allows graduating seniors in the Roanoke Valley to attend Virginia Western Community College tuition-free for two years. Students from Patrick Henry and William Fleming High Schools can take dual enrollment classes at Virginia Western Community College at no cost to them.
The Arnold Burton Center for Arts and Technology in Roanoke County, founded in 1962 as a vocational school, was once an escape for non-academic types who wanted to study shop/auto mechanics or cosmetology/child care, and is now a high-tech school for those who see little relevance in English lit.
The Burton Center is divided into five categories: Associate Degree Technicians, College Bound, Work Force Entry, Specialized Programs, and Adult Education. Most courses are cumulative and build upon a previous one. Burton has had a number of names, reflecting its various and growing emphasis at the time of the changes.
Salem High School’s International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme is “is a rigorous pre-university course of studies leading to examinations, which meets the needs of highly motivated secondary school students between the ages of 16 and 19,” according to promotional material. “The IBDP is accepted worldwide as a superior secondary school qualification, giving students access to college and university study throughout the world.”
Private Schools
The Roanoke Valley has 16 different private schools (and within them, high schools, elementary schools and pre-schools) with 2,661 students in 2017. Classes are generally small (an average of 11 students per teacher) and with the high schools, high success rates in entering college.
Most of the schools are religious, but schools like Community High and North Cross School are non-affiliated and intensely academic. Community High specializes in the arts. There is a special ed school (Minnick, a system of Lutheran Family Services schools), a girls school (Eastern Appalachian Academy) and a number of church-affiliated schools (Roanoke Catholic, Roanoke Valley Christian, Faith Christian, Life Academy, Parkway Christian and Grace Academy).
Roanoke Catholic and North Cross, meanwhile, have combined forces to offer foreign students downtown Roanoke lodging at the old Boxley Building (under renovation). The rooms will only be available to high school students with the emphasis on foreign students, though some from the mid-Atlantic will also be eligible.
Overall, the valley comes pretty close to offering something for everyone, regardless of age, background, or goals.
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