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Dan Horine
VWCC Regional Advanced Technology Academy head Dan Horine: "Our goal is to provide local industry with the trained workforce they need."
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VWCC Sign
Affordability is a key component of Virginia Western's success in attracting students, with tuition rates of less than $100 per credit hour for Virginians.
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VWCC Arboretum
Virginia Western's two-acre arboretum is home to 10 spearate garden areas with hundreds of labeled plants; the garden's amphitheater hosts weddings and othe outdoor settings.
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VWCC Building
The 70-acre campus is the largest in the 23-school Virginia community College system. Enrollment at opening in 1966 was 1,352; this year it's projected to exceed 10,000.
Jobs, Free Tuition, Dual Schools, Virginia Western Beats the Odds
Knowing what you’re up against is pretty important when you’re trying to change things.
Affordability is a key component of Virginia Western's success in attracting students, with tuition rates of less than $100 per credit hour for Virginians.
Rather than dodge hurdles, the head instructor at Virginia Western Community College’s new Regional Advanced Technology Academy, Dan Horine, prefers to tell it like it is – or how many people see it anyway.
“Community colleges have a stigma: the place you go when you can’t get in anywhere else.”
Horine continues: “Well, we don’t feel like that’s the case with Virginia Western.”
Fighting a stigma isn’t easy – especially if it’s one as lingering and pervasive as the perception that community colleges are a last resort for high school graduates.
But fortunately for Horine and other Virginia Western administrators, there are few climates better suited to shift people’s perception than the current economic downturn.
Colleges nationwide are feeling the pinch as state legislatures’ overall budget shortages translate into less funding for post-secondary education institutions.
The 70-acre campus is the largest in the 23-school Virginia community College system. Enrollment at opening in 1966 was 1,352; this year it's projected to exceed 10,000.
Virginia Western is no exception to feeling the effects of a statewide funds crunch. As a recipient of Virginia’s general state fund, the college has been asked to pare down its expenses by as much as 15 percent in the upcoming school year.
Yet, in another way, Virginia Western may be among the lucky few on the winning end of a nationwide recession.
With the statewide unemployment level on the rise, Virginia’s community colleges like VWCC could benefit from a growing number of people seeking financial deals when it comes to their college education.
Since 2007, Virginia Western, according to spokesperson Margaret Boyes, has witnessed a steady increase in student enrollment. Last year enrollment was up by 5 percent, a trend that’s likely to continue with this year’s enrollment, expected to top 10,000 students.
President Robert Sandel says Virginia Western's challenge is to use creative solutions to meet the combination of rising enrollments and falling funding.
Dealing with an enrollment surge on top of a decreased budget is a bittersweet predicament, according to VWCC President Robert Sandel.
“We’re in a Catch-22 position,” he says. “Our numbers are going up at the same time they’re being squeezed from the other end, leaving us with more students and less funds.”
Fortunately, for Sandel and other community college administrators, help may be on the way. In mid-July, President Obama proposed a $12 billion initiative specifically for two-year institutions struggling with recent slashes to their budgets.
Sandel says he sees the initiative as a necessary way to maintain VWCC’s developing programs and to take care of its expanding student body, one that now includes not only traditional college-age students but also a younger population.
VWCC’s Dual Enrollment program and its new Regional Advanced Technology Academy are part of the community college’s effort to target students while they are still in high school.
In an economy where employable job sectors trump ideal ones, Virginia Western’s effort to make itself a viable and inexpensive route to employment may also prove to be its path away from that age-old stigma.
Local businesses to Virginia Western: skilled workers needed!
The impetus for starting up the academy at Virginia Western didn’t come from inside the college.
VWCC Regional Advanced Technology Academy head Dan Horine: "Our goal is to provide local industry with the trained workforce they need."
The idea came about several years ago when local company presidents approached Virginia Western’s Sandel directly, asking him for help, Horine recalls.
“They essentially said we need young trained workers with a wide range of technical and mechanical skills, and if we can’t them here, we’re packing up and leaving the area.”
Horine says the conversation sparked a new way of thinking at Virginia Western, one that he stands firmly behind.
Instituting the academy two years ago was about providing better job-oriented education to young people, he says. That meant reaching out to high schools and technical centers to offer college-level engineering, technical and culinary courses to their upperclassmen.
Horine, as head of a program called Mechatronics, teaches a synthesis of technological, mechanical and engineering components to students from 16 high schools in Virginia Western’s service region. Other programs at the academy include one strictly for engineering and another for the culinary arts.
Keep in mind the academy’s students are high school students, not graduates. But, Horine insists, their early college involvement is fundamental in preparing a solid work force.
“It [the academy] is a way to create a pipeline for in-demand programs that will lead to a career,” he says. “Our goal is to provide local industry with the trained workforce they need.”
And, he adds, the earlier students take these courses, the more confident and prepared they’ll be in their college careers.
A lot of college freshmen don’t have the science and math background they need to succeed in the engineering field. Some are lost as to how to use a ruler. Others are stunned to find they can apply Pythagorean theorem in a real life scenario.
Horine adds that this also applies in matters of maturity.
“Students these days are scared to death to fail. We’re trying to condition and prepare them.”
In Horine’s course and others, students can earn up to 29 hours of college credit and a career studies certificate prior to high school graduation.
“By that time, they’re well on their way to an associate degree,” he says.
College and high school … both at once?
Though it may seem strange, high school students taking college courses is not a new idea, according to Bill Salyers, director of Virginia Western’s dual enrollment program for the past six years.
Gone are the days when you had to be a genius to graduate from college at 18.
Nevertheless, instances of students attending (and graduating!) college while still in high school seem to occur far more frequently than they used to.
Virginia Western alone began the 2008 fall semester with 2,000 high school students signed up in the dual enrollment program. (Their service area spans Roanoke and Salem cities and Roanoke County, plus Franklin, Botetourt, and Craig counties, with satellite locations in the latter three counties.)
The program, similar to the career studies program offered through the Regional Advanced Technology Academy, allows high school upperclassmen to jumpstart their college careers, sometimes earning enough credits to earn an associate degree before graduating high school.
Salyers says advantages to the dual enrollment program are numerous, the first of these being its cost.
“The students who are doing this in high school are getting a really good deal financially,” he says, adding that high schools cover 75 percent of the costs for students taking these courses.
Salyers also points out many students obtain a degree from Virginia Western without ever having set foot on the college’s campus.
How does this happen?
Salyers explains: Virginia Western offers freshman and sophomore college-level courses at the high schools. High school teachers credentialed to teach at the college level serve as adjunct instructors for the college, and students who take these courses receive dual credit through Virginia Western and their secondary school.
Even with the explanation, however, the question of how to avoid a potential mess with all the back and forth between college and high school administrators still lingers, along with a few others.
How does Virginia Western ensure their adjunct instructors (who are also high school teachers) are teaching courses at college level? And don’t most students require a four-year background in high school English to succeed in a college English Composition 101 course?
In other words, are two years of secondary schooling enough?
Salyers says “a very close partnership” between Virginia Western and the secondary schools is the key to the success of the dual enrollment program. That way the college exercises strong oversight over the courses offered, the instructors who teach them, and the students qualifying to take these courses, he says.
Overall, Salyers says he has heard far more praise than complaints about the program.
“They [high schools] see the value of the program as do their students and the students’ parents.”
Just look at the numbers, he says.
“High schools all over the country are doing dual enrollment programs right now.”
Staying in the game
So what keeps a college moving in an upward direction in a downward economy?
Making college affordable is number one, says Kay Strickland, executive director of Virginia Western Education Foundation.
With the help of a $100,000 contribution from both the Roanoke Women’s Foundation and Advance Auto Parts, the foundation will send 75 William Fleming and Patrick Henry high school students to college through their Roanoke Community College Access Program.
In 2008, Salem’s Community College Access program – which involves a partnership between the college and the City of Salem – provided a two-year tuition-free education at Virginia Western for 76 students at Salem High School.
Ultimately, the foundation plans to have tuition-assistance programs for all of the localities in the college’s service area, Strickland says.
In addition to continued work to highlight Virginia Western’s affordability, other efforts are being made to assure that the educational program is of high quality as well as being within area students’ economic reach.
Among these are construction of a $26 million Science and Health Professions Building, a new non-credit pharmacy technician course and a viticulture program.
But these and other projects, like the regional academy, are still contingent upon VWCC’s continuing to find funding sources.
A national boost in funds is what’s needed for public institutions being hit hard by statewide budget crises, Sandel says, and he is hoping that President Obama’s proposed initiative might supply a necessary kick-start to VWCC’s efforts to continue to develop new ways to fulfill its educative mission.
Bottom line: Affordability has appeal, but it’s not enough by itself to break the stigma or to sustain enrollment numbers in a post-recession era.
Virginia Western just might be the community college that gets that.
Valley High Schoolers attend VWCC For Free
The Virginia Western Educational Foundation, assisted by grants from The Roanoke Women’s Foundation and Advance Auto Parts, is offering free tuition to graduating seniors from Patrick Henry and William Fleming high schools for the first time this fall. Qualifying students with at least a 2.0 grade point average may attend VWCC tuition-free, under the to the Roanoke Community College Access Program.
Salem High School graduate Scott Bradford, 19, is entering his second year at VWCC as a member of the Salem CCAP, which offered, in partnership with the City of Salem, 76 students the opportunity to attend Virginia Western tuition-free, beginning in 2008.
Bradford, who is well on his way to earning an associates degree, says Salem’s CCAP has been a godsend.
“My parents and I had been struggling with how we would pay for my college education,” says Bradford, who had originally hoped to attend Liberty University.
The announcement of the CCAP initiative came three months before Bradford’s graduation.
“It just seemed like an answer to a prayer,” he says. “Whenever someone hands you two years of college for free, you’d almost have to be crazy not to take it.”
Bradford says he is pleased with his experience so far at Virginia Western, and doesn’t feel at all shorted by not attending a four-year college to begin his education.
“I and a lot of my friends were excited about going off to big universities,” he says. “But, in high school, you have an unrealistic view of college and so community college gets pushed to the side in light of all that. But it [VWCC] is a definite contender with big universities. You get the same degree; it just has a different price tag and comes in a different package.”
Bradford now plans to attend Virginia Tech after he acquires his associate degree next year, to pursue a bachelor’s degree in communication. –DT
Did You Know? A Look at VWCC’s latest events and happenings
• March through December 2009: Motorcycles at VWCC?
Yep, that’s right. A Motorcycle Riders Safety Basic Rider Course has been offered on weekdays and weekends to VWCC students interested in tackling the basics of motorcycle riding and safety. The class features classroom and on-vehicle operation training, and no experience beyond riding a bicycle is necessary.
• Summer 2009: The Culinary Institute at Virginia Western opens its doors to the public:
In late July, non-credit classes, under the instruction of VWCC’s Chef John Berardi, covered the culinary basics of sushi preparation, Mediterranean cuisine, party panache, and “Meals in Minutes” recipes. Offered in VWCC’s Culinary Kitchen, the evening classes ($40 per class) took place July 24-July 30 and were the institute’s first set of cooking classes open to the public.
“As a culmination of the program, we’re trying to give back to the community by offering cooking classes to the public, “ says Lacey Carey, administrative assistant at the institute.
Virginia Western's two-acre arboretum is home to 10 spearate garden areas with hundreds of labeled plants; the garden's amphitheater hosts weddings and othe outdoor settings.
Construction begins on The Community Arboretum’s new city garden
Construction began this summer on a $60,000 privately funded expansion to the campus arboretum, located to the north of The Natural Science Center. Designed by landscape architect Melissa Hodgkinson, “The City Garden” will serve as a model for the urban landscape and include a number of sustainable landscape features which address resource conservation, storm water remediation and pollution abatement, according to Lee Hipp, head of VWCC’s Horticulture program. The garden structures, all composed of recycled materials, will include features such as green roofs, permeable pavers, and biodegradable plant containers.
Virginia Western beats the system
Superlatives for Virginia Western among Virginia’s 23 community colleges:
• VWCC grads have the highest GPAs upon transfer to four-year Virginia institutions of all community colleges.
• VWCC has four campus locations in addition to Colonial Avenue: Roanoke Higher Ed Center, and sites at Botetourt, Franklin and Craig County education centers.
• Western’s 70-acre primary campus is the state’s largest.
Career Center
The Hall Associates Career and Employment Assistance Center, as a business-sponsored VWCC resource, is akin to partnerships much more common at four-year schools, according to Director Gary Adkins. The center, aimed at matching employers with VWCC grads, has ties to 44 of the 50 largest employers in the valley.
VWCC’s Unduplicated Dual Enrollment program enrollment:
Figures on the number of high school students earning credit for Virginia Western classes while still in high school:
Fall, 2007: 1,931
Spring, 2008: 1,861
Fall, 2008 1,997
Spring, 2009 1,880
Distance Learning Program: 500 classes offered each year.
“I think Virginia Western is at the threshold of a tremendous expansion of programs and enlarged enrollment growth.”
–Robert Sandel, President of VWCC