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Bobby Sandel became just what the Virginia Western Community College board wanted, although it didn’t know that at the time he was hired.
Aaron Spicer
When Bobby Sandel took over the president’s chair at Virginia Western Community College at the turn of the millennium, the college’s place and mission were unclear … at best.
VWCC was often derisively called UCLA, the University of Colonial Avenue. Its identity was murky, neither high school nor college in the minds of most people in the Roanoke Valley. It had become Virginia’s first community college under Governor Mills Godwin in 1966, and is one of 23 today.
Former VWCC President Charles Downs, whom Sandel replaced (four presidents in 50-plus years), once said, “We were not the red-headed stepchild, but we were the new kid on the block” and there was no real precedent for what VWCC would accomplish or what it would cost. To that point, it had accomplished little, but it hadn’t cost much, either.
What Sandel found when he sat down at VWCC was “a dated, old campus with facilities that were very poor. We needed course offerings and to be more responsive. We needed to add the right faculty and there was no grants program, although there was a ton of money available.” Morale was in the outhouse.
All that was about to change on July 1, 2001, when Robert H. Sandel, a now 76-year-old native of Orangeburg, S.C., moved to Roanoke from Mountain Empire Community College. That was a world away in every sense, situated as it was, in far southwest Virginia’s remote Big Stone Gap. Sandel—nobody calls him “Robert”; he’s “Bobby”—outlined his vision to the board at the time, leaning in, rarely taking a breath as he talked, jumping from goal to goal to goal, always emphasizing what was possible, not what was expected or what had been done. He knew the reality and the reputation, and he wanted to change both. The board bought his pitch. He set to work.
Since the day he pulled his big leather chair up to his big desk in Fishburn Hall, Bobby Sandel has delivered. Consider a few highlights:
- A mechatronics program that has proved to be a major lure to manufacturers.
- Opening the Fralin Center for Health Professions.
- The Student Life Center built and opened.
- $30 million spent on a STEM building and program.
Development of a spectacular Culinary Arts Program (in conjunction with Higher Education Center in downtown Roanoke).
An Education Foundation base of $1 million that has soared to $28.8 million. “People like to support success,” Sandel says.
During the Sandel years, enrollment has doubled (13,224 head count at its highest point pre-COVID, and 5,048 full-time equivalents). The most recent numbers are 7,827 headcount and 3,367 FTE. There has been $200 million in upgrades and new facilities. “Today it is the finest facility in the system and is the closest to a four-year environment,” Sandel says without hesitation.
“Somebody once called us ‘a high school with ashtrays,’” Sandel cracks. “We had to make the facility more conducive” to the students’ needs. The student and fitness centers helped a lot. So did teaching designer courses that pretty much guaranteed a job at a specific industry (or solidified one already held). “We designed courses for industry and business,” says Sandel, “even if that meant for the third shift and the class being held at 3 a.m. Community colleges need to be economic drivers.”
His success did not go unnoticed. He was elected president of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, named Roanoke’s Citizen of the Year in 2013 and received the Roanoke/Blacksburg Technology Council’s prestigious Ruby Award.
He worked with chamber membership to fill the needs of its members and lobbied every group in the Valley that he thought could help reach VWCC’s goals. He got to know influential people and that proved to be one of his greatest gifts.
Ed Hall, a Realtor and strong supporter of VWCC, says Sandel has “always had a different attitude, understanding the needs of business and selling the community on the college. He has worked hard on making key contacts. Bobby is one of the most responsive people you will ever want to meet. He is goal-oriented and I suspect that among the board members we have now, few if any would have wanted to be on the board 20 years ago [before Sandel]. The board is attracting 45-to-55-year-olds now and even the chairman, William Farrell, is in his mid-50s.”
Chamber president and CEO Joyce Waugh, says, “The recent alignment of the School of Corporate and Career Training ensures that employers can invest in their employees to keep their workforce up to speed with new and adaptive skills and that those ever-changing jobs stay in the region.”
Sandel points out that the culinary school has been so successful that “restaurants are hiring students before they finish, then sending them back to finish.”
He stresses the health care programs at VWCC (nine of them) “all have a waiting list” of students and “these are high demand salaries.”
That, of course, means VWCC is in demand, that high school students no longer consider it a second or last chance. “We needed to be the first choice and we no longer hear that we are a ‘diamond in the rough’ or take it as a compliment that we are ‘the best kept secret in the Roanoke Valley,’” says Jane Sandel, Bobby’s wife and partner. These days, a third of high school grads who attend VWCC intend to transfer with an associate degree to four-year schools after two years. Two-thirds want to go straight to work.
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