Spin the career wheel!

Spin the new Career Wheel and learn about students who have taken advantage of Virginia’s community college career pathway programs/services!

Read about Eric Henkel, who decided in his 30s to change his career to become a chef and is now working for Ukrop’s. Or read about Kim and Pam Moreno who, after retirement, decided to open their own vineyard and winery with the the help of PVCC”s viticulture and enology program.

Career pathway programs foster educational programs that prepare individuals for skilled employment in targeted industry sectors. We have profiled 10 careers and programs offered through our community colleges.

Each and every story was truly inspiring for me to hear and write about. I hope you feel just as inspired and proud of these individuals (and our colleges!) when you spin the wheel!

Submitted by Heather Millar

Chancellor’s Summer Bike Tour

Summer vacation has arrived and while many Virginians are taking time off to travel with family, visit the beach or just take an afternoon dip in the local pool, Chancellor DuBois prepares to embark on different sort of vacation.

Beginning Friday, he will start a two-week, 700-mile bike tour of Virginia to promote Great Expectations, a program started by the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education to provide education and resources for foster care youth in this state.

Though not your typical summer vacation, the Chancellor’s Summer Bike Tour will take him to various community colleges and centers across the state to speak with students, faculty, social workers and community members about the opportunity to help foster care youth in Virginia.

Speaking to Karin Kapsidelis of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dr. DuBois said, “Virginia trails among states in what happens to foster-care youths when they age out of the system. The state has the highest percentage of teens leaving foster care without a permanent home — about 500 annually.”

Great Expectations will help these youth transition out of the foster care system and into a postsecondary program by providing educational and financial support.

“The way we’re going to help these youth and all youth is to provide a post-secondary education, helping them earn a degree or certificate that is worth something in the marketplace.” 

With nine stops on his Summer Bike Tour and 700 miles to travel, Chancellor DuBois has a difficult task ahead but is excited to hit the open road to raise awareness and resources for the exciting new program.

To find out more about the Chancellor’s Summer Bike Tour and to learn more ways to get involved with Great Expectations please visit GreatExpectations.vccs.edu.

Posted by Lauren Von Herbulis

Special Session on Transportation Starts Today

The General Assembly comes back to Richmond today to consider Governor Timothy Kaine’s proposed transportation plan.  The Governor has stated that his plan will offer a solution for the state’s growing highway needs and provide funds to tackle congestion problems in Northern Virginia and Tidewater.  The governor’s bill transportation bill :

• Increases the existing statewide motor vehicles sales tax from 3% to 4% with a 1/2% increase in January 2009 and another 1/2% increase in July 2009, and dedicates all motor vehicle sales tax to maintenance;
• Increases the statewide annual vehicle registration fee by $10 and earmarks those funds for maintenance;
• Increases the retail sales tax in Northern Virginia by 1% (not including food and drugs) and dedicates those funds to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority for special projects in Northern Virginia and to seven regional projects in Hampton Roads (including the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel) and abolishes the  Hampton Roads Transportation Authority;
• Increases the statewide grantor’s tax by 25 cents, and dedicates those funds to the Transportation Change Fund;
• Provides incentives for cities and towns to take responsibility for road construction programs; and
• Creates incentives that encourage more efficient land use patterns among Virginia’s localities.

The Governor’s plan may be viewed at:  www.transportation.virginia.gov

Posted by:  Ellen Davenport

College Nursing Enrollment Breaks Record

A story in today’s online version of the Rappahannock Record says this year’s nursing enrollment at Rappahannock Community College is breaking records:

[Beyond the 57 new students who enrolled for the fall semester,]  Adding 10 who signed up for the two-year degree after completing RCC’s LPN program, and five more who transferred to RCC from other colleges, the total of 72 students tops the program’s previous high from fall 2007 by more than 25 percent.

This is further evidence of the incredible effort being put forth by Virginia’s Community Colleges to meet Virginia’s nursing shortage.  The commonwealth is expected to need an additional 22,600 new nurses by the year 2020.

Currently, graduates of Virginia’s Community Colleges account for roughly half of the commonwealth’s new nurses every year.

And since the 2002-2003 academic year, the number of nursing graduates at Virginia’s Community Colleges has increased 52%.

It’s hard to say where Virginia would be on this critical issue without its community colleges.

Posted by Jeff Kraus

SCHEV and VCCS GEAR UP for Virginia Students

More high school students in Virginia will get a helping hand on choosing a career path and pursuing it thanks to a new partnership announced today between the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) and Virginia’s Community Colleges.

You can read the details in this news release.  The skinny on the partnership is that SCHEV is using money from a federal GEAR UP grant to hire ten new Career Coaches and expand the service Career Coaches provide to an additional 25 high schools.

We’ve blogged about Career Coaches before here and here.  You can also hear from one of Virginia’s best Career Coaches in this podcast.

Career Coaches work with high school teachers, administrators and guidance counselors to help elevate students’ individual career goals, understand the post secondary education they need to achieve those goals and help them navigate the often confusing processes of enrolling in college and seeking financial aid.

The impact Career Coaches is having is impressive in the schools that they serve.

The partnership announced today means more children will have access to the perspective and assistance that Career Coaches provide.

Posted by Jeff Kraus

Community College State Board Chair Joining Emory & Henry College

Mark Graham, who is concluding his one-year term as chair of the State Board for Community Colleges, has a new job at Emory & Henry College according to a story today at timesnews.net:

The chair of the Virginia State Board for Community Colleges and a 1985 Emory & Henry College graduate has been named executive assistant to the president of the College.

Mark Graham, a director in the Abingdon law firm of Boucher, Hutton & Graham, will serve under E&H President Rosalind Reichard. He brings to Emory & Henry a strong background in higher education administration.

Mr. Graham becomes only the latest connection between Virginia’s Community Colleges and Emory & Henry.  The institutions are also partners in a guaranteed transfer agreement.

Posted by Jeff Kraus

Is the imagination the keystone of progress?

What is the thing someone needs to be successful today?

That questions fuels a lot of what happens at Virginia’s Community Colleges.  It’s driving the Chancellor’s listening tour, the first step in the creation of his next strategic plan.

Let’s see:  computer skills are a must; strong writing remains important; some say too few students are pursuing mathematics and science; employers often cite the lack of “soft skills” among those they recruit.

But I wonder, is it ultimately one’s imagination that determines his or her success?

I’ve wondered about that for a long time.  When I was an undergraduate student my room was decorated with an Albert Einstein poster that included one of his most famous quotes:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.  For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

It always struck me that a person renowned for advancing science would place the imagination above hard facts and knowledge.  Further, his priorities are shared by author J.K. Rowling who told this year’s graduating class at Harvard that noting is more important than imagination:

“We do not need magic to transform our world,” she said. “We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better.

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation,” Rowling said. “In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity; it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

And finally, we have the recently late artist Robert Rauchenberg, who insisted that ideas and knowledge were too restrictive.  One of the most influential artists of his time, Rauchenberg was known for taking items, any item you can imagine, and combining it with other things to create art. In 1999, he told a reporter that he worked from his imagination:

“People ask me, ‘Don’t you ever run out of ideas?’  In the first place, I don’t use ideas.  Every time I have an idea it’s too limiting and usually turns out to be a disappointment.  I haven’t [however] run out of curiosity.”

There you have it, three people all considered geniuses in at least their field, if not in general, pointing to the imagination as that which can and should fuel the future.

I wonder, are we doing enough, throughout our system of education or even our society to engage the imagination?  And what would the reward be if we did a better job of it?

It’s hard to imagine.

Posted by Jeff Kraus