Mr. Chairman; members of the committee; ladies and gentlemen: good afternoon.

I frequently remind people that our community colleges have had no better partner in its 46-year history than the General Assembly.

We are grateful for that as well as today’s opportunity to discuss how we can leverage that partnership and the introduced budget to meet a goal that we all share: helping more Virginians earn a college credential.

You know, when Governor McDonnell signed the T-J-21 bill into law last year, he said it was creating 6,000 new slots for Virginia college students. And he said 4,000 of those were at Virginia’s Community Colleges.

While that is a small anecdote, it is a telling one – emblematic of the role our community colleges must play if Virginia is to succeed.

You can also see that what our community colleges accomplish:

• In the four years leading up to last May, your community colleges were responsible for nearly one out of every three college degrees awarded by a Virginia public institution;

• Last year, Virginia’s Community College graduates accounted more than one-third of all the science, technology, engineering and mathematics degrees earned at Virginia’s public higher ed institutions; and

• Your community colleges leveraged the $3 million investment you made last year in Workforce Development instruction into job training for 75,000 Virginians and service for 8,000 Virginia employers.

We maintain a public pledge to keep our tuition and fees at less than half of the same charges at Virginia’s public universities. We’re currently just over one-third. Given that, and the results I just mentioned, it’s easy to see how we are helping a lot of people get ahead while saving them – and taxpayers – a lot of money along the way.

Similarly, Senator Hanger has introduced legislation that would make it easier for middle-income families to benefit from the state’s Two Year College Transfer Grant program. We support that legislation and believe it could help hundreds of families every year.

INTRODUCED BUDGET
In general, we are supportive of the introduced budget and grateful for the priority it places on higher education in general and community colleges in particular.

To date, the introduced budget has earned formal resolutions of support from the State Board for Community Colleges as well as the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education – two esteemed panels that include some of Virginia’s most respected community-focused business and industry leaders.

The introduced budget continues moving our partnership in the right direction following some dire years of public funding.

In the four-year period that began in 2008, Virginia’s Community Colleges lost $95 million dollars in General Fund support. At the same time, we enrolled 50,000 additional students.

To offer a broader perspective, Mr. Chairman, since the fall of 2007, Virginia’s Community Colleges have accounted for 69% of the undergraduate enrollment growth at Virginia’s public colleges and universities.

We are proud of that record.

Our colleges were created in a spirit of innovation to address Virginia’s unmet higher educational and workforce needs.

When the chips are down, families use our community colleges as their personal economic recovery plan.

Even in the most challenging times, we are there for them.

Virginia’s Community Colleges are in the second year of an innovative reengineering initiative that is exploring everything we do and asking how can we do it better?

That honest, open process is earning attention across the Commonwealth and across the country. And it is one more reminder of that innovative spirit that gave rise to our colleges.

MOVING FORWARD
In that spirit, Mr. Chairman, I would like to offer just a few thoughts about priorities that support the goal of an additional 100,000 college graduates but are not in the introduced budget:

Capital Outlay remains a challenge for our institutions and the four-year universities, especially as they ramp-up our offerings in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and healthcare.

Across Virginia, we are serving students at our community colleges in buildings that are 40 to 45 years old but were built with a life expectancy of only 25 to 30 years.

Nor were those campuses built with 21st century community college students in mind.

Increasingly, our student enrollments are younger and much more likely to attend full-time – remaining on campus from eight or nine in the morning until five in the evening. They are expecting things we just can’t offer right now, like someplace to study between classes other than the inside of their car.

Virginia’s Community College struggle with finding the right balance of full-time and part-time faculty members.

Over the past decade or so, while balancing funding challenges with the need to remain affordable, we have backed-into a place where the majority of our instructors are part-time employees.

I don’t question the quality of instruction those people bring to the table.  We need more full-time faculty members, however. Our work to improve student retention and student success depends on people who spend their entire day on-campus. We cannot count on that from our adjunct instructors who owe most of their time and attention to their other, primary job.

I must also mention our faculty and staff salaries, which, as you know, have remained stagnant for more than four years now.

As I previously mentioned, we have added more than 50,000 students over the last four years while losing $95 million in General Fund support. The resources simply have not existed to ramp-up our faculty and staff in the same dramatic fashion that our enrollment has.

Forgive the cliché, but in very tangible ways, our people have been doing a lot more with less.

I would hope that the time is drawing near that we can honor that work with even just a modest cost of living salary adjustment.

And finally, Mr. Chairman, I believe a state investment in the VCCS Career Coach program would payoff in our shared pursuit of more college graduates.

Career Coaches are community college employees, who work in high schools with students, helping them carve out customized career and college plans – a task that even guidance counselors will tell you that they lack the time to do. With your help, we could continue expanding this proven and effective strategy to every high school, influencing more and more young people whose vocabulary doesn’t even include the word, “College.”

CLOSING
You know, the first year we opened for business, we served 7,500 students at two colleges.

This year, when you add together our academic and workforce development efforts, we will be serving more than 400,000 Virginians.

We could not have that kind of impact on Virginia without the partnership that we share with you. Thank you. We are grateful for that.

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

As part of the agreement, the VFCCE and the WF will identify high-impact skill development programs in India that need support, and further partnerships will be forged with government or private initiatives to meet local needs. Virginia community college experts will serve as consultants, sharing best practices, and the Wadhwani Foundation will provide local support and funding for this capacity building.

“Virginia’s two-year community colleges play a vital and unique role in our workforce training efforts,” said Sen. Warner, who is one of eight former Virginia governors to sit on the Honorary Board of Directors of VFCCE. “This agreement will allow Virginia’s Community Colleges to share their expertise and best practices materials as we work with the Wadhwani Foundation to help expand basic skills-based training as India’s middle class explodes in size.”

Today Chancellor Glenn DuBois paid a visit to J. Sargent Reynolds Community College to speak about what Virginia’s Community Colleges are doing to serve military-related students – and also ways to improve the military friendliness at each institution.

His speech highlights a few of the initiatives our schools have already taken to serve our active duty members of the military and reserves, veterans and their families. Read Dr. DuBois’ full remarks from today by clicking on the PDF attached to this post.

Dr. DuBois VCCS and Veterans Speech

posted by Krystal Gillespie

RCC website

Starting the month off, The Center for Digital Education announced Sept. 1 that Rappahannock Community College was the winner in the Center’s “Best of the Web” competition in the community college category. RCC spent about a year researching and updating its site to be more student focused, moving it to the WordPress platform.

Tidewater Community College was a winner in the Center’s “Digital Education Achievement Awards” in the higher education digital application/project category for its Direct Student Loan Application and Financial Aid Education site. 

Then earlier this week, TCC’s student loan education and counseling project received an honorable mention in the 2011 Governor’s Technology Awards. Through the innovative use of business process planning and digital technology, TCC helps students borrow responsibly and make sound investments in their education. 

Piedmont Virginia Community College also was recognized with an honorable mention in the Governor’s awards for its partnership with Albemarle County to provide IT interns.

Today, community colleges made news again, in the Center for Digital Education’s seventh annual  Digital Community College Survey. 

Virginia Western Community College topped the mid-size colleges category in technology integration into college curriculum and campus life.  Other community colleges making the “top 10″ in their respective enrollment categories included:

• Northern Virginia (3rd) and Tidewater (7th) in the large community college category;
• Virginia Western (1st), Germanna (4th), Lord Fairfax (4th), New River (8th) in the mid-sized colleges category; and
• Rappahannock (6th), Southwest Virginia (7th) and Piedmont Virginia (10th) in the small colleges category.

Way to go team!

–posted by Susan Hayden

PS – Also this month, Matt Lawson is interviewed in Campus Technology magazine on enterprise cloud strategies.

Three Wytheville students were among the many college groups that created a public service announcement in response to the challenge earlier this year from Governor Robert McDonnell.

Wytheville,Virginia Intermont College and Longwood University were selected as the top three finalists. 

The video, entitled – “Stop – Listen – Care”  – was created by Andrew Beaver, Kelly Widner and Bradley Pedler in a spring Film class taught by John Lawson.  Says Lawson:

We do a weekly newscast from our studio and then we do any projects for the College, community, or anywhere else ….  In the Spring Semester one of the projects the students took on was this PSA challenge.  Kelly wrote it, Andrew edited it and the others either helped with acting, lights, or audio.

The program is sponsored by GOSAP, the Governor’s Office for Safety and Abuse Prevention.

You can also find the videos on the Governor’s Youtube channel, or by going to Wytheville’s home page.

Posted by Susan Hayden

Dressed in matching yellow shirts, 45-50 developmental educators from Virginia community colleges stood on the steps of Berry Hill plantation to have their picture made with Chancellor Glenn Dubois. 

The first Chancellor’s Developmental Education Institute took place June 12th-17th at the remote but gracious plantation home built in 1728.

Representatives of math and English instructors from each of the colleges in the VCCS worked together to learn about developmental education from the faculty of the National Center for Developmental Education (NCDE) in Boone, NC.  Dr. Hunter R. Boylan, Director of the NCDE, Dr. Barbara Bonham, Dr. Amy Trawick, Dr. Patrick Saxon, and Ms. Barbara Calderwood spent the week sharing their expertise about developmental education.

The week began with an introductory session with Gretchen Schmidt giving an overview of the week.  This was followed by a reception hosted by Danville Community College’s Education Foundation. 

The next day, sleeves were rolled up and the work began. Tuesday, Chancellor Dubois gave an overview of his plan for creating a cadre of developmental educators who would go back to home campuses to teach others.  He gave kudos to Dr. Gretchen Schmidt whose vision for the institute led to this week’s events.
 

The faculty from the NCDE gave a daunting amount of material on learning outcomes, integrating academic and support services, instructional design, and culturally responsive teaching.  Each participant was registered for a subscription to the Journal of Developmental Education and Research in Developmental Education (RIDE) to keep updated about new strategies for working with developmental students. 

Dr. Susan Wood gave remarks at a closing reception hosted by the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education (VFCCE) which ended the four days of hard work.  On Friday each participant gave an overview of professional development projects he/she was preparing to present on home campuses. 
 

The food was wonderful; the rooms were luxurious; the hotel staff was accommodating to a fault.  Paulette Yates is to be commended for all of her hard work bringing it all together. This “working vacation” brought together educators with a common goal – to become the best in the field of developmental education to better serve our students and demonstrate that developmental education is worthy of being recognized as a discipline in its own right.
 

Thank you, Dr. DuBois, for making this possible!

Posted by Laura Powell
Associate Professor
Danville Community College

There is a lot of media coverage today of a survey revealing that Virginia’s state lawmakers are among the nation’s most educated.

Here’s how the Richmond Times-Dispatch is describing it:

Nearly 89 percent of members of the General Assembly have earned at least a bachelor’s degree, ranking Virginia second among the states in the educational achievement of its lawmakers.

The Bacon’s Rebellion blog wrote about the Chronicle of Higher Education survey as well, pointing out that state lawmakers also hold a lot of post graduate degrees:

Virginia legislators rank 3rd in the nation (after New York and New Jersey) for the percentage of lawmakers possessing an M.A. degree or more.

It will be interesting to watch what, if any, impact this has on the Governor’s High Education Reform Commission’s work in the coming year.

Posted by Jeffrey Kraus

Beginning today, the General Assembly will also take up bills redistricting Congressional districts.   HB 5004 (Janis) realigns the boundaries of Virginia’s 11 Congressional districts according to plans designed by the Republican majority in the House of Delegates.  SB 5003 (J. Miller) has also been filed in the Senate; the Senate calendar has not yet been posted but SB 5003 is also expected to be taken up today.

Posted by Ellen Davenport

• An additional $9.92 million from the general fund in FY 2012  to support the goals of the Governor’s Higher Education Commission of access, affordability, quality and increased degrees.  Of this amount, $5.4 million is included to improve the full-time faculty ratio by at least two percent, there is $2.65 million for operations and maintenance of new buildings and $1.87 million for base operating support.
• An additional $5.36 million in FY 2012 for student financial aid–a 20% increase.
• An additional $300,000 for two-year transfer grants for anticipated enrollment in the program.

The General Assembly also ratified and will be appropriating $3 million in FY 2012 for non-credit workforce funding.  This infusion of funding is based on recommendations from the Governor’s Commission on Economic Development and Jobs Creation.

Posted by Ellen Davenport

Budget conferees are Senators Colgan, Houck, Howell, Saslaw, Wampler, Stosch, and Norment. House conferees are Putney, Cox, Sherwood, Landes, Jones, and Joannou.

The House Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittee tabled SB 1363 (Stosch) to enhance two-year transfer grants on Monday, February 21. The legislation was an initiative of the VCCS and would have implemented a policy recommended by the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education Reform, Innovation, and Investment.  The legislation was supported by SCHEV, the Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia, George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia State University. The vote to table the bill was 5-3.

SB 819 (Edwards), which would have established a $5 million scholarship match for our 23 community colleges, the VFCCE, and Richard Bland College was tabled by the Higher Education Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on February 14. Instead, the concept will be communicated by letter by the Vice Chair of House Appropriations to Tom Farrell, the Chairman of the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education Reform, Investment, and Innovation.

Remaining bills to prohibit illegal immigrants from having access to higher education did not advance in the Immigration subcommittee of Senate Courts of Justice last week.

Although today is the published deadline for the budget conferees finishing their work,  there are still significant differences on some items, including changes to the Virginia Retirement System, such as charging current employees a contribution rate and/or  moving away from a traditional defined benefit plan.

Posted by Ellen Davenport