Category — VCCS News

All enterprise applications hosted by the VCCS (Blackboard, MyTNCC, Student Information System, Student Email) will be unavailable for a 24-hour period starting Friday, June 4 at 10:00 PM through Saturday, June 5 at 10:00 PM. The VCCS data center will undergo critical and necessary electrical upgrades. The timeline for the outage follows:

• June 4, 10:00 PM (Friday)
  All production systems will be powered down and made unavailable. The electrical work will commence.
• June 5, 10:00 PM (Saturday)
  All production systems will be made available to colleges.

RICHMOND, Va. – The Virginia Education Wizard has now served more than 200,000 unique visitors since its introduction last spring. Virginia’s Community Colleges launched the Wizard in March as a one-stop resource to help students and parents explore career paths, identify college programs to reach those goals and find ways to pay for continued education.

“I’m delighted that the Wizard has reached this milestone so quickly but I’m not surprised,” said Glenn DuBois, chancellor of Virginia’s Community Colleges. “The worst economy since World War II is pushing people to really think about how to begin or even re-start their career. The Wizard puts a wealth of information right and their hands and makes it so easy to use.”

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Business and community leaders call for sustained funding and 70,000 more degrees by 2020

RICHMOND, Va. – June 22, 2009 – Grow By Degrees (www.growbydegrees.org), a campaign initiated by the Virginia Business Higher Education Council (VBHEC) to promote economic growth through high-impact investment and innovation in Virginia’s colleges, universities, and community colleges was formally launched today in a series of press events throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Grow By Degrees advocates a sustained, long-term program of higher education investment and reform, embodied in state law, to ensure affordable access for Virginia students and to generate strong economic activity and growth revenues for the Commonwealth.

Prominent business leaders including Medical Facilities of America CEO W. Heywood Fralin; Dominion Resources President Thomas F. Farrell II; and Landmark Communications former President John O. “Dubby” Wynne joined other members of the Grow By Degrees coalition to announce the statewide effort. The business leaders were joined by top officials of the state’s public institutions of higher education for media activities in Roanoke, Norfolk, Richmond, and Northern Virginia.

“It is a startling reality that 75 percent of voters we polled in Virginia say a college degree is needed to succeed in today’s economy, but only 35 percent of college-age Virginians enroll in college and only 42 percent of Virginians have college degrees,” said VBHEC Chairman Heywood Fralin. “There is a broad gap between Virginians’ expectations and reality, and to turn those numbers around we need to take action now.”

Fralin released key findings from two public opinion surveys conducted jointly in December 2008 and March 2009 by respected Republican and Democratic polling firms. The findings show broad public support for promoting economic recovery and long-term growth through targeted investments in higher education initiatives. (See accompanying document on poll findings)

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RICHMOND — Governor Timothy M. Kaine has announced that Virginia will join forces with Microsoft in an innovative public-private partnership to provide free technology training to displaced workers. Through the Microsoft Elevate America program, the software and technology giant will work with the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to distribute 11,250 vouchers for technology training and certification. Elevate America also provides a wide variety of other free resources on its website including basic skills training and career resources to find internships and jobs. (The specially dedicated telephone number set up at Thomas Nelson’s Workforce Development for Elevate America is 865-5874).

“Virginia already has one of the best workforce development systems in the country—this program means we’ll have another exciting tool at our disposal,” said Governor Kaine. “This partnership will provide thousands of Virginians with the technology skills they need to attain and sustain employment as the economy recovers. At the same time, this critical training will ensure Virginia’s workforce emerges from this economic downturn stronger than ever—and ready to compete on a global level.”

Virginia will receive 5,000 vouchers for intermediate level online training, 5,000 vouchers for Microsoft business certification exams, and 1,250 vouchers for advanced technical professional online training:

• Each intermediate level training voucher can be used for training on Microsoft Windows or one of the products in the Microsoft Office Suite.
• Each testing voucher can be used for a Microsoft business certification exam, which when passed signifies a student is Microsoft certified in either Windows Vista or a specific Microsoft Office product.
• Advanced level vouchers are redeemable for training for individuals on technical professional career tracks in areas such as web development or database management.

In its role as Microsoft’s “designated partner” for administration of Elevate America in Virginia, VCCS will work with the Department of Education and Virginia’s workforce centers to distribute 1,500 training vouchers, 1,500 testing vouchers, and 400 advanced level vouchers each. VCCS will retain the remaining vouchers for distribution as needed. Vouchers will be distributed to citizens across the state on a first come, first served basis starting today.

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Community college tuition & fees increase less than half of comparable increases at public four-year universities

The State Board for Community Colleges, in a unanimous vote, set the 2009-2010 in-state tuition and mandatory fee rate at $92.70 per credit hour. As a result of the $6.55 per credit hour increase, a full-time, in-state student, taking a total of 30 credit hours, will pay an additional $196.50 for the academic year.

Board members say the increase is essential to serving the record-setting number of traditional students and laid-off workers who are turning to Virginia’s Community Colleges for an opportunity in this recession. More than 16,000 new students began attending a Virginia Community College over the last two years. Enrollment during the recently concluded spring semester was unusually high, up more than 7 percent. Indications are mounting that a similar increase will occur during the summer.

Across the state, 30 new community college buildings are opening – more than one million square feet of instructional space – to meet the growing need.

“Thankfully, the federal stimulus money the VCCS is receiving from the General Assembly is greatly reducing the size of this tuition increase,” said Megan Beyer, chair of the board’s budget & finance committee. “Without that federal money, it would have taken a tuition increase twice as big just to keep the lights on and instructors in the classrooms to serve these students.”

Virginia’s Community Colleges will receive $19.4 million for each of the next two years under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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Thomas Nelson Community College’s Director of Distance Learning Ruth Smith was among several Virginia community college instructional designers who earned the first place Technology in Education (TIE) award for the Teaching Online Program (TOP). The first place winner received $1,500.

The annual award recognizes individuals and groups for technological advances that enhance the educational resources offered by the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). Members of the VCCS faculty and staff judged each entry on creativity, potential longevity, usefulness across multiple disciplines and institutions, impact on student success and relevance to the VCCS mission and Dateline 2009.

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• More than one-third of college graduates in Virginia had attended a Virginia Community College
• 27 percent completed an associate’s degree before going on to obtain their bachelor’s degree.
• Nearly 60 percent of students co-enroll or go back and forth between two- and four-year institutions.

More than one third of those who graduated with a four-year degree in 2008 in Virginia got their start at- or supplemented their college experience with courses from- Virginia’s Community Colleges.

A recent research report compiled by the Virginia Community College System’s Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness and the National Student Clearinghouse shows that more than 36 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients at Virginia’s public and private colleges and universities had attended a Virginia Community College.

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Thomas Nelson Community College (TNCC) student William F. Zorn was among 30 students honored as Commonwealth Legacy Scholars. The honorees representing Virginia’s 23 community colleges were acknowledged in October during a luncheon in Richmond.

The scholarships recognize students from across the Commonwealth who demonstrated academic excellence during high school as well as a commitment to developing their leadership skills. They will become mentors to future Legacy Scholars as they move through their academic programs and graduate from a Virginia community college, according to Dr. Glenn DuBois, Chancellor of the Virginia Community College System (VCCS).

The Commonwealth Legacy Scholarship Program, established in 2006 through the generosity of private donors to the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education, provides up to $3,000 for a full year of tuition and fees at one of the 40 campuses of the VCCS’s 23 colleges. Each scholarship bears the name of one of many philanthropy leaders who support Virginia’s community colleges.

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