Va. community colleges and businesses help fill in-demand jobs

Virginia had about 295,000 unfilled jobs as of November 2024, according to a U.S. Department of Labor report released in January, but it’s not as simple as sending people to job interviews to fill these positions.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration notes that these are good jobs for skilled workers, but there are long-term labor shortages in several of these fields, from IT and health care to manufacturing and transportation.

That’s where the Virginia Community College System steps in, preparing people for jobs that require special skills — going back to 1964, when the Virginia Technical College System, as it was known then, started tech colleges in Roanoke and Northern Virginia. Now, with 23 community colleges and 40 campuses, VCCS had about 230,000 students enrolled in 2024.

Many are working toward professional credentials and associate’s degrees to qualify for jobs, and in 2016, the Virginia General Assembly created the nation’s first short-term, pay-for-performance training program known as FastForward.

In the nearly 10 years since, the program has turned out to be that rarity in this life — a win for all parties involved.

For students who spend six to 12 weeks in classes, FastForward can qualify them for jobs that have an average pay increase of nearly $16,000, and many have two-thirds of their tuition paid by state workforce grants, leaving the student’s cost at an average of $800. Some even receive financial aid that brings their total payout to zero.

It’s been a win for the community colleges, too, because the affordability of FastForward training attracts more students, and the program has become the fastest growing component in the community college system, with 175 different courses now on offer.

Meanwhile, businesses benefit because they have a pipeline for workers with the most in-demand skills and at most, they have to match the state’s investment in cash or in-kind contributions, as opposed to footing the whole training bill. And the state benefits as well, since FastForward graduates have gone on to contribute $6.3 billion in wages over the past nine years, a great return on the state’s investment of $96.95 million, says Randy Stamper, Virginia Community College System’s assistant vice chancellor for grants and workforce programs.

Linking up with IT

When a lot of people think about emerging career fields, information technology often springs to mind. IT professionals who specialize in cybersecurity, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and running data centers are all in-demand jobs, and tech companies are some of the community colleges’ most enthusiastic partners in FastForward and other workforce initiatives.

“We don’t ever want to do our own training,” says Nicholas Lee-Romagnolo, program manager for workforce and economic development at Amazon Web Services (AWS). “Community colleges are the best place to do that.”

AWS has committed to investing $35 billion in data centers throughout the commonwealth, especially in Northern Virginia, where 70% of all Internet traffic flows through Loudoun County. Someone has to build, operate and maintain data centers, though, and there is an acute shortage of qualified workers in Virginia. AWS has partnered with Northern Virginia Community College and other systems to design what Stamper calls “deliberate and comprehensive” courses for IT jobs.

At NOVA, the AWS partnership has produced a yearlong certificate program in cloud computing and data center operations, as well as an eight-week FastForward course on fiber optics installation. The college also offers a one-day free workshop on fiber optic fusion splicing co-sponsored by Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, a fiber optics company. These programs are changed and updated often to keep pace with the swiftly evolving IT field. AWS also has supported advanced computer labs at NOVA’s Loudoun and Woodbridge campuses.

Germanna Community College, with campuses around Fredericksburg, also is an AWS partner, as the business announced plans last spring to build data centers in Spotsylvania, Caroline, Stafford and Louisa counties.

To prepare locals to fill jobs at the data centers, Germanna now offers the AWS Information Infrastructure Pre-Apprenticeship four-week program to train students on HVAC, electrical, mechanical and data center operations specifically attuned to AWS’ data centers.

Other tech giants are also working with the state’s community colleges to train future workers. Microsoft offers its Datacenter Academy program at Southside Virginia Community College, and Google has a presence at all 23 of the state’s community colleges.

“We all know that they are excellent. It was a no-brainer to reach out to them,” says Wendy Peterson, program manager for community development, social impact and workforce development at Google Data Centers.

Peterson worked with Steve Partridge, NOVA’s vice president for strategy, research and workforce development, to design the five-week Skilled Trades and Readiness (STAR) course, which introduces people from underrepresented populations to the skills needed by the contractors that build data centers. Google Data Centers pays STAR students’ tuition and gives them a stipend while they study. Of the 47 students who have gone through the program, all 47 have received job offers.

At SVCC in Keysville, the first-ever Microsoft Datacenter Academy offers classes and on-the-job training in cloud computing and IT. Last May, the academy added a pilot project called the Critical Environment Training Lab to prepare students for careers in industrial environments.

Beyond the digital world

IT isn’t the only booming sector of the commonwealth’s economy, of course, and Virginia’s community colleges have formed a range of special relationships with businesses in other high-demand fields. A sampling of these partnerships shows just how effective double-teaming a personnel problem has been for everyone involved.

At Central Virginia Community College in the Lynchburg region, the nonprofit National Center for Construction Education and Research offers industry credential programs in fields such as plumbing and electrical work. CVCC also worked with F&B Contractors in Bedford, says Jason Ferguson, the school’s associate vice president for professional and career studies and workforce solutions, to create a FastForward heavy-equipment operator program. A bit more than a year ago, CVCC also took over worker training for Southern Air, and about 70 employees of the industrial, commercial and institutional contractor are slated to finish their training in May.

“We do customized training that works both ways,” Stamper explains. “We may create a class, and businesses send us their employees, or we may go to a company and offer them training.”

Still another successful partnership story is Germanna’s relationship with the asphalt industry, an unsung powerhouse of the state’s economy, generating nearly $2 billion annually and employing more than 10,000 people. In 2018, the college joined forces with the Virginia Asphalt Association and the Virginia Department of Transportation to start the Virginia Education Center for Asphalt Technology.

About 1,700 people train at the center every year, says Ed Dalrymple Jr., president of Cedar Mountain Stone and Chemung Contracting in Mitchells, who was involved in getting the education center off the ground. “It’s important for industry to engage with the colleges,” he says. “That way we can both meet each other’s needs.”

Perhaps one of the most notable community college partnerships with business, though, has been the one between Southside Virginia Community College and the state’s electricity providers. About 10 years ago, a whole generation of line workers was heading toward retirement, but the closest training available for potential replacements was in Georgia, says Brian Mosier, CEO of the Virginia, Maryland, Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives.

To deal with that alarming reality, two of his association’s members, John Lee, president and CEO of the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, and Jeff Edwards, president and CEO of the Southside Electric Cooperative, approached SVCC about starting a training program.

Mosier says that before FastForward came along, a partnership with the college had been a no-go because of the money his co-ops would have had to pony up. But with the institution of FastForward, the college offered to provide $362,000 toward a line worker training curriculum, and the electrical co-ops would only have to match it.

The co-ops ended up doing a lot better than that. “In a matter of weeks, we had almost a million dollars,” Mosier says. “I don’t know if I ever had a program where all 16 members wanted to be involved.” Dominion Energy later contributed significant scholarship dollars, as well.

Keith A. Harkins, SVCC’s vice president for academic and workforce programs, says that graduates of the 11-week program come out with five different credentials, including a commercial driver’s license.

They can expect to make $45,000 to $60,000 a year for starters, Lee says, but can make six figures “easy” through additional on-call work. Since its start in 2016, 625 linesmen and women have successfully completed the program, and classes are now waitlisted.

“It’s the epitome of a public-private partnership,” Lee says of the electric companies’ collaboration with SVCC. “I don’t know how it gets any better than that.”