Va. Western Community College president to retire

President of Virginia Western Community College since 2001, Robert Sandel steered the two-year, public higher education institution into the 21st century, more than doubling enrollment and overseeing more than $138 million in construction and renovations. 

On Monday, the Roanoke-based college announced Sandel’s plans to retire at the end of June.

When Sandel started, the VWCC Educational Foundation had about $1 million in assets under management and operated out of a cubicle, according to a news release. Today, the foundation boasts $34 million in assets under management. A grants office founded under Sandel’s leadership in 2002 has secured about $48 million in state, federal, corporate and foundation grants.

Founded in 2008, VWCC’s Community College Access Program, known as CCAP, has provided about $11.8 million in tuition assistance. A public-private partnership, CCAP covers the cost of two years of tuition at VWCC for students who do not receive sufficient financial aid.

Fitting Sandel’s ethos to center all efforts on students, the foundation has never raised money for a capital project. Instead, all naming gifts are directed to student assistance. 

In 2017, the City of Roanoke received a state grant to launch the Regional Accelerator and Mentoring Program, or RAMP, an accelerator for tech startups. Sandel championed the effort, support that included lending staff members from the VWCC Educational Foundation to run RAMP’s operations. To date, the accelerator has worked with more than 50 companies that created about 800 jobs, according to its website. 

“At a critical time in RAMP’s early development, it needed a financial sponsor to become operational,” W. Heywood Fralin, chair of Retirement Unlimited, co-trustee of the Horace G. Fralin Charitable Trust and a board member of the foundation, said in a statement. “Bobby Sandel and Virginia Western stepped up to fill that need, and today, the RAMP accelerator thrives. Bobby is a visionary, and without him this region’s economy would not be where it is today.”

Edwin C. “Ed” Hall, founder of Hall Associates, the Roanoke-based commercial and industrial real estate firm, said that the first time he met Sandel, he could tell “things were going to be different at Virginia Western.” 

“His question was, ‘Can I come and speak to the Chamber board? I need to know what the business community needs instead of us telling you what you need,’” recalled Hall, who went on to serve as a president of the VWCC Educational Foundation and chair of the school’s Scholarship and Foundation Grants Committee. 

A native of Orangeburg, South Carolina, Sandel earned an undergraduate degree from The Citadel, a master’s degree from South Carolina State University and a doctorate from the University of South Carolina. 

Before becoming VWCC’s fourth president, Sandel worked for more than two decades in the South Carolina technical college system and spent more than nine years as president at Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap. 

VWCC boasts an enrollment of more than 8,500 students taking credit courses and more than 1,200 enrollments in workforce and continuing education courses. The school has nearly 80 full-time faculty members and more than 150 full-time staff members. VWCC offers more than 100 programs, including nine health profession programs — the third largest among the state’s 23 community colleges, according to Monday’s news release.

Details about the search for VWCC’s next president will be released later.