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Tag: education

A fair share

Virginia’s first Black governor says it’s past time for the state’s historically Black colleges and universities to receive their fair share of the pie.

Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a Virginia Union University alumnus, jokes that he has been advocating for increased state funding for Virginia HBCUs “for about a hundred years.”

The Biden administration gave a push in that direction last September in letters to 16 Southern governors — including Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin — calling on them to correct what it calls decadeslong underfunding of 16 land-grant HBCUs in their states. According to the White House, states underfunded these schools by $13 billion from 1987 to 2020.

The commonwealth has two land-grant schools — Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and Virginia State University in Ettrick, an HBCU founded in 1882. Federal officials estimate that VSU is owed more than $277 million in state funding.

Land-grant schools were established by the 1862 Morrill Act, under which the federal government provided money to create 57 public colleges for agriculture and engineering. States generally provide required dollar-to-dollar matches for these institutions. During the days of racial segregation in the South, Black students were unable to attend colleges established by the 1862 act, so a separate Morrill Act system was set up in 1890.

Youngkin’s administration has denied that the commonwealth has underfunded VSU compared with Virginia Tech, and expressed skepticism over how federal officials came up with the numbers.

Wilder, a Democrat, says he’s written to Youngkin on the subject. “The underfunding has been documented at the federal level. I say to the governor, ‘Start putting money in the budget for HCBUs — all of them.’ This has been ignored too long by too many.”

William R. Harvey, who retired in 2022 after 44 years as president of Hampton University, suggests that HBCUs seek state funding for specific projects, like HU’s Proton Therapy Institute, which treats cancer patients. Photo by Mark Rhodes

The 93-year-old Wilder, the nation’s first Black governor since the Reconstruction era and later Richmond’s first popularly elected mayor, is now a distinguished professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs named for him. Last September, the school’s annual Wilder Symposium addressed the topic of HBCU funding head-on under the title, “HBCUs and the Absence of Support.”

Under Youngkin’s proposed 2024-26 state budget, released in December 2023, VSU’s operating funding would go up about 9.2% — from $232 million for fiscal 2024 to $250 million proposed in 2025. The Democratic-controlled state legislature will get a crack at the budget to make amendments (likely in a special session this spring) before submitting it to the governor to sign.

There are multiple ways of advocating for more funding, Wilder says. In 2006, a group of alumni and supporters of Maryland’s HBCUs filed a federal lawsuit accusing the state government of providing inequitable resources to its four historically Black schools. In 2021, Maryland reached a $577 million settlement to end the lawsuit.

Wilder says he’s not advocating that Virginia HBCU supporters follow Maryland’s example, but he notes that both chambers of the General Assembly have significant Black leadership, including the state’s first Black speaker of the House of Delegates, Del. Don Scott. 

“I don’t think a lawsuit is necessary,” Wilder says. But if HBCUs are not better funded, “we’ll say that your projects likewise will not be funded. There will be no pie for you if there’s no pie for me. … Power concedes nothing without demand. Now that we people of color can do something, we need to do it.”

Economic drivers

Virginia State University President Makola Abdullah, who serves on President Joe Biden’s HBCUs advisory board and is board chair of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, expresses hope that the General Assembly recognizes the value of investing in HBCUs and will be “receptive” to funding increases. “It’s exciting that we’ve reached the point where this conversation is happening” in Virginia, he says.

VSU ranks No. 26 in U.S. News and World Report’s list of Best Overall HBCUs for 2023, and its enrollment grew by 8% for fall 2022 and another 11% in fall 2023, surpassing 5,000 students. In 2021, Virginia State got a major boost in the form of a record-setting $30 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. She also donated $40 million to Norfolk State University, part of a series of donations to HBCUs and other traditionally underfunded institutions.

Major donations are important, but consistent public funding would translate into more scholarships, increased financial aid and updated technology and equipment, VSU’s president says. More than that, increased resources would mean that “the entire community would be uplifted,” Abdullah says. “VSU is a premier economic driver in Petersburg.”

Land-grant schools such as VSU “invest so much back into rural America,” says U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who serves on the House Agriculture Committee and in December 2023 launched her bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Speaking at the 1890 Land Grant Universities Recognition event co-hosted last September in Washington, D.C., by the nonprofit 1890 Universities Foundation, she told the audience that “back home in Virginia, I have heard from our farmers and our institutions of higher education about the critical nexus between research and the success of Virginia’s No. 1 private industry — agriculture.”

In the past three decades, “more than $275 million should have been available for Virginia State University, had it received state funding per student equal to that of Virginia Tech,” according to Spanberger. “This is unacceptable; those investments could have supported more infrastructure, more student services, and the ability to compete for research grants to better serve Virginia’s students. We need to do better.”

Acknowledging disparity

Although the Biden administration’s letter was specifically aimed at land-grant schools, “it comes at a time when we’re trying to get Virginia to do more for all Black schools,” says James W. Dyke Jr., senior advisor for McGuireWoods Consulting in Tysons.

“This has been going on a long time. Black schools have always received less funding. It’s built up over the years. I think everybody acknowledges the disparity,” says Howard University alumnus Dyke, who was Virginia’s education secretary under Wilder and has worked in recent years on increased funding for HBCUs.

Now is an especially important time to allocate more money to HBCUs, Dyke says. While many institutions around the country are struggling to attract students, enrollment at HBCUs is on the rise, increasing 57% by 2022, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report last spring.

And after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned affirmative action at most colleges and universities last June, Dyke says, “I think there will be more demand.”

He’s far from alone in that assessment. According to a July 2023 report by Inside Higher Ed, HBCU leaders are expecting more applications. While more interest is generally welcome, administrators at HBCUs nationwide expressed concern that they don’t have the resources and infrastructure to accept more students.

Currently, predominantly Black universities produce 20% of Black college graduates in the country but face significant underfunding compared with predominately white institutions, according to the Wilder Symposium, which billed it as “a crisis that impacts financial support for students, technology resources, and building infrastructure.”

It’s in the best interest of businesses and communities to better support all HBCUs, Wilder says. “Businesses are looking for leadership to come from all of their schools in Virginia. They need a [workforce] pipeline. We produce the doctors, the lawyers, the engineers.”

Like other higher ed institutions, HBCUs are not a monolith. Some, like NSU and VSU, are public universities that receive federal, state and private funding, while others are private universities that rely on tuition, donations and endowments. In Virginia, Hampton University, Virginia Union University and Virginia University of Lynchburg are the state’s private HBCUs.

In 2022, Virginia Attorney Gen. Jason Miyares, a Republican who is rumored to be eyeing a 2025 gubernatorial run, wrote that the state’s laws and constitution allow some public funding of private HBCUs — through the Tuition Assistance Grant program for individual students and with loans to universities through the Virginia College Building Authority.

“This is a significant moment in time for HBCUs,” Virginia Union University President Hakim J. Lucas said when Miyares made that determination.

William R. Harvey, who retired in 2022 after 44 years as president of Hampton University, knows about the effort it takes to attract donations and has advice for other private HBCUs.

When Harvey became HU’s president almost half a century ago, the university’s “finances were in bad shape. They had not balanced the budget. Physical buildings had decayed.” The school’s endowment was $29 million.

Harvey and his team went to work, and “people responded.” At his retirement, Hampton’s endowment contained more than $400 million, a 1,279% increase. MacKenzie Scott also made a $30 million donation to the school in 2020, its largest donation. But that endowment increase also reflects support from nonbillionaire donors.

People responded, Harvey says, because “we asked them to fund specific projects. We didn’t ask for $50 million, we asked for the proton center.” That’s the $225 million Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute (HUPTI), which employs proton treatments on a variety of cancers. The facility opened in 2010, funded by private donors and regional lenders, as well as some public support from the state and federal governments.

Harvey views the institute as a “classic example” of how Hampton and other HBCUs are helping their communities. “We are curing cancer. Cancer is the No. 1 killer in Virginia. We are easing human misery and saving lives.”  

Virginia HBCUs at a glance

Virginia has five historically Black colleges and universities, spread across Hampton Roads and Central Virginia. Some of the oldest in the nation, these institutions are a mix of public and privately run schools. 

Hampton University

Located in Hampton, the private, not-for-profit university is on 314 acres and has 3,649 students, 3,255 of them undergraduates.1 It was founded in 1868 as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. In July 2022, Hampton welcomed its new president, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams; he succeeds William R. Harvey, who had served as the university’s president since 1978.

Norfolk State University

The four-year public school near downtown Norfolk was founded in 1935. It has a 134-acre campus and has 6,045 students. NSU’s  December 2021 commencement speech was delivered by music superstar and Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams, who also hosted his Elephant in the Room business forum at NSU that year. NSU unveiled its 6,000-square-foot Micron-NSU Nanofabrication Cleanroom in October 2021.

Virginia State University

Virginia State University was founded in 1882 as one of Virginia’s two public land-grant institutions (the other is Virginia Tech). Located in Chesterfield County’s Ettrick area near Petersburg, its 231-acre campus overlooks the Appomattox River. VSU has 5,190 students, 4,829 of them undergraduates.

Virginia Union University

The private university was founded in 1865. Hartshorn Memorial College, a women’s college established in Richmond in 1883, became part of VUU in 1932. Storer College, a Black Baptist college in West Virginia that closed in 1955, merged its endowment with VUU. The university has 1,704 students, 1,227 of them undergraduates.1

Virginia University of Lynchburg

Virginia University of Lynchburg traces its origins to the 1886 founding of the Lynchburg Baptist Seminary. Renamed over the years, VUL was incorporated as Virginia University of Lynchburg in 1996. The private not-for-profit school has 837 students, 479 of them undergraduates.2

1 Fall 2022

2 National Center for Education Statistics

ODU promotes engineering dean to VP of research

Kenneth J. Fridley has been promoted to vice president for research, Old Dominion University announced Monday. He has been in the position on an interim basis since August 2023 while also serving as dean of ODU’s Batten College of Engineering and Technology.

Fridley, who began his new role Wednesday, will continue as interim dean until a permanent engineering dean is named. He joined ODU in July 2022. Before coming to Norfolk, Fridley served in several roles at the University of Alabama. Most recently, he spent eight years as senior associate dean for administration at Alabama’s College of Engineering. He was also interim dean of the Honors College for a year and head of the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering for 12 years.

Fridley has expertise in engineered wood construction, performance and hazard mitigation. He has published 65 peer-reviewed journal papers and co-authored a wood engineering design textbook. Additionally, he has been responsible for more than $14.4 million in sponsored research, supported by a variety of federal, state and industry sources. Much of his research has directly impacted the civil engineering profession, resulting in changes in national design specifications, standards and codes, according to a news release from ODU.

Va. Tech receives two $1M endowment commitments

The Public Service Education Institute has endowed two $1 million funds at Virginia Tech to support internships, the university announced Tuesday.

The endowments, each created with a $1 million commitment, will support students who have secured internships with federal, state or local government agencies, including the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

One endowment will support students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, while the Public Service Education Institute Virginia Tech Internship Endowment will support students across a range of programs. The university is still working to establish the funds’ award criteria for students. 

“We are grateful for the support of the Public Service Education Institute for this tremendous gift that will impact the lives of Virginia Tech and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences students for years to come,” Alan Grant, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said in a statement. “Internships and the valuable skills they impart set students up for success in their future careers.”

The Public Service Education Institute was originally the U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate School program. Established in 1921, the program expanded to provide more than 200 continuing education courses to government employees. In 2009, the program became an independent nonprofit, Graduate School USA. In 2021, Charles Town, West Virginia-based American Public Education bought the organization and renamed it the Public Service Education Institute.

Merle Pierson, the president and chairman of the institute’s board, was a professor of food microbiology and safety at Virginia Tech from 1970 to 2005 and headed its Department of Food Science and Technology from 1985 to 1994.

“Our goal is to help provide students with an experience in the government and to also provide the government with highly qualified individuals. … Hands on experience beyond the classroom provides much added value to education,” he said in a statement.

Interest rate

Dr. Aubrey Knight has spent his career listening to stories about the past. He’s talked to people who were miners during World War I. He’s spoken to Prohibition-era bootleggers. He’s heard endless stories of relationships severed then reconciled decades later.

That comes with the territory for geriatricians like Knight who specialize in treating older adults. A professor of family medicine and senior dean of student affairs at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, he says the joy and sense of accomplishment he associates with the specialty is what drew him to choose it more than 30 years ago.

With more than 56 million Americans now 65 and older, geriatrics is one of the specialties most in need of doctors due to a large population of aging baby boomers. But most of today’s medical students don’t feel the same pull for the specialty that Knight did.

The American Geriatrics Society estimates that the U.S. will need 30,000 geriatricians by 2030 to meet health care needs, but there are currently fewer than 7,300 geriatricians practicing in the nation.

The urgent need for geriatricians and other specialists shows how competing medical needs in an industry barraged with burnout and staffing shortages — especially among the primary care and behavioral health workforces — is leaving gaps in patient care.

It’s also creating a challenge for Virginia medical school leaders who want to encourage students to flock toward in-need specialties while making sure they also choose a career that will fulfill them.

Those two goals don’t always line up.

Family medicine, for example, is facing one of the most aggressive physician shortages in the U.S., but it’s not one of the most popular medical specialties — unlike dermatology, orthopedic surgery and anesthesiology, which are also among the most competitive residency programs to get into.

“What we don’t want is for a student to make the wrong decision, for a student to get into a specialty and to realize two or three years in, ‘This is not what I thought it was going to be,’” Knight says.

But no matter what specialty they choose, Dr. Lee A. Learman, VTCSOM’s dean since 2019, notes that graduating med school students are helping the health care industry battle an overall physician workforce shortage.

By 2034, the U.S. will be facing a shortfall of up to 124,000 physicians, according to projections from the Association of American Medical Colleges. Even surgical specialties, which are among the most popular and most competitive medical fields, are also facing severe shortages in rural areas and in the South. Nationwide, the AAMC projects surgical specialties could be short by up to 30,200 physicians
by 2034.

In a national address about the growing crisis in October 2023, American Medical Association President Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld said, “While our current physician shortage is already limiting access to care for millions of people, it’s about to get much worse.”

A third-year medical student at Virginia Commonwealth University, Mathew Ciurash decided to specialize in anesthesiology after shadowing a resident anesthesiologist. Photo by Caroline Martin

Years in the making

Deciding on a medical specialty is a process years in the making, and it’s part of an additional three to seven years of residency that follows medical school before doctors formally join the workforce.

Medical students usually choose specialties after their third year of medical school, where as part of the core curriculum, they “rotate” or train in multiple specialties like internal medicine, general surgery, psychiatry or emergency medicine as part of an actual medical team.

Students then take what’s known as the Step 2 CK exam, a one-day test of clinical knowledge, such as treatments for given diagnoses. The exam determines a students’ competitiveness in applying to residency programs that train newly graduated physicians in specific medical specialties.

The more competitive the specialty, the higher a student needs to score on the exam to remain an attractive candidate, says Caila Bachmann, who is entering her fourth year as a medical student at the University of Virginia and plans to specialize in general surgery due to her love of hands-on work.

The fourth year of med school consists of electives that cater to a student’s expected specialty choice and can provide them a boost in their residency application process, which starts around September and is when they officially declare their desired medical specialty. Applicants are then matched with residency programs each March by the National Resident Matching Program. The number of applications submitted per person depends on the medical specialty.

Because the process is getting more competitive, med students are individually submitting more residency applications in order to raise their odds at landing a desired residency slot, Bachmann says. Med students are also putting in more applications because most residency interviews are now conducted virtually, eliminating travel time and expenses that applicants used to incur before the pandemic.

Mannet Dhaliwal, a fourth-year U.Va. medical student who aims to specialize in psychiatry, says she’s applied to more than 50 residency programs. A friend who wants to specialize in dermatology has applied to roughly 150 residency programs due to dermatology programs being smaller and among the most competitive, Dhaliwal says. The easiest programs to get into are often the ones most in need of doctors and require fewer applications, she says.

“We need a lot more pediatricians, so that’s why it’s ‘easier’ to get that residency,” Dhaliwal explains.

Decisions, decisions

The average Eastern Virginia Medical School graduate has $250,650 of school debt, according to a 2023 AAMC report, while graduates of Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and the U.Va. School of Medicine incur $204,515 and $161,322 in average school debt respectively.

“I make a lot of jokes about [the debt] because I find it’s on my mind a lot,” Bachmann says. “And it’s easier to laugh than cry.”

But interest, desired lifestyle, level of patient interaction and work-life balance play heavier roles in the specialty decision-making process than salary, according to Bachmann and others.

Though Dr. Ronald Flenner, vice dean for academic affairs at Eastern Virginia Medical School, has met students whom he thinks would make “fantastic” primary care physicians, they’ve been turned away from it as a career option due to their school debt loads, he says.

Work-life balance, however, was the top consideration for 85% of new physicians choosing a job in 2022, compared with 63% in 2018, according to surveys from health staffing consultancy CHG Healthcare.

It’s a reason why dermatology, a profession limited mostly to daytime work hours, has remained consistently popular and why anesthesiology is growing as another desirable specialty nationally and among Virginia’s med school students.

Nationally, more specialized fields like thoracic surgery, neurosurgery, plastic surgery and orthopedic surgery are much more competitive and are more likely to see high percentages of people not make it into those residency programs due to limited slots. These specialties are also among the highest paid.

A neurosurgeon can expect an average annual salary of $788,313, while a family medicine doctor makes an average of $273,040, according to a 2023 physician compensation report from medical platform Doximity.

Psychiatry is a specialty that’s slowly becoming competitive, too, which Virginia’s medical school leaders attribute partly to a growing behavioral health crisis across the U.S.

More than 2,100 psychiatry positions were offered in the 2023 residency match nationwide, the highest ever recorded, and the specialty had 99% of its residency program slots filled, says Donna Lamb, president and CEO of the National Resident Matching Program.

Lamb and Virginia’s medical school leaders say Virginia’s medical students mirror national trends.

Bearing witness to industry stressors is also influencing med students’ choices on whether to pursue a particular specialty, says Dr. Meg Keeley, a pediatrician and senior associate dean for education at U.Va.’s School of Medicine.

“I would say the biggest shift that we have all experienced — not just in my medical school but across the country — is a fairly dramatic drop-off of students choosing to go into emergency medicine,” Keeley adds, which is in part due to stories about how emergency rooms were overwhelmed as they fought on the pandemic’s grueling frontlines.

Prior to COVID, emergency medicine was one of the most popular and competitive specialties for students to get into. But in 2023, the emergency medicine specialty had just 82% of available residency slots filled, down from 92.5% in 2022, Lamb says.

Third-year clinical rotations offer another glimpse into the industry, which leads some physicians to pull away from less competitive specialties with high industry needs like internal medicine when they see how difficult those specialties can be day-to-day, says Dhaliwal. 

“The residency is very brutal. You are just basically working like 14-hour days for four years, six days a week,” Dhaliwal continues. “I think a lot of people just don’t want that life for themselves.”

For Mathew Ciurash, a third-year medical student at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Medicine, shadowing a resident anesthesiologist his first year had the opposite effect. Seeing how happy and fulfilled anesthesiologists were in their jobs is what cemented his decision to pursue anesthesiology as a specialty.

The pressure to be certain about the specialty one chooses can be tough, Ciurash explains, “because there’s … not really a looking back. Once I start a new residency, I’m … locked into a field that I better enjoy because it’s the rest of my career.”

Doctors in demand

The paradox facing medical schools is that the medical specialties experiencing the greatest shortages of doctors aren’t always the specialties medical students tend to pursue — and the issues deterring students from going into those in-need specialties are sometimes out of their control.

Medicaid’s low reimbursement rates for pediatricians and other primary care physicians can make it challenging for some practices to retain staff and provide needed care for patients.

In Virginia, the result is that more than 60% of open physician roles are for primary care positions, and those are concentrated in metro areas, likely due to patients’ ability to pay rather than need for physicians, according to a preliminary study issued in 2023 by the Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority.

Nationally, during the past 10 years, family medicine has had the lowest number of residency program slots filled within primary care specialties.

But in some cases, political and social factors — such as health care policies and growing awareness of the social determinants of health — are in part prompting students to chase specialties with great need for doctors, says Dr. Arturo Saavedra, dean of the VCU School of Medicine and VCU Health System’s executive vice president for medical affairs.

One example is Swet Patel, a fourth-year U.Va. medical student who has chosen family medicine as his specialty. Patel says seeing how overworked physicians were in larger institutions led him to want to own his own independent practice so he could have greater autonomy.

Dhaliwal, the fourth-year U.Va. medical student pursuing psychiatry, says she was drawn to the intersections of race, class and gender that “come to light” in psychiatry after working closely with
social workers.

But despite the urgent need for psychiatrists and family physicians, there’s a cap on the number of federally funded residency positions — which means there could be interest but not enough spots for them.

“We need more doctors in this country,” Dhaliwal says, “and they make it so hard.”  

Brightpoint promotes Fiege to president

William “Bill” Fiege will be the eighth president of Brightpoint Community College, the Virginia Community College System announced Monday.

Fiege will begin his new role on Jan. 2, 2024.  Van Wilson has led Brightpoint as interim president since February 2023, after former President Ted Raspiller stepped down from the role to take a job with Virginia529.

Fiege is currently Brightpoint’s vice president of learning and student success at Brightpoint, the college’s chief academic officer, a position he has held since 2012. Before that, he was at Germanna Community College, where he was dean of professional and technical studies. He has also worked for Longwood University, his alma mater, from which he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science. Fiege also has a master’s in speech communication from Bloomsburg University and a doctorate in community college leadership from Old Dominion University.

“I’m excited about Bill’s appointment,”  David Doré, chancellor of VCCS, said in a statement. “I am confident he will build on the college’s outstanding history of serving its communities and its diverse student populations and will lead Brightpoint into a new era as Virginia’s Community Colleges embark on a systemwide transformation to serve more learners in new ways. Our monthslong search yielded exceptional candidates and we are grateful to all of the talented educators who expressed interest in the Brightpoint presidency.”

Brightpoint attracted 74 candidates in its national search for a new president.

“The Brightpoint Community College Board is elated with the selection of Bill Fiege as the institution’s eighth president,” Kenneth Pritchett, chair of Brightpoint Community College’s Local Advisory Board, said in a statement. “I would like to thank our college board members for their time and energy throughout the rigorous selection process. We truly believe that Dr. Fiege will move our college forward. Under his leadership, Brightpoint will continue to be a place that changes lives, focuses on student success and supports the needs of its communities.”

Brightpoint serves Amelia, Charles City, Chesterfield, Dinwiddie, Prince George, Surry and Sussex counties as well as Colonial Heights, Hopewell and Petersburg. It has campuses in Chester and Midlothian.

“After serving Brightpoint as the chief academic officer for the last 11 ½ years, I am honored and humbled to have been selected from an outstanding pool of candidates to lead the college as its next president,” Fiege said in a statement. “Already embedded in the community, I fully comprehend the positive impact of Brightpoint and our workforce arm, the Community College Workforce Alliance, within our region. I appreciate the confidence bestowed upon me by Chancellor Doré and look forward to working with him and Brightpoint’s boards, faculty, staff, students and partners to continue the college’s positive momentum. We are and will continue to be trailblazers for the great communities we serve.”

Sweet Briar College names alumna 14th president

Sweet Briar College will keep Mary Pope Maybank Hutson as its president permanently after serving as interim president since July, the private women’s college announced Thursday.

Hutson is the 14th president of Sweet Briar and the Amherst County school’s first alumna president. A 1983 graduate with a degree in international affairs, Hutson served as Sweet Briar’s senior vice president for alumnae relations since 2016. She has a background in public service and policy and served as executive vice president of the Land Trust Alliance in Washington, D.C., from 2002 to 2015. She has also been executive director of the Lowcountry Open Land Trust in South Carolina, and director of educational programs for the Historic Charleston Foundation.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Hutson worked for former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms and later joined the Department of the Interior, where she served as Guam desk officer and as a liaison to the island of St. Thomas. In 1990, the George H.W. Bush White House appointed her special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to Kenya.

Her commitment to Sweet Briar goes back to her days as a student when she was a student leader and nationally ranked tennis payer. Hutson earned a spot in the college’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

When Sweet Briar was threatened with closure in 2015, she was among the alumnae who thwarted the administration’s effort to close the college. She joined the Board of Directors, then became part of the college’s administration as senior vice president for alumnae relations in January 2016. In July, Hutson replaced former President Meredith Woo on an interim basis. Woo, who became president in 2017 and announced in January that she would be stepping down, is a political science professor at Arizona State University.

In a statement, Hutson said: “The gifts of my Sweet Briar education to my life have been pivotal in my career and in my ability to give back to my community and my college, and I know we all need to be part of educating and mentoring young people while ensuring the sustainability of Sweet Briar for the next century.”

“After a meticulous and thorough process, led by a committed group of stakeholder representatives and under the expert guidance of our search firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, I am delighted with the board’s overwhelming and unanimous support of Mary Pope as Sweet Briar’s next president,” Mason Rummel, Sweet Briar’s board chair, said in a statement. “Not only does she embody the spirit and ethos of our beloved college, but she is also resolute in her determination to lead Sweet Briar to new heights as the leader in women’s higher education.”

JPMorgan Chase gives $5.3M to DMV career pathways program

JPMorgan Chase has donated $5.3 million to TalentReady, a student career pathways program in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., the bank announced Thursday.

The program, which is organized by the Greater Washington Partnership and Education Strategy Group, has a focus on ensuring students get work-based learning experiences, such as capstone projects and internships.

TalentReady has already supported 25,000 high school students from Fairfax County; Montgomery and Prince George’s counties and Baltimore in Maryland; and Washington, D.C. The program aims to connect students in K-12 and colleges in the greater Washington region with high-growth, high-demand jobs. It also increases accessibility for underrepresented populations to secure entry-level STEM jobs in fields such as technology and health care.

GWP cited a McKinsey analysis that found 70,000 jobs in the region went unfilled last year, and TalentReady hopes to fill more vacancies by training and retaining local talent.

“The path to powering our communities and unlocking economic opportunity for everyone starts at the local level,” Tim Berry, global head of corporate responsibility and chairman of the mid-Atlantic region for JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement. “Through our investment in the TalentReady initiative, we are expanding our efforts to better prepare students for in-demand, skills-based jobs in the greater Washington region. Working alongside local partners in the nonprofit, education and business communities, and with engagement from regional leaders like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, we can create a system that helps students advance their career pathways and support a thriving economy.”

GWP uses a tool called the Employer Signaling System, which helps educators prepare students to fill some of the most in-demand tech jobs, according to a news release.

“Through our TalentReady work, we’re continuing to strengthen the Employer Signaling System, our innovative process and tool that combines labor market data with feedback from employers and educators to paint a comprehensive picture of the region’s workforce landscape,” Kathy Hollinger, CEO of the Greater Washington Partnership, said in a statement. “We know conversations about talent pipelines can occur in silos, with various stakeholder groups in discussions amongst themselves, but not always to one another. The ESS serves as the connector between these groups — educators, employers and more — allowing them all to speak in common language about talent needs and skills gaps.”

The expanded initiative builds on the first phase of TalentReady, which launched in 2018. This gift expands on JPMorgan’s $75 million global career readiness initiative.

“Thanks to the private sector leadership of JPMorgan Chase and their investment in TalentReady, we are expanding workforce opportunities for students in Virginia,” Youngkin said in a statement. “My administration is committed to fostering pathways to the most in-demand careers, providing technical training and investing in results-oriented programs that boost our workforce readiness. By fostering partnerships between our top-ranked education institutions and Virginia’s most critical employers, we are preparing our young people to graduate workforce and college ready.”

100 People to Meet in 2024: Educators

As leaders in our K-12 and higher education workforce, these teachers, professors, deans and university administrators are passing on their knowledge to the next generation of Virginians.

William Kelly

President, Christopher Newport University
Newport News

William Kelly has built his career on public service and leadership, including serving as the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s superintendent, his job before taking the reins at Christopher Newport University in July. A rear admiral before his military retirement this year, Kelly succeeds longtime CNU President Paul S. Trible Jr.

During his 36 years in the Coast Guard, Kelly and his wife, Angie, spent three years in Newport News. Now, at CNU, he looks to shape the next generation of leaders. “We want to open doors to as many students as possible so their lives can be transformed and they, in turn, can improve the lives of people in Virginia and around the world.”

Richard Moncure

Director of S.T.R.E.A.M., St. Margaret’s School
Tappahannock

Richard Moncure grew up in a family of watermen and ran a seafood restaurant until he saw the Rappahannock River was no longer providing a large enough catch to supply the business. Moncure pivoted into conservation, first helping Zambian tilapia farmers in the Peace Corps, and later serving as the first-ever tidal river steward for Friends of the Rappahannock. Now, he is educating the next generation about the river, as head of S.T.R.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, River, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) at St. Margaret’s, an-all girls’ school serving grades 8-12. Tapped for his new post in June, Moncure developed a prototype for the S.T.R.E.A.M. program during the pandemic, creating an outdoor classroom at Aylett Country Day School to connect kids to the region’s history through the river. Now he teaches his students the challenges of restoring the watershed through experiential learning.

Enric Ruiz-Geli

Professor of practice, Virginia Tech Honors College; principal and founding architect, Cloud 9
Blacksburg

As professor of practice at Virginia Tech’s Honors College, Spanish architect Enric Ruiz-Geli instructs students in transdisciplinary and experiential learning, drawing from the lessons learned in his wide-ranging career. His Barcelona-based firm, Cloud 9, has been involved in significant sustainable architecture projects around the world, including the Media-TIC building in Barcelona, named “Best Building in the World” at the World Architecture Festival 2011. At Virginia Tech, he’s part of the Honors SuperStudio faculty that teaches four interrelated topics. Ruiz-Geli’s focus has been on building greener buildings. Now the architectural and building fields are primed, he says, to be a solution to global warming.

Bevlee A. Watford

Associate dean of equity and engagement; executive director, Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity, Virginia Tech
Blacksburg

At age 10, Bevlee Watford was that rare child who met an engineer and discovered her life’s calling. A high school guidance counselor recommended Virginia Tech, where she earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in mining and industrial engineering and operations research. With few women and people of color in engineering when she began teaching at Clemson University, Watford became a role model and her office a magnet for students needing assistance to unlock their potential. She joined Virginia Tech’s faculty in 1992, and as a dean, she works to attract and retain a diverse group of students. In January, Watford was appointed by President Joe Biden to the National Science Board, which advises on policy matters in science, engineering and related education. “To know I can contribute to finding new programs and discussing research to further our culture is amazing,” she says.

Check out the other 100 People to Meet in 2024.

EVMS, ODU merger pushed to July 2024

The merger of Eastern Virginia Medical School into Old Dominion University has been pushed back six months, to July 1, 2024, instead of January as originally planned, ODU President Brian O. Hemphill announced Friday during his State of the University address.

While that date still meets the deadline set by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the General Assembly — July 1, 2024 — ODU and EVMS had been aiming for January 2024. But Hemphill and EVMS President, Provost and Dean Dr. Alfred Abuhamad said there’s more work that needs to be done before EVMS is folded into ODU, though Abuhamad added that the merger is “very, very close” to being finalized.

“We have a number of subgroups that are working hard and looking at issues from IT to finance and that work will continue, but the next step is that we are going back to [the General Assembly],” Hemphill said. “There’s a little more funding that we’re going to have to receive from Richmond.”

The creation of Eastern Virginia Health Sciences Center at ODU — making EVMS into ODU’s medical school — was included in a bill sponsored by state Sen. Louise Lucas during the 2023 Virginia General Assembly. Then, in September, the General Assembly approved $14 million to support startup costs for the initial integration and launch.

Friday’s announcement wasn’t exactly a surprise. The formal announcement comes about a month after a letter written by Hemphill and Abuhamad indicating that the merger had been pushed to July 2024 was posted on an EVMS website dedicated to the merger.

“While we are confident that we will conclude these conversations soon, it is unlikely this will happen before we reach some important … accreditation approval deadlines” from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, Hemphill and Abuhamad wrote. “As these important discussions continue, our functional teams and the Integration Management Offices (IMOs) continue to make substantial progress. Both institutions are fully immersed in the remaining work toward the goal of a successful integration.”

ODU and EVMS will submit the materials for accreditation in March 2024 with the expectation to receive word on approval in June, an ODU spokesperson said.

Though EVMS and ODU missed their self-imposed Jan. 1, 2024, deadline, the two institutions remain on track to meet the July 1, 2024, deadline set by Youngkin and the state legislature.

“It’s very complex to bring two large institutions together,” Abuhamad said, talking with reporters after Hemphill’s speech. “There’s a lot of things that need to get worked through prior to getting to Day One and we’re on schedule and on time to reach them.”

He said the January deadline was predicated “on us getting support, financial support and making sure that all the work is accomplished to be able to integrate.”

Hemphill and Abuhamad did not elaborate further on how much financial support is needed.

In addition to financial support, Abuhamad said Friday that the schools’ desire to integrate and the creation of a symbiotic culture between EVMS and ODU are two pieces that are necessary for a successful merger. “We feel very good about this because all these three major things that typically derail mergers are very solidly founded,” he said.

Another aspect of that success is Sentara Health, which already has an agreement with EVMS for residencies, and has “doubled down” on the merger, Hemphill said Friday.

In his speech, Hemphill said ODU, EVMS and Sentara’s leadership approved a long-term deal. “It’s a significant investment that will drive this merger and ensure we are going to be successful.”

The two schools have been working on the merger for at least two years and it’s not the first time they have worked together. They have previously entered into agreements with Sentara Health and Norfolk State University on health care collaborations.

A dozen committees are working on the integration between ODU and EVMS, some meeting as often as two or three times per week. In July 2022, ODU hired Dr. Alicia Monroe as chief integration officer and senior adviser to Hemphill.

 

Framatome revamps nuclear training pipeline

A French nuclear power company with its United States headquarters in Lynchburg is ramping up hiring to meet a growing global need for clean, low-carbon energy.

Framatome North America is recruiting for 200 positions in the U.S, about 125 of which are in Lynchburg, and it anticipates a “significant” number of additional openings in coming years, says CEO Katherine Williams.

Some of those employees will come from the 20-year-old Framatome Nuclear Technology Academy at Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg, which in May saw a major revamp after realizing its enrollment, which was limited to employees, had dwindled from a high of 25 students at a time to as few as five. The academy, a pathway to an associate degree, produces nuclear technicians who monitor and help maintain nuclear plants.

Nationally, about 600 openings for nuclear technicians are projected annually during the next decade.

Framatome has been in Lynchburg since 1989 and has about 1,320 employees in the location. It designs and provides equipment, services and fuel for nuclear power plants around the world. After noticing a skills gap in its entry level applicants, the company donated $1 million to CVCC to establish the academy in 2004. More than 100 employees have graduated from it, and 70% still work at Framatome, says Williams.

In May, Framatome announced it was donating $400,000 over four years to revamp the academy, adding equipment and condensing classroom instruction into semesters instead of two, five-week sessions annually for four years. (The rest of the time, Framatome’s students work at nuclear plants globally.) Employee pay was also made more competitive for students enrolled in the academy, which is tuition-free. Enrollment has reached a company goal of 30, says Marci Gale, head of CVCC’s mechatronics and electronics faculty.

The academy also is now open to the public; 16 non-Framatome employees have enrolled. Those who don’t work for another company that might cover academy tuition are likely to get an interview with Framatome.

L.A. Wills, 24, worked for a Framatome subcontractor when he learned about the academy. He’s in his third year now and works on steam generators for Framatome. He’ll graduate next year with a degree in applied nuclear mechatronics.

“Personally, it gives you an opportunity to show the company that you’re willing to put in the work to better yourself, so that way you can grow with the company,” Wills says.