The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art is moving from Virginia Beach’s ViBe District to Virginia Wesleyan University’s campus, with the aid of a $25 million gift, the museum and university said Tuesday in announcing the partnership.
The gift, from Jane Batten, Joan Brock and David and Susan Goode, will fund construction of the museum’s new space, Virginia Wesleyan President Scott Miller told Virginia Business. The museum, which will be about 30,000 to 35,000 square feet, is being designed by Tymoff + Moss Architects of Norfolk and Richmond-based Hourigan will serve as the contractor, Miller said. The museum could open as soon as 2025.
“This partnership will anchor us in our mission to present locally relevant, nationally resonant art that is exceptional,” Virginia MOCA President and CEO Gary Ryan said in a statement. “While Virginia MOCA remains an independent museum, our collaboration with VWU will allow us to do even more of what we do best: create groundbreaking exhibitions and engage the community in thought-provoking artistic experiences. Our mission remains the same, but we are now bolstered by our partnership with VWU and its amazing educational resources.”
Virginia Wesleyan students and instructors have exhibited at the museum in the past and MOCA has provided students with internships and work opportunities. As part of the move, which has been in the works for several months, the private university is also planning to launch a Master of Arts degree in arts management, Miller said, and other programs in arts and history could develop.
The current museum, which includes 38,500 square feet with 6,300 square feet of exhibition space, will remain open during construction of its replacement.
Virginia Wesleyan sits on the Norfolk side of the Virginia Beach border, just off Interstate 64, an entry point into the city that sees more than 31,000 cars daily, Miller said, adding that the museum’s new location will help make arts more accessible to the entire region. “The relocation to our campus actually puts it in the epicenter of the Hampton Roads community,” he said.
Batten, Brock and the Goodes have been major benefactors to the arts, educational and civic communities in Virginia and at Virginia Wesleyan, where the Jane P. Batten Student Center, the Batten Honors College, the Susan S. Goode School of Arts and Humanities, the Susan S. Goode Fine and Performing Arts Center and the Joan P. Brock School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences bear their names.
Miller said the museum, which will be constructed adjacent to the university’s arts center, will continue to have an independent board of directors.
Like the rest of the country, Virginia’s public schools are suffering from a teacher shortage. In the 2022-23 academic year, there were 3,573 vacancies statewide, and more teachers are working with only provisional licenses, which don’t require teacher preparation courses.
In Southwest Virginia, though, educators are signing up for a master’s degree in education that the University of Virginia’s College at Wise is offering this fall, its first graduate-level degree program. Applications opened May 1, and the school received more than 40 responses in the first three weeks, even though tuition for the 2023-24 year hadn’t yet been set, says U.Va. Wise Chancellor Donna Price Henry.
“We were hoping that this first cohort will have 20 students, so we’re excited that we have more applications than that,” she says. “We’re planning to accommodate all who qualify.”
Although teachers can get licensed in Virginia with a bachelor’s degree, many opt for master’s degrees because they can qualify for higher pay and often gain more job opportunities — but Southwest Virginia lags behind Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads in the number of teachers who have master’s degrees in education.
U.Va. Wise’s board of visitors approved the program last year, and the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia approved the degree in March.
“Education seemed to make the most sense for our first master’s degree program,” Henry says. “Our thought was that if we could offer a graduate degree, it would provide teachers with that access, and then, hopefully, that enhanced education might help them to be better teachers.”
The nearly 69-year-old college worked with the University of Virginia to create the 30-credit-hour program, which has a concentration in curriculum and instruction. “[Graduates] will be better equipped to design curriculum, supervise other teachers and go into administration,” says SCHEV Director of Academic Affairs Joseph DeFilippo.
The new program will also provide those without a teaching license the courses they need to be provisionally licensed in special education and other subjects, Henry says. It’s flexible, with a full-time track that takes a year to complete, a five-year part-time path, and a combination of remote, in-person and hybrid courses.
“We could add some different tracks in the future, and one track that we’re looking at is for librarians, which is a need across the commonwealth,” as well as a track for reading specialists, she says.
Tidewater Community College has kicked off the expansion of its Skilled Trades Academy, adding more space and more courses to its Portsmouth facility.
The academy opened in 2019 with 20,000 square feet of space, and currently has three classrooms at 3303 Airline Blvd., which is enough room to hold three to six courses at a time. With the addition of 12,000 square feet, the academy will have seven classrooms and be ready for more students in January 2024.
“We are growing because we want to address our workforce needs in the community,” TCC President Marcia Conston said in a statement. “Students come here with no background in the skilled trades and leave with skills that enable them to provide for their families long term.”
Programming at the academy focuses mainly on maritime skills, including marine coating, pipefitting, pipe laying, welding, carpentry, roofing, sheet metal, wind energy and electric vehicle repair.
With the expansion, TCC plans to add programs in building maintenance, heavy equipment operation, logistics, shipfitting, electrical and HVAC skills.
“When we started looking at where our gaps were, the biggest gaps were in infrastructure-related areas and behind the scenes in maritime … that require hands-on lab space and classroom time,” said Laura Hanson, interim vice president of workforce solutions for TCC.
Additional classroom space means courses can be offered more frequently, and training can be completed in a shorter period of time. Most classes are about three to eight weeks long.
“I think the biggest challenge we face in [the] workforce is getting them into the employment space quickly, giving them the training they need to enter the workforce without taking a financial hit,” Hanson said.
This year, the academy offered 69 classes via open enrollment (meaning open to everyone, not just certain companies who did customized training programs). After the expansion, it will be able to offer 29 more classes.
Major employers, including the Port of Virginia and Newport News Shipbuilding, have acknowledged the need for skilled trades workers in the shipbuilding and repair industries. According to a 2022 Virginia Economic Development Partnership report on Hampton Roads’ maritime industry, the region needs thousands of skilled maritime employees as many workers retire. Meanwhile, the pressure is on to train prospective workers as quickly as possible.
The shortest courses currently offered at TCC’s academy, like forklift operation, take 15 hours total. Foundational courses, such as construction fundamentals, are bigger commitments and are prerequisites for more specialized courses. With more space, TCC’s goal is to shift those course offerings to more than three or four weeks for 20 to 30 hours per week.
“What we’ve learned over the last couple of years doing courses is that’s the timeline that works for folks to go quickly through, but [it] also gives them enough time to absorb the information,” Hanson said.
The expansion will also allow more evening sessions for people working full-time jobs who are looking to either gain skills needed for promotions, or to switch industries. TCC also plans to add more full-time instructors instead of relying on part-time ones. That hiring would take place over the next year or so.
The academy also currently offers customized classes for employers in need of workers with particular skills, including ship repair companies and the Port of Virginia.
The key is to help people gain access to employment opportunities and find pathways to careers, not only through the classes but also through community resources, Hanson said. “We can get them the skills they need, we can connect them to the community resources that will help overcome any hurdles they’re experiencing during their training and then we have established partnerships and relationships with employers.”
Way back when, Roanoke was a train city — the headquarters for Norfolk and Western Railway and a late-1800s hub for the Shenandoah Valley Railroad.
The scenic mountain community, however, has grown into a bustling region with a variety of successful industries, including one standout: health care. With the formation of Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine (VTCSOM), the product of a public-private partnership between the university and the nonprofit Carilion Clinic health system, Roanoke has become a hotspot for medical talent, research and development.
What was once just a brownfield a little south of the city center is now home to VTCSOM, a medical research institute and clinical facilities. In fact, VTCSOM is considered one of the major “success stories” from a brownfield grants program run by the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2008, the city of Roanoke received a $200,000 grant to clean up the scrapyards around South Jefferson where the medical school and Carilion Clinic hub stands today.
“When the people who formed the [Virginia Tech Carilion] partnership envisioned building assets that would be shared between Virginia Tech and Carilion here in Roanoke, including a research institute at a medical school, they really were thinking about transforming Roanoke from a … ‘train city’ to a ‘brain city,’” explains Dr. Lee A. Learman, the medical school’s dean since 2019.
The small medical school, which graduated its 10th class of doctors in May, has become one of the country’s most competitive medical schools. It has the third lowest acceptance rate in the nation, according to College Evaluator. For the class of 2025, 6,405 prospective students applied to VTCSOM, and just 49 students were accepted — a 0.77% acceptance rate. By comparison, 6,914 people applied to Harvard Medical School for entrance in 2022, and 226 were admitted — a 3.3% acceptance rate.
VTC is also the most selective medical school in Virginia, compared with acceptance rates ranging from 0.85% at Eastern Virginia Medical School to 4.5% at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. VTC is also the state’s smallest medical school; it began enrolling 49 students per year in 2020, after starting with classes of only 42 students.
Dr. Aubrey Knight, senior dean of student affairs at VTC, says that this small expansion doesn’t mean the school is any less competitive.
The growth in class size is “incremental, it’s relatively small,” he says. “We’re still a very small school. Going from 42 to 49 [students], I don’t think makes that much difference in the culture of the school or in the process for admitting students. The process for admissions is more about our reputation and the growing number of people that are applying and interested in the medical school.”
VTCSOM is “very much a clear and compelling partnership,” Carilion Clinic President and CEO Nancy Agee says. “Medical students, residents, fellows and faculty, all those are intricately linked.” Photo by Don Petersen
Symbiotic partnership
As its name makes clear, the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine is a true partnership between the university and the regional health care system. In summer 2014, the medical school received full accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, and on July 1, 2018, it officially became the ninth school
at Virginia Tech.
Roanoke-based Carilion Clinic operates a network of seven hospitals, as well as primary and specialty care practices serving nearly 1 million Virginians across the Roanoke and New River valleys as well as the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia. This robust network of physicians is what allowed Virginia Tech to establish its own medical school, says Nancy Agee, president and CEO of Carilion Clinic, which has grown into an almost $2 billion medical system over its nearly 125-year history.
“The school doesn’t exist without us. It’s very much a clear and compelling partnership,” she says. “Medical students, residents, fellows and faculty, all those are intricately linked.” Carilion Clinic physicians train medical school students; Virginia Tech does not employ the professors, she explains. This has been a symbiotic relationship — in that Carilion Clinic employs more than 1,000 physicians, up from the 600 the organization had when Agee became CEO in 2011.
Currently, there are 600 Carilion Clinic physicians who are also VTCSOM teaching faculty. These 600 physicians are paid exclusively by Carilion; however, the medical school has a total of 871 faculty, with the others having different employers and affiliations. Virginia Tech employs 78 faculty members.
“It’s been a sea change, frankly, and the School of Medicine has been a catalyst for it,” she says. “It was part of our plan at the beginning, so we’re achieving that vision.”
While Virginia Tech Carilion medical students don’t have guaranteed residency programs with Carilion Clinic, some end up “matching” with one of Carilion’s programs. Upon graduation from medical school, students across the country participate in a matching process in which prospects rank their top residency programs, and the medical programs do the same with the students. Medical grads typically match with a residency program, which can vary in specialty, length and location. For the VTC class of 2023, seven students matched with Carilion, and since 2014, 57 students have matched with the regional medical network.
Others, though, have matched with increasingly competitive programs, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education, and Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. So far, VTC has had a 100% match rate for students pursuing residencies, which is somewhat rare, even at other highly regarded medical schools.
“The factor is more about our graduates performing well and opening the door for subsequent students,” Knight says. “We’ve always had very strong students. Other people are recognizing that to a greater degree.”
Sahana Nazeer, who graduated from VTC in June, will return to her hometown, Boston, for a child psychiatry residency program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, consistently ranked as one of the nation’s best hospitals. Coming from Brown University, Nazeer wasn’t necessarily eager to move to Roanoke — a city mostly unknown to her — but it quickly felt like a place where she could build a community. With small class sizes, Nazeer says she felt comfortable approaching and working with her classmates.
“I feel like I walk away from medical school feeling like I’ve had an individual relationship with each person in my class,” she says. “I don’t know many med students that could really say that, too. I can 100% say, now, four years later, I’m going to miss Roanoke.”
That sense of community largely hinges on the school’s problem-based learning, in which small groups of students work through medical scenarios together, teaching each other how to be successful in practice.
Dr. Adam Tate, a 2018 VTC graduate, also found that having significant direct contact with faculty, medical residents and attending physicians made his medical school experience an “involved and immersive classroom and clinical learning environment,” he says. “I developed both amazing friendships and professional relationships from my time in the program.”
Research chops
Because VTC is so competitive, incoming students often have serious research chops.
“We really do want a student who has some experience in and can hit the ground running with research,” Knight says. “While we have a curriculum and we do teach them the basics of clinical research and biomedical research, we expect that they’ve had some experiences prior to coming, so that it’s not a shock.”
Virginia Tech Carilion students, staff and faculty note that the school’s focus on research is another factor that makes it unique when compared with other medical schools. That’s largely due to the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, which was founded in 2010 and focuses on the study of diseases such as brain disorders, heart disease and cancer.
“Fralin does some very significant biomedical research, and students are very involved with Fralin and our faculty,” Agee says. “Something that we’ll continue to focus on is commercialization of research,” including redesigning medical products by using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
All medical students are expected to conduct weekslong “original, hypothesis-driven research” during their three-and-a-half-year medical school journeys. Plus, each student receives $1,000 per year for research supplies during years two through four.
The outcomes have been impressive over the past decade: More than 100 students have published their research, and nearly 400 have presented their findings at regional, national or international conferences. In March, VTCSOM hosted its Medical Student Research Symposium, highlighting student research.
VTCSOM’s focus on research is very different from old-school medical training, Learman explains. Many medical schools have academic departments focused on different disciplines, including physiology, biochemistry and anatomy, and were built out with large faculties lecturing students.
“It’s hard when you’re a student learning abstract knowledge and principles to not understand how those get applied in actual patient care,” Learman says. “Our students finish with a research certificate. When they get to residency, they’re far more facile with how to implement knowledge to impact clinical decision-making as a result of these research requirements they’ve been able to fulfill over the four-year curriculum.”
“We both loved being here during school and made many important connections,” says Dr. Adam Tate, who practices at Carilion with his wife and fellow VTSCOM graduate Dr. Megan Witham. Photos by Don Petersen
Return to Roanoke
Roanoke may not always be the first place VTC graduates practice medicine, but it’s often a final destination. Both Tate and his wife, VTC alum Dr. Megan Whitham, pursued residencies elsewhere before returning to Roanoke to work at Carilion Clinic.
Whitham works in maternal fetal medicine, while Tate practices family medicine. Originally from Carroll County, Tate was “psyched” to get to study medicine near home and Southwest Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains, a region negatively affected by a shortage of doctors.
“We both loved being here during school and made many important connections, which contributed to our desire to move back once we were finished with residency and fellowship training,” Tate says. Plus, Whitham notes, Roanoke was “an exciting place for us to come back to because it has been developing quickly, and there is a growing young professional community that is so welcoming in this area.”
About 25% of VTC students stay in Virginia for their residencies, Learman says, and of the 408 students who have graduated from the medical school so far, he anticipates about 100 of them will come back to the state to practice.
“We’re also happy that we can create a net increase in the Virginia workforce by attracting people from outside of Virginia who fall in love with this region and may go away temporarily to do residency but come back ultimately to live and to work,” Learman says.
Incremental growth is what’s next for the school, officials say. This will include the construction of more medical training space and the small increase in the number of new students at VTC to 49 in 2024.
Architectural planning for the future building hasn’t begun yet, and timelines aren’t mapped out, but officials envision the new construction to more than double the size of the current 51,000-square-foot facility, a VTCSOM spokesperson says. While a target class size hasn’t yet been determined, the expansion could allow the school to double in enrollment. However, the school would not enroll more than 100 students per class, “which would still be a small medical school by national standards,” the spokesperson adds. (The median medical school class size nationally is 140 students, with a range of 40 to 250, according to the Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.)
“The transformation of an industrial brownfield into a rapidly growing health science and technology campus over the past decade is a remarkable success story for the Roanoke-Blacksburg region and the commonwealth as a whole,” says Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. “We are excited about the next phase of growth for VTCSOM.”
Virginia Tech At a glance
Founded
Virginia’s original land-grant university, Virginia Tech was known as Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College when it was founded in 1872. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is the state’s second largest public university by enrollment.
Campus
Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg main campus stretches over 2,600 acres. Tech also has regional presences statewide and a study-abroad campus in Switzerland. The university’s Innovation Campus for computer science and computer engineering graduate students will open in Alexandria in 2024.
Enrollment (2022-23)
Undergraduate: 30,434
Graduate and professional: 7,736
In-state: 23,885
International: 3,884
Students of color: 8,741
Male: 57%
Female: 43%
Employees
Full-time employees: 8,538
Research and teaching
faculty: 2,766
Tuition and fees, housing and financial aid*
In-state: $15,476
Out-of-state: $36,393
Room and board: $11,746
Average financial aid awarded to full-time, in-state undergraduates seeking assistance in 2021-22: $8,588
Virginia Tech has promoted Charlie Phlegar to senior vice president for advancement, the university announced Thursday.
Phlegar has led efforts in fundraising, alumni relations, communications and marketing since 2015. Under his leadership, Tech’s advancement division has secured record amounts of new gifts and commitments, including $268.5 million in fiscal year 2021-2022. Undergraduate giving has also increased 22% in the most recent fiscal year. Phlegar was previously vice president for advancement.
“Charlie has been able to tap into our alumni’s profound loyalty, affection and desire to support their alma mater because he feels these things as deeply as any Hokie,” Virginia Tech President Tim Sands said in a statement. “The promotion reflects his expanded responsibilities resulting from our new communications and marketing model, and the remarkable impact of his leadership on our advancement division and Virginia Tech’s capacity to achieve our Beyond Boundaries vision for the university. I have great appreciation for his partnership with me over eight years, and look forward to building on our success.”
Phlegar has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Tech and was assistant director of athletics for sports marketing and later was assistant director of the alumni association at his alma mater. Then, he was campaign director at East Carolina University, vice president for development at the University of South Carolina, senior associate vice president and interim vice president for development and alumni relations for The Johns Hopkins Institutions and vice president for alumni affairs and development at Cornell University.
“I care a great deal about this university and, since returning, have stressed to our advancement division how important it is to build and nurture a culture of philanthropy and engagement within our worldwide alumni community,” Phlegar said in a statement. “We’ve worked very hard on that, while also looking to help develop partnerships with prominent, non-Hokie partners who share goals of leveraging learning and technology to improve industry and society. President Sands has outlined an ambitious vision of what Virginia Tech can become, and my team and I look forward to doing all we can to help bring that about.”
Virginia Commonwealth University will open its $125 million College of Humanities and Sciences’ 168,000-square-foot STEM building during a ribbon cutting scheduled next week.
The six-floor building, located at 817 W. Franklin St. in Richmond, will expand lab, classroom and office space for the college, which is home to 17 departments, two schools and three programs. About 60% of VCU’s undergraduates are enrolled in the college and the new building will provide classroom and study space for more than 10,000 students who will take up to 70 courses in the building each semester, beginning in fall 2023.
“At VCU, we pride ourselves on making education and research more accessible to all students. Modern facilities thoughtfully designed to support learning and innovation will foster our ability to shape Virginia, its robust economy and the well-being of people everywhere,” Michael Rao, president of VCU and VCU Health, said in a statement. “As we educate the next generation of scientists and leaders, VCU’s new STEM building will foster seamless integration of classroom learning with hands-on research engagement, encouraging students to collaborate across disciplines and facilitate discovery — which is what the world needs. We are modeling a truly public research university in the 21st century.”
Opening April 26, the STEM building will feature 32 teaching labs; a Math Exchange and Science Hub; two 250-seat, team-based learning classrooms; computer labs; and flexible classrooms. It will also feature wet and dry instructional labs. The college’s main offices will remain in their current building, Blanton House, at 828 W. Franklin St.
Funding for the building was provided by the commonwealth in 2019. It was not funded by VCU students’ tuition or fees. The building was designed by Philadelphia-based Ballinger and Washington, D.C.-based Quinn Evans architects and constructed by Richmond-based Hourigan.
The Hampton Roads Biomedical Research Consortium opened its headquarters at Old Dominion University’s Tri-Cities Center in Suffolk Friday.
The consortium is a partnership between ODU, Norfolk State University, Eastern Virginia Medical School and Sentara Healthcare Inc., and was founded in June 2020. Its goal is to address health care disparities, jumpstart scientific research and advance biomedical innovation for the region.
The center’s technology includes an innovation and prototype lab, which includes a digital anatomy printer and a 5G digital learning lab. The consortium has already brought in $10 million in federal grants and has another $15 million in federal grants pending.
“The Hampton Roads Biomedical Research Consortium has been working on putting together a research space where we can bring collaborators, from universities, from the health care systems, and really also from the community to work on population health,” said Morris Foster, ODU’s vice president for research. “We have a wonderful computational environment here where we work on confidential data, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) data, those kinds of things. Also, we can help people create the technologies that have ultimately become products for medical purposes, for prevention of disease, for all of those things. We also hope to inspire a biohealth economy for the region.”
The presidents of ODU, EVMS and NSU, along with Michael Gentry, Sentara’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, spoke at Friday’s opening.
“Our work together in this new space is about improving our region as well as people’s lives,” said ODU President Brian O. Hemphill.
Dr. Alfred Abuhamad, president, provost and dean of the School of Medicine at EVMS, noted that the consortium’s research is focused on the community and is key to “our ability to make a difference in the future” and “leverage our strength to really affect change in the community.”
The creation of the Eastern Virginia Health Sciences Center at ODU — folding the medical school into the university — was included in bills sponsored by state Sen. Louise Lucas and Del. Barry Knight, which passed unanimously during the 2023 Virginia General Assembly regular session. In March, Gov. Glenn Youngkin proposed a change in wording that would not allow the merger until requirements relating to cooperative agreements and joint ventures are met and approved by the chairs of the Senate Finance Committee, the House Appropriations Committee and the governor. If the House of Delegates and state Senate approve the governor’s amendments later this month, the Eastern Virginia Health Sciences Center would go into effect Jan. 1, 2024.
Foster said the schools working together through the consortium, which was first discussed in 2018, “really seeded a lot of the integration that is now happening between ODU and EVMS.” He said it showed them that they can “play well together.”
But other partnerships between ODU, EVMS, Sentara and NSU have also been in the works, including the consortium.
“The state government had the foresight to see the importance of the collaboration that could happen and could definitely positively affect the health disparities we see, particularly in Hampton Roads, but throughout the nation,” NSU President Javaune Adams-Gaston said. “The relationship between EVMS, ODU, NSU and Sentara has been a wonderful opportunity for us to begin to say, ‘We are better as a collaborative, we can make a difference in those individuals who are suffering.’ … We don’t have the answers today, but through this research consortium, we will have the answers to infant mortality … and so many more disparities that are occurring across our region.”
Roanoke-based Goodwill Industries of the Valleys has named Rachel Putman as its chief people officer.
In her new role, which was effective Feb. 20, Putman will lead mission services and organizational development, which includes human resources, employee engagement and learning and development.
Putman comes to Roanoke from Goodwill Industries of Upstate/Midlands South Carolina, where she worked for eight years and served as vice president of mission and people. Based out of Greenville, S.C., Putman was responsible for strategic leadership of mission services, human resources, and learning and development. She also worked as the organization’s chief compliance officer as well as its diversity, equity and inclusion executive sponsor.
“We are excited to welcome Rachel Putman to Goodwill Industries of the Valleys and our journey to help people achieve their fullest potential by empowering individuals, strengthening families, and inspiring communities,” Goodwill Industries of the Valleys President and CEO Richmond Vincent said in a statement, adding: “We welcome her experience within the Goodwill network and her strategic mindset and strong track record for building high-performing company culture and teams.”
Putman has a bachelor’s of science degree in mathematics and computer science from Newberry College and a master’s in human resources management from Webster University. She also completed Goodwill Industries International’s executive development program.
Goodwill Industries of the Valleys serves 35 counties and 14 cities from the Shenandoah Valley to Southern and Southwest Virginia.
A 1959 graduate of the University of Mary Washington has bequeathed $30 million to her alma mater — the largest donation in the Fredericksburg university’s 115-year history — to support undergraduate research and scholarships, UMW announced Thursday.
Irene Piscopo Rodgers, who died in 2022, earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from what was then called Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia, the all-women’s sister school to U.Va. She then earned a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan. Rodgers started her career at the American Cyanamid Co. as a chemist and microscopist and Philips Electronic Instruments as an electron microscopist at a time when there were few women scientists in her field of electron microscopy, a technique for obtaining high resolution images of biological and non-biological specimens. She also was an independent consultant to FEI Co., a subsidiary of Thermo Fisher Scientific, which provides electron and ion beam microscopes and tools for nanoscale applications, according to her obituary.
Rodgers’ gift will grow UMW’s undergraduate research program. Students in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, earth and environmental sciences, computer science and math will have more opportunities to explore their research interests throughout the academic year and at the university’s Summer Science Institute, working alongside faculty mentors, according to a news release. The gift also supports the creation of four new Alvey scholarships, providing full tuition, fees and room and board for out-of-state undergraduate students for up to four years. Rodgers had already created eight Alvey scholarships.
Rodgers gave her first $50 donation to UMW in 1980, and over the next 40 years, she donated a total of $39 million, including the gift announced Thursday.
In 2004, she donated a transmission electron microscope to UMW and trained students and faculty to use it. Ten years later, she earned an honorary doctorate of humane letters for her service and contributions to UMW. She named a microscopy lab and several scholarships after her late parents. She died in July 2022 in New York.
“Students who benefited from Irene’s generosity welcomed her into their lives, so she was able to observe firsthand the transformative power of her gifts,” UMW President Troy Paino said in a statement. “This unprecedented donation guarantees that exceptional students will continue to have access to a UMW education that delivers the kind of high-impact learning experiences that Irene valued so much.”
To date, 85 students have earned awards through Rodgers’ generosity, including 15 Alvey scholarship recipients and 28 research fellowships Rodgers funded. Seven students received other scholarships and 35 students received scientific presentation grants for conference travel, also established by Rodgers, according to UMW.
“The university is so grateful to have been the beneficiary of Irene’s generosity during her lifetime and now as a lasting part of her legacy. This gift was made possible through relationships built over decades by numerous members of the Mary Washington community,” UMW Vice President for Advancement Katie Turcotte said in a statement. “Everyone who knew Irene knows how much she loved Mary Washington and helping our students pursue opportunities to conduct research.”
Given pandemic-caused interruptions, college students have been through a lot so far this decade, but one silver lining at many Virginia schools has been frozen tuition. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin made it a priority to keep costs flat this academic year, and he succeeded in getting all 15 of the state’s public colleges and universities on board with that plan.
Speaking at William & Mary’s February 2022 convocation, Youngkin said, “I strongly urge our college and university boards to show restraint in tuition increases, just as you have been doing during the pandemic. … And the reason this is important is, if we are not careful, we will price first-generation students and those that come from low-income homes out of the market.”
Most schools and the Virginia Community College System agreed to freeze tuition levels for in-state students soon after the governor’s message, and the University of Virginia’s board of visitors voted in September 2022 to give its students a one-time credit to refund its recent tuition hike, amounting to $690 per student. George Mason University followed suit later that month, awarding a $285 credit to its full-time undergraduates.
Meanwhile, many Americans with heavy student loan debts felt a mixture of excitement and relief after President Joe Biden announced loan forgiveness of up to $20,000 for eligible applicants. The plan was blocked, however, when a group of states and two student-loan borrowers filed suit against the government; the cases were set to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court in late February, with a ruling expected later in the year.
Whether or not federal loan forgiveness happens, Virginia’s schools and government officials are working to increase the ways students can afford college. One such effort is the state’s G3 program, which offers community college students below a certain income threshold the opportunity to earn a free degree in certain high-demand employment fields. Additionally, many universities — public and private — have come up with ways for students to fund their educations without incurring crippling debt, while some are promoting faster paths to earning degrees or career certifications.
However, the other side of the tuition freeze issue is the cost burden for colleges and universities. Virginia Commonwealth University, for instance, reported it would have an $11 million budget shortfall and would have to eliminate 62 jobs through attrition due to flat tuition in the 2022-23 school year. Virginia Tech and other schools raised tuition on paper but gave a one-year scholarship to in-state undergraduates to cover the increase. This means that schools will likely raise costs for tuition, room and board this fall.
In other higher ed news over the past year, there were some significant departures, including a president with one of the nation’s longest tenures, Hampton University’s William R. Harvey, who retired in June 2022 after heading the university for nearly 44 years. He was succeeded by a 1983 alumnus, retired Army Lt. Gen. Darrell Williams, who served nearly 40 years in the military and led the Department of Defense’s Defense Logistics Agency.
The 21-year chancellor of the state’s community college system, Glenn DuBois, also retired in June 2022. One candidate withdrew after being hired last year, and now David Doré of Tucson, Arizona’s Pima Community College is set to succeed DuBois in April. The search for DuBois’ replacement was complicated and politically fraught, as Youngkin pushed to be more involved with the hiring of VCCS’ chancellor. Seeing as the 23-college system is the linchpin of the state’s plans to prepare students of all ages to fill approximately 300,000 health care, tech and other high-demand skilled jobs, expectations for the system’s leader have risen in recent years.
“The race for talent is on,” Youngkin said in a statement announcing Doré’s hiring in January.
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