Saonee Sarker, a professor at Sweden’s Lund University, will serve as the next dean of the Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business following an international search.
Virginia Tech announced Sarker’s new role Monday. She has been a professor in Lund University’s Department of Informatics in the School of Economics and Management since 2021, and is also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics’ management department. Sarker, who succeeds interim dean Roberta “Robin” Russell, will start her new position July 1.
The new role also marks a return to Virginia for Sarker, though it comes with a twist. She previously served at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce from 2013 to 2021, where she worked in roles including senior associate dean for academic affairs, area coordinator of IT and professor of IT.
“Saonee’s strong academic leadership experience, global perspective, and commitment to recruiting and retaining a diverse community of business faculty is well aligned with the goals and priorities of the Pamplin College of Business and the university,” Virginia Tech Executive Vice President and Provost Cyril Clarke said in a statement. “I look forward to her joining our leadership team and supporting her efforts to lead the college and advance Virginia Tech’s land-grant mission and global reputation.”
Sarker earned a bachelor’s degree from Lady Brabourne College at Calcutta University in India, an MBA from the University of Cincinnati, and a Ph.D. from Washington State University, where she worked for 11 years in a variety of roles, including as a professor, a Ph.D. program coordinator and as chair of the management and information systems department.
Sarker is also senior editor emeritus and director of diversity, equity and inclusion for MIS Quarterly, a peer-reviewed academic journal covering research in management information systems and IT and she also serves as senior editor of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. Her research interests include smart infrastructure and sustainability, health care information technology and technostress, technology-enabled collaboration and more.
“I am honored to join the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech as its next dean,” Sarker said in a statement. “The college is experiencing tremendous positive momentum, and I look forward to partnering with new colleagues, alumni, and industry partners to advance a world-class business education ecosystem with far-reaching societal impact.”
Russell has served as interim dean since July 2022 following the retirement of Robert Sumichrast. She is also retiring after a 40-year career at the university.
“I would like to thank Robin Russell for her outstanding leadership and guidance as interim dean and for continuing to elevate the Pamplin College of Business during this transition,” Clarke said. “I know that she will continue to be a valuable resource for the new dean and will advocate for and support the college’s future growth and success.”
James Madison University alumni Angela and Carl Reddix have made a $1.1 million commitment to their alma mater to support first-generation college students, JMU announced Friday.
Founder, president and CEO of Norfolk-based ARDX, a health care management and IT consulting firm, Angela Reddix studied marketing at JMU and graduated in 1990. Her husband, Carl, studied management and graduated in 1988. Their gift establishes the Reddix Center for First Generation Students and the Reddix Centennial Scholarship Endowment.
“This gift is an incredible investment in JMU and will benefit countless students for years to come,” JMU President Jonathan R. Alger said in a statement. “We are honored that JMU is the recipient of this form of generosity from inspiring and innovative alumni. We have been very intentional to cultivate a supportive and inclusive community for first-generation students throughout their educational journey at JMU, and this gift is perfectly aligned with that initiative.”
Reddix Photo by Mark Rhodes
Angela Reddix also founded the nonprofit Envision Lead Grow, which helps girls, especially girls of color, overcome long odds to become successful entrepreneurs. She founded ARDX in 2006 and the company has won more than $200 million in government contracts and last year announced a $2.4 million facility expansion in Norfolk. Reddix is a member of Old Dominion University’s Strome Entrepreneurial Center Hall of Fame.
“We are delighted to leave a powerful mark on a university that has left such a powerful mark on our lives,” the couple said in a statement. “May this center be a representation that, regardless of where you start, we can all reach impossible dreams.”
In an interview with Virginia Business, Angela Reddix talked what it means to them to be able to make the gift. She said her mother was a first-generation college student and her husband was, as well.
“The foundation of who we are and what we were able to do, personally and professionally, came from here,” she said. It’s a full circle moment for her, she added.
“I feel that it’s absolutely my responsibility to to give and be an example,” she said.
At JMU, the applicant pool of first-generation students has grown 29% since last year, according to a news release. First-generation students make up about 38% of JMU’s class of 2021. About 67% of first-generation students were already working full time at graduation and another 23% continued their education.
U.S. Coast Guard Academy Superintendent Rear Adm. William G. Kelly will become Christopher Newport University’s sixth president on July 1, the Newport News-based public liberal arts school announced Thursday.
CNU Chief of Staff Adelia P. Thompson has been serving as interim president since former President Paul S. Trible Jr.’s retirement at the end of the 2021-22 academic year, announced in fall 2021. Trible, who was CNU’s president for 26 years, now serves as the university’s chancellor, a post he said he would hold for the 2022-23 academic year during his retirement announcement. Trible oversaw more than $1 billion in capital construction at CNU, including more than 40 construction projects, and the campus grew from 100 acres to 260 acres.
Kelly, who will retire this year from the military after 36 years, became the Coast Guard Academy’s superintendent in 2019 and has been responsible for the education, development and commissioning of Coast Guard officers. A 1987 graduate of the academy, he has a master’s degree in instructional systems design and a certificate in human resource management from Florida State University.
“Christopher Newport values scholarship, leadership, compassion, service, community — these same core values have guided me throughout my life and are closely aligned with the academy I currently have the privilege of leading,” Kelly said in a statement.
He was previously an assistant commandant for human resources in Washington, D.C. In that role, Kelly was responsible for carrying out the Coast Guard’s diversity and inclusion strategic plan, which included implementing the service’s first Affinity Group Council and overseeing its first study of women’s retention issues in more than 25 years.
Kelly has served as the commanding officer of the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey, the director of the Coast Guard’s Leadership Development Center and the school chief for Officer Candidate School. He also has served as an adjunct professor at Florida State University.
Christopher Newport University’s former president, Paul Trible, with students in 2019. Photo courtesy CNU
Including two command tours on board USCGC Seneca and USCGC Monomoy, Kelly has more than 10 years of service at sea. As executive officer in USCGC Spencer, he led the crew for deployment with the Navy’s Sixth Fleet in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He also has chaired the Coast Guard Academy Board of Trustees and been president of the Coast Guard Mutual Assistance Board and the Coast Guard Nonpay Compensation Board. His major awards include the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Coast Guard Commendation Medal, the Coast Guard Achievement Medal and the permanent Cutterman’s pin.
The CNU Board of Visitors unanimously appointed Kelly, according to the school’s announcement. He and his wife, Angie Kelly, moved 15 times during his Coast Guard service, and they spent three years in Newport News and six in Northern Virginia. They have two sons and a grandson.
“[Kelly’s] life of public service embodies the principles of leadership, honor and service that define the Christopher Newport experience, and I am confident that CNU’s best days lie ahead,” Trible said in a statement.
Donald Alexander Jr. considered multiple schools, as well as the Air Force, before he landed at Norfolk State University in 2019.
The Chesapeake native grew up with strong ties to the university, one of Virginia’s two public historically Black colleges and universities. As an elementary schooler, Alexander went to summer camp on Norfolk State’s campus, and several aunts, uncles and cousins attended the school. His uncle, Melvin T. Stith Sr., a former dean at Florida State University, received his bachelor’s degree from Norfolk State and served as its interim president from 2017 to 2019.
After high school, Alexander attended a summer program offered by Norfolk Stateto help him prepare for the academic experience, and fell in love with the college. He also found comfort in building connections with peers who had similar backgrounds and experiences.
“We were in a time where racial profiling was active again. It was a big thing when I was going into college, and I feel like a lot of African Americans, when they choose HBCUs, they choose them because of the comfortability that they will have,” says Alexander, now a 22-year-old senior majoring in computer science. The shared experience of an HBCU, he says, “allows you to have more people to lean on, to have more people to get close with.”
Virginia State University Provost Donald Palm says branding, social media and a state-sponsored program offering free tuition for eligible local students have helped fuel record enrollment. Palm photo by Shandell Taylor;
At a time when overall undergraduate enrollment is declining nationally, Alexander is among a wave of Black students who are choosing HBCUs over predominantly white colleges and universities.
According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, undergraduate enrollment in colleges and universities declined 4.2% from 2020 to 2022. Meanwhile, undergraduate enrollment at HBCUs grew 2.5% in fall 2022, reversing a 1.7% decline from the previous year. That growth was driven by a 6.6% increase in freshmen enrolling at HBCUs, the NSCRC noted.
Virginia’s 15 four-year public universities, including HBCUs Norfolk State and Virginia State University, are slightly ahead of national trends. Undergraduate enrollment declined 2% between fall 2020 and fall 2022, according to an analysis of data from the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia. Enrollment at Virginia private colleges that report data to SCHEV fell 4% during the same period.
However, during the same two-year period, VSU and NSU saw huge undergraduate enrollment boosts — increases of 18% and 7% — far outstripping their larger, predominantly white public counterparts. Only William & Mary came close to matching those increases, with a 9% enrollment boost from 2020 to 2022. By comparison, Longwood and Radford universities saw undergraduate enrollment decreases of 20% and 18%, respectively, during that same time.
Nationally, combined total enrollment at HBCUs grew 25% from 1980 to 2015, rising from 234,000 to 293,000. But that growth wasn’t as rapid as it was for all colleges and universities combined, which saw enrollment nearly double during the same time period, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. From 1976 to 2014, the percentage of Black college students attending HBCUs fell from 18% to 8%, a trend that has been reversing more recently.
Fall 2022 enrollment data from two of Virginia’s three private HBCUs, Hampton and Virginia Union universities, is incomplete, and neither granted Virginia Business’ requests for interviews. Virginia University of Lynchburg, another Virginia HBCU, does not report data to SCHEV because it does not receive state funding. VUL did not respond to interview requests from Virginia Business.
Social justice, strategic planning
Administrators at VSU and NSU say enrollment increases at their universities are a result of numerous factors and follows a trend seen nationally among the 101 HBCUs located across 19 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Juan Alexander, associate vice president for enrollment management at NSU, and VSU Provost Donald Palm, who is also senior vice president of academic and student success and engagement, cite the Black Lives Matter movement for helping to raise the visibility of HBCUs. Social justice rallies that swept the country in 2020 fueled greater corporate awareness for diversity, equity and inclusion and sparked philanthropic giving to HBCUs, including record gifts from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. Scott’s 2021 donations of $30 million to VSU in 2020 and $40 million to NSU represented the largest gifts each university has ever received. She also gave a record $30 million to Hampton University in 2020.
While those donations also led to media exposure and are helping fund scholarships and other initiatives, including research laboratories, faculty and staff conferences and training, and venture capital funds at NSU, they also coincided with efforts to enhance admissions, says Alexander, who also credits the university’s marketing strategies and use of alumni in boosting enrollment.
NSU Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Juan Alexander says the university is one of only a few HBCUs that use the Common App. Alexander photo by Mark Rhodes
For example, Norfolk State had also been working to streamline and remove barriers to its admissions process. NSU’s Alexander (no relation to NSU senior Donald Alexander) says that around December 2021 the university joined the Common App, an undergraduate application that allows students to apply to as many as 1,000 member colleges and universities by using one form. That’s allowed NSU, which has only about five recruiters, to expand its reach to students it might not otherwise reach. Fewer than about a dozen HBCUs currently use the Common App, and about 30% of NSU’s incoming freshmen in fall 2022 applied using it, he says.
In addition, NSU added virtual college tours and virtual appointments, including with financial aid counselors. It also moved to a new customer relations portal that allows the university to keep in touch with students “at every stage” of the enrollment and application process.
“We’re up about 131% from last year in our freshman first-time acceptances … so that’s a good sign,” Alexander says. “It looks like we’re gonna have a pretty hefty freshman class again this coming fall.”
Meanwhile, VSU, located in Chesterfield County’s Ettrick area near Petersburg, broke a 30-year record for the 2022-23 academic year, enrolling more than 1,700 first-time freshmen and transfer students, for an increase of 550 new students over the previous academic year, which also broke enrollment records.
VSU launched a strategic plan in fall 2020. One prong of that plan includes improved marketing and branding efforts. Social media is an important part of that, and has gotten attention, Palm adds. “Our students are so engaged. That’s where are students are — on social media. So we are in the social media game.”
VSU ranked No. 27 among all NCAA Division II schools for overall social media engagement in 2022, according to social media marketing analysis company Rival IQ, but took the No. 1 spot on Twitter, with 19,043 engagements, and No. 3 on Facebook, with 151,362 engagements.
Another program helping boost enrollment is the state-sponsored Virginia College Affordability Network. Launched in 2021 to support the state’s two public HBCUs, it provides free tuition for Pell Grant-eligible first-year students who live within 40 miles of VSU or within 45 miles of NSU. About 600 VSU students have taken advantage of the program and about 300 students have benefited from it at NSU.
The program has helped encourage some students who may have looked farther from home for their higher education to stay local, Palm says.
“We’re reaching those students who — many students want to go elsewhere — they want to leave home to go to college,” Palm says.
At NSU, Donald Alexander credits the personal attention and family atmosphere he’s found there with helping him push himself, something he’s unsure might have happened if he’d gone to a non-HBCU. He’s been a member of NSU’s student government, including its chief justice during the 2021 to 2022 academic year, and after the Black Lives Matter protests he served as an SGA liaison to handle student relations with campus police.
He likes that the university hosts “Soul Food Thursday,” offering Southern comfort foods like fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread.
“There’s nothing like an HBCU, honestly, and any HBCU student could attest to that,” he says. “The atmosphere there is unmatchable. It’s just something that is going to stick with you for the rest of your life.”
Sarah King contributed to this story.
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 3,317 students, 2,867 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 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 5,786 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 4,300 undergraduates and 348 graduate students.
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 1,730 students, 1,243 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 558 students, 217
of them undergraduates.1
The Virginia State Board for Community Colleges on Wednesday announced that it hired David Doré to lead the state’s 23 community colleges.
Doré currently serves as president of campuses and executive vice chancellor for student experience and workforce development at Tucson, Arizona-based Pima Community College, where more than 30,000 students are enrolled. He replaces Sharon Morrissey, who has served as interim chancellor of the Virginia Community College System since July 2022. The system, founded in 1966, includes 40 campuses and 146,330 credit students enrolled in fall 2022.
Doré will be the 10th person to lead the Virginia system and is set to start his new job in Richmond on April 1. His selection follows a national search that became tinged with politics and controversy in summer 2022 after state Democrats accused Gov. Glenn Youngkin of trying to insert himself into the hiring process after the previous chancellor, Glenn DuBois, stepped down after 21 years, The Washington Post reported. The state community college board in March 2022 announced it had hired Russell A. Kavalhuna, president of Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Michigan, to lead the VCCS, but Kavalhuna changed course last June and remained in Michigan, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That led to Morrissey’s temporary appointment.
“The race for talent is on,” Youngkin said in a statement Wednesday. “The Virginia Community College System must be the linchpin of the commonwealth’s skills development system by bringing together employers, K-12 [students] and higher education to prepare every Virginian for success in our changing economy. I look forward to working with Chancellor Doré to advance our mission of every high school graduate in Virginia being equipped with a credential in an in-demand industry and to ensure that the Virginia Community College System becomes a best-in-class national leader.”
In a video call Wednesday, Doré told reporters that he talked with Youngkin for the first time Tuesday, also over video, and plans to attend an upcoming reception for the General Assembly’s legislative session, which convenes Jan. 11. Youngkin has said he wants every high school student in the state to graduate with a credential or an associate’s degree, a priority that Doré and the governor talked briefly about.
“We didn’t get into details … but I do know that the governor is interested in scale, and doing that at scale,” Doré said. “And I want to say that I believe the governor is spot on.”
Doré said he was attracted to the position by innovation he’s noticed in the Virginia system, including partnerships allowing students more seamless transfers from community colleges to four-year institutions. He was also enticed by FastForward, a short-term job training program for in-demand industries, including IT, transportation and engineering, among several other fields. There were 6,483 people enrolled in that program from July 1 through Dec. 19, 2022.
“The investment that the system and the leadership has put into the FastForward program, and then looking at the outcomes of that program, that really excited me,” Doré said. “And that’s one of the indicators that this is really a forward-thinking system that really understands where community colleges need to go in the future.”
Among Doré’s first priorities will be addressing a skills gap that is pervasive throughout the country, including in cybersecurity. To help address those gaps in Arizona, Doré led planning and implementation for centers of excellence at Pima Community College, focused on the needs of Arizona’s workforce in partnership with business, industry and the community. Pima partnered with Arizona Cyber Warfare Range LLC, which provides hands-on skill development, for a cyber-focused excellence center, received funding from the state to double the capacity of a center focused on aerospace and has partnered with the health care sector to address shortages in nursing and skilled workers, Doré said.
Doré spent two years teaching at a private Catholic high school outside of Pittsburgh before moving on to community colleges, which he called “the most transformative organizations in this country.” He’s spent more than two decades working within the field, including as an instructor, department chair, dean, as well as in executive leadership. He joined Pima Community College in 2014 as its president before starting his most recent position there in January 2020, according to his LinkedIn page. He has also worked at Maricopa Community College, also in Arizona, and spent 17 years at City College of San Francisco.
Doré is a first-generation college student and has multiple degrees. He earned his Ph.D. in education from Pepperdine University in California, an MBA from Georgetown University, a master’s in education from Boston College and master’s of theological studies from Santa Clara University in California. He received a bachelor’s of arts in philosophy from Gannon University in Pennsylvania. He was also a presidential fellow in the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program from 2017 to 2018.
Civic Leadership Institute President and CEO Sarah Jane Kirkland will become Old Dominion University’s associate vice president for corporate partnerships on March 1, 2023, the Norfolk university announced Thursday.
“Sarah Jane is well-known and highly respected in Hampton Roads, especially among business and industry leaders. For many years, she has been fully dedicated to creating connections and producing results that both benefit and transform our region as part of her exemplary efforts with the Civic Leadership Institute,” ODU President Brian O. Hemphill said in a statement.
Kirkland will collaborate with the president’s office and ODU’s office of research, focusing on forming relationships with senior executives at corporations and nonprofits to develop partnership opportunities, such as internships and employment placements, corporate research and development grants and workforce development initiatives. Partnerships could also include executives teaching part-time and businesses and the university co-developing certificate program curricula.
She will also serve as ODU’s point of contact for help attracting new businesses to Hampton Roads and retaining current companies. Kirkland will design and oversee a university-wide partnership council to coordinate corporate account management and help develop proposals.
Kirkland has been with the Norfolk-based Civic Leadership Institute, which aims to connect executive leaders to improve life in Hampton Roads, since 2003. The institute runs an eight-month executive program, recognizes philanthropic leaders with its Darden Awards and hosts a scholars program for ODU and Tidewater Community College students.
Kirkland has served as president and CEO since 2019. From 2016 to 2019, she was its chief operating officer, and from 2013 to 2016, she served as director of alumni engagement. Kirkland was the institute’s program manager from 2003 to 2005.
“As president and CEO of the region’s premier leadership organization, the Civic Leadership Institute, I have been privileged to develop partnerships across seemingly disparate facets of our community,” Kirkland said in a statement. “Due to this work, I have been uniquely positioned to bring leaders together with the common goal of affecting real change in Hampton Roads. I am honored to have an opportunity to continue this great work at Old Dominion University.”
Prior to joining the Civic Leadership Institute, Kirkland was a business development director with Carnival Cruise Line for nearly 10 years.
Kirkland has served on numerous boards and committees in Hampton Roads, including RVA757 Connects, YMCA of South Hampton Roads and the Hampton Roads Regional Transit Advisory Panel.
Eric Weisel, executive director of ODU’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center and associate vice president for applied research, chaired the search.
George Mason University has promoted Deb Dickenson to executive vice president for finance and administration, the university announced Monday.
Dickenson had been serving as interim senior vice president for administration and finance since June. In her new role, she will be responsible for universitywide leadership, strategic oversight and financial and operational management of the administrative and financial business units at the university. She will also collaborate with GMU’s board of visitors, office of the provost and academic and nonacademic leadership, as well as working with the university’s government relations team and elected and appointed leaders in Richmond.
“I’m so proud to be part of this community of Patriots making huge leaps forward for the university, our region and the commonwealth,” Dickenson said in a statement. “Alongside our outstanding leadership team, I will continue to work efficiently and effectively to increase support for Mason students, faculty and staff and ensure everyone has equal opportunity to thrive as part of a diverse and inclusive Mason Nation.”
Dickenson joined GMU in 2019 after 13 years at George Washington University. Before serving in her interim role, she served as vice president for finance. At GWU, she held roles such as assistant dean for finance, planning and fiscal operations and principal business officer.
Before she joined GWU, she served in senior financial positions at Marriott International Inc., Price Waterhouse LLP (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) and Arthur Anderson & Co. (now Accenture).
Women made up about 11% of the construction workforce in 2021, but that doesn’t mean they were all on site wearing a hard hat.
That percentage includes women in office and administrative roles, positions more traditionally filled by females, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
And so, many recruiters see women as an untapped resource for the construction industry, which expects to lose a whopping 41% of its workers to retirement by 2031, according to the National Center for Construction Education and Research.
On Oct. 22, Roanoke construction firm The Branch Group hosted its inaugural G.I.R.L. (Girls in Real Life) Construction Experience, an event designed to expose girls to opportunities in the construction industry, with an emphasis on careers as skilled tradespeople and in science, technology, engineering and math professions.
“It’s not a career that’s just for men,” stresses Aisha Johnson, Branch’s economic inclusion, diversity and equal employment opportunity specialist. “Women can have successful careers in construction.”
More than 100 girls and teens ages 5 to 18 turned out for the 4-hour experience, during which they participated in activities ranging from riding in a boom lift to taking a virtual reality tour of a construction site to building a paper bridge.
“We focused on activities related to construction site work since fewer women enter those positions in construction,” explains Johnson.
Nikki Williams, CEO of Girl Scouts of Virginia Skyline, which helped organize the event, points out that by the time girls are in 11th grade, fewer than 12% will consider a career in a STEM field.
“And we truly believe it’s all about access,” Williams says, “so this event was wonderful because it gave girls access to see exactly all the different types of activities and careers that they could pursue in construction that have a STEM component to them and gave them a chance to do it hands-on.”
Aubrie Taylor, a third-grader from Vinton, particularly enjoyed flying a drone and learning how drones are used to survey construction sites. “That was really fun,” she says.
Aubrie’s mother, Tamara Taylor, signed her daughter up for the construction experience because she wanted to open her eyes to the many career opportunities she has. “With construction itself, it’s not something that you see women in the field doing every single day,” she says.
Virginia Tech’s real estate program has earned approval from the State Council for Higher Education to become the Blackwood Department of Real Estate.
Becoming a department housed under the Pamplin School of Business will offer the former program more resources, enhance its academic and experiential learning offerings and boost its ability to recruit top faculty talent and advance research programming, according to a news release.
“With the other academic units on campus, it puts us on even footing for resources,” said Kevin Boyle, the department head. He also noted it’s a big signal in the academic world. “Being a department is something for academics that has a lot more prestige than being an academic program.”
The intention is to grow from 400 real estate majors to 500, and keep the minors at about 150 or 200 students, Boyle said. The program had three full-time faculty and one shared with engineering, along with four instructors. As a department, two more faculty have already accepted offers and Boyle hopes to bring in two more, including one to run The Center for Real Estate Excellence.
In September 2021, the real estate program was named for the Blackwood family. Willis Blackwood, founder and president of Blackwood Development Co. Inc., his wife Mary Nolen Blackwood, and their children, Morgan Blackwood Patel and Notel Blackwood, have donated $10 million to Virginia Tech since 2018.
The real estate program was established in 2013 with four first-year students and has grown to 400 students with majors focusing on commercial and residential real estate as well as financial aspects of the industry.
“The real estate educational ecosystem at Virginia Tech is reflective of the real estate industry at large — highly collaborative, ever-evolving and, most of all, exciting,” said Roberta “Robin” Russell, interim dean of the Pamplin College of Business, in a statement. “The Blackwood Department of Real Estate serves as a model of success for integrative education and partnership-building within the university.”
Reston-based Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. founder and CEO Gary Bowman committed $5 million to Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering for the expansion of sustainable land development learning initiatives, the university announced Monday.
“The Bowman gift solidifies Virginia Tech as the premier undergraduate and graduate programs in the field of sustainable land development,” Mark Widdowson, head of the Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said in a statement. “In partnership with the land development industry and through the generosity of Gary Bowman, our department has set the standard for curriculum innovation and experiential learning that will enrich the education of civil engineering students for years and decades to come.”
The donation will establish the Bowman Sustainable Land Development Program, serving both undergraduate and graduate students. The sustainable land development master’s program, currently in its second year, will fall under the program, as will the Land Development Design Initiative (LDDI), which will be renamed but will continue to allow people and organizations in the industry to provide input on curriculum and to provide students with mentoring and experiential learning opportunities, like field trips and practitioner-led workshops.
Virginia Tech established LDDI in 2005.
“When I began to recruit students from Virginia Tech 25 years ago, most students were unaware of land development design as a potential career path,” Bowman said in a statement. “The establishment of LDDI resulted in a sea change in awareness among Virginia Tech students of land development design as a desirable career choice. Clearly the industry, and our company, has benefited from the influx of well-prepared young talent.”
Bowman graduated from Virginia Tech in 1980 with a degree in civil and environmental engineering. He was a principal at Urban Engineering for 15 years before founding engineering services firm Bowman Consulting Group in 1995. Started with five employees, the company now has 1,700 employees. It went public in May 2021.
Bowman serves on the College of Engineering Advisory Board and has served on the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department’s alumni board in the past. He is a member of the department’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni. Bowman also served on the LDDI’s leadership board in its early years.
“The program has withstood the test of time and has blossomed into a mature program educating a tremendous number of students,” Bowman said in a statement. “My hope is that this gift will be the beginning of a new level of support for the program that will ensure its long-term durability and provide resources to enable it to continue to grow and evolve.”
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