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byline: Karin Kapsidelis

Making a case for liberal arts

University of Richmond sophomore Jajsani Roane has always been passionate about art and science. 

When she graduated from the Henrico High School Center for the Arts outside Richmond, she had the opportunity to go to a large research university or an art school.

“It was tough making a decision between the two, but Richmond kind of fell between them,” she says.  “I knew I would be getting an academically rigorous curriculum, but I was also able to pursue my interest and passion in art.”

With a double major in art and environmental science, Roane already is steeped in both fields.  Last summer, she was awarded a research fellowship allowing her to work in the lab with a biology professor  studying applications of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which causes crown gall disease in plants.

In January, she joined other students, faculty and alumni in downtown Richmond for an intensive two-day session called Arts in the Life of a City. The program was part of Arts & Sciences NEXT, a program that uses case studies on a variety of topics that help students explore contemporary issues in ways that show how their education might translate to a career.

Roane, whose art focuses on mixed media and illustration, says her team became so enthusiastic about its proposal for how to use art to enrich “the entire population, rather than just an arts district,” that she hopes it might be considered by city leaders.

Losing ground
Nationally, liberal-arts studies are losing ground to programs that tie degrees more directly to jobs at graduation, a consequence of rising college costs and student debt.

So many programs have been cut that the Association of American Colleges & Universities and the American Association of University Professors issued a joint warning last year about the threat to courses once universally viewed as central to the intellectual life of academia.

“We are fighting the good fight,” says Anthony Russell, associate professor of English and coordinator of the Italian Studies Program at UR.  He chaired a committee on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship that proposed collaborative courses and projects for students and faculty across disciplines to work on real-world problems.

The value that students gain from the liberal arts, he says, is the ability to interpret and write critically about complex issues. Students learn problem-solving skills that are important for today’s workforce, he says.

That’s not always clear to the public, he says. “Because liberal-arts colleges cost so much, parents want to see more tangible, quantifiable skills in their student when they graduate.”

Tuition alone at UR in the 2019-20 academic year will be $54,690. The estimated cost of attendance, including tuition, books, room and meals, will be $69,750.

Promise to Virginia
The university’s endowment — thanks to a $50 million gift from Richmond business leader E. Claiborne Robins in 1969 when the institution was struggling to survive — was valued at more than $2.5 billion as of June 30.

That financial underpinning has allowed the university to be one of the few in the nation with a “need-blind” admission policy.  The term refers to schools that do not consider an applicant’s financial situation in deciding admission. The university’s total enrollment this year is more than 4,000, with 80 percent of undergraduates coming from outside Virginia.

To make the school more accessible to middle-income students, UR awards full scholarships to Virginians with parental income of $60,000 or less. For the current school year, 30 first-year students received the scholarships, with 103 recipients overall in the entire student body.

Since the income threshold was raised from $40,000 to $60,000 for fall 2014, the program, known as Richmond’s Promise to Virginia, has made 422 awards, including recurring scholarships to students who continue to study at the university, according to Cynthia Price, director of media and public relations.

Preparing for work
Price points to an array of programs designed to prepare students for the work world, such as the Queally Center, which integrates career services with the offices of admission and financial aid. 

The center also focuses on “employer development” services, such as facilitating employment interviews for graduating students and implementing internship programs.

In 2015, the university started a program guaranteeing each student up to $4,000 to help pay for summer research and internship opportunities.  An average of 575 students have been awarded funding each year.

Other programs include Spider Shadowing, which allows students to learn from UR alumni about various career paths; Q-Camp, which introduces business-school students to practical exercises in professional skills; and the Jepson Edge Institute, which offers interactive sessions for leadership-studies students with alumni.

Russell, who was the faculty facilitator for the NEXT program’s arts in the city sequence, says the university is taking steps to clarify the practical connections between the study of liberal arts and the real world.

For Roane, that connection already has been made.

The liberal arts, she says, expose students to a wide variety of topics. That exposure is especially helpful for those who come into college not knowing what they want to study.

They can explore options, find their passions and get direction on how to pursue their goals, she says.  They are more competitive in job interviews because they “are a more interesting, more well-rounded person” and “know a lot of approaches to solving problems.”

With the evolving economy, Roane says, “it’s very important to have a wide range of skills.  People are basically making their own jobs and making their own place for themselves in the industry.”

Major construction project

New construction at the University of Richmond will bring wellness services together in one building and provide a training and performance facility for the men’s and women’s basketball teams.

Work will begin this spring on the project, which will include the Well-Being Center and the Queally Athletics Center plus an expanded and renovated Millhiser Gymnasium.

The project, which will include 70,000 square feet, is scheduled to be completed by fall 2020 at a total cost of $40 million.

Two new buildings will go up in the space between the Weinstein Fitness Center and the gym, which will be repurposed for sports programs and gain a second story for basketball staff offices.

“When you compete in Division I athletics, they say, if you’re standing still, then really you’re falling behind,” says John Hardt, UR’s athletic director.

The basketball building will provide “all the tools necessary to compete at the highest level” in the Atlantic 10 Conference, he says.  Amenities will include a digital video coaching station, a full-size practice gym, an athletic training room with hydrotherapy, strength and conditioning areas, team locker rooms, and sports medicine and nutritional facilities.

A two-story entryway featuring images of all Spider athletic programs will be used for fundraising and receptions.

New era for fitness
The Well-Being Center will integrate the work of Counseling and Psychological Services, sexual-assault prevention, health and recreation into one concept, says Tom Roberts, associate vice president of health and well-being.

He describes the facility as an example of how old-school fitness has changed, “We had gyms, pools and weight rooms, but they were all dark and dungeonous,” he says. “They were not interconnected.”

Just as the Weinstein Center reflects the understanding of the importance of recreation and fitness, he says, the new facility will connect programs that focus on the physical and mental health of students.

The Well-Being Center will be “one-stop shopping for students,” with the health clinic on the second level and counseling services on the third, Roberts says. This will facilitate referrals for students who may go to see a nurse for a physical symptom when the real problem is emotional.

The center’s first level will offer amenities promoting wellness: a meditation garden, massage rooms, an organic-food café, an art gallery and a piano “for students to just play music when they’re inclined to play music and get something off their chest.”

‘They’re necessities’
Some people might think of these centers “as luxuries. But they’re necessities,” he says.  “Students need to find ways to unplug.  They need to find ways to be more mindful, and they certainly need to find ways to help their mental health.”

Roberts says mental health is increasingly a key focus on college campuses nationally as schools recognize the isolation that has resulted from students’ overusing social media and digital connections.

“They have lots of friends, but I don’t know that they’re the kind of friends I used to have,” he says.

So, more schools are integrating wellness services  — William & Mary opened a center last fall — and taking a holistic approach to health that promotes the value of sleep, nutrition and mindfulness.

“We want to find ways to help students thrive,” Roberts says, and he believes UR’s new approach will do that.

“We don’t want them to come here just when they’re not well,” he says. “We want them to come here when they are well and keep coming back so they can stay that way.”

‘Reinventing itself for a changing world’

University of Virginia President James E. Ryan has received more than a thousand suggestions for how to change a 200-year-old institution he describes as an “unfinished project.”

At the start of his tenure in August, Ryan established an “Ours to Shape” website soliciting ideas for crafting a strategic vision for the university’s third century.

But whatever new vision emerges, some steps already signal the shape of things to come:

  • In January, the university received its largest private gift ever — a $120 million grant from the Quantitative Foundation — for a proposed new School of Data Science. (See related story on this page.)
  • The university is expanding its footprint in Northern Virginia, with a $55 million investment in genomics research and a partnership with Inova Health System that will include a medical school campus at Inova Fairfax Hospital.
  • A new statewide biocomplexity initiative also is being established, financed by a $30 million startup package and headed by the top researcher who oversaw a similar Virginia Tech program.

“U.Va. is reinventing itself for a changing world,” Ryan says of the university, which was chartered in 1819.

By email through a U.Va. spokesman, Ryan says the university’s “responsibility to serve the commonwealth and beyond” requires an expanded presence outside Charlottesville. And U.Va.’s biocomplexity initiative, with an Inova satellite site, will be able “to partner with the thriving commercial technology sector” in Fairfax and Loudoun counties.

In his inaugural address in October, Ryan characterized the university as an “unfolding and unfinished project,” one that he envisions will be “not simply inclusive and equitable, but also genuinely integrated.”

In his speech, he acknowledged “the sins of our past” and noted that African-Americans weren’t admitted until the 1950s and women until the 1970s.

Ryan, who succeeded U.Va.’s first female president, Teresa A. Sullivan, has named two women as his top vice presidents: Stanford Law School Dean Mary Elizabeth Magill will become the chief academic officer this summer, and Jennifer “J.J.” Wagner Davis took over as chief operating officer in November after serving as George Mason University’s senior vice president for administration and finance.

In an effort to open the university to more low- and middle-income students, Ryan announced that U.Va.  no longer would charge tuition to Virginia students whose families earn less than $80,000 annually and have “typical assets.” Those earning less than $30,000 also will receive free room and board.

Elite but not elitist?
For Lauren Higgins, a third-year student from Midlothian, the decision represents an “incredibly encouraging” step toward making U.Va. more diverse.

Higgins was among several hundred people who participated in one of Ryan’s “Ours to Shape” community conversations in late November during which some participants raised the issue of how the university can be elite but not elitist.

“Elite is kind of a fraught word, isn’t it?” Ryan responded.

Higgins, a member of the student-run University Guide Service, told Ryan she often is asked by visitors and prospective students about the perception that U.Va. is “white, rich, Southern and preppy.”

And now an online search for U.Va. brings up images of the white supremacist rally of August 2017, she added.

Higgins later told Virginia Business in an email that the university “has endured its fair share of trials” that have been a test of its character and resilience.  But she is optimistic the school will emerge “in this pivotal moment” as a leader unafraid to address hard questions.

Higgins says the question about U.Va.’s culture arises so frequently during tours that she has prepared a response based on her own experiences.

She tells visitors that each student “brings their own unique story to Grounds and is shaped throughout their time here through their interactions” with people who may challenge their points of view. And each will add “their narrative to the history of U.Va.”

“I feel that this community, while not perfectly diverse, makes a consistent effort to embrace and share the differences we have,” she says.

 The new tuition promise will apply to about 1,900 in-state undergraduates next year, says university spokesman Anthony de Bruyn. Current financial aid packages essentially meet this need, but “we believe it’s important to make an explicit promise” as a commitment to low- and middle-income families.

He says this is the first step in a larger and longer project to look at financial aid packages for in-state and out-of-state students.
Northern Virginia presence        

In May, U.Va. appointed Gregory Fairchild, a Darden School of Business professor, as the university’s first director of operations for Northern Virginia.

Ryan says Fairchild will lead a task force set up to examine “what makes sense” for the university through its partnership with Inova, which owns the former ExxonMobil campus in Fairfax County.

U.Va. and George Mason University have joined with the Inova Center for Personalized Health to establish the Global Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Institute (GGBRI) there.

In September, the board of visitors approved $55 million in funding to be paid in three installments to retrofit the Inova building for the institute. Construction is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2020, says Eric Swensen, public information officer for the U.Va. Health System. 

At the same meeting, the board  approved a resolution committing to a broader academic presence at the Inova Health System facility in Fairfax beyond the previously approved medical campus.

The board tapped earnings from the university’s Strategic Investment Fund for the genomics research institute capital project and for a hiring package for the new Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative.

While GGBRI has not yet begun recruiting researchers, the Biocomplexity Initiative has about 68 researchers and support staff and is expected to grow substantially during the next three to five years, according to Swensen. The initiative’s headquarters is in Charlottes­ville, but researchers also are based in Northern Virginia.

‘Different kinds of questions’
Although it will collaborate with GGBRI, the two institutes “are working to solve different kinds of questions,” Swensen says.

The goal of GGBRI is to translate genomics research into personalized medical treatments, drugs and devices. The Biocomplexity Initiative brings together scientists from many fields to use high-performance computing capabilities to address problems spanning human health and behavior, the ecology of living systems, public policy, technology and infrastructure.

Christopher L. Barrett, a professor of computer science who held a similar position at Virginia Tech, was hired as the program’s executive director.

Ryan says he does not see that move as unnecessary competition with another state university but as “an opportunity to transform a single site institute into a statewide enterprise by expanding it across Virginia and into new areas like human health and disease.”

The new School of Medicine campus at Inova Fairfax is scheduled to begin operations in February 2021. Swensen says the campus will allow up to 72 medical students to complete their third and fourth years at Inova. 

Hospital expansion
Meanwhile in Charlottesville, a $394 million renovation and expansion of the university hospital is underway. The project will add 440,000 square feet and renovate another 95,000 square feet.

The work will expand the Emergency Department from 43 to about 80 beds and include dedicated space for mental health services. The project increases space for interventional services for patients needing surgeries or other procedures, including four new operating rooms. That portion of the work is scheduled to be completed by fall.

The project also includes construction of a six-story tower atop the expanded emergency and procedural space. Three of the floors will accommodate the conversion of most of the medical center’s semiprivate rooms to private.

The first new floor is expected to open in 2020, with the top three floors built as shell space for future expansion, Swensen says.  Renovations to the existing space will be completed in 2021.

When Amazon announced it would put half of its second headquarters in Arlington,  Ryan celebrated the news with a statement detailing U.Va.’s involvement in Northern Virginia, including the Darden School of Business’ new facilities in Rosslyn and a joint degree in business analytics offered by Darden and the McIntire School of Commerce.

Virginia Tech announced its plans for a $1 billion innovation campus near the Amazon HQ2.

Ryan says every college and university in the state will benefit from the increase in opportunities Amazon will bring. “In this case, a rising tide really will lift all boats,” he says.

‘A different animal’

Across the state’s higher-ed landscape, Shenandoah University stands apart because of what it does not profess to be.

“Shenandoah is a different animal in higher education in Virginia,” says Tracy Fitzsimmons, president for the past decade at the Winchester-based university. “It was not started as a liberal-arts institution, and we have never been a liberal-arts institution.”

That pronouncement may be unusual for a private, nonprofit institution, but the principle behind it has gained currency since the recession.

Founded in 1875 as a seminary and conservatory, Shenandoah has grown into a university while retaining its mission to align degrees with careers.

“We have always been unapologetic about offering professional training,” Fitzsimmons says. “We love that our students get jobs at graduation and that they are able to contribute broadly to their community.”

But don’t mistake Shenandoah for a technical school. With nearly 4,000 students almost evenly divided between undergraduate and graduate students, SU offers a blend of liberal arts education with career preparation through about 150 academic programs in seven schools. 

According to the university, 81 percent of its 2017 graduates are employed or furthering their education, and those who are working reported a median salary of $52,000.

Next year, the university plans to tap into fast-growing and lucrative industries with new majors in e-sports and virtual-reality design.

SU programs are varied. They include, for example, musical theater, criminal justice, business administration and the health professions. Last year, the university expanded a partnership with Inova Health Systems to launch graduate-level programs at a new campus in Fairfax County. 

Admission to the highly ranked Shenandoah Conservatory is by audition only. 

Back from Broadway
Kevin Covert, an assistant theater professor who grew up in Winchester, was startled by what he found at Shenandoah when he returned to his hometown after a career on Broadway.

Covert, who saw the school as “just a conservatory” when he was growing up, left Winchester in 1988 for Florida State University. On Broadway, he appeared in “Spamalot,” “Memphis” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

After “How to Succeed” closed, he decided to try something different and went to Florida State for an adjunct position.

“I fell in love with teaching,” he says. “I fell in love with watching the students and their desire to get better. I even thought to myself, ‘I remember this. I remember all of the hope and none of the cynicism that comes with living in New York.’”

So, when a friend sent him a link for a teaching job at SU, it seemed “kind of kismet.”

Touring the campus during the job interview was like seeing the school for the first time, says Covert, who is in his third year at the university.

“Once you come here and look at the campus and the area surrounding the university and meet the faculty, you’ll be sold,” he says. “There’s a real dedication to care here.”

‘Try different things’
Nonetheless, it took about a semester for Shenandoah’s amenities and opportunities to take hold for James Turner, a junior from Manassas who is president of the Student Government Association.

“My first impression wasn’t very good, actually,” he says. During his first semester, he recalls, all he did was go to class until a faculty member advised him to get involved.

Now, Turner gives similar advice to others. “This is the time you want to step out of your comfort zone and try different things,” he says, and at SU “all those opportunities are right in front of you.”

Turner lists a few:

  • experiential learning opportunities such as trips to events where sports management students help with game-day logistics for media credentials, corporate suites and team travel schedules.
  • internships such the one he had last summer with an auditing firm in Reston. 
  • and his visit to Pittsburgh to meet with the Steelers marketing department.

One other experience that Turner would like to try is the Global Citizens Project, an expense-paid, study-abroad trip for 50 to 60 students, faculty and staff members who are selected for the program based on their essays. Their destinations are not revealed until the winners are announced at a school assembly.

Turner, a business administration major who also is president of the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity, was recruited to play football at SU but found that time commitment interfered with other goals.

“I kind of chose my career over football,” he says. “I no longer play, but I fell in love with the school, so I stuck around.”

Moved in 1960
Shenandoah’s fortunes were not always so bright, though. Its original campus was in Dayton, about an hour south of Winchester.  With only 159 students, the school was about to close when business leaders decided in 1960 that Winchester needed a college. 

“They plucked us out of Dayton and invited us here, and we have thrived since then,” Fitzsimmons says. Winchester provided the first classroom buildings and some acreage, but the school didn’t have dormitories.

“So, community members opened their doors and invited students to come live with them for the first couple of years,” she says.

Now the university, which is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, has 10 residence halls and satellite locations near Winchester and in Northern Virginia. The sites include Scholar Plaza in Leesburg, which offers graduate programs in business, education and health care. 

In January, the university opened the James R. Wilkins Jr. Athletics & Events Center, a 77,000-square-foot indoor facility that serves SU’s 21 teams and can seat 5,000 people for events.

Since 2013, SU also has been steward of the 195-acre Cool Spring River Campus, which serves as an outdoor classroom for history and environmental-studies programs.   

Formerly a golf course acquired by the Civil War Trust, the property was the site of the 1864 Battle of Cool Spring. The university is returning the land to its natural state, but it remains open to the public, with the paved cart paths retained for accessibility.

Ties to health systems
The university collaborates with two major health systems: Winchester-based Valley Health and Inova, to train nurses, pharmacists and other health-care professionals.  New programs announced last year at the Inova Center for Personalized Health in Fairfax County focus on emerging fields, such as pharmacogenomics — the study of how genes affect a person’s response to drugs.

Specialized health-care training also includes the nursing school’s new Patient Navigation Certificate for licensed registered nurses, which is based on a program developed by Inova Health System.

The program focuses on training nurses as “navigators” to coordinate patient care, especially for those with complex and chronic conditions, says Lisa M. Darsch, a faculty member and the program’s director.

She says the program’s techniques already have shown cost and health benefits for patients who are followed by a trained professional. “Patients no longer fall through the cracks,” she says by email.

Fitzsimmons says such collaborations are mutually beneficial for the health systems and the university. The partnerships help SU expand programs for which there are demonstrated needs, resulting in jobs for graduates and employees for health systems.

SU might be best known for its conservatory and health programs, she says, but it also is investing more in the liberal arts in a way that cuts across majors.

For example, a program might bring in a community expert to explore human trafficking in a forum involving students from a wide range of disciplines. A business major, for example, might address the economics of the problem, while a nursing student would discuss the impact on the body, and a creative writing student would write a poem.

“That’s really about celebrating the breadth of learning — the opening of minds, which is the heart of liberal learning,” she says.

$145.7 million impact
The university has a $145.7 million annual economic impact on Winchester and Frederick County, according to a 2016 study by the consulting firm TischlerBise. The university’s presence supports about 1,570 jobs, an increase of 230 jobs and $56.2 million in economic impact since 2010.

But Fitzsimmons says that’s not the full story. “It’s important to say Winchester is our home, but our backyard extends all the way to Washington,” she says.

And whether they are in a bank, a hospital or on stage, Shenandoah alumni “are the people who keep this country going,” she says. They have “useful, relevant degrees” that prepare them “to do good in the world.”

“I think that’s the magic of our story.”

Shenandoah University adds degrees in virtual reality and esports

Shenandoah University will launch new undergraduate degree programs next fall that will establish an academic foothold in the expanding world of virtual reality and esports.

The university is announcing this afternoon in Winchester that it will offer bachelor of arts and science degrees in virtual reality design and a bachelor’s of science in esports, or video game competition.

“We believe a significant number of careers will live in virtual reality,” says J.J. Ruscella, executive director of the Shenandoah Center for Immersive Learning (SCiL) and associate professor of theatre.

Immersive experiences such as training and simulation videos that students produce through SCiL will be a game changer not only for education but also for how industry will train workers for ever evolving jobs that now don’t even exist, he says.

“You remember when web design came out in the ‘90s and you needed someone to design a website and the only person you could turn to was a high school student?” Ruscella says. “That is sort of happening with virtual reality.”

Corporations are turning to universities to produce simulation-training videos, he says, giving students the opportunity to work on real-world projects.

SU already has an augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) program.  The esports program is new, although the university currently has a varsity team competing in video-game matches. Both programs also will offer minors and certificate options.

Esports has rapidly become one of the fastest-growing segments of the commercial entertainment industry, according to Joey Gawrysiak, associate professor and director of sport management.

The industry is predicted to be worth $1 billion by 2020.  “I think it will be there next year,” he says.

In esports, competitors face off in video games such as Call of Duty, League of Legends and Madden NFL that have a global audience.  Fans can attend live events or watch from home via streaming services. 

The esports degree will offer three tracks in which students focus on management, coaching, or media and communications, positioning graduates well ahead of other applicants in competing for jobs in the industry, Gawrysiak says.

In researching the degree program, he says, industry professionals told him many applicants think they are qualified simply because they play video games.

His students, for example, will learn how to produce a match that is live-streamed, as opposed to a broadcast production of a traditional sporting event.

Although most jobs now are in management and marketing, he says, coaching slots are increasing as esports trickle down from the professional level to colleges and even high schools.

Players used to compete “for energy drinks, not million-dollar prizes,” he says, and this change has brought a new emphasis on sport science and psychology “to optimize performance and minimize injuries.”

“It’s following the traditional sports model,” he says, and he does not see the two as mutually exclusive.

“I see none of the stereotypical ‘jocks vs. nerds,’’’ he says.  Often, in fact, the jocks are the nerds as traditional athletes also play on esport teams.

For the AR/VR design program, SU has partnered with Immersive VR Education, a software company in Ireland that provides a platform called Engage.  Ruscella says Engage will allow SU to focus not on software development but on “human experience design.”

The BA program will prepare students for careers producing content for AR/VR and related disciplines through a concentration in either VR Media or Digital Stages.

The BS focuses on careers for technical specialists and programmers in AR/VR or related fields.

Students will build virtual worlds and scenes that create simulated life experiences for training or educational videos for museums, law enforcement and the health professions.  The videos can recreate history – the university recently used 360-degree VR video to simulate a 1960s Civil Rights-era lunch counter sit-in and the trial of pre-Civil War abolitionist John Brown.

But they can also create training experiences, such as how emergency responders should handle a suicide threat, by simulating  “life moments” in real-time work scenarios so that “the novice is a veteran even before they take their first step on the job,” he says.

“This has been the gap that education has had between delivering knowledge and developing skills,” he says, as classroom training does not always translate to the workplace. “Now we can recreate the work experience in the education experience.”

Such simulation training grew out of earlier collaborations between theatre majors and health-care students, two of the university’s largest programs, he notes.  Now as VR simulation is increasingly used by corporations for training, the videos also will be a way for actors “to make their daily bread” while trying to land their Broadway roles.

Saving shellfish

John T. Wells can see from his office when harmful “red tides” are spreading on the York River.  

But now researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) are working with a new device known as a cytobot that can detect toxic algal blooms well before the murky reddish threat to marine life is visible. “It offers an early warning that’s going to be a huge benefit to the shellfish industry,” says Wells, dean and director of the institute.

Such research underpins much of what happens at VIMS — it’s the reason shellfish lovers can eat oysters year-round, for one thing. But the institution’s impact runs much deeper. “On the surface, it looks like any other marine science institution,” Wells says.

But VIMS is both an independent state agency and a part of the College of William & Mary, with responsibilities that are mentioned in 36 sections of state code, he says.

Based in Gloucester Point at the mouth of the York River, a major tributary to the Chesapeake Bay, the institute’s triple mission is to research, educate and advise policymakers, industries and the public. “That makes us very unusual as a marine science institution,” Wells says. “Everybody checks that service box — ours is actually mandated and deeply embedded in our operations.”   

William & Mary’s new president, Katherine A. Rowe, visited VIMS in August with the university’s board of visitors. By email, she describes the work as crucial to the future of understanding and sustaining marine resources. “It is a rare and wonderful thing to have an advisory arm of the state also serve the dual role as William & Mary’s School of Marine Science,” she says.

Plastic pollution
The institute, which has satellite campuses on the Eastern Shore and Rappahannock River, enrolls about 90 master’s and doctoral students who work closely on research projects with 55 faculty members. “Our students are deeply engaged with faculty researching real-world problems,” Wells says.

They have seen firsthand the tragic consequences of plastic pollution on marine life:  In July, an osprey chick had to be euthanized when it became entangled in fishing line brought by a parent to a nest that was being monitored by live-video stream.

Research teams are studying biodegradable plastics to lessen the threat. A new type of cull ring on crab traps, for example, would prevent “lost crab pots from continuing to fish in perpetuity,” Wells says.

The so-called ghost crab pots break away from their buoys and settle on the bottom of the bay, continuing to catch crabs that can’t escape or be harvested. Biodegradable panels provide an escape hatch by slowly dissolving to give captive crabs a way out.

Algal blooms
VIMS research, Wells says, ranges from “global down to molecular in scale.”

Researchers are working to combat potentially harmful algal blooms, or HABs, that cause red tides. The research includes the use of a new technology known as Imaging FlowCytobot. The submersible instrument can identify individual algal cells in real time, potentially giving hatcheries and nurseries enough notice to get their shellfish out of harm’s way.

Unusually heavy rains during the summer reduced salinity in the York River, keeping toxic algae in check but also slowing several research projects.

Kimberly S. Reece, chair of aquatic health sciences at VIMS, says the cytobots are being programmed to recognize phytoplankton species common to the region.

With current monitoring techniques, it can be days or a week before the blooms are noticed and the species identified, she says.

The goal is to deploy cytobots at strategic spots near shellflish growing areas to more quickly notify growers of HABs, which also can threaten human health.

Clams and oysters
Mark Luckenbach, associate dean of research and advisory services, points to the establishment of the clam and oyster industries as major accomplishments for VIMS. “The big, booming success story is the decades of work we’ve done in the shellfish aquaculture industry,” he says.

The state now leads the nation in hard clam aquaculture and is second to Washington state in oyster production, he says, and scallop aquaculture could be established soon. 

No longer seasonal, oyster and clam aquaculture provides year-round work for people who “are basically farmers, not watermen,” Luckenbach says.

The 2017 “farm gate” value for Virginia shellfish aquaculture was $53.4 million, with sales of $37.5 million for hard clams and $15.9 million for oysters, according to the Virginia Shellfish Aquaculture Situation and Outlook Report.

Clam research, primarily at the Eastern Shore campus, has helped develop techniques to grow and more quickly bring to market the prized little neck clams that are difficult to harvest in large numbers in the wild.

Oyster research was necessitated by disease and habitat destruction that decimated the population.

But the research also led to the development of oysters that are edible through the summer. “We didn’t eat oysters in the summer,” Luckenbach says.  

Historically, that was because of bacterial contamination during hotter temperatures. Refrigeration lessened the risk but didn’t solve the taste problem, which results from spring spawning that leaves wild oysters almost flavorless.

That problem was solved through a breeding technique that yielded a sterile oyster. Luckenbach describes the process as something “like growing a seedless watermelon.”  

However, he says, the need for continuing research and selective breeding for commercial hatcheries is ongoing and will keep VIMS closely entwined with oyster growers. “You can’t breed a disease-resistant oyster and forget about it for decades,” he says. “The diseases evolve.” 

Founded in 1940
VIMS research is funded through more than 300 grant and contract awards worth $20 million in annual expenditures but with a multiyear value of more than $65 million.

The fiscal 2019 operating budget totals $50.3 million, including $22.8 million from the state’s General Fund.

The state also financed a new $10 million, 93-foot research vessel for VIMS.  The R/V Virginia was completed over the summer in Canada. It wasn’t made in Virginia, Wells says, because it was too small for the military ship builders and too large for yacht makers.

VIMS opened across the river in Yorktown in 1940 as the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory and moved to its current location a decade later.  The School of Marine Science opened in 1961.

A William & Mary biology professor, Donald W. Davis, was the institute’s founding father and is the namesake for the newest building on its campus, a $14.4 million, 32,000-square-foot facility dedicated in April.

Davis Hall provides research and office space for five departments, including programs that form the core of the institution’s advisory and outreach education activities.

VIMS was launched with a separation of powers that seems prescient today but actually reflects political sensitivities that existed then as well.

Davis worked with the General Assembly to create the enabling legislation that attempted to ensure that the institute would be immune from political pressure. “He was very clear that the agency that makes marine regulations was not the agency that conducts research that leads to those regulations,” Wells says. “There is a very clear operating separation.”

No hiding in offices
VIMS doesn’t make policy but provides the science that helps state agencies such as the Virginia Marine Resources Commission make regulatory decisions. With its advisory mandate, the institution also assists industry on a range of issues, including determining the impact of dredging plans.

Beach communities can get data from VIMS on offshore resources for sand replenishment projects and learn whether that sand would be compatible with their beach, Wells says.

And the new Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency was established in 2016 to provide localities with research and technical support to adapt to sea-level rise.

The center, a joint effort with Old Dominion University and W&M’s Coastal Policy Center, will provide “street-level information” to help with zoning and development plans, he says. “That’s a really big deal,” he says. “If you’re going to build a hospital you want to know where to put it in terms of rising waters over the next 50 years.”

The mission of VIMS to broadly communicate research goes far beyond policymakers and industry, Wells says.  

Students, faculty and staff take part in about 360 outreach programs a year that include after-hours lectures, discovery labs, fishing clinics and “Science Under Sail” voyages on the York River.
“We don’t hide in our offices,” Wells says.

Connecting with the public is especially important now, given “the questioning of what science is telling us,” he says.  “We’re trying to say it’s got real value in all of our lives.”

A healthier state?

A former construction worker was in such despair that he got down on his knees in George Washington University Hospital’s emergency room and begged Dr. Jennifer Lee for help.

The man had been to the ER in Washington, D.C., many times before, desperate for a hip replacement. He told Lee that he didn’t want to go on disability.  He wanted to go back to work.

But she had to tell him that his debilitating condition was not life-threatening, and without health insurance she couldn’t help.

“I thought about him so many times because it was really distressing to me as a doctor that I could not help him to get what he needed,” she says of the incident, which occurred before the District of Columbia expanded its Medicaid program.

Now director of the state Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS), Lee is overseeing the expansion of Medicaid health coverage on Jan. 1 to as many as 400,000 Virginians — including low-income adults of working age without children.
Lee is optimistic that the new benefits will improve their health and the state’s economy, too.

Budget compromise
Medicaid expansion in Virginia under the Affordable Care Act has been a slow and contentious process, long-thwarted by state lawmakers who saw it as a break from the commonwealth’s conservative fiscal policies. 

But a budget compromise in May ended the impasse, allowing Virginia to accept more than $2 billion in federal funds to pay for about 90 percent of the expansion costs. The state’s share of the cost will be financed by new assessment fees — essentially a tax — on hospital revenues.

Until now, Virginia has had one of the most restrictive Medicaid programs in the nation, ranking 46th among states in per-capita spending, according to DMAS.  Expansion under ACA will increase the income eligibility level to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and extend coverage to adults without dependents.

Before expansion, a childless adult without a disability was not eligible for Medicaid.   Beginning next year, an adult with an annual income at or below $16,754 can sign up for the program.

A family of three will be eligible with an income at or below $28,677, quadrupling the previous threshold of $6,900.  For a disabled person, the eligibility level goes from $9,700 to $16,754.

Virginia joins 32 other states and the District of Columbia in agreeing to expand Medicaid coverage. Originally a key component of ACA, Medicaid expansion became optional for each state in a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the health-care law’s legality.

Work/training rule
Lee says her office is “working very intensely” on two tracks to gain federal approval of the state’s Medicaid plan.  In addition to amendments to the existing plan, the state is seeking approval of a waiver that would tie recipients’ bene­fits to work, study or civic engagement requirements.

The addition of the Training, Education and Employment Opportunity Program for Medicaid beneficiaries was part of the budget compromise. The requirement would apply to some current Medicaid recipients as well as new ones. In November, the commonwealth will ask for federal approval for a waiver, known as the 1115 Demonstration Waiver, that would allow the requirement to take effect.

While Medicaid expansion is on track for the Jan. 1 launch, Lee says the timetable for implementing the waiver provisions is less certain.   In a potential complication, a federal judge in June struck down a similar work/training requirement in Kentucky.
Lee points to the man with chronic hip pain she met in the ER to explain her view on the requirement.

“People want to be well. People want to work.  They want to pursue more opportunity,” she says. “But they need some help to deal with an injury or an illness to get them back on their feet.”

Net savings?
With Medicaid expansion, the commonwealth will receive $2.4 billion in federal funds for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 to pay for 90 percent of the costs of caring for newly eligible recipients. That federal infusion, Lee says, will result in net savings of $355 million to the state’s General Fund for those years.  

“Medicaid expansion actually results in net savings to the commonwealth,” she says.  “I know that sounds counterintuitive.” 

Uninsured people, she notes, often put off seeing a doctor or taking medications until they have a medical crisis. Then they end up in emergency rooms and are unable to pay for costly treatments. “Someone still pays that bill,” she says, “and those costs are absorbed by the system and increase costs for everybody else.”

Expansion is expected to close the “Medicaid gap” that leaves many low-income Virginians without insurance options. These are adults who are ineligible for the existing Medicaid program but did not earn the minimum income required for receiving insurance subsidies under ACA. 

With the higher income threshold under expanded Medicaid, some people who received subsidized insurance on the health exchange may now qualify for Medicaid. 

Lee says DMAS is trying to determine how many people fall in each of those groups. Doug Gray, executive director of the Virginia Association of Health Plans (VAHP), says he has seen estimates that as many as 90,000 people now insured through the ACA exchange may be eligible to move to Medicaid plans.

Also uncertain is the health status of new Medicaid enrollees who will make up the risk pools for six managed-care plans offered by insurance companies under Medicaid. The plan providers can earn a profit up to 3 percent above their underwriting gain, Gray says, with any percentage above that being shared with the state.           

For example, if profits exceed 3 percent — an event Gray says is unlikely — half of the amount up to 10 percent would be returned to the state.

Premiums are to be based on a sliding scale not to exceed 2 percent of monthly income for those between 100 percent and 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

“Part of the challenge is to develop a rate to pay for the new enrollees,” Gray says.  “Some are going to be much sicker than others.”

But the state will benefit, he says, as a large number of people with chronic conditions — diabetes, asthma, heart disease — will get treatment early on “instead of having to go to the ER for help after it’s too late.”

Health exchange effects
Gray says it is too soon to gauge the impact of Medicaid expansion on premiums paid on the health exchange.  Some very sick patients may leave the exchange for Medicaid, but healthier people now on the exchange also may move to Medicaid. Either move could affect the exchange risk pool.

“It will be a mix. The question is: When the mix is all said and done, is the net effect a reduction for premiums?” he says.

In July, insurance companies told the State Corporation Commission that rates for individuals covered under ACA’s Virginia exchange are expected to increase by an average of about 13 percent next year.

Lee says a 2016 study found that states with expanded Medicaid plans saw an average drop of 7 percent in premiums for health insurance policies bought through marketplace exchanges.

But that study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service predates the election of President Donald Trump and subsequent cuts to federal cost-sharing reduction payments that subsidize ACA policies.

Assessment fees
The General Assembly approved two provider assessment fees as part of Medicaid expansion.

The assessments on hospital revenue will be imposed on 69 private, acute-care hospitals, according to Julian Walker, vice president of communications for the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association. Exempt are children’s and specialty hospitals, such as psychiatric and rehabilitative facilities, and the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University medical centers.

One assessment fee, which will pay for Virginia’s 10 percent share of Medicaid expansion, is expected to yield $281 million during the two-year budget cycle and up to $300 million annually in subsequent years, Walker says.

The second assessment will be used to increase the reimbursement rate for treating Medicaid patients. The reimbursement rate now is 71 percent, or 71 cents for each dollar of care, despite state law that sets the acceptable level at 78 percent, Walker says.

The rate will increase to 88 percent with the second assessment fee, which is expected to bring in about $250 million. However, Walker says the exact numbers remain uncertain because the implementation process is ongoing. The state is expected to begin collecting the assessment payments in October.

Although hospitals are paying the state’s cost for Medicaid expansion, Walker says, they will receive only about 36 percent of revenue that will be generated.   

Other health-care providers such as pharmacies, home health-care businesses, medical equipment companies and labs are among beneficiaries that won’t be subject to the tax, he notes.

Hospitals will benefit as a result of the increased Medicaid reimbursement rates as well as from a reduction in the uncompensated care of uninsured patients, Walker says.   But, it’s still not clear how many people will actually enroll in Medicaid. “The challenge of uncompensated care will not vanish,” he says.  

The association historically has opposed provider assessments but agreed to the bipartisan proposal to facilitate Medicaid expansion and to improve reimbursement rates, Walker says.

‘In-reach program’
Getting Medicaid expansion up and running requires a multi-partner push, says VAHP’s Gray. “People aren’t going to be just magically enrolled” on Jan. 1, he says.

At community health centers that treat people across the state regardless of their ability to pay, officials are contacting patients who might be Medicaid eligible to walk them through the enrollment process.

“We have what we call an in-reach program,” says R. Neal Graham, CEO of the Virginia Community Healthcare Association.

The centers see about 106,000 uninsured patients, the majority earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, he says. As many as 70,000 might qualify for Medicaid under the 138 percent income level cutoff, with about 75 percent of those enrolling.

“Most of our people — the vast majority who are uninsured — are employed or working part time. They just don’t earn enough,” he says.

Many earning under 200 percent of the poverty level can’t afford insurance, he explains. “So, we’re worried about that group that is at 138 percent to 200 percent that won’t qualify for Medicaid but still won’t be able to afford insurance.”

Many others in the state won’t be eligible for Medicaid because of their immigration status. Undocumented immigrants do not qualify, and immigrants with legal status are not immediately eligible.

“We’re still going to need our safety net system, our free clinics to fill in the gaps,” Lee says. “But those gaps are going to be a lot smaller.”

A ‘working community’

Julia Bailey graduated from John Tyler Community College in May with an associate degree in liberal arts and something more.

Bailey, who will transfer to the University of Virginia this fall and plans to go to law school, earned a paralegal career studies certificate that she hopes will help her find part-time work as an undergraduate.  It’s already landed her an internship for the summer.

Bailey took most of her classes at JTCC’s Chester campus — which is set to undergo a major expansion of its workforce training facilities — and it was there that she says that she came to understand what the “community” in community college means.

Sharing a campus with students on so many career pathways was “a very humbling experience,” she says. “It’s like seeing a working community.  

“You have the transfer students but also the skilled-trade jobs.  I was meeting students from all different backgrounds — they’re doing welding, electricity and HVAC,” she adds. “Then you have the engineers and the art people. That’s the really cool thing about community college.”

Whether they’re seeking an academic degree or a workforce credential, the students are being prepared for whatever’s next, says Edward “Ted” Raspiller, JTCC president since August 2013.

A career ‘pass-through’
“We’re a pass-through,” he says. “They’re going to pass through us, and they’re going to go to work or they’re going to pass through to a four-year school and then to work.”

Ensuring that the students’ foundation is on firm footing requires a closer collaboration with potential employers than in the past, he says. Economic development, once entwined with natural resources, now is more closely dependent on workforce development.

The $34 million Chester campus expansion reflects that linkage. Ground was broken in May on the project, which is to be complete in fall 2019. It will increase the space for business and industry training as well as for nursing and EMS programs. 

The work will overhaul two buildings on the campus, which opened in 1967 as the first community college in the state to be built from the ground up.

A 25,503-square-foot addition will double the size of the Nicholas Center, allowing for a workforce development center with conference space and a multiuse laboratory focusing on skilled trades.

Bird Hall, one of the college’s original buildings, will be gutted and rebuilt to house the associate degree program in nursing and new labs for the natural sciences. The nursing program, now based at Johnston-Willis Hospital, will be expanded and co-located with paramedic training to facilitate the sharing of advanced simulation equipment.   

Mellon Foundation grant   
While workforce training and the sciences are the focus of the expansion project, the liberal arts also are getting a boost from a Mellon Foundation grant to map pathways to the arts and humanities.

Under the three-year, $1.48 million grant, JTCC, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and Virginia Commonwealth University will work to accelerate baccalaureate degree completion and strengthen faculty collaboration among the institutions.

John Tyler and Reynolds already collaborate on training programs through the Community College Workforce Alliance, which served 5,500 students in the 2017 calendar year through customized training programs.

The alliance offers shorter-term, intensive job training to move adults more quickly into positions that don’t require a degree, says Elizabeth Creamer, vice president of workforce development and credential attainment.

“We get them ready in weeks or months,” she says, but the programs also can be an access point to a longer-term degree or credential.

Both colleges offer Bridge to Career programs that combine GED preparation with job skills training and career coaching. In February, JTCC expanded the program to offer classes at Petersburg High School “to serve the high level of need there,” she says.

Although such programs generally target young adults seeking entry-level employment, Carolyn Carlison signed up for a 15-week program at the Chester campus to earn her GED and a certified logistics associate certificate for a different reason.

“I did not want any of my grandchildren to know I had not graduated from high school,” says Carlison, 58, who left school after the 11th grade and works full-time in retail sales. She sees the program as “a stepping stone to the next level,” and describes working full time while taking classes as difficult but rewarding.

“It’s given me a lot of confidence because I know a lot more than I was giving myself credit for,” she says.

Concurrent enrollment
High-school students also are turning to community colleges to take advantage of a low-cost option that “gives them a leg up” in the workforce, Raspiller says

“We’re seeing more and more high-school students that want a credential or at least some dual enrollment credits before they graduate,” he says.

When students come to campus to take classes rather than taking college courses at their schools, the arrangement is called concurrent enrollment. 

Concurrent enrollment is increasing, particularly among students from rural high schools, Raspiller says. JTCC enrolled 69 students in career studies certificate programs this academic year and expects the number to increase to 99 in the fall.

The students can learn skills such as precision machining “so they can go right from here to work,” Raspiller says.

While community colleges have seen enrollments decline as the economy rebounds, JTCC has run counter to that trend. Enrollment for the previous academic year was 13,930, about equally divided between the Midlothian and Chester campuses. 

Though this year’s headcount is preliminary, enrollment was up 3.6 percent and 5.8 percent for the fall and spring semesters, respectively, according to Holly W. Walker, public relations manager for the college.

At the May commencement, more than 1,100 degrees and 1,600 credentials or certificates were awarded — reflecting the national trend toward “stackable credentials,” such as the paralegal certificate that Bailey earned.

For Bailey, a home-schooled Hopewell resident, the extra certificate wasn’t in her plans until she wrote a paper about a legal case that reinforced an interest in studying law.

Cost savings had been one of her main considerations in starting at a two-year school, so paying for the additional courses she needed for the certificate was something she had to weigh carefully.

“I’m one of four siblings, and we’re all pursuing a higher education,” she says. But she decided the certificate would help in finding part-time work while preparing her for law school.

Bailey chose JTCC because of its transfer agreements, she says, but now sees it as the right course even if she could have afforded to start at a four-year school.

“I came in thinking that I would just blend in with the crowd and be another number,” she says. But the connections Bailey made “opened up all these opportunities. I don’t feel like just another number in the crowd anymore.”

U.Va. in transition

James E. Ryan is off to a fast start as the new president of the University of Virginia although he actually hasn’t begun the job.

Ryan, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has moved up his start date at U.Va., announced two search committees to fill top leadership roles and named a former law school colleague to oversee an ambitious capital campaign for the university’s third century.

Ryan will succeed U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan on Aug. 1, two months earlier than originally planned. His appointment was announced last fall.

In an email, he says that among his priorities will be “to build on the momentum generated by President Sullivan, especially in the areas of faculty recruitment, financial aid, and growth in research and philanthropy.”

And, he says, he’s “doing what I can to earn the trust of the community.”

He has met with all the university’s vice presidents and has been traveling to Charlottesville about once a month to meet with deans, faculty and staff.  In late April, he visited U.Va.’s College at Wise.

“It’s been a great way to get to know parts of the university with which I was not as familiar when I was a law professor,” Ryan says.   

He describes what he has seen as inspiring.

“The exciting research that is being done across Grounds and the care and commitment to great teaching has been truly impressive, and the affection that students feel for the university is palpable.”

Ryan also has met with state and U.S. legislators and has “had a lot of conversations with a diverse cross-section of the larger” university community and its stakeholders.
His meetings are “with an eye toward crafting a shared vision for the future” of U.Va. through a strategic plan, he says.

Frank M. “Rusty” Conner III, the rector of U.Va.’s board of visitors, says he urged Ryan to work “very diligently” to have his leadership team in place where possible when Sullivan’s term ends July 31.

“One piece of advice I gave Jim Ryan, given the length of the transition, was that he be ready to go on Day One,” says Conner, a Washington, D.C.-based partner with the law firm Covington & Burling LLP who co-chaired the committee leading the presidential search. 

Coinciding with the presidential transition has been “a lot of turnover,” primarily from retirements, Conner says, although many officials will remain from “the great leadership Terry Sullivan has attracted” during her eight-year tenure. “It’s a matter of supplementing the talent pool we have already,” he says.

Capital campaign
Two key expected departures involved Patrick D. Hogan, the chief operating officer who had announced plans to retire in June 2019, and Thomas C. Katsouleas, the provost, who was to have stepped down at the end of the 2017-18 academic year.

In a March letter to the U.Va. community, Ryan said both have agreed to remain until their successors are found, adding Hogan also will stay on “to help in a consulting role as we bring a new person on board.”

Ryan also wrote that he has asked John C. Jeffries Jr., a law faculty member and former dean, to serve for three years as senior vice president for advancement, effective Aug. 1, to help establish a strong start to the capital campaign. 

Jeffries will work alongside Mark Luellen, the vice president for advancement, on the campaign, which now is in its “quiet” fundraising phase with the public launch planned next year.

U.Va.’s last campaign, completed in 2013, raised $3 billion, but Jeffries says it would be premature to discuss the scope of the new effort.

“My sense is that everyone who watches public higher education knows that private support is becoming more and more essential,” he says. “The University of Virginia has historically done a pretty good job of marshaling private support because of the loyalty of our graduates. And I think we’re on track to do that again.”
 
No stranger to campus
Jeffries says the mood on Grounds about Ryan is upbeat. “He’s an impressive guy, and so far, I think he’s made a terrific impression on the people here in Charlottesville. In time he’ll have the opportunity to make a terrific impression on our alumni everywhere.”

Ryan, a U.Va. law school graduate who served on its faculty for 15 years, is returning to a university he knows well and where people know him, Conner says. 

Transitions can be awkward times, he says, but Sullivan and Ryan “have worked very hard to minimize that awkwardness.”

When Ryan steps in the day after Sullivan steps down, he won’t move into Carr’s Hill, the presidential residence she has occupied since 2010. While the house undergoes $7.88 million in renovations, Ryan will live in Pavilion VIII in Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village.

His temporary quarters overlook the Lawn, the symbolic heart of the university that was the setting for the dramatic bookends to Sullivan’s tenure: The Lawn was where the faculty and students staged a revolt in 2012 that thwarted an attempt by some board members to remove her from office.  And last August, the Lawn was where hundreds of white supremacists carrying torches staged a surprise march the night before the violent “Unite the Right” rally that shocked the nation.

U.Va., in fact, found itself in the national glare of nearly every higher-education issue that came to the fore during Sullivan’s tenure. A 2014 Rolling Stone article about an alleged gang rape, for example, briefly made the university a national symbol of campus sexual assault until the magazine retracted the discredited story.

“I think [Sullivan] has managed with a very calm demeanor through any number of issues that most presidents don’t have to address,” Conner says. 

A university, he says, can be “a great institution but still be imperfect and have all sorts of issues” to confront. 

“The institution is not some isolated place of nirvana. We reflect all of what’s going on in society,” he says. “It’s a question of how you deal with these issues as a president both from an immediate standpoint and a longer-term basis.”

Sullivan has positioned the university “for extraordinary success over the next decade” in ways that have not always been apparent, Conner says.
 
Strategic Investment Fund
He cites as an example the Strategic Investment Fund, now worth about $2.4 billion. It was initially derided as a “slush fund” by a former rector, Helen Dragas, who had instigated the board effort to fire Sullivan.

The fund now is viewed “as one of the most creative financing devices for a university, and many other universities have taken steps to emulate it,” Conner says.

The board has approved more than $307 million in grant proposals from the fund since September 2016.  

The two largest awards have been $100 million to create the Bicentennial Scholars Fund for Need- and Merit-based Scholarships and $75 million for the Bicentennial Professors Fund to recruit top faculty.

Both are multiyear, matching programs that would leverage private gifts, with the goal of creating a $300 million scholarship endowment and about 70 endowed professorships.

The board also has approved $15.7 million to advance brain research focused on therapies for neurodegeneration and epilepsy, and about $17 million for studies related to Type 1 diabetes.

Other approved projects reflect the range of work at the university, such as $250,000 for “Reimagining Librarianship,” $1 million for the Virginia Initiative on Cosmic Origins and $6.2 million to support transformative autism research.

Conner primarily credits former Rector William H. Goodwin Jr., Sullivan and Hogan for the strategy to invest funds previously held as cash reserves. The strategy essentially created an unencumbered endowment to finance university priorities and initiatives. 
 
New financial model
Sullivan also instituted a new financial model that drew little attention outside the university, but “I think has appropriately incentivized the various units within the university to make the decisions they need to make to be successful going forward,” Conner says.

The model, phased in over several years, decentralizes accountability and authority for resource management for university units, such as schools and other U.Va. organizations. 

For example, rather than the facilities department assuming responsibility for costs across Grounds, “those charges are now aggregated and doled out to units based on usage,” explains Michael W. Phillips, associate director of the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

This approach gives the university and its units “a truer sense of how each unit is doing from top to bottom,” he says.  “The real bonus is it matches up revenues and expenses with incentives for the organization to do better.”

Phillips, who is also co-chair of the Staff Senate, sees a “generally positive” atmosphere at U.Va. “We’ve seen a lot of good changes President Sullivan has made, and I know that the staff is looking forward to what President Ryan will do as well,” he says.

Sullivan declined through a university spokesman to comment or discuss her immediate plans.

In his email, Ryan says he has been in regular contact with Sullivan, “who has been incredibly generous with her time and with her counsel.”

“I am looking forward to getting started; and I am grateful to all those who have been helpful in the transition.”

Ryan originally had requested an October start date for family reasons. His wife, Katie, and two of their children will remain in Massachusetts during his first year in office so that his son can complete his senior year at his current high school.

While those considerations remain, he wrote in his March letter, the earlier start date is “the right thing to do for the university, given the rhythm of the academic year.”

The August start date also will mean the board will not need to appoint an interim president, Conner says.  He sees this transitional period and U.Va.’s bicentennial as “a good time to renew the focus of the university, and that’s what we’re doing.” The bicentennial observance began Oct. 6 on the 200th anniversary of the laying of the first university cornerstone, at Pavilion VII. The commemoration continues until Jan. 25, the 200th anniversary of U.Va.’s charter.

Conner’s time working with Ryan during the transition has showed him “how thoughtful and creative and decisive a leader he will be as president,” the rector says.

Ryan has “a voracious appetite for information,” he says. Ryan’s book “Wait, What?” may have posed only the five essential questions of life, but “he asks 50 questions on every other subject.”

Evolving profile

The surfboards in the administration building and the Adirondack chair in front of the John Wesley statue might help close the deal for some prospective Virginia Wesleyan University students.

But that’s not what struck Nicholas Hipple when he arrived for a tour nearly five years ago, thinking there was no way he wanted to follow his older brother to the 300-acre VWU campus in Virginia Beach.

“Once I got on campus, I knew that I was home,” said Hipple, a senior from Blacksburg who is a double business and theater major and serves as the student government president.  “I feel like a lot of students, when they tour, have an ‘aha’ moment like, ‘Yes, I need to go here.’”    

For Hipple, whose younger sister has joined him at VWU, the “aha moment” came as he observed how students interacted with professors in class. “The one thing I hear from students is that they like how personal the school is,” he says.

Individual attention is a hallmark of small liberal-arts schools, one that remains central to Virginia Wesleyan as it evolves to meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive higher-education market.

“We could sit here and allow those same factors to have a negative impact on us, or we can develop a new business model that celebrates our strengths and markets us to new constituency groups,” says Scott D. Miller, VWU’s president.

Bringing changes
In taking the job in 2015, Miller was charged with bringing innovative changes to a United Methodist college that he was told had been a well-kept secret too long.

Last fall, Virginia Wesleyan added master’s degree programs in education and business administration, started an online division, welcomed the inaugural class of 40 students to the Batten Honors College and completed its transition to university status.

VWU also has launched a rebranding effort — those surfboards in the administration building point to more than fun in the ocean. “We’re not just celebrating that we’re in Virginia Beach in a beach community, but we’re celebrating the value-addeds that come with being in this location,” Miller says.

VWU’s location on the Norfolk city line also offers students opportunities at a range of Hampton Roads sites — from internships at the Port of Virginia to glass-blowing classes at the Chrysler Museum of Art — plus a coastal environment to study.

Students use a 45-foot research vessel, co-owned with the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, to gather specimens for experiments at the 44,000-square-foot Greer Environmental Sciences Center, which opened last fall.

Financed entirely by an anonymous donor, the center quickly drew accolades, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Conservationist of the Year award.

The facility, which won LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, is clad with reclaimed sinker cypress, has a green roof and is surrounded by native plantings and habitats. A turtle already has made a nest in the wetlands basin out back.

But for students, the center is transformative, says Maynard Schaus, the university’s associate provost who is a biology professor. “It links what we’re doing in classes with the outside environment,” he says, with labs that allow for high levels of experimentation.

Other projects
The building is one example of major upgrades to campus infrastructure outlined in a 10-year master plan.

Ground has been broken for the 23,200-square-foot Susan S. Goode Fine and Performing Arts Center, which is scheduled to open next year. It will feature a $154,000 Steinway concert grand piano in a 300-seat theater.

Across Wesleyan Drive, on a 12.8-acre tract of university property, VWU plans to break ground this summer on a 248-unit residential complex in partnership with a private developer. The complex will house some upper-level students in addition to faculty and staff from area schools.

“Right now, with the exception of the founding of the institution in the 1960s, we’re going through the most aggressive construction period in the history of the institution,” Miller says.

He plans to grow the university’s enrollment also. VWU currently has about 1,500 students. Miller would like to see the headcount climb to 1,700 students in about five years. The online program, which started modestly with 62 students, is expected to increase to 300-500 students through increased offerings during that five-year period.

“For a school like us, it’s supplemental,” Miller says of the online program. “We’re never going to abandon our core mission as a university of the liberal arts and sciences. What it does is open up new markets and opportunities for nontraditional learners.”

The MBA program also is taught entirely online, but the master’s in art education is offered exclusively in the classroom, “what we call seat time,” Miller says.

VWU’s Frank Blocker Youth Center is a laboratory for teacher education as well as a collaboration with the YMCA’s summer camp program and Tidewater Collegiate Academy, which serves homeschool families.

Scholarship program
Miller also plans to expand the number of students admitted to the Batten Honors College by 40 a year to a total of 160 over four years. For this year’s class, the program provided full-tuition scholarships to 20 students and two-thirds scholarships for another 20.

Miller is sensitive to the school’s tuition costs, which have risen about 3 percent a year during the past 15 years. The university has announced it will not increase tuition for the next academic year. “When a student leaves here, I asked them why, and cost has become the single-biggest reason why a student doesn’t continue,” he says.  

With the help of a donor, VWU held a program last summer that let students “who might be on the margin” work off a portion of their bill.

For the spring semester, the university also brought two students from storm-ravaged Puerto Rico to study at VWU, a move that “we saw as part of our mission as a United Methodist institution,” Miller says.

Steven Emmanuel, a philosophy professor, has witnessed the school’s trajectory. He arrived in 1992 at the same time as Miller’s predecessor, William T. Greer, who initiated overdue construction projects and inspired more from the faculty.

Now Miller “has really ramped it up,” says Emmanuel, who recently received a 2018 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. “I don’t think stagnation is an option for anybody in the kind of environment we’re in,” he says. “It’s very competitive.”

The changes were necessary for VWU to flourish and make “it possible for us to continue to invest in keeping our strong, core liberal arts focus,” the professor says. That includes student access to faculty in ways that are unlikely at larger institutions. “Even though we’ve moved to university status, we’re still a small school,” Emmanuel says.