U.Va. Wise helps founders build community, confidence

Donna Price Henry, chancellor of the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, says she’s often heard her institution described as one of the state’s hidden gems. But she’s not thrilled with that image.

“I really don’t like the fact that we’re hidden,” she says of the university in the remote mountain reaches of Southwest Virginia. “A lot of the work that we’ve tried to do is to make sure that more people know about us.”

After a decline in enrollment starting in 2020, U.Va. Wise has stabilized its student count, says Henry. About 350 freshmen arrived this fall. An additional 65 students waitlisted at the U.Va. College of Arts and Sciences are also temporarily attending U.Va. Wise as part of the Year in Wise program, an initiative that allows students to start their classes at Wise before transferring to Charlottesville.

The growing underclass enrollment means space in U.Va. Wise dorms are filling up. Henry and other university officials say that means they must consider ways to develop new student housing, possibly through public-private partnerships. There’s hope that it could also help boost the town’s economy and create a livelier community.

In recent years, U.Va. Wise has also focused on expanding academic programs for in-demand industries and developing a stronger entrepreneurial culture on campus.

Supporting startups is one way to “help the region find its footing after the loss of the coal industry,” she says. “While we’re still mining coal, it’s not at the level that it was. We understand that we need to diversify the industry in the region and the workforce, and so we want to support that.”

Last fall, U.Va. Wise received its largest single gift, $11.2 million, from The Bill Gatton Foundation. The money helped cap a $100 million milestone for a fundraising campaign that began quietly in 2013, culminating with additional support from U.Va.’s Bicentennial Scholars Fund last year.

While the money will help support academic scholarships, athletic facility renovations and other capital improvements for years to come, university leaders are also optimistic about recent grassroots efforts to reshape Southwest Virginia’s regional economy.

“We need the next big ideas [and] big companies to be started here if we really want to capitalize on the wealth generation that comes with that,” says Blake Salyer, the university’s ecosystem and innovation manager. “I’m biased, of course, but I’m going to always say startups are the best economic development strategy you can have.”

Opening doors

The university hired Salyer, an alumnus who earned a business administration degree in 2015, to oversee the Hatch Accelerator and its new CO.STARTERS Core program.

As a student, Salyer proved his mettle by starting a mobile phone repair company specializing in hard-to-fix Apple products. “I took entrepreneurship courses, but we didn’t have as robust of an entrepreneurship program then,” he says. “I’m really glad to say that it’s grown tremendously.”

GO Virginia, the state economic development program, has financially supported five program cohorts at U.Va. Wise. About a dozen participants in each group meet in a mix of in-person and online sessions over a 10-week period. At the end, the founders compete in a pitch night with money on the line for the top three finishers.

Stephanie Strouth, founder of Anchoring Hope Counseling, won the $2,500 grand prize last summer but also attracted more capital the same night.

In her presentation, Strouth described how she planned to use the potential earnings to expand her offices in Wise. She says it was needed after serving more than 1,000 clients and growing to two additional locations in Abingdon and Pennington Gap since launching in 2020.

Strouth, a native of Coeburn, a nearby coal town, earned an undergraduate degree in accounting at U.Va. Wise. In her third year, however, she felt called to a career in mental health counseling. After growing her practice for a few years, Strouth signed up for the CO.STARTERS program.

Strouth says she’s learned some new things through the program but also was reassured that her business instincts are sound. “You’re getting direct feedback from people who could potentially be your customers or clients,” she says. “It’s great to have that.”

The program has also opened doors.

“What I learned from these competitions, when you’re pitching these ideas, you never know who is going to be in that room listening,” Strouth says. “It was wild. At the end of the pitch battle, before I even knew that I won, I was approached by someone in the crowd that said, ‘Hey, we want to fund your office expansion.’”

Her company netted an additional $7,500 at the event. “At first, I didn’t want to believe it, because it was, you know, we’re just talking,” she says. “Then you get excited the moment you have the check in hand and you’re going to the bank.”

Strouth says she’s thinking about using the pitch competition prize money to certify another employee for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, a specialized treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Strouth and another certified clinician, she says, already have a full caseload, with additional patient referrals waiting.

Business as family affair

Caitie Cox, a participant in the first CO.STARTERS cohort at U.Va. Wise, operates Maple Tree Book Shop + Coffee House in Gate City.

Cox and her husband, both William & Mary alums, lived in Colorado and Maryland before returning to the region in 2020 to be closer to their families. “We moved right next door to my parents, and this business has been a family operation,” Cox says. “My dad and mom and I are all here at some point almost every day.”

Her father, a retired medical doctor, encouraged her to think deeply about her next career move as they settled back into the community. Cox chose to open a used bookstore. In its early stages two years later, Maple Tree started with pop-up events at town festivals, selling books acquired from charity sales and the family’s own shelves.

“We got a really good response,” Cox says. “And from there, we spent several months trying to find a place that would be a good fit for us here in town.” She dreamed that the store would open on Jackson Street, to help revitalize the main corridor of their town along the Daniel Boone Trail.

Trying to start the business while participating in the U.Va. Wise startups program, she was able to apply lessons she learned about pivoting after a deal fell apart for a storefront.

“We started selling books online. That had not been our idea,” she says. “That came about through some of the discussions in the cohort, suggesting putting stuff online to sell before we actually had a physical store.”

Web sales and a few interim pop-up events bought time for Cox to eventually open her bookstore in a space formerly occupied by a bakery cafe, which allowed her dad to be involved behind the espresso machine. Cox also put her past experience working for a cake decorating company to work.

Cox’s two daughters are also fixtures at the store.

“My fourth grader loves to read. She’ll come into the shop after school, grab a book and plop down on one of the chairs and read until it’s time to go home,” she says. “Now my younger daughter, she’s just in second grade, she would much prefer to be in the kitchen with me. When she’s here, she’s usually my little shadow.”

As fun as it may sound, running a business is no cakewalk, though.

“It’s not always Hallmarkesque,” she says. However, amid the challenges of kitchen upkeep and managing inventory, she says, the family strives to make Maple Tree a cozy community hub.

In addition to storytelling hours, Christmas cookie classes and other cafe events, the bookstore also has “a kids’ room, with toys and puzzles and coloring sheets,” Cox says. “I never want families to feel like they have to buy something. I’d want them to feel like they can come and just be.”

Got game?

Wise has also attracted out-of-state talent who have adopted the community as their home.

Raised in Indiana, Molly Land fell in love with basketball watching Reggie Miller and the Pacers play their archrivals, the New York Knicks. She modeled her own game after the all-star shooting guard, and her parents told her she could be an even better athlete than her two brothers.

After playing for Shepherd University and helping lead the women’s basketball team at U.Va. Wise as an assistant coach for several years, Land started All My Friends Are Hoopers, a lifestyle and apparel brand that launched in 2023 along with a newsletter covering the WNBA.

In two years, she’s gained 6,000 subscribers and seen professional ballers wear her brand as they walk through arena hallways in runway-ready “tunnel fits.”

“We were in four WNBA locker rooms this summer. It’s the coolest,” Land says. “The kid in me, who went to the first ever Indiana Fever game, making clothes that WNBA players and coaches want to wear, I’m having the time of my life.”

In addition to growing up with sports, Land obtained a youthful appreciation for reading, writing and art. “My dad was super creative, like he taught me how to play the guitar at a young age,” she says. “I learned early that I love the ability to express myself through making anything.”

In college, she took communications and marketing classes. She saw how her knack for doodling translated into a natural inclination for making things on a computer. “You know how they say there are two wolves that live inside you? One is an Adobe nerd, and the other is a basketball nerd,” she says.

Despite having launched a previous company, selling athletic weighted vests and apparel under the brand name Backbone Supply Co., Land says she never felt so confident in her business ambitions. She signed up for the CO.STARTERS program after conferring with Salyer at The Nest, an off-campus office space designed to foster new business ventures.

She wanted to learn more about how she could connect her student athletes to more university programs outside of basketball, but the meeting also sparked her own entrepreneurial curiosity. Participating in the CO.STARTERS program, she felt her peers pulling her out of her shell. She started voicing her ideas out loud.

“I did not want to try to just do silly stuff and go viral. I wanted to really have a creative, artistic storytelling brand about women’s basketball,” she continued. “I felt like I could actually start telling that story, and maybe it could be something bigger than just a couple of T-shirts.”

Salyer says Land’s story demonstrates one of the main lessons for his students.

“If you love living here, you love being here, that’s not going to limit you from the potential to launch a really creative or innovative company,” he says. “The more we can push that message home, the better. And she’s a really good example of that.”

At a glance

Founded
Founded in 1954 under the umbrella of the University of Virginia as Clinch Valley College, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise (U.Va. Wise) was established to serve students living in Southwest Virginia. The public liberal arts college was started on a farm with two sandstone buildings and operated as a two-year college throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. The college began offering four-year degrees in 1966 and was officially renamed the University of Virginia’s College at Wise in 1999. Today, the campus encompasses 396 acres amid the scenic Appalachian Mountains, with more than 30 main buildings serving more than 2,300 students, just 60 minutes from the Tri-Cities of Tennessee and Virginia.

Enrollment*
Total: 2,130
Graduate: 70

Student profile*
Male-to-female enrollment ratio: 1:1.6
In-state students: 85%
Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) students: 9%
Out-of-state students: 4% (outside ARC)
International students: 47 students from 24 countries

Academic programs*
U.Va. Wise has 34 majors and 41 minors, including a bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) degree, an online business administration degree and a Master of Education (M.Ed.) degree in three concentrations. Fields of study include business and economics, visual and performing arts, natural sciences, communications, mathematics and computer science, social sciences, language and literature, history and philosophy, nursing, and education.

Faculty and staff*
U.Va. Wise has more than 100 full-time and 30 part-time faculty. Students and faculty are supported by 230 full-time and 30 part-time staff members.

Tuition, fees, housing and dining*
Virginia resident: $11,780 per year
Out-of-state resident: $28,010 per year
ARC/TAG** resident: $12,508 per year
Housing: $8,535 per year
Meal plans: $5,853 per year (commuter meal plans are also available)

*Fall 2025 numbers
**Students who live in Kentucky, Tennessee or the Appalachian Regional Commission’s service area