Since its approval by Danville voters in November 2020, plans for a casino in the city have shifted.
In August 2022, Caesars Entertainment Inc. announced a partnership with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI). Together, they upped the size and scope of Caesars Virginia, increasing their investment from $400 million to $650 million.
They’re also planning to open a temporary casino at the former Dan River Inc. Schoolfield mill site this summer, according to a third-quarter earnings call by Caesars President and Chief Operating Officer Anthony Carano. Company officials declined to share details, but Danville City Manager Ken Larking confirmed plans.
“Based on conversations that I’ve had with the Caesars team … they’re planning … a temporary casino, but they are waiting for the lottery to give approval for the license,” Larking says, adding that it could open in July. Caesars broke ground in August 2022 on the permanent casino, which is slated for a 2024 opening adjacent to the temporary casino site.
Cory Blankenship, EBCI’s secretary of the treasury, says all necessary materials for the temporary casino have been submitted to the Virginia Lottery Board. As of November 2022, the board had not scheduled action.
As for the permanent resort casino, Caesars appears bullish on its success, now building 500 hotel rooms, up from its originally proposed 300 rooms. The hotel will also feature a spa, a pool, bars, a 2,500-person entertainment venue and 40,000 square feet of meeting and convention space. The casino will have at least 1,300 slots, 85 live game tables, 24 electronic table games, a poker room and sportsbook.
Part of the increased $250 million investment is due to cost escalation of construction materials, Blankenship says, but he adds that investors also increased the project’s scale because of the strength of the market.
“Following COVID-19 pandemic closures, we found that regional gaming markets across the country recovered more quickly than anticipated,” Blankenship explains. “We are confident that market conditions — regional population, consumer demographics, proximity to other gaming markets and other variables — are favorable to support an expanded scope to the Danville project.”
Ordinarily, Blankenship says, the EBCI wouldn’t have supported opening a temporary casino. With this project, though, he believes it’s the right move. “The temporary facility is really going to help us buy down some of that cost escalation,” he says.
In the late 1990s, Jennifer E. Clift was working as a secretary when her supervisor encouraged her to continue her education. She began taking business classes at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.
“I wasn’t in a settled place,” she says. “I was not a traditional student. I was working full time, plus pretty much going to school full time. I was a young mother. For a while, I was arriving at 8 a.m. for classes, then I went to work, then I went back to school in the evening.”
UMW’s professors, she says, were very understanding of her needs and “so encouraging and supporting. They were not going to let me give up.”
These days, Clift, who graduated from UMW in 2000 with a business administration degree, is senior scientific technical manager and chief technology officer for the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division in King George County. She holds a master’s degree in engineering systems from the Naval Postgraduate School and is pursuing a doctorate in engineering at George Washington University.
Nehemia Abel, who earned a degree in marketing from UMW’s College of Business in 2020, is pursuing a career at the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Photo courtesy University of Mary Washington
In the years since Clift graduated, the university’s business education program has advanced as well. Though Mary Washington has been offering business studies for the last 100 years, its College of Business was not established until 2010.
“It’s a startup and a growth story in and of itself,” says Brian Baker, executive director of the business college’s Center for Economic Development (CED), which focuses on topics such as entrepreneurship, small business development and innovation and competitiveness.
UMW’s College of Business, he says, grew out of “a vision for discovering how the university could better engage with the broader community.”
Founded in 1908 as a normal school, or an institution for training teachers, the University of Mary Washington has a long history of teaching business and related subjects.
In 1919, at the direction of a state education board, the Fredericksburg campus began specializing in teaching “commercial” subjects. It graduated its first business teacher in 1924, the same year that commercial courses were offered in the evening to “interested townspeople.”
Over the next century, business education at the university evolved to meet the changing needs of both students and the community, school officials say.
Provost Tim O’Donnell says one reason the College of Business was established “was because our alums told us we weren’t doing enough to prepare them. Work is different now, more competitive.”
Students “need to learn to talk in the language of employers. They need to be real-world problem solvers,” says O’Donnell, who became UMW’s permanent provost in June 2022.
He praises the strong relationships that the College of Business has built with the local business community through the CED and the college’s Center for Business Research (CBR), which researches topics including issues impacting the Fredericksburg region’s economy.
“Faculty often are doing research projects in cooperation with Fredericksburg Regional Alliance,” O’Donnell says. For example, a CBR project for the alliance and the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce assessed the growth and decline of jobs across industry sectors in the region over a 10-year period.
The CBR, which is headed up by David Henderson, an associate professor of accounting, also has conducted a study on the demographics of commuters living in the Fredericksburg region and an analysis of the costs imposed on commuters by area traffic congestion on Interstate 95.
Entrepreneurial perspective
UMW’s College of Business is “a startup and a growth story in and of itself,” says Brian Baker, executive director of the college’s Center for Economic Development. Photo by Caroline Martin
CED programs include the EagleWorks Business Incubation Center and StartUpUMW, an entrepreneurial education program.
“Everything we have added has made sense from an entrepreneurial perspective,” says Baker, the CED’s executive director.
EagleWorks offers business development services to local startups and early-stage companies. Entrepreneurs have access to professional networks, office facilities, consulting services, peer engagement opportunities and other business resources.
StartUpUMW is designed to teach students how to start and run a business. Students have access to research databases, business consultants and office space to grow their own business ideas. They’re given tools to write their business plan and guidance from the CED team. Students can receive an experiential learning credit or internship experience for participating.
UMW’s College of Business has helped place 776 interns into the community workforce over the last five years, with 223 of those interns coming directly from the CED through initiatives like StartUpUMW.
“Those interns are doing some pretty heavy lifting in the areas of accounting, marketing, sports management, strategic planning and business analytics,” Bakersays. For example, several years ago, Baker and a team of students partnered with the Stafford Regional Airport to produce a written strategic marketing plan. The process included hands-on work with the Stafford Regional Airport Authority.
Taking part in StartUpUMW, “students will understand the process of preparing an idea to go to market. They will be able to do it forever. It’s like riding a bike, but it’s a tough bike to ride,” Baker says.
The CED also sponsors Eagle Innovation, a business pitch competition open to all UMW and Germanna Community College students. Three winning teams receive seed capital for their company or startup, Baker says. The grand prize is $2,000.
Through the various College of Business programs, “students benefit, faculty, businesses, the community — everybody benefits in some way. They synthesize together well,” Baker says.
The CED is also home to the U.S. Small Administration’s regional Small Business Development Center (SBDC), which serves the greater Fredericksburg area, the Northern Neck and the Middle Peninsula. This SBDC served 2,436 business clients over the past five years and “4,587 jobs have been created and retained” by those clients, says Baker, who started at UMW in 2002 as executive director of the SBDC’s forerunner. The center has also provided management education to 2,467 entrepreneurs in the region.
Recognizing that a large part of the business conducted in the Fredericksburg area is driven by federal contracting, the SBDC hosts one-on-one personalized government contracting assistance consultations with advisers from the Virginia Department of Business Assistance and the Central Virginia Procurement Technical Assistance Center.
The university has a strong partnership with one of the biggest employers in the area, the Naval Surface Warfare Center, notes O’Donnell. “We were tasked about a dozen years ago to build an education center for on-base individuals,” he says. Today, UMW’s Dahlgren Campus delivers science- and engineering-focused postgraduate courses taught locally and via distance learning from Virginia’s state universities. The campus hosts a broad spectrum of training events for the Navy, local government and private industry.
Success stories
Nehemia Abel, who graduated from UMW’s College of Business in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, says students benefit from the college’s emphasis on internships and hands-on projects. During his senior year, Abel collaborated with a team of classmates to assist an environmental and education research center with communications, marketing, business development and operations services.
Now, Abel is a U.S. Agency for International Development Payne International Development Fellow and is pursuing a master’s degree at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Also a policy and advocacy fellow for the International Rescue Committee, Abel plans to work at USAID when he graduates from Georgetown in May.
Abel says he continues to benefit from lessons he learned about critical thinking and project management from UMW’s College of Business. He’s especially glad that the business college placed an emphasis on writing, noting that it’s a skill that comes in handy for the many policy memos, reports and case studies he produces.
As a UMW undergraduate, Abel, a Burundian refugee born in Tanzania, was involved with UMW’s James Farmer Multicultural Center, which promotes awareness and knowledge of diversity issues. He also co-founded an organization to assist Burundian refugees in the Fredericksburg region pursuing higher education and preparing for the workplace. The university honored him with its 2019-20 Citizenship Award for Diversity Leadership. Since graduation, he has remained involved in promoting diversity and mentoring students at UMW. “When I go back,” he says, “I try to make sure those students are taken care of and have a voice.”
UMW’s business teachings also made a difference in Jennifer Clift’s career at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, she says.
“I work in a science and engineering organization, where there’s a lot of technical work. I’m unique at Dahlgren. A lot of scientists and engineers don’t have a business background,” she says. “I got a strong foundation with the business lessons at Mary Washington. The path that I took has been very beneficial. It’s allowed me to look at things differently.”
In particular, Clift recalls her senior capstone program. Students were tasked with profiling a business, and she chose Southwest Airlines Co.“I interviewed the businessmen and women there about what made their business successful. It was very hands-on,” she recalls. “Getting students out of the classroom is extremely beneficial. … I remember a lot of the things I learned 20 years ago.”
Last October, Clift was inducted into the UMW College of Business Hall of Fame. “An innovator and technology expert,” the college said in recognizing Clift, “she drives advancement of [Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division’s] technical capabilities through investments, partnerships and education, including academic partnering.”
In helping the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division forge partnerships with UMW, Clift, not surprisingly, says, “I started at the College of Business,” but she’s also helped established partnerships with UMW’s College of Education and College of Arts and Sciences. Last October, the NSWCDD sponsored its second robotics competition for high school students, in partnership with the university.
“It’s a well-integrated university,” says Clift, who also stays involved with UMW through efforts such as sharing her career experiences with women business students. “It’s not a stovepiped organization. We bring in everybody’s perspective.”
University of Mary Washington At a Glance
Founded
Established by the state government in 1908 as an all-women’s school to train teachers, Mary Washington, which was named after the mother of the nation’s first president, is a public liberal arts university. From 1944 to 1972, it functioned as the women’s college of the University of Virginia, becoming co-ed in the early 1970s and reorganizing as an independent college, later becoming a university in 2004. UMW’s College of Business was founded in 2010.
Campuses
UMW’s 176-acre Fredericksburg flagship campus is set in a mostly residential, historic part of the city that was the site of the 1862 Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg. The self-contained, brick-lined campus is within walking distance of downtown Fredericksburg and the Rappahannock River. In recent years, the university has expanded to campuses in Stafford County, which includes graduate-level and adult degree programs, and Dahlgren, which offers continuing education and professional development courses for the region’s engineers, scientists and administrative professionals.
Enrollment1
Undergraduate: 3,493
Graduate: 264
Virginia residents: 90%
International students: 2.4%
Racially or ethnically diverse students: 29%
Employees
UMW has nearly 850 workers, including approximately 650 full-time faculty and academic professionals.
Election years are not the time to make waves in Virginia’s legislature, says Greg Habeeb, a former Roanoke delegate who now advises clients pursuing legislation in the General Assembly.
Big changes — the kind the state saw during the Democrats’ two years of full legislative control in 2020 and 2021 — are expected to be extremely unlikely amid the split, election-year legislature of 2023. “It’ll cause some people to be excessively bold,” but that’s not the natural state of things, says Habeeb, who leads Gentry Locke Attorneys’ government and regulatory affairs team in Richmond. “It’s hard to legislate on the off-off year.”
Odd-year sessions are automatically shorter than even-year sessions, when the state must pass budgets. The Virginia Constitution requires a session of 30 days, traditionally extended to 45 days in odd years, so there’s less opportunity to pass as many bills as with the 60-day session required in even years.Also, this fall, all 140 seats in the House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate are up for election, and redrawn districts mean 61 incumbents suddenly found themselves sharing districts with other incumbents, setting up a crowded primary field for this spring. (See related story.)
Undoubtedly, lawmakers in Richmond this session will pass some legislation — likely in the areas of renewable energy, education, public safety, workforce development and industrial site development. But “you [can] take the social issues off the table,” including gun control and abortion, Habeeb says. “There’s little to no room for compromise on those.”
That said, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin‘s administration is supporting a bill to seek out public school library books with graphic sexual content so that parents can prohibit their children from having access to those materials. Other social-issue legislation being introduced in the House this session includes a measure to make vaccinations optional for public school students. And though it’s almost certain to not make it to the state Senate floor, House Bill 1395 from Del. Marie March seeks to ban all abortions in the wake of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling repealing Roe v. Wade.
At least some bills this session are likely to gain traction and some bipartisan support, however.
For instance, there may be some movement toward filling two vacancies in the Virginia State Corporation Commission, the three-judge panel that governs utilities, state-chartered financial institutions, securities, insurance, retail franchising and the Virginia Health Benefit Exchange. In recent years, confirmations have been tied up in partisan strife, and with Judge Judith Williams Jagdmann’s resignation at the end of 2022, only Judge Jehmal T. Hudson remains on the bench.
“With two seats [open], there’s an obvious compromise,” Habeeb says. “The House fills one; the Senate fills one,” although there’s no guarantee that legislators will do that, he adds.
Other areas ripe for compromise include some Youngkin initiatives, such as measures to increase affordable, workforce-priced housing as well as a new agency focused on creating a “one-stop shop” for workforce development efforts.
A perennial subject
Extra money for site development will depend on the budget surplus, says Del. Luke Torian, D-Prince William. Courtesy photo
The Youngkin administration has proposed creating a state Department of Workforce Development and Advancement to take over 13 programs from eight state agencies, representing most of Virginia’s $485 million workforce efforts. His reorganization plan would move some responsibilities away from the Virginia Employment Commission and the Virginia Community College System.
According to the governor, the state’s workforce development initiatives are spread across 12 agencies, 20 other organizations and 800 programs. Meanwhile, Youngkin says, there are about 300,000 jobs unfilled statewide, and the state’s labor force participation rate was at 63.6% in October 2022, down from 66.4% before the COVID-19 pandemic.
During a December 2022 panel discussion sponsored by the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Virginia Labor Secretary Bryan Slater called the current state of workforce development in the commonwealth “fragmented [and] siloed.” Virginia needs a “centralized hub … to drive policy, programs data and grants,” he added, and also a stronger focus on how many jobs are being filled through programs and how long people stay in those jobs.
It’s hardly a new idea. James W. “Jim” Dyke Jr., senior advisor for McGuireWoods Consulting LLC and former state secretary of education under Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, recalls that when he was tasked with consolidating the state’s workforce training functions in the early 1990s, “I had a full head of hair and Barry DuVal was the young mayor of Newport News.”
Del. Chris Head, R-Roanoke, is particularly excited about the proposed department. “We’ve spent an awful lot of money on workforce development,” he says, but Virginians often are not aware of training programs, due to a lack of marketing and poor interagency communication. Del. Terry Kilgore, the House majority leader, says Virginia’s workforce infrastructure is “duct-taped together,” compared with other states’ more cohesive approaches.
Also, notes University of Mary Washington political science professor Stephen Farnsworth, “one of the areas in which Virginia has not done well is unemployment assistance.” Kilgore says that if the VEC doesn’t have to worry about workforce training, it will be able to focus on more efficiently handling unemployment claims.
In April 2022, the VEC settled a federal lawsuit filed by three legal aid groups that represented Virginia residents who had struggled to obtain benefits during the height of the pandemic shutdown. The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission reported in November 2021 that the VEC had made more than $1.2 billion in incorrect payments during the pandemic.
Dyke hopes the new department could be created “in one fell swoop,” adding that he’s spoken to legislators on both sides of the aisle who support the new department. But Farnsworth says that turf battles could trip up the plan — especially if the community college system loses some authority and resources from the proposal.
While Head says there’s “still a significant amount of discord between Democrats and Republicans in the House of Delegates,” he’s hopeful they will find common ground on the workforce proposal.
Not safe bets
It’s less clear whether Youngkin will find support for some of his other proposals, such as increasing the state’s current budget allocation for helping localities prep industrial sites for megaprojects from $150 million to $500 million, or adding $1 billion in personal and business tax cuts.
“I think every single legislator will agree we need to focus on developing megasites,” Habeeb says, but the governor’s proposed spending increase for site development may face some pushback.
“I’m not sure it’s going to be possible this year,” says Democratic Del. Luke Torian, a member and former chair of the powerful House Appropriations committee, adding it will depend on the amount of budget surplus.
Also, notes Farnsworth, “One of the tensions in Richmond is the governor spending a lot of time on the road. There is always a fear in the legislature that the governor from the other party will be able to launch a national campaign on the backs of [statewide] successes.”
In short, Democrats have political motivation to prevent too many compromises that would make Youngkin appealing to a national audience. In 2022, the governor campaigned for GOP gubernatorial candidates across the nation — trips he said were in exchange for the Republican Governors Association’s support during his campaign. Many political observers, however, say that Youngkin is testing the waters for a potential 2024 presidential campaign.
“Glenn Youngkin‘s aggressive national outreach has made compromise less likely in Richmond,” Farnsworth says. “He hasn’t done all that much to encourage compromise.”
Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, supports building a small nuclear modular reactor in Southwest Virginia. Photo by Earl Neikirk
Youngkin also has also proposed a $10 million investment to create the Virginia Power Innovation Fund, including $5 million to develop a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) in Southwest Virginia. (See related story.)
Nuclear energy is one way to help the state fulfill the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which calls for all energy in the state to be generated from carbon-free sources by 2050. The VCEA was passed in 2020 by the Democratic-controlled legislature.
Although Democrats intended for this goal to be met primarily through innovations in solar and wind energy, including battery storage, Habeeb says other kinds of energy production — including nuclear — are currently needed to meet the 2050 deadline.
Kilgore is bullish about building a reactor in coal country, where it could easily find a home at an abandoned mine site. “A lot of European countries are relying on nuclear energy,” Kilgore says. “I’m all for clean energy — solar and wind — but we’re going to have to invest in gas, coal and SMRs.”
However, some environmental groups and Democratic Del. Richard C. “Rip” Sullivan Jr., the House’s chief patron of the VCEA, have voiced doubt about the viability of a small reactor in Southwest Virginia, which would take at least 10 years to be productive, the governor has acknowledged.
In an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch last year, Sullivan wrote: “It is ironic that [Youngkin] would call renewables risky and expensive while trumpeting small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Solar and wind projects abound, while commercialized SMRs don’t exist anywhere in the world, because we don’t know how to build or operate them in cost-effective, safe and reliable ways.” [Editor’s note: While there are no SMRs in the United States, a Russian floating nuclear power plant uses two SMRs, and a land-based SMR is under construction in China.]
Meanwhile, state politicos say it’s a safe bet that Democratic Sen. Joe Morrissey will be doing everything in his power to gain approval this session for bringing a casino to Petersburg.
In October 2022, Petersburg City Council voted in favor of Maryland-based The Cordish Cos. developing a casino there if the General Assembly would allow it. In December 2022, Cordish Cos. officials said the project would include $1.4 billion in total commercial development.
Three years ago, the Assembly passed legislation allowing casinos to be built in five economically challenged Virginia cities — Bristol, Chesapeake, Danville, Norfolk and Richmond. Voters in the first four localities have approved casinos, which are under development, but Richmond voters narrowly defeated a referendum in November 2021, blocking a proposed $565 million casino resort. The next day, Morrissey, whose district includes Petersburg, began working on getting Petersburg a shot at a casino instead of Richmond. His 2022 bill failed, but he’s refiled it for the 2023 session.
Morrissey, who was elected to the state Senate in 2019, says in an interview with Virginia Business (see related January 2023 Q&A with Morrissey) that the region’s previous state legislators were “asleep at the wheel” when negotiations were held in 2018 to determine which Virginia cities could hold casino referendums — and that he would have fought “tooth and nail” for Petersburg.
The casino bid may receive some bipartisan support because Republican Del. Kim Taylor, who represents Petersburg and part of Chesterfield County, is carrying the House version of Morrissey’s casino bill.
Richmond casino proponents are still actively pursuing a second referendum, even if Petersburg also wins the right to build a casino. But two casinos in the region would mean fewer jobs and less revenue for each locality than just one casino, according to the findings of a JLARC report released late last year. And Cordish Cos. officials have said they are not interested in pursuing a Petersburg casino if one is approved in Richmond.
Another adult recreational issue that may come up during this session is regulating commercial sales of cannabis. Following the legislature’s 2020 decriminalization of marijuana, plans for creating a legal retail market are still up in the air, and loopholes for products like delta-8 gummies may also be addressed this year.
Head doesn’t expect an overall resolution on retail marijuana sales this session, although there could be some new medical marijuana legislation. Some Republicans, himself included, consider it “crazy” that marijuana possession was legalized in the first place, Head says, and are not likely to approve further legislation. Morrissey, however, is hopeful for some regulatory measures, calling them “a fiduciary duty,” while Kilgore expects the state Cannabis Control Authority to make recommendations for the 2024 session.
The list of bills that probably won’t be passed this year is long. Limits on abortion and LGBTQ rights — including restrictions on K-12 transgender students participating in school sports — are bound to hit Senate Democrats’ brick wall.
A bill as seemingly anodyne as adjusting state dentist licensing lost its prospective chief co-sponsor’s support “because it’s an election year,” says Republican Del. Phil Scott.
And even in the wake of high-profile mass shootings in recent months at the University of Virginia and a Chesapeake Walmart store, gun-control measures like Morrissey’s proposed ban on assault weapons are unlikely to pass through the GOP-controlled House.
Dyke says that higher education leaders in Virginia may seek more leverage in barring firearms from their campuses, but Habeeb says even that powerful constituency is unlikely to budge Republicans.
U.Va. and Virginia Tech — two schools strongly impacted by gun violence this century — are “so intertwined with their communities, and you can’t put a fence around the universities,” Habeeb says, adding that even if guns are banned from campuses, students and employees could store weapons off-grounds.
Nevertheless, there is a chance, he adds, that the legislature will find common ground this year “in investing in more law enforcement or more funding for mental health.” Both ideas have the support of Youngkin, who has proposed $230 million to expand the state’s behavioral health system.
When Virginia Commonwealth University closed its buildings in spring 2020, then-student Julien Reininger wasn’t deterred from his entrepreneurial pursuits. In the kitchen of his parents’ Springfield home, Reininger ran a dehydrator for eight hours at a time, creating vegan jerky from canned jackfruit and developing different marinades.
“I’m sure when I started doing it, they were a little bit confused. Like, ‘Why is he dehydrating jackfruit?’ … They’re definitely patient,” he says of his parents.
Earlier that semester, Reininger had joined a startup pre-accelerator program meant to prepare student entrepreneurs to join external accelerator programs like Lighthouse Labs. Run by VCU‘s entrepreneurship center, the da Vinci Center for Innovation, the VCU Pre-X program allows cohorts of about 50 teams and/or solo entrepreneurs to share and critique ideas in small groups and meet with mentors.
A 2021 VCU graduate who received his master’s of product innovation degree from the university in 2022, Reininger received advice specific to his business from the VCU Pre-X program, and learned basics such as how to create prototypes. Mentors pointed out that his product needed to be shelf-stable and that his packaging needed nutrition labels.
“That’s when I started really playing with the recipe, making sure the flavors were still strong and unique, but also the salt levels weren’t through the roof, and sugars were relatively low compared to other jerkies,” Reininger says. “That was something I was introduced to that I never really thought of, but it’s probably one of the most important parts.”
The da Vinci Center is one of multiple entrepreneurship centers housed in Virginia business schools that are aiding students across disciplines to start their own companies or broaden their skillsets, through incubator programs, pitch competitions and other hands-on experiences.
Although some offer for-credit courses, many serve students on an extracurricular basis, providing students real-world experience and teaching in-demand entrepreneurial skills that are useful even to people who don’t want to start their own businesses.
Entrepreneurial thinking is useful across industries, whether or not a student hopes to start their own business, says Graham Henshaw with William & Mary’s Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center. Photo by Mark Rhodes
“We’re not saying … ‘Hey, don’t do physics or psychology. Do entrepreneurship instead!’ We are saying, ‘Do those things. Get that deep expertise in that one sector, but add entrepreneurial thinking as a layer on top of that,’” says Graham Henshaw, executive director of the Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center, part of William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Miller Center, which offers programming like workshops, pitch
competitions and guest speakers, had
439 students across 41 majors access it in some way during the 2021-22 school year.
Natalie Marcotullio, a 2019 William & Mary graduate, competed in multiple pitch competitions through the Miller Center. She’s now head of growth and operations for Navattic, a New York software company founded in 2020 that helps businesses create interactive product demos.
“I think I wouldn’t have been prepared at all for the startup world, honestly, without the entrepreneurship center,” she says. “I think the No. 1 thing I learned was just that it’s OK to try things and fail and experiment.”
Garret Westlake, the da Vinci Center’s executive director, emphasizes that businesses want students with hands-on experience.
“It’s been historically [that] you had an MBA or you had an MFA or you had an engineering degree, and then on the job you had to be taught these other aspects,” he says. “And now you have graduates coming out that … are able to jump right in.”
Getting set
Multiple Virginia centers operating in business schools offer accelerator or incubator programs for aspiring entrepreneurs. For example, James Madison University’s Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship’s Dukes Venture Accelerator is a paid, intensive summer internship open to undergraduate and graduate students as well as alumni who graduated the preceding May. Each student receives $4,000 for the six-week program, and each startup receives up to $10,000 in reimbursable funds for their business needs. Last year, the program hosted 10 startups.
Lucas Warner, a JMU student who was set to graduate in December 2022, joined the program for help marketing his business, Groovy Power Washing.
“We get updates, we learn how to put the business into practice,” Warner says, noting that Gilliam Center Executive Director Suzanne Bergmeister “encouraged us to just get out of the building and just try to make it happen.”
Programs like business incubators for student-led startups “plant the seed of entrepreneurship,” says Suzanne Bergmeister with James Madison University’s Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship. Photo courtesy James Madison University
Malique Middleton, a 2021 JMU biology graduate who’s now enrolled in VCU’s graduate pre-med program, participated in JMU’s incubator, accelerator and seed funding programs when founding his skin care products business, Gewd Botanicals LLC. “I think the most important thing that JMU gave me was … the opportunity to pick people’s minds who are already experts in … various fields” like accounting, he says.
At VCU, Reininger joined the center’s Shift Retail Lab to gather feedback on his prototypes’ branding and flavors. Students can sell products in events like pop-up holiday markets, but for the most part, the lab is for gathering information in four-week cohorts, which began in January 2022. Through taste testing conducted in the lab, Reininger learned that not everybody liked his spicy flavors and added a savory flavor, miso ginger.
In Charlottesville, the University of Virginia‘s i.Lab Incubator, run by the Darden School of Business’ Batten Institute, supports up to 25 startups and runs each March to December.
From March to May, students work with U.Va. School of Law students to incorporate their ventures and get documents like service agreements in order. During i.Lab’s full-time summer phase, students have one-on-one check-ins with mentors and meet with potential customers. Also during the summer portion, student teams receive grants as long as their team has a minimum viable product. In 2022, teams each received $5,500 at the beginning of June and another $5,500 at the end of the summer program.
Once the summer phase concludes, students participate in Demo Day, presenting their summer work and asking audience members to take actions such as signing up for their newsletters or visiting their websites.
“What they’re learning is how to solicit and understand feedback and apply it … to their product, service and company at large,” says Jason Brewster, Darden’s director of venture programs.
i.Lab participants can also apply to make a presentation to the Kathryne Carr Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence selection committee, which awards a $25,000 prize to “the entrepreneur(s) that best embody magnetic and selfless leadership and whose venture demonstrates clear potential for commercial success.”
Starting up
Virginia Tech’s Apex Center for Entrepreneurs in Blacksburg does away with the cohort model, however, allowing students to join an accelerator-style program whenever they need help. Student startup teams can meet with Executive Director Derick Maggard and Sean Collins, managing director of the Startup Hokies program, for assistance with testing concepts, assessing risk and connecting with alumni.
Tim Pote, who received a doctorate from Tech in 2021, is co-founder and CEO of Element Exo Inc., formerly Maroon Assistive Technologies Inc., which manufactures exoskeletons to protect workers’ backs when they lift heavy objects. Collins and Maggard helped connect his team to Tech’s network, Pote says. “We actually got our first customer through the Apex Center. It was an alumni connection” to a pallet manufacturer in St. Louis, Pote says.
About 40 or 50 company founders consult the center each school year for help with their startup companies, and about 1,000 students will use Apex Center services, like its coworking space, Collins says. Students from 112 majors have accounts on the center’s coworking space software system.
JMU’s Gilliam Center’s Madison Inc., an academic-year incubator for students at any stage of starting businesses, has a similar rolling admissions setup. Students meet monthly with entrepreneurship faculty fellows — one from each JMU college — and with their cohorts to learn techniques for risk reduction and customer discovery. In November 2022, Madison Inc. had 30 participating students, 15 of whom had majors outside the business school.
“Throughout the program, regardless of where they are in their entrepreneurial journey, we hope to plant the seeds of entrepreneurship, give them tools and resources that they can use either in this venture or the next one or the next one,” says Bergmeister.
Entrepreneurship centers at Virginia business schools also provide student entrepreneurs with opportunities to practice their investor pitches, often with the potential to secure funding.
“When you’re doing pitch competitions, and when you’re introducing your content to people, having a good story is super important,” Reininger says. VCU’s da Vinci Center, he says, helped him develop a fluid story he could tell over and over again.
The VCU center’s pre-accelerator program also culminates in a Demo Day, with students pitching to judges from the venture capital world for seed funding. Reininger, who joined the 2021 cohort rather than finishing virtually in 2020, pitched in May 2021 and won $5,000, which he largely used to incorporate his Richmond-based business and trademark its name, Jacked! Jackfruit Jerky.
Ready to run
U.Va.’s three-phase E-Cup pitch competition runs from late January to May, although students can apply for any phase and don’t have to complete them all. In the first phase, 40 student teams compete for $1,000 grants that only 20 of the teams will win. During the discovery phase, 10 teams compete for $5,000 each, and in the launch phase, five teams present to judges without an audience.
Every other Friday, William & Mary’s Miller Center hosts Rocket Pitches, with students delivering two-minute presentations. The winner receives a Chick-fil-A gift card and is invited to an end-of-semester pitch competition that has a roughly $1,500 award.
Tech’s Apex Center holds KickStart VT events monthly. Student entrepreneurs apply to present to an alumni panel, and accepted applicants are guaranteed a minimum of $250.
Though not as public as some pitch competitions, JMU students can pitch to the Gilliam Center’s Bluestone Seed Fund, a donor-supported fund with two investment cycles per school year. Students or alumni who graduated less than five years ago pitch to the fund’s investment committee, seeking $5,000 in return for 5% equity in their companies. So far, donors have committed $240,000 to the fund, which launched during the 2021-22 school year. The committee has invested in eight companies, with one receiving $10,000.
But seeking seed funding also sometimes requires going outside the university structure. To launch his company, for example, Reininger ran a Kickstarter campaign that ended in September 2022. With the $8,686 he raised, Reininger moved his jerky-making enterprise into Hatch Kitchen, a commercial kitchen in Richmond’s Manchester neighborhood.
In November 2022, he launched Jacked!’s website and secured deals to sell his products through three Richmond retailers: Northside Gourmet Market, Good Foods Grocery and Ellwood Thompson’s Local Market.
Reininger credits the da Vinci Center with helping him get his business off the ground and running: “I would say the da Vinci Center has played a role in every part of the development of Jacked!”
Christie Bibbs already works in the tech industry as a systems engineer, but she wanted to add cloud computing tools to her abilities.
Through the Black Women in Tech Facebook group, Bibbs learned about Amazon Web Services Inc.’s new Arlington-based Skills Center and signed up for a three-part cloud practitioner course. During the free, in-person classes, Bibbs learned the fundamentals of cloud computing, including more about AWS products and services, as well as compliance with data and security controls. This month, she plans to take an exam to become an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, taking the first step toward her goal of becoming a cloud solutions architect.
“Our clients need various solutions, depending on what they’re trying to do,” says Bibbs, who works in Columbia, Maryland, for defense contractor TransTechSol LLC. “Taking these classes will help me advise them a little bit better.”
Opened in October 2022 near parent company Amazon.com Inc.’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters, the 10,000-square-foot AWS Skills Center includes classrooms and interactive exhibits that demonstrate cloud computing in real time, including a miniature smart home. The Arlington location is the second AWS Skills Center; its first opened in Seattle in November 2021. Both offer free, in-person foundational courses on cloud computing and are a piece of Amazon’s larger goal to provide free digital skills training to more than 29 million people worldwide by 2025.
Russ Cowley, global head of AWS Skills Centers, said the Seattle location has trained “thousands” of people. The centers are meant as launchpads for tech careers, and AWS is targeting “anyone who is new to the cloud,” including underrepresented communities and people seeking to change industries, Cowley says.
Additional courses on foundational topics in cloud computing are planned, and the center will also work with employers and local organizations for networking and career placement events. AWS is already working with Consult Lemonade, a nonprofit that works to connect underrepresented communities in the Washington, D.C., region with career opportunities. AWS partnered with the group to offer a hybrid cloud computing course that started in December 2022.
Bibb says she prefers face-to-face learning and the opportunity to meet other professionals.
“I might even have a nice little study group forming of people who, like me, are trying to learn so that we can move forward in our careers,” she says.
1. L to R: Hampton Roads Chamber President and CEO Bryan Stephens; Petty Officer 1st Class Eddie B. Carroll III, who works as a hospital corpsman at the Navy Medicine Training Support Center; Portsmouth Mayor Shannon Glover; and Ron Lewis, Hampton Roads Chamber. Carroll received the chamber’s 2022 Military Citizen of the Year award on Nov. 17, 2022. Photo courtesy Hampton Roads Chamber 2. Jay Youmans judges wines during The Omni Homestead Resort’s first Epicurean Classic & Norton Cup Challenge, held in early November 2022. Photo courtesy The Omni Homestead Resort. 3. L to R: J&A Racing Event Director Bob Schniedwind; J&A Racing co-owners Jerry and Amy Frostick; Caelum, age 14; Joan Steele, executive director of Toby’s Dream Foundation; Wayne Foshay, Chartway Promise Foundation’s board chair; Chartway Credit Union President and CEO Brian Schools; Norfolk Tides mascot Rip Tide; Chartway Promise Foundation President Christine Wilson; and Graham Firoved of the Baltimore Orioles at the Chartway Norfolk Harbor Race Weekend in mid-November, during which Chartway Promise Foundation granted Caelum’s wish for a baseball-themed shopping spree. Photo by Joemmel Tendilla. 4. David Kamer (L) with Kaufman & Canoles PC received the Hampton Roads Community Foundation’s 2022 Barron F. Black Community Builder Award on Dec. 7, 2022, presented by the foundation’s chair, Sharon S. Goodwyn, and the foundation’s president and CEO, Deborah M. DiCroce (R). Photo courtesy Hampton Roads Community Foundation. 5. Children watch a skid-steer loader dump Lego bricks during the Lego Discovery Center groundbreaking at Springfield Town Center. Photo courtesy PREIT Services LLC – Springfield Town Center.
As recently as 30 years ago, few people would have imagined that Fairfax County would grow to contain one of the most robust technology ecosystems in the nation, with thousands of tech-fueled firms, fed with workers trained by some of the state’s top universities.
Bruce Caswell, president and CEO of McLean-based federal tech contractor Maximus Inc., has been in Fairfax County for the past three decades. But he recalls a time when Fairfax — now home to 8,700 technology firms — didn’t compare to other tech epicenters in the U.S.
“There was a period where we had a bit of an inferiority complex because we would look at other regions like Silicon Valley or even the Route 128 corridor in Massachusetts and be envious of the way that they were building their technology ecosystems,” he says. “But I think we’re well past that at this point. If anything, we’re poised to become, if not the leading, already one of the very leading technology ecosystems in the country.”
How did Fairfax get there? Jennifer Taylor, president and CEO of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, says there’s been three major waves of tech innovation in the region since the 1990s: the emergence of the internet, the late 1990s dot-com bubble and the explosive regional growth of government contracting during the 2000s.
“Because Virginia is very business-friendly and because the federal government is the largest purchaser of tech products and services, it’s attracting the key pieces of the tech ecosystem,” she says. “Over 30 years, the area has just really flourished. All you have to do is take a look at the skyline and our infrastructure to see the growth.”
While government contracting has been a boon for the region, Fairfax County has also grown to attract commercial technology companies, Taylor adds. In the county alone, there are 44,000 open jobs, about 30% of which are in the tech industry, according to the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA).
Northern Virginia’s business-friendly atmosphere and federal contracting ecosystem attract tech companies, says Northern Virginia Technology Council President and CEO Jennifer Taylor. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
Competing with other tech hubs
Silicon Valley has long been synonymous with tech startups. Currently, there are about 8,000 startup tech firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, employing about 225,000 people. Other tech hubs have popped up in Boston, Texas and North Carolina. However, Fairfax County has established itself as a tech government-contracting epicenter.
“People are realizing that Silicon Valley is not the only place that tech talent resides, and it’s not the only place where tech companies thrive,” says FCEDA President and CEO Victor Hoskins. Several Fairfax County startups have grown into successful unicorn tech companies with valuations of more than $1 billion, including Somatus Inc., Electrify America, ID.me Inc., IronNet Inc. and Expel Inc.
Fairfax County and the surrounding Washington, D.C., region also have a lower cost of living when compared with other tech hubs and major metropolitan areas, according to the FCEDA. San Francisco outpaces Northern Virginia in terms of tech compensation — but not by much. Tech workers in Northern Virginia make 97% of their counterparts’ salaries in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and San Jose, California, according to data from Carta, a San Francisco-based software firm specializing in tech industry equity management.
Entry-level tech workers in Fairfax County can expect starting salaries ranging from $80,000 to $150,000, Hoskins says, with compensation skyrocketing from there. Tech workers who have a few years of experience and a master’s degree can earn between $200,000 and $350,000 per year in the county. A typical household (with two adults and two children) would need a salary of about $117,000 per year to live comfortably in Fairfax County, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. The average cost for a two-bedroom apartment in Fairfax County is $1,909 per month, EPI data shows. And while the median home sale price for November 2022 was $630,000, there are also affordable housing options in Fairfax County, where the government has a goal to add 10,000 more units by 2034.
While that cost of living may seem manageable on paper, Northern Virginia is notorious for being the most expensive region in the state. To continue to attract tech talent to the region, the region needs to become more affordable, Taylor says. “Can they afford to live here? Are the wages competitive?” Taylor questions. “If we can crack that nut, it’ll help us compete against areas like San Francisco.”
Remote work is one option for making living in the region more affordable since employees can find cheaper housing options outside the D.C. real estate bubble. With the option of remote work, professionals can also land jobs based in higher paying cities — like New York City or San Francisco — but still work from home. About 70% of the employees at Herndon-based cybersecurity company Expel work from home at least part of the time. “Having the availability of working remote — even if it’s only a few days a week — really gives you that option to choose where to reside without the need to be as close to the headquarters as possible,” says Jeff Kaiser, Expel’s principal program manager for compensation analytics. Expel, which was established in 2016, employs nearly 1,000 people and had a $1.5 billion valuation as of September 2022.
“We do also find folks who are well-established in their careers,” adds Yanek Korff, Expel’s co-founder and chief of staff. “Our more experienced folks tend not to have a problem with the pricing in this area. They’ve already found their homes, they have real estate, they’re building families here.”
The variety of tech jobs available in Fairfax County is vast. Some of the most in-demand tech positions in the county include cloud engineers, cybersecurity specialists, full-stack engineers, .net developers, business analysts and enterprise architects, Caswell says.
“This area provides almost inexhaustible talent for tech businesses, whether it’s security or just tech in general,” Korff says. It also has “a diverse talent [pool], which I really like,” he adds. “The D.C. area is a bit of a melting pot, as it’s often a transitory area for people.”
During the next five years, the Northern Virginia region will need to add more than 130,000 tech jobs to keep up with demand, according to data from the FCEDA in collaboration with the Northern Virginia Economic Development Alliance (NOVA EDA). In Fairfax County alone, there are currently more than 13,000 tech jobs left unfilled, county data shows.
Virginia ranks third in the nation for concentration of tech workers, making up 8.7% of the commonwealth’s workforce, according to the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA). The state also ranks No. 5 in net tech employment at more than 350,000 workers, and fourth highest for new tech job postings in 2021, at more than 48,000 postings, according to CompTIA. By comparison, nationally, employment in computer and information technology jobs is projected to grow 15% during the next 10 years, which is much faster than the average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Plus, the Virginia Employment Commission projects a nearly 17% increase in computer and IT jobs during the next decade.
The Fairfax County area is “one of the very leading technology ecosystems in the country,” says Bruce Caswell, president and CEO of McLean-based Maximus. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
Tech talent demand
While there will be plenty of employment opportunities for tech workers during the next decade, Fairfax County isn’t immune to the massive tech talent gap. In the cybersecurity industry alone, the nation is short 700,000 workers, according to a report by market research company Lightcast.
Part of the reason that many of these tech jobs are left unfilled is a skills gap. The region, however, is working on closing the fissure between the skills tech companies are seeking in workers and what top universities in the region are teaching students. This “employer-signaling” system, as established by the Greater Washington Partnership, listens to tech companies to learn the type of skills needed and communicates that need to top universities in the region, like George Mason University and Virginia Tech’s developing Innovation Campus, Caswell explains.
“We’re listening to industry and government and really proactively asking them and rejiggering electives and programs to meet those needs,” says Liza Wilson Durant, George Mason’s associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement and professor and associate dean in the College of Engineering and Computing. “That makes Virginia a very interesting place for industry to locate because they’re hopefully going to find the talent that they need to meet those demands.”
For example, in 2015, George Mason launched the nation’s first cybersecurity engineering bachelor’s degree largely in cooperation with industry partners, including Northrop Grumman Corp., the Falls Church-based Fortune 500 defense contractor. While most cybersecurity programs across the U.S. are focused on IT security, George Mason’s program focuses on Internet of Things (IoT) devices, smart buildings and autonomous vehicles. GMU similarly consulted Reston-based Fortune 500 contractor Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to launch its master’s in data analytics engineering degree in 2013.
“We’ve been very focused on the supply of diverse tech talent for Virginia and the region,” she adds. “We are very interested in understanding what the skills, knowledge and abilities of industry and government are so that we can make sure that we’re producing graduates with the skills that industry and government need.”
While Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus is in Alexandria, it too acts as a feeder for tech companies in the region. The school, which opened in 2020, currently hosts about 250 graduate students. By its 2024 full buildout, Academic Building One will be able to accommodate about 750 graduate students and 200 doctoral students. Ultimately, it is hoped they will fill computer science and computer engineering jobs across the Northern Virginia region, including at Amazon.com Inc.’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters in Arlington.
“We’re not scaled to be a boutique; we’re scaled to really deliver at a high end in terms of the number of students that will be graduating each year that will go into this workforce,” says Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus. “There’s a lot of companies, and I think that it’s becoming an attraction to be in this region because of the investments that Virginia has made into its higher ed to address that gap.”
At this point, though, there’s still more jobs out there than there are people to fill them, Collins adds. “We really want there to be an equilibrium because that means companies can grow at the pace that their intrinsic capability and market share,” he says.
Fairfax County still has a growing population, Taylor points out, but universities and companies will need to pay closer attention to retention efforts as other tech hubs also continue to grow. A lot of this will come down to company culture and work flexibility, Expel leaders say. And that goes beyond amenities like free snacks or foosball in the breakroom.
“A lot of companies talk a pretty good game from a cultural perspective, but when it comes down to the decisions and the behavior, though, there’s some variance,” Korff says. “That can make it very difficult to keep people in seats because that disconnect between what people expect and what they find can wear on you over time.”
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center Photo courtesy Virginia Tourism Corp.
Fairfax County at a glance
Located about 20 miles south and west of Washington, D.C., Fairfax County was established in 1742; the city of Fairfax, the county seat, was incorporated in 1805. Fairfax County is an epicenter for many of the state’s technology companies and is also home to George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. Nine Fortune 500 companies are based in Fairfax County, including defense contractors General Dynamics Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. George Mason University, one of the most diverse colleges in the country, is also in the county.
Population
1.14 million
Top employers
Inova Health System
Amazon.com Inc.
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp.
Capital One Financial Corp.
Freddie Mac
General Dynamics Corp.
Science Applications
International Corp. (SAIC)
Major attractions
Tysons Corner Center, a massive mall with hundreds of stores and restaurants, is a premier regional shopping destination. The county is also home to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center and the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, as well as Great Falls Park and Mount Vernon. Notable areas to visit in Fairfax include Reston, Vienna, Tysons/McLean and Herndon. Reston Town Center is another popular shopping and dining destination.
Top convention hotels
Westfields Marriott
Washington Dulles
336 rooms, 59,538 square feet
of event space
Hyatt Regency Reston
518 rooms, 32,000 square feet
of event space
The Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner
398 rooms, 30,000 square feet
of event space
By the end of 2023, portable air purifier maker Oransi hopes to have products on the market designed and manufactured in its new Radford facility.
It’s the second attempt by CEO Peter Mann to build an American-made HEPA (high energy particulate air) air purifier since founding Oransi in 2009.
After initially selling China-made air purifiers, Mann contracted with a Connecticut company in 2013 to manufacture two Oransi-designed models. But that stopped in July 2021 because too few customers were willing to pay made-in-
the-USA prices, he says.
Now, Oransi sells four air purifiers made in China: two designed in-house and two through a collaboration between Oransi and a Chinese factory. Sold online and through major online retailers, Oransi’s purifiers cost $149 to $499. Consumers make up about 70% of Oransi’s customers, and the rest are businesses and government procurers.
Mann worked as a senior manager at Dell Inc.in the early 2000s before co-founding WSA, a business operating as a series of e-commerce sites selling products ranging from tankless water heaters to generators and air purifiers. In 2005, he launched Alen Corp., an in-house brand of air conditioners and purifiers. Around 2009, he sold his interests in WSA and Alen to focus on building Oransi.
“I wanted to create a brand and develop products,” Mann says. “I knew the selling direct to the consumer side, but I wanted to do the whole manufacturing side.”
In 2015, Mann approached Moe Barani, founder of Radford’s Aspen Motion Technologies, about contract manufacturing for Oransi, but it didn’t work out. Time passed, and Barani and Mann reconnected. Barani left Aspen Motion in 2018 and launched Aviemore Technologies Inc., a Radford-based manufacturer of motion control products. The pair started talking again.
In April 2021, Oransi, then based in Raleigh, North Carolina, invested $5.6 million to establish a manufacturing facility in Radford. Four months later, Oransi and Aviemore merged. Barani became chief technology officer and the pair began studying air purifiers from the ground up.
“So, we’ve looked at every component, and reengineered pretty much every component that we are going to use in our new air purifier,” Barani says. “So, it’s not just the motors and the drives — it’s the whole system.”
Oransi’s first air purifier manufactured in Radford will be in production early in the second quarter, and a second purifier will begin production late this year or in early 2024.
Like a “Top Gun” fighter pilot, Christopher Goyne feels the need for speed.
Goyne directs the University of Virginia’s Aerospace Research Laboratory and leads a new team developing hypersonic engines that will enable more maneuverable missiles, jets and — eventually — spacecraft via a $4.5 million Department of Defense award announced in October.
Under the three-year effort, U.Va. will spearhead work with Virginia Tech, the University of Minnesota, North Carolina State University and several industry partners, including Arlington-based Boeing Co., to develop components for a supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet, an air-breathing jetengine that will function through extreme turns at speeds above Mach 5. The work includes engine design, maneuverability control and operational resiliency and will culminate in wind tunnel tests at U.Va. and NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton.
“They’re a very simple engine by concept, but difficult to practically implement because of the very high temperatures and high speeds involved in operating these engines,” Goyne says. Air coming into the engine at Mach 5 can reach 1,700 degrees, which would destroy a commercial jet engine.
The project comes at a crucial time as the Pentagon races to catch up with adversaries like China and Russia, which have developed and tested hypersonic missiles.
Goyne says the award builds on 35 years of hypersonic research at U.Va. and relies on the university’s wind tunnel, one of the few in the world that can conduct extended tests in hypersonic conditions. The university has previously worked on projects with the Air Force, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA, which in 2019 named U.Va. one of three national hypersonic science centers.
“U.Va. has extensive experience over many years doing scramjet engine ground testing and advanced measurement diagnostics development,” says Kevin Bowcutt, chief scientist of hypersonics at Boeing.
The award was made through the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics, a network of universities, government agencies and industries developing hypersonic technology for national defense. It also aims to attract students to hypersonics research.
Nicholas Gushue, a graduate research assistant on the team, says U.Va.’s reputation in the field drew him to the university. “They … continue to get some really exciting projects,” he says. “They’ve graduated a lot of influential people from here.”
“We have an important contribution that we can make to … national security,” Goyne says. “That’s a responsibility that we all feel as well.”
Wholesome Foods Inc. will expand its meat processing operation in Shenandoah County by adding a new, USDA-inspected slaughter facility with a $1.2 million investment, creating 12 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Thursday.
Nearly all the livestock used at the new facility will be sourced from Virginia farms, according to Youngkin‘s office.
“We are excited to grow our business with the help of the commonwealth and Shenandoah County through the AFID program,” Wholesome Foods President Wes Pence said in a statement. “This expansion will increase our capacity, add jobs to our work force and provide a much-needed service to the community and local farmers for years to come.”
The family-owned business has been part of Shenandoah County’s business and agricultural scene for more than 50 years. Established in 1964 by Dean and Syvilla Pence as a home delivery service of poultry, meat and eggs to the Washington, D.C.-area market, the company has grown into a full-scale food distributor and now supplies wholesale accounts in the mid-Atlantic, as well as serving consumers with meat and cheese. After experiencing backlogs from local meat processors the company relied on for beef and pork products, Wholesale Foods decided to add in-house slaughter capacity at its existing operation and expanding its meat processing capabilities, according to a news release.
“As Virginia’s largest private industry, our agricultural sector draws its strength from the diversity of production and the entrepreneurial spirit of families like the Pences, whose company has served the Shenandoah community for more than 50 years,” Youngkin said in a statement. “I thank Wholesome Foods for its commitment to the commonwealth and wish them success in the future serving the farmers and consumers of Virginia and beyond.”
The Virginia Department of Agricultural Services worked with Shenandoah County and the Shenandoah County Industrial Development Authority to secure the project. Youngkin approved a $40,000 grant from the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund. Shenandoah County will match it with local funds.
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