■ College Profile: NORTHERN VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE College timeline
1964 – Northern Virginia Technical College established.
1966 – College is renamed
Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA).
1967 – NOVA opens Annandale Campus.
1972 – Manassas Campus first offers classes.
1972 – Woodbridge Campus first offers classes.
1973 – Alexandria Campus opens. 1974 – Loudoun Campus opens.
2003 – The Medical Education Campus opens in Springfield.
2006 – The Arlington Center and Reston Center open for classes.
2008 – The Innovation Park Center in Manassas opens for classes.
2009 – Signal Hill in Sterling opens for classes.
2015 – President Robert
G. Templin Jr. retires. He is succeeded by Scott Ralls.
Aiming high N
NVCC intends to be the go-to workforce supplier for the region
by M.J. McAteer
orthern Virginia Community College stands apart among the commonwealth’s public
institutions of higher learning by virtue of its size and diversity and the scope of its ambitions. With 78,000 students enrolled, it is
the largest of Virginia’s public two- and four-year schools and the second-largest community college in the United States. It has six campuses, three academic centers and online studies offering certificates and degrees. Its huge student body represents
every age bracket a nd ethnicity and more than 200 countries worldwide, and it has a mission statement that is as expansive as its demographics. The college aims for no less than being a go-to supplier of a workforce that will power the economy of its NoVa home, while simultaneously being a place that welcomes all those who “are pursuing the American dream.” President Scott Ralls took over lead-
ership of the sprawling community college last year, drawn from his stewardship of the North Carolina Community College System by the opportunity to work in NoVa’s tech-driven environment. “Information technology, biotechnol-
ogy, cybersecurity, health care — we are training tomorrow’s workforce today,” he says.
Preparing people for work Projections for the makeup of
tomorrow’s workforce have been chang- ing rapidly and drastically in recent years. Northern Virginia used to be a company — read, government — town, and the feds hired mainly based on a job applicant’s academic credentials. Tech jobs
96 AUGUST 2016
were important, but not transcendent. These days, IT is the region’s biggest growth area, with NoVa ranked as the second-largest STEM (science, technol- ogy, engineering and math) employment base in the country, Ralls says. The private sector, though, unlike
the government, is profit-driven and pragmatic. It wants employees who can hit the ground running, and NVCC is determined that its students will be fast out of the starting gate. Steven B. Partridge’s job is to make
sure that the college is up to speed on this objective. He is NVCC’s vice president of workforce development “Getting people ready to go to work
is a huge part of what we do,” he says. He spends much of his time talking with employers and advisory groups, including the Northern Virginia Technology Coun- cil, to gather input on how best to get “rid of the disconnect between education and jobs.”
Cybersecurity effort Cybersecurity is a good example of
how the college has been reshaping its curricula to fit the changing job picture. Northern Virginia has evolved into the premier cybersecurity center of the nation during the past decade, yet good jobs in this burgeoning sector have been going begging for want of qualified applicants. Until recently, NVCC hadn’t been
much of a factor in closing the gap between supply and demand. Although it began offering a career studies certificate in network security as early as 2001, it had just 49 enrolled in its cybersecurity courses at the end of the fall 2014 semes- ter. As of April this year, however, it had
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