Virginia's Community Colleges

DuBois, Glenn

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 11 
12-14-2022 
Commencement Address at the Apprentice School 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Commencement Address at the Apprentice School. Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia 
Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol25/iss2/11 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
	
Commencement Address at the Apprentice School 
 
This address was delivered at Northrop Grumman in Newport News on February 27, 2010. 
 
 
irector Jordan, faculty and staff; proud moms and dads, and family members; distinguished 
guests; and graduates: good afternoon…and congratulations! 
 
Today, The Apprentice School honors its class of 2009. The 161 members of this class join a 
collection of alumni that is over 9,000 strong and spans generations. 
 
And let me share with you what an honor it is to congratulate a group of students who, on their way 
to graduation, just happened to help finish building a nuclear supercarrier as a class project. I had the 
chance to tour the U.S.S Bush before it was commissioned. When I looked at its nearly eleven-
hundred foot length and think about how it displaces over 100,000 tons…well, let’s just say it puts 
into perspective that big book report I wrote to graduate with my Ph.D. 
 
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my good friend, Dr. Bob Leber, who recently transitioned 
from being the director of this proud institution to leading the effort to build its next facility just 
down the street. Bob has been a friend and ally since I first came to Virginia in 2001 and I deeply 
appreciate his partnership and his leadership. 
 
In preparing for the honor of speaking with you today, I reviewed a great deal of literature about 
The Apprentice School and its students. (As an aside, let me just congratulate your football team 
once again for that 7-6 victory over UVA in 1943. Surely, I’m not alone, am I, in thinking that could 
happen again today, whether the game occurs on the Builder’s home turf or in Charlottesville?) 
 
One piece that I read described you this way: “They build ships with their muscles and their minds.”  
That makes sense. You can’t think about the process of building a supercarrier without thinking 
about muscle. You can’t think about the submarines you build – with technology that makes the 
space shuttle look like a child’s toy – without thinking about the minds behind it. 
 
But I would suggest that the sentiment is incomplete. Along with your muscles and minds, you use 
your heart. Like your brains and your brawn, your heart goes into those ships you are building, just 
as it goes into this company that you are building, just like as it goes into this community that you 
are building. 
 
Graduates, you would have never gotten this far without heart. I appreciate what you’ve 
accomplished because I know how overwhelming it has been to arrive at this moment. 
 
More than thirty years ago, I was walking across the stage at my high school, picking up my diploma, 
wondering how in the world I had even graduated. If I didn’t graduate last in my class, I was 
certainly in sight of it. But you know what? I didn’t care. I just wanted out. I didn’t know, and really 
didn’t care, what the future held for me. I wanted a job. What I really wanted was money in my 
pocket. 
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DuBois: Commencement Address at the Apprentice School
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And so, I got my wish – a job washing dishes in the restaurant in my neighborhood. You know, I 
had never even considered formal education. No teacher, no coach, not even a friend of mine had 
even put the idea of an apprentice school or college in my head. 
 
Dish-pan-hands, my friend: that was the extent of my aspirations. The good news is after only a few 
months, I opened my eyes and raised my goals and thought yeah, I can move up. I did, which meant 
that I was busing tables. I figured if I could get on the floor, I could at least see my customers. At 
the time I considered that an aggressive and bold career move. 
 
My mom wasn’t impressed. And I’m grateful she wasn’t. She thought I had more in me than that – 
even if I couldn’t see it. So every day, it seemed, as I clipped on my red bow-tie and put on my thick, 
cotton, fashion-free, fire engine red busing jacket, Mom would harass me about it. “Glenn, you need 
to go to college, “she would say while shoving a community college application into my hand. “Fill 
this thing out, now. You can do this.” We’d go back and forth about it. But you know how mothers 
are. I eventually caved in. 
 
I was shocked – shocked! – when an acceptance letter came through the mail. In fact, I was 
convinced it was a mistake. Maybe someone in the registrar’s office got my name confused with 
another. But I decided to go to class. 
 
I wasn’t taking any chances, however. I kept the acceptance letter in my shirt pocket for proof. I was 
certain that someone would eventually spot me, realize the college’s mistake and ask me to leave. My 
next surprise was that I 
found the classes to be 
engaging and interesting. 
Gradually, I developed 
meaningful relationships – 
especially with my 
instructors. It changed me. I 
felt a growing confidence. 
Busing tables wasn’t going 
to be enough. I felt like I 
was on a launch pad, 
curious to see just how far I 
could go. 
 
As I look back on that time, 
one of the best – if not the 
best – feature of earning an 
education was the opportunity to interact with inspiring teachers. No question, every one of you in a 
cap and gown feels that way about at least one – it’s probably more – but at least one of the 
instructors here at The Apprentice School. Join me, will you, in giving your teachers a round of 
applause. My teachers inspired me to become a teacher – specifically, a community college teacher. 
 
Now I have the pleasure of serving at the helm of the vibrant and dynamic community college 
system in Virginia – one of the nation’s largest. I hope that gives you a sense of why postsecondary 
education is so important to me. Institutions like The Apprentice School, like our community 
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colleges that partner with it, are like Ellis Island, on-ramps if you will, to a great career and a great 
life…even for a short-sighted busboy. 
 
My friends, you are in an enviable position. You have the chance to build amazing vessels while 
working for an amazing employer. The concept of apprenticeship is not a new one. Long before 
Donald Trump pretended to invent the word apprentice, the apprenticeship model was THE model 
for learning a skilled trade. 
 
What sets Northrop Grumman Newport News apart is that the company stayed true to the 
apprenticeship model over the last 90-years when others abandoned it. The company has never lost 
sight of the value of growing its own skilled team of employees and growing its own leadership. 
It has been suggested to me that The Apprentice School is to the shipyard what the U.S. Naval 
Academy is to the U.S. Navy: it may not produce every leader within the organization, but it’s going 
to produce most of them. 
 
In fact, let me take just a moment to congratulate Everett Jordan, the new director of The 
Apprentice School. Everett is another friend who I have worked with for years now. And he has a 
proud distinction. More than 30 years ago, Everett sat where you graduates are sitting today. Though 
he is the eighth director of this institution, he is only the second director of The Apprentice School 
to also be a graduate of it. Congratulations, Everett! And I look forward to working together for 
years to come. 
 
Your company strives to invest in you and that is why it is a national leader with its model of earning 
while you’re learning. And much to the company’s credit, they don’t view today as a finish line for 
you – and neither should you. 
 
An important step? Yes. A terrific and memorable moment along your journey? You bet. But 
today’s not a finish line. 
 
This is the part where I get to make a small sales pitch. And the best part about it is many of you 
wearing caps and gowns already know where I am going with this because you are already there 
yourselves. 
 
Through Thomas Nelson Community College and Tidewater Community College, we are proud to 
partner with The Apprentice School in countless ways. That includes creating opportunities for you 
to continue your education further and to earn an associate’s degree. We are proud to count Danny 
Hunley, your company’s vice president and a member of our state board, as a Thomas Nelson 
graduate. I invite you to join him and, beyond that, to take advantage of our wonderful and unique 
transfer relationships to continue working toward your bachelor’s degree at Old Dominion 
University or The College of William & Mary, or any of the two dozen universities we work with. 
At every step, you will create greater opportunities for yourself and you will become an even bigger 
leader for the shipyard. 
 
As you continue your work on the waterfront, I wish you a long, safe and successful career. And 
know that our doors are always open to you as you proceed through it. Thank you. 
  
 
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English

Commencement Address at the Apprentice School

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 25 
12-14-2022 
Remarks at the VCCS New Horizons Conference (2015) 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Remarks at the VCCS New Horizons Conference (2015). Inquiry: The Journal of the 
Virginia Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol25/iss2/25 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
Remarks at the VCCS New Horizons Conference (2015) 
 
These remarks were delivered at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center in Roanoke, VA on April 2, 2015. 
 
 
ood evening, ladies and gentlemen: Save the best for last. That’s what they always say. Well, 
I’m going break that rule tonight. I’m going to start with the best. 
 
Welcoming the T-Man 
In this case, it means beginning by introducing a good friend – a good friend to most of us in the 
room. In fact, if you don’t consider him a good friend, well, that just means you haven’t met him yet. 
I consider this man, in many ways, the dean of the VCCS faculty. He’s the executive director of the 
Virginia Master Teacher Seminar; a retired community college professor; an active community 
college advocate; and a community college graduate. Would you join me, please, in giving a warm 
welcome to Dr. Terry Whisnant? 
 
Terry, we’re delighted to have you back with us at the New Horizons conference. I have one 
question for you, however. For those who may not know it, Terry’s background includes service in 
the U.S. Army, where he was part of a psychological warfare unit. So, Terry, I wonder: Do we really 
love you as much as you just saw, or did you just get us to think that we love that much? No, wait, 
don’t answer that. 
 
Complete 2021: three take-aways 
Friends, I was asked to talk with you this evening about our next VCCS strategic plan, Complete 2021. 
While nothing about it is easy, the plan itself is quite simple. We are making a pledge to triple the 
number of credentials that our 23 colleges award by the year 2021. 
 
Many of you attended a session earlier today about the plan presented by Blue Ridge President John 
Downey and Tidewater President Edna Baehre-Kolovani. They chaired the committee that created 
the new plan, and did a great job of it. Unlike them, I won’t go in to detail about all the numbers 
behind it and the machinations they endured to create it.  
 
For those who missed it, however, there are three big take-aways: One, this goal was created to 
address what Virginia needs. Over the next decade, we need to fill 1.5 million jobs across the 
commonwealth. Two-thirds of those jobs require postsecondary credentials, but not necessarily 
bachelor’s degrees. Tomorrow’s Virginia desperately needs the associate degrees and the workforce 
certifications and credentials that your college produces, and they need a lot more of them. 
 
Two, while I expect our colleges to accomplish this goal, I can assure you that business-as-usual 
won’t get us there. Mark Twain once wrote, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll 
always get what you always got.” The students we serve are different today. The challenges they face 
in the pursuit of a middle class lifestyle are different today. And the expectations of what community 
colleges can and should be are different today too. We heard Dr. Jill Biden say it yesterday. I deeply 
believe it too: this is our time. 
 
And three, this pursuit will likely change the very essence of what it means to be a Virginia 
community college. While it will poke and prod the habits and myths that hold us back, I think it 
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will liberate each of us to embrace the hopes and dreams that first drew us to this work – the chance 
to wake up every morning and change someone’s life. 
 
Community college instructors 
That’s what I really wanted to discuss with you tonight. Look around you. Tonight, we gather with 
hundreds of colleagues from across Virginia, and beyond – friends, who may live and work 
hundreds of miles of away from you but share a powerful bond. We are community college 
instructors. 
 
Like we heard from Jill Biden yesterday, we deeply understand what it means not just to share 
information but to impart knowledge. We know that telling look when a student awakens, when that 
connection is made between ideas, when that confidence gets a jolt of “I can do it,” and when those 
dreams begin to feel not just tangible but reachable. We are community college instructors. 
 
That means we are on the front lines of a massive effort, waged one person at a time, to enact our 
mission of giving everyone the opportunity to learn and develop the right skills so lives and 
communities are strengthened. Said another way, we want to help our graduates achieve the good 
life. We can’t do it without you, and we can’t do it if we don’t support you. 
 
Moving beyond a culture of access 
As we transition from the pursuit of our Achieve 2015 goals to the single goal of Complete 2021, we 
are doing a lot more than just moving from one plan to another. While this has been underway for 
some time now, I would suggest to you that we are transitioning from our 20th century roots to our 
21st century needs. We are moving beyond our foundations, established just after a global war, into a 
future defined by global competition. We are evolving from a Culture of Access to a Culture of 
Completion. 
 
That Culture of Access has defined our first 50 years. But if we are going to live up to our mission; if 
we are going to address Virginia’s unmet needs in higher education and workforce training then it, 
alone, cannot define our next 50 years. You’ve probably heard me say it a million times: a high 
school diploma is no longer the finish line. The truth today, my friends, is that college admission is 
no longer the finish line. 
 
Ellis Island & those left behind 
If you’ve ever been to my office in Richmond, you’ve probably seen a framed image that I keep on 
the wall there of Ellis Island. That’s an important symbol, I believe, for who we are and what we do. 
For 62 years, Ellis Island was the gateway to our nation. More than 12 million people came through 
its doors. Every one of those people represented a unique journey into the American Dream. 
 
The people I wonder about sometimes, though, are the people who reached Ellis Island but failed to 
complete their journey. Tens of thousands – at least a quarter million of them – were turned away 
for a myriad of reasons.  
 
It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it, what it means to be driven by that idea of a better life, to spend what 
little money you may have for a chance at it, to suffer the adversity necessary to get it only to come 
away empty-handed. That’s tragic. That’s soul-crushing. That’s something you don’t wish on anyone. 
And I wonder: As much as we embrace the idyllic side of the Ellis Island story, does that darker side 
apply to us too? 
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We know today that two out of three jobs available in Virginia – and the nation, for that matter – 
will require more than a high school diploma in just three years, according to a leading labor 
economist. State leaders tell us that Virginia will have to fill 1.5 million jobs over the next decade. 
Two-thirds of them will require a postsecondary credential, most will require less than a bachelor’s 
degree.  
 
Information like that can fill you with hope or dread. Either way, it can inspire people to pursue 
their future at our community colleges. And we know today that for every five students who come 
through our doors, only one of them will walk out of them with a credential in hand. 
 
Higher education is too expensive to pursue, and to provide for that matter, and our credentials are 
increasingly too important to an individual’s prospects for us to be satisfied with those results. We 
can do better. And we must. 
 
A culture of completion 
As community college leaders, we are comfortable with the Culture of Access. Unlike our 
counterparts in the universities, we take pride in the number of people we let in, not the number of 
people we keep out. But in our 
zeal to convince more and more 
people about the “why” and the 
“what” of higher education, 
we’ve not done enough to help 
them with the “how.” That’s 
what moving to a Culture of 
Completion is all about. 
 
One of our presidents spent his 
winter break combing back 
through five years’ worth of his 
college’s catalog. You know 
what he found? He was shocked 
by it. With the exception of two 
of his programs, it was literally 
impossible to graduate from his college on-time in two years. The offerings didn’t allow it. 
 
Another college closely examined what happened to an individual between the moment they 
thought about attending until the moment they actually did and identified more than 100 individual 
steps to make that happen. Similar work at Northern Virginia Community College uncovered similar 
results. They talk about students being “NOVA-whelmed” when they try to come to the college. 
That’s what moving to a Culture of Completion is all about. 
 
Look, academic rigor will knock some students out, and that’s as it should be. In the hospital, I want 
to know that my nurse understands enough math to give me the proper amount of medicine. At 
home, I want only the electrician who knows how to avoid burning down my house. But 
bureaucratic red tape, the hassles of navigating our campuses and our processes should never stand 
in the way of student success. That’s what moving to a Culture of Completion is all about. 
 
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Earlier this year, we wrapped up the VCCS Reengineering Taskforce.  For five years, the people 
from across our colleges who worked on that panel asked tough questions about why we do many 
of the things we do. I like to say that, thanks to their work, reengineering is part of our DNA now. 
That ability to take a critical look at what works and what doesn’t is growing throughout our 
colleges. 
 
We’re going to need that, up and down the organizational depth chart. We’re going to need that 
from every person who works for our colleges. We’re going to need to elevate and prioritize our 
problem-solving instincts. With our shared passion and experience, that will lead us to become the 
community colleges that we know that we can be – and to become the community colleges that the 
people we serve need us to be. 
 
Every student who walks through our doors is on a unique journey to his or her American Dream. 
Together, let’s work to see that more of those tales end with caps and gowns, and careers and 
paychecks – the things they need for a chance at the good life. That’s what moving to a Culture of 
Completion is all about. 
 
And ladies and gentlemen, that’s what our new strategic plan, Complete 2021 is all about. Thank you. 
 
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Remarks at the VCCS New Horizons Conference (2015)

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 27 
12-14-2022 
Remarks at the VCCS Hire Ed Conference (2015) 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Remarks at the VCCS Hire Ed Conference (2015). Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia 
Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol25/iss2/27 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
Remarks at the VCCS Hire Ed Conference (2015) 
 
These remarks were delivered at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center in Roanoke, VA on December 9, 2015. 
 
 
adies and gentlemen: good afternoon. I would especially like to welcome the many business 
leaders who are sharing their time to be part of this conference. It’s not easy for many of you 
to get away. This is taking time away from what you need to be doing for your business. We 
appreciate that sacrifice. We’re grateful to have you, and eager to help you. More on that in just a 
minute. 
 
There are certain milestones that really stand out as your career advances. If you have ever been in a 
job for any length of time then you know what I’m talking about – a particular event, or a moment, 
or a tradition that reminds you of where you began and how far you’ve made it. 
 
This Hire Ed Conference is one of those milestones for me. I remember the first one I ever 
attended after being hired to the chancellor’s post. There were about 30 people there. Our group 
was so small that our breakfast, which was served outside of the meeting room, was eaten by an 
entirely different group. (The worst part, by the way, wasn’t that they took all the food. It was that 
they also took all the coffee, and that’s unforgivable.) 
 
It was a plucky group of folks in those early days. Some of them are still with us today. But 
workforce development services was still sort of new for Virginia’s Community Colleges. In fact, 
that conference was happening only a few years after the turn of the century, when the General 
Assembly and then-Governor Jim 
Gilmore had passed a new law declaring 
that we were the keepers of the 
commonwealth’s postsecondary 
workforce development. 
 
We weren’t quite sure what that meant in 
those days. And, honestly, I don’t think 
we could have predicted just how vital is 
was to become. We did some customized 
training, here and there. We offered some 
courses that would probably qualify you 
for what was called, “blue collar” jobs. 
We offered something called non-credit 
classes – a depressing nomenclature that can easily sound like basket weaving courses to someone 
who doesn’t know better. 
 
But that plucky little group of workforce leaders were hungry folks – and not just because of the 
stolen breakfast. They thought this stuff could be big. They thought it could make a difference. And 
they didn’t care about the sideways glances their enthusiasm earned from the traditionalists raised 
with the academy mindset. If I had to pinpoint it, I would say that our short-term training programs 
really came of age during the Great Recession. A flood of people washed across our campuses, 
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grasping for something to serve as their personal recovery plan in desperate times. Many of them 
landed in these short-term programs and came out the better for it. 
 
I expect that we will soon see that again at New River Community College in Dublin. The Volvo 
truck plant there recently announced that they were laying-off 734 people – a quarter of their 
workforce – in February. While I’m no fortune teller, I suspect that there won’t be too many of 
those folks looking at this as a chance to enroll in a university and finally earn that Ph.D. in 19th 
century French poetry. 
They’re looking our way. They want something that can help them get back in the game in a few 
months, not years. And they need something that will help them earn enough money to keep 
supporting their family. They need our short-term training programs. 
 
There’s an old sports cliché that says, winners want the ball in their hands no matter the 
circumstances. Folks – and I’m talking to our workforce leaders here – you got it. You have the ball. 
And before I finish these remarks I will ask each of you to help us get that ball over the goal line. I 
believe we can, though we can’t do it without you. 
 
What we do in community college workforce development – specifically the industry-recognized 
credentials to which our short-term training programs lead are the higher education issue of our 
time. Our businesses need more of them, and they need them yesterday. No longer are community 
college folks the only ones saying that. We hear it from business leaders. We hear it from elected 
leaders. And this is only the beginning. 
 
I’m a big reader. And I love history. Can’t get enough of it. It’s been a few years since I’ve read it but 
I really enjoyed Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about the election of Abraham Lincoln 
and the cabinet he assembled. 
 
Among the things that stand out to me was the feeling of boredom that surrounded that particular 
election. As the generation that led the American Revolution was dying off, people had a sense that 
the exciting part of the American story was finished. The real history-making, they thought, was 
done. 
 
I’ve thought about that quite a bit as we prepare for our own historic commemoration. Next year, 
we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Virginia Community College System. That 
was an exciting moment, folks. Virginia was in the midst of a population boon that included 
returning veterans, women and African Americans, all seeking the chance to go to college. Virginia 
had industries that were fretting about the lack of trained and qualified technicians to do their work. 
And Virginia had a new governor, elected on a no-new-taxes platform, pushing for a first-ever state 
sales tax to build a system of community colleges to make it all work. My friends, our history-making 
isn’t finished yet. In fact, we’re just getting warmed up. 
 
We are pushing a plan today to help more people earn the industry-recognized credentials that will 
get them jobs. We are pushing a plan today to invest state money in a meaningful way, for really the 
first time, to expand the short-term training programs that our colleges offer to get people to those 
credentials. And we are pushing a plan that is likely to be included in the Governor’s biennial 
budget, and finding some bipartisan support in the General Assembly. Of course, it’s early in this 
sausage-making process. 
 
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In short, we are pushing a plan to create a funding formula for our workforce development 
programs – something we’ve never had before. Like I said, our history-making isn’t finished. And 
we need your help if we’re going to see it through. 
 
Many of you have heard me talk about our work to create this plan. When I say that this is the issue 
of our time, I’m not being arbitrary. Increasingly, circumstances and situations are pushing Virginia 
in this direction. Let me give you three examples of that. 
One, 19 other states are already funding the community college training programs that lead to 
industry-recognized certifications. That includes many of our neighbors like Maryland, Kentucky 
and both Carolinas. In fact, North Carolina is investing more than $92 million a year on their non-
credit programs. 
 
Two, over the next decade as many as two-thirds of the 1.5 million jobs that will have to be filled in 
Virginia will require more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree. They will 
demand our associate’s degrees and industry-recognized credentials. 
 
And three, this need is already costing all of us real money today. The company Burning Glass 
produced a report indicating there were more than 175,000 job vacancies last year in Virginia in 
what’s considered middle skill occupations.  
 
The jobs we’re talking about paid more than $28 an hour, or more than $58,000 dollars a year – a 
figure that is just shy of Virginia’s median household income ($63,000). This is the kind of money 
that can support a family. Well, those jobs each sat vacant for nearly a month. That means Virginia 
employers lost more than 36 million hours of productivity. That means Virginians lost more than $1 
billion dollars in wages. And Virginia, which depends on income tax withholdings more than any 
other state save one, lost more than $54 million in tax revenue. 
 
We spent the first half of this year studying this. We held 22 town hall meetings across Virginia that 
engaged more than 1,500 business leaders. The people who came to those meetings really drilled 
into us the important of what’s called the 1-2-7 phenomenon. It works like this:  
 
• For every “one” job that a business hires that demands a postgraduate degree. Think senior 
engineer, medical doctor, or lead software designer;  
• The business has to hire “two” people with baccalaureate degrees. Think human resources, 
accountant, or public relations;  
• And their work must be supported by “seven” frontline technicians with associate degrees or 
postsecondary certifications to make it all work. Think machinists, welders, electricians, 
project managers, lab technicians. 
 
Businesses can find and hire the “ones” and the “twos,” no problem. In fact, they’re not afraid to 
recruit them from across the world, if necessary. The “sevens,” however, must already be here. 
That’s essential to attracting new businesses to Virginia and convincing existing businesses to stay 
and even expand. In fact, economic developers say that the proven existence of the “sevens,” or a 
pipeline to them, is more important to deal-making than any other physical infrastructure or tax 
policy.  
 
Let me just walk you through some of the thinking that supports our two-year, $40 million dollar 
ask, creating a funding formula, that would deliver more than 10,000 high-demand credentials for 
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Virginia. (For the business leaders in the crowd, this is what I meant when I mentioned earlier about 
how we want to help you.) Resources are needed to begin, and in some cases, expand the short-term 
training programs that our colleges run to help people earn these certifications. Our colleges are not 
paid to do that today. It’s not part of our state funding model. 
 
We’re taking a risk to get this done. We are proposing a unique, outcomes-based plan that would pay 
our colleges only after someone completes our program and earns a credential. It doesn’t get any 
more accountable than this. It asks the 
Commonwealth to invest only in results. 
We’re striving to make these opportunities 
more affordable for the people who have 
the most to gain from them. These short-
term training programs are significantly 
cheaper than our degree programs. But 
there’s a catch: there’s hardly any financial 
aid available for those students. The typical 
program cost is just over $3,000 and that’s a 
big check to write for the 70-percent of 
Virginians who live from paycheck to 
paycheck. 
 
We need to get more people excited about 
these opportunities. We found a huge 
interest gap. People don’t know these 
credentials and careers exists. We are 
beginning that work, along with some other 
agencies, through a grant from the National 
Governor’s Association. This is something 
that no other state is doing well. And we’re 
putting Virginia in a position to compete 
with the 19 other states that already invest 
in the training of their “sevens.” Our plan 
includes some matching money to help 
existing Virginia employers update and up-skill their employees – when doing so is in Virginia’s best 
interest. 
 
As I stand before you today, my friends, I believe that this is a modest and solid plan that puts our 
colleges on a path to meeting Virginia’s needs for more of these credentials. I also believe that this is 
truly in play for the legislative session. You know, every year thousands of bills and hundreds of 
budget amendments are filed. Only some of them are really in play. This proposal is. 
 
This is a history-making moment for our generation of leaders. But we need your help to get this 
across the goal line. I invite you to join our coalition of supporters who are keeping this 
conversation going. 
 
Specifically, I want to ask you to do three things to help us. First, help us keep this plan as a priority. 
As I said, lawmakers have to deal with thousands of measures and even more people clamoring for 
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their time and attention once the legislative session is underway. Talk to them early and often about 
how important these credentials are and how this plan will help Virginia secure more of them. 
 
Second, help us keep this plan above partisan politics. You only have to read a single day of press 
clippings to get a sense of just how easily this legislative session can devolve into nasty squabbles. 
There are a lot of divisive issues around us. But this credentials plan holds no partisan aims. The 
folks we want to educate with it are Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and vegetarians. When we 
give individuals the knowledge and skills necessary to help their businesses succeed, everyone wins. 
 
And third, help us keep this plan “real” for our elected officials. This credentials plan isn’t 
addressing a community college need. This is a Virginia need. This is a business need. This is a need 
for the 1.1 million Virginians who have some college experience, and probably some college debt, 
but no college credential. When you talk to lawmakers, please tell them about your business. Tell 
them about your challenges finding and hiring qualified and skilled employees. And tell them how 
having more of these credentials will ease that burden for you. That’s what makes it real for those 
who will make this decision. Your voice is invaluable for that. 
 
In closing, ladies and gentlemen, let me once again thank you for being part of this conference. It 
has grown over the years from just a breakfast-free planning session for some visionary folks to 
being a marquee event in Virginia’s workforce scene. Your participation bolsters it even further. And 
thank you for being engaged and helping us advance this credentials plan. Now is the time, and 
credentials are the issue. Together, we’ll make the most of this opportunity and move Virginia 
forward in a real and meaningful way. Together, we can make some history of which we can all be 
proud. 
 
Thank you, and enjoy the conference.  
  
 
  
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Remarks at the VCCS Hire Ed Conference (2015)

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 46 
12-14-2022 
VCCS Announces Actions It Will Take Following George Floyd's 
Murder and Subsequent Protests 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). VCCS Announces Actions It Will Take Following George Floyd's Murder and 
Subsequent Protests. Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from 
https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol25/iss2/46 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
 
VCCS Announces Actions It Will Take Following George Floyd’s 
Murder and Subsequent Protests 
 
This news release was posted on June 3, 2020. 
 
  
eorge Floyd’s indefensible death, and the demonstrations it has inspired, demand more than 
thoughts and prayers. They demand action. We owe it to our African American students, 
faculty, staff, supporters, and friends to say that we see you, and that we see your pain. And we need 
to share what Virginia’s Community Colleges can do to contribute solutions moving forward. 
 
Equity and access to opportunity have been at the heart of our community college mission since we 
first opened our doors in 1966. However, our efforts to translate those ideals into action for all 
Virginians have not always yielded the results that we seek as quickly as we would like. Simply stated, 
we must do better, and we will.   
 
To that end, I am immediately charging a task force, now working under the leadership of Dr. Anne 
Kress, president of Northern Virginia Community College, and Dr. Sharon Morrissey, senior vice 
chancellor of academic and workforce programs for the VCCS, to expand their scope and place a 
priority emphasis on equity in all that our colleges do for students, ranging from access to 
completion, and beyond. This group is creating our next six-year statewide strategic plan, and I am 
charging them with creating both goals and measurable strategies for increasing equity across our 23 
colleges. 
 
I am also asking that group to create goals and measurable strategies for increasing diversity in the 
recruitment, hiring, and retention of community college faculty, staff, and administrators. We know 
that students do better and achieve more when they can see themselves in their instructors. We must 
do more to see the communities that we serve reflected within our employee ranks.   
 
Further, I am creating a separate panel to examine the curricula that we use to educate law 
enforcement officers across our 23 colleges. Collectively, we are one of Virginia’s largest providers 
of law enforcement personnel, enrolling nearly 2,200 students last year. 
 
Dr. Quentin Johnson, president of Southside Virginia Community College will lead this effort, 
working with community leaders and law enforcement officials to ensure that we are doing all that 
we can to train officers who can effectively protect, serve, and earn the trust of every Virginia 
community. 
 
The protests and riots occurring across the nation remind me of those I lived through during the 
1960s, and they sadly illustrate just how little things have changed since then. We need to invest 
ourselves, and our colleges, in actions that elevate equity before we can realize the rhetorical promise 
of equality – and that work begins now. 
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VCCS Announces Actions It Will Take Following George Floyd\u27s Murder and Subsequent Protests

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 26 Number 1 Article 1 
4-17-2023 
Front Cover (Spring 2023) 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Art and Design Commons, and the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
(2023). Front Cover (Spring 2023). Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges, 26 (1). 
Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol26/iss1/1 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
1
et al.: Cover
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Video: The Virginia Foundation for Community College Education

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 3 
12-14-2022 
Editor's Note 
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 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
(2022). Editor's Note. Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from 
https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol25/iss2/3 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
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VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
1
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Editor\u27s Note

Remarks at the VCCS Chancellor\u27s Annual Planning Retreat (2013)

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 37 
12-14-2022 
Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission Study Response 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission Study Response. Inquiry: The Journal 
of the Virginia Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol25/iss2/
37 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
JLARC Study Response 
 
These remarks for JLARC were delivered in the Pocahontas Building on September 11, 2017. 
 
 
r. Chairman; members of the committee; good morning. On behalf of our colleges, I would 
like to thank Hal Greer, Tracey Smith, Jamie Bitz, and the entire JLARC staff for their 
professionalism. I am proud of the way our respective teams worked together in this process. And 
given just how little experience the JLARC team had with community colleges coming into this 
study, I commend them for their diligence and hard work. 
 
We’ve reviewed the exposure draft, and find the conclusions and recommendations to be largely 
balanced and helpful. Any concerns we have with the report are nuanced, demonstrating little more 
than the differences that can arise from any collection of professionals interpreting the same set of 
data and facts.  
 
The mission of the VCCS is, “to give everyone the opportunity to learn and develop the right skills 
so lives and communities are strengthened.” Our community colleges, collectively, represent 
Virginia’s largest institution of higher education in terms of enrollment, accounting for 36 percent of 
all public higher education students. 
(The percentage is higher if you 
count only undergraduate students.) 
Our open enrollment policy is key 
to expanding college access and 
“critical to the state’s economy,” 
given the increased credentialing 
requirements of the modern 
workplace.  
 
To fulfill our mission we must 
achieve a delicate balance by 
accomplishing two things at the 
same time: First, we must provide 
affordable access to higher 
education and workforce training 
opportunities. Second, we must 
ensure that those offerings are high 
quality – game changers, if you will 
– for those who partake in them. 
Our task is made tougher by fiscal 
challenges with which you are all 
well acquainted. 
 
We are proud to be the most affordable option for postsecondary education in Virginia. The vast 
majority of our students do not borrow to finance their education; and there is evidence that our 
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lower costs help bachelor’s degree earners – who began at one of our colleges – borrow less money 
too. 
 
Affordability is a priority throughout our colleges – and we demonstrate that within the things that 
we can control. The report says that we are efficient compared to our counterparts in other states; 
that the vast majority of our colleges have fewer staff per 100 students than other institutions in our 
region; and it goes on to say that our system office, “provides effective support and strategic 
leadership.” 
 
Throughout our system, we strive to find new and more to be efficient. Now, the report says, and 
I’m quoting here that, “Opportunities for further system-wide efficiencies are limited.” Limited, yet 
we still seek them. From IT services, to our new Shared Services Center in Daleville, to a culture and 
practices that finds nearly all of our colleges sharing faculty, programs and equipment among their 
campuses, we take efficiency seriously. The effort to find ways to do more for less go on. 
The report identified – correctly, mind you – the biggest difference between our colleges and 
Virginia’s universities: we serve different people. And those people come to us with different needs. 
We are proud to be Virginia’s biggest higher education provider for individuals from 
Underrepresented Populations. In education-speak, we call them URPs. Community college students 
are more likely to be older, poorer, enrolled part-time, and the first in their family to attend college 
(just like I was).  
 
Research indicates, these factors – individually and in combination – lead more students to leave 
college before earning a credential. Accordingly, our completion rates trail Virginia’s public 
universities but are “comparable to community college rates across our region and the nation as a 
whole.” We concur with the report’s recommendation to increase the number of academic advisors 
on our campuses. Our Shared Services Center, which is just beginning to operate, was created in 
part to free-up money to support this priority. That won’t be enough, however. Additional resources 
will be needed to realize this recommendation. We look forward to working with members of the 
General Assembly to advance this priority. 
 
Additional advisors is also an important strategy, we believe, in reversing the enrollment decline that 
we’ve experienced over the last several year. This is a national trend. But inside our numbers, we can 
see that helping more of our students “stay with it” instead of leaving before completion is no less 
important than attracting more new students to campus. Along those same lines, we have convened 
a taskforce of leaders from across our colleges to examine our enrollment and student retention 
practices with the intention of improving them. This panel includes board members, presidents, 
faculty, staff, and students. Their final recommendations are due in the spring. 
 
We are also in the midst of significant technology upgrades to simplify our online application and 
improve our virtual guidance. Technology alone won’t improve the completion rates of our 
students. We know that. These tools, however, can and will help us better connect to individuals 
increasingly accustomed to doing everything, and I mean everything, by touching a screen. Further, 
we are working with the Department of Education to create the next generation of Dual Enrollment 
offerings. These partnerships exist in high schools across Virginia. Today’s Dual Enrollment is 
achieving its stated purpose for some students – inspiring them to pursue higher education and earn 
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college credits while still in high school. But we can do better for Virginia. We believe an improved, 
21st century model could serve more students and do it more effectively, efficiently, and deliberately.  
 
On the other end of things, we are working with our partners to help more people take advantage of 
college transfer options. Our dialogue continues with the State Council for Higher Education in 
Virginia (SCHEV) and both public and private universities on how to best continue, expand, and 
make more transparent what we collectively offer. The decentralized nature of these opportunities 
today can be confusing. Too often, parents and students don’t realize just how much they could save 
by beginning their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree at a community college; and they don’t understand 
the many benefits of actually staying with us long enough to finish their associate degree along the 
way. Improving would benefit families, students and the commonwealth as a whole. 
 
We also agree that more can be done to ensure our community college workforce developments 
programs – resource-intensive undertakings – meet the needs of Virginia businesses. The report is 
spot-on in identifying that limitations in space, equipment, qualified faculty and resources prevent us 
from meeting every employer demand. In truth, we are making a substantial difference there. 
 
In fact, the report goes on to say, that current labor data indicates our colleges “offer programs in 
career fields with the greatest statewide demand, such as health care, and colleges are generally 
offering programs in fields that align with regional employer demands.” The first year of the 
Workforce Credentials Grant Program was a success at our colleges. Including those who took 
advantage of the grants that program offers, we tripled the number people who earned high-demand 
credentials. Income data, of course, is a lagging indicator. We just don’t have it yet. Once it catches 
up to us though, I believe we are going to see that this is nothing but a winner for the 
commonwealth. 
 
In closing, I would like to point out that this JLARC report represents the first outside look at the 
operations of Virginia’s Community Colleges in more than a quarter-century. Its findings tell us that 
we are pursuing the right priorities; that our colleges are operating efficiently, effectively and 
responsibly; and that we are right to keeping the needs of our students and communities at the 
center of our focus. We are grateful for the report’s policy suggestions, as we believe there are 
always ways for us to improve and be better. 
 
Thank you. 
  
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Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission Study Response

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 47 
12-14-2022 
Keynote Address at Drone Conference 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Keynote Address at Drone Conference. Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community 
Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol25/iss2/47 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
Keynote Address at Drone Conference 
 
These pre-recorded remarks were recorded via Zoom and delivered virtually on June 17, 2020. 
 
 
ood afternoon, friends. I regret that this pandemic took from us the chance to enjoy this 
conference in person, but I’m happy to have a chance to briefly share with you some 
thoughts about this exciting, growing technology and the role community colleges will play in that 
evolution. However, before we look forward, let me look just a little backwards for a moment. 
 
Introduction 
Virginia’s Community Colleges made history in 2016. That was the year, with the help of the 
Virginia General Assembly and the McAuliffe Administration, that we first garnered public funding 
for our workforce training programs that lead to high demand credentials. 
 
What is now known as our FastForward program was a huge win for individuals seeking a career 
that could support their family with a middle-class lifestyle. It was a huge win for businesses across 
the commonwealth that complained about finding trained, skilled people for jobs that are available 
today. And, ultimately, it was a win for Virginia’s General Fund because connecting those people 
with available jobs leads to higher income tax 
withholdings. 
 
FastForward produced big results that first 
year, just as it has ever since. We decided to 
celebrate that by holding a public event with 
the governor. The event began with a drone 
delivering to the Governor some ceremonial 
credentials that he would sign and give to 
some of our FastForward graduates. The 
drone was piloted by one of those graduates, a 
deputy sheriff from Culpeper who had earned 
his license through Piedmont Virginia 
Community College. 
 
The pilot did his job well, and the drone 
performed flawlessly. It made a big impression 
on the Governor – and this guy doesn’t 
impress easily. I know it made a big 
impression because a short while later, he tried 
to replicate the drone delivery at a meeting of 
the National Governor’s Association. He tried 
to have a microphone flown in and dropped 
to him on a stage. 
 
It failed badly – badly enough to earn some 
brief media attention. The governor shared his version of all of that with me later. Glenn, he said, I 
don’t know what went wrong. Well, governor, I said, drones are a promising technology. But 
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without that community college-trained technician, you’re never gonna’ make ‘em fly the way they 
can. 
 
Thank you for the chance to talk with you today about preparing the drone workforce and the 
critical role community colleges are going to play in that as we move forward. Mind you, I’m not a 
technical expert when it comes to this evolving technology. I would point you to Chris Carter, who 
is leading our collaboration with Old Dominion University and developing our drone training 
curriculum. He, and the people working with him, would be happy to help you geek-out if you care 
to explore the specifics of today’s machines and their capabilities.  
 
Instead, I want to talk to you about the role I see community colleges playing in the future of 
unmanned aerial vehicles.   
 
Community colleges were created for this 
The truth is community colleges were created to help us get the most out of these machines. I know 
what you’re thinking: how can I say that? How can I claim that institutions founded in the 1960s – 
make that 1966 in Virginia – were created for a technology that only came into its current form in 
the 21st century. 
 
Community colleges were created, you see, to do what no one else would: to address the unmet 
needs of a community for access to higher education and workforce training. Yes, our colleges were 
created to serve a growing generation of baby boomers. Yes, we were created to promote diversity 
and inclusion in higher education, serving students of color and women who had largely been shut 
out at universities. But the politics needed to create us would have never happened without the 
support of the business community who saw a growing need for trained talent and no other way to 
meet it. 
 
In the mid-1960s that meant skills like punch card operators, as big computers began finding their 
way into more and more industries. Today, that means drone pilots and technicians. The details 
change over time but the application of our mission and the value it brings to individuals, 
businesses, and communities is a constant. 
 
Evolving technology 
Unmanned aerial vehicles, of course, aren’t really that new. Historians trace their beginnings to start 
of the 20th century, not long after the Wright Brothers achieved manned flight just down the road 
from here in Kitty Hawk. 
 
In 1907, the quadcopter caused excitement when it flew without a pilot. Mind you, it took four men 
to operate, and it got only two feet off the floor. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere, right? A 
decade later, the Ruston Proctor Aerial Target became the first pilotless winged aircraft in history. It 
was a radio-controlled vehicle, based on technology invented by Nikola Tesla. It was never used in 
combat but became the model for others that were. 
 
Modern drones are traveling a familiar path from my perspective. Like the microchip, like the 
smartphone, even like cloud computing, drones are important not simply for what the vehicles can 
do but for everything they can help us do better.  
 
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When a drone is used by a group of soldiers to see what’s over the next hill, it becomes part of the 
national defense industry. When a farmer uses one to monitor her vineyards for pests, or even soil 
hydration levels, it becomes part of the agriculture industry. When a sworn officer uses a drone to 
locate a missing child in remote areas, it becomes part of our public safety industry. And when 
Amazon uses it to deliver a CD copy of the Rolling Stones’ greatest hits to your doorstep, it 
becomes part of our commerce and service sector industry. 
 
You get the idea. These machines don’t exist in a vacuum. That’s why it’s so important to have 
events like this and explore what community colleges need to do to understand and address the 
workforce needs that will exist as these tools become more commonplace. 
 
1:2:7 challenge 
Drones are simply the latest example of the 1-2-7 challenge that we need to help businesses address. 
We learned a lot about this when we were creating the FastForward program. The 1-2-7 challenge 
works like this: The ones are people who hold post-baccalaureate degrees. Think doctor, lawyer, or 
engineer. The twos are the next layer of folks with bachelor’s degree that support the work of the 
ones. Think accountants, human resources, or public relations. 
 
Businesses say they can search globally for the ones and the twos and they can import them from 
just about anywhere. But it’s a different story with the sevens. The sevens are the front-line 
employees who really make the work happen. Think technician, medical assistant, CDL-holding 
truck driver, or even electrician. 
 
Businesses say that to succeed they need to know that they have access to the sevens in the local 
community for hiring, and if they don’t exist today, you must be able to produce them quickly. The 
labor market analysis of the drone industry reveals that same reality. There may be ones and twos 
who want or need the skills necessary to operate these vehicles. But most of those jobs will be the 
sevens. They will need more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree. They will 
need the credentials community colleges exist to help people earn. 
 
When it comes to drones, specifically, it may come down to upskilling folks already on the payroll, 
giving them the skills to maximize these new tools. 
 
Evolving community college mission 
That brings me back to that community college mission I mentioned just a moment ago. We exist to 
address the unmet needs in higher education and workforce training. While I don’t think that 
mission is changing in the 21st century, I believe it is beginning to focus a little more sharply. 
 
To be clear: traditional academic transfer pathways and even community education opportunities 
will forever be part of what occurs on our campuses. But I see a sharpening focus on our programs 
that connect people with jobs in high-demand career fields. That’s the very reason the FastForward 
program was created. The success we see there, and the further needs of Virginia’s businesses, has us 
on the verge of implementing a new initiative called G-3 – which expands that ROI focus to for-
credit pathway programs beyond FastForward. 
 
G-3 is Virginia’s answer to the so-called free college, or promise, programs enacted in other states. 
G-3 is an innovative financial aid program that can make select program pathways more affordable, 
and even free, for qualifying students. We’ve delayed this work while we determine the impact the 
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pandemic has on Virginia’s state budget. However, the support is there to begin the program as 
soon as we can. Those select programs are being defined by the needs of Virginia businesses. 
 
And that’s the point, really. When we know that as many as two-thirds of the jobs Virginia has to fill 
throughout this decade require more than a high school education but less than a bachelor’s degree, 
policymakers want programs that can offer very specific ROI. I expect the pandemic to only sharpen 
that focus.  
 
I see that as a correction in our broader higher education philosophy. We have long supported those 
seeking bachelor’s degrees, or higher. We should. We need those people. We need the ones and the 
twos. But we need the sevens too and we need to support the people working to acquire those skills 
and credentials. 
 
Investing in our mission 
We’re seeing that support at the state level. Virginia’s initial annual investment in FastForward was 
about $4 million dollars. It’s more than triple that now. When the G-3 program begins, it will do so 
with a significant investment.  
 
At the federal level – beyond today’s 
understandable focus on the COVID-19 
emergency – they’re beginning to notice 
that state investment, and the success its 
creating. As Congress works to update the 
Higher Ed Act, there’s bipartisan support 
for what I call workforce Pell. That is 
establishing criteria that will allow people to 
use federal financial aid to pursue these 
short-term workforce credentials. 
 
And yes, you heard me right: the effort 
there is bipartisan. In a time and place 
where members of the two parties can 
rarely agree on the color of the sky, there is a broad and growing consensus that this policy 
evolution is a winner for individuals, businesses, and the broader national economy. And that, my 
friends, is a great sign for those of us looking at an emerging field like drones and wondering where 
we will find the workforce necessary to unleash the benefits this technology promises to the 
industries I’ve mentioned and those we haven’t even thought of yet. 
 
And that’s where I want to conclude. Community colleges are partners with you in this effort. 
We understand what’s needed to create the sevens that this industry will need. We even know how 
to help some of those go on to become the ones and the twos who will lead the innovations driving 
these tools forward. And, we are finding support in the legislative arena to help individuals pursue 
the programs we build together. 
 
Just do me a favor, please. Keep these things from buzzing over my head when I’m tending to my 
backyard garden. Deal? 
 
Thank you. 
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Keynote Address at Drone Conference

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 1 A Lasting Legacy Article 11 
4-6-2022 
Remarks at the Society for College and University Planning 2013 
Mid-Atlantic Conference 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
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DuBois, G. (2022). Remarks at the Society for College and University Planning 2013 Mid-Atlantic 
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Remarks at the Society for College and University Planning  
2013 Mid-Atlantic Conference 
 
This speech was delivered on April 9, 2013 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. 
 
 
our organization is asking a good, tough question in your conference theme: “Is higher 
education still the gateway for opportunity in America?” Of course it is. Families are 
struggling, however, to finance it.  
 
Twelfth grade is no longer the finish line. Dropping out of high school or refusing to attend college 
can doom generations of a family to a cycle of failure or under-achievement. Meeting the public calls 
for more college graduates demands that we successfully break that cycle.  
 
We have to break that cycle in the coalfields and the tobacco fields, where no one in the family ever 
needed a college degree before. We need to break that cycle in the urban areas where children grow 
up not seeing a single college graduate living in their neighborhood. And we need to break that cycle 
for our newest Virginians who came here to pursue a dream and need our help overcoming the 
language and culture differences that can intimidate. 
 
Serving these 21st century students, my friends, represent our biggest challenge and requires our 
best planning. Virginia’s Community Colleges were founded to address Virginia’s unmet needs in 
higher education and workforce training. So, you might ask, what does planning have to do with 
that? The short answer is that the importance of planning grows with each passing day. But it wasn’t 
always that way. 
 
Planning philosophies 
It has been said that if you fail to plan then you are planning to fail. Former President Dwight 
Eisenhower – the guy who planned the D-Day Invasion – is often quoted by planners and at 
meetings like this for having said that, “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” Eisenhower’s 
notion was demonstrated, by my count, at least 973 times in Warner Brothers’ cartoons by Wile E. 
Coyote who never could quite catch that Roadrunner no matter how many ACME Co. blueprints he 
ordered nor how many contraptions he built. 
 
Former heavy weight champion boxer Mike Tyson offered a more modern rendition of the 
Eisenhower sentiment – albeit in his own way – when he said, “Everyone has a plan until they get 
punched in the face.” Metaphorically speaking, and perhaps more than any of us would like to 
admit, Tyson is right. We’ve all been there. 
 
Too many plans? 
My friends, I can assure you that there is no shortage of plans or planning in higher education in 
general and community colleges in particular.  
 
As public institutions, we work with state lawmakers and their staffs to create multi-year budget 
plans. As employers, we must balance the needs for and the needs of a large, diverse, sometimes 
isolated, and often part-time employee pool for an efficient labor plan. As landlords, we tend to 
spaces and structures – including some buildings that are in use some two-times longer than their 
Y 
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original life expectancy – as we write and rewrite facilities plans. As leaders in the field of education, 
serving students with evolving needs from generation to generation, we must continually refresh our 
academic plans. As service providers to a customer base that is increasingly wired, connected, 
tweeted, and Facebooked, we must plan for information technology needs that can change before 
ink dries on a page. As an increasingly important part of the economic development puzzle, we 
continually revise our workforce development plans. And as witness to the senseless and horrific 
episodes of violence that have splashed across America’s classrooms, we constantly test and 
challenge our campus safety plans. As I said, there is no shortage of plans and planning in our 
industry. One might even be able to argue that we have too many plans. 
 
What we are lacking in higher education, what we truly need, are plans and planning that are 
consistent, effective, transparent, and focused on critical state needs. I say that as someone with 
more than 30-years of higher education experience. I have been fortunate enough to be part of some 
plans that were, shall we say, great learning experiences. And I have been part of some plans that 
helped bring into focus the community college mission and truly advance the institution. 
 
Three traits of bad planning 
So, how do you tell the difference between good and bad planning for a community college? 
It can be complicated. While easy to describe, our mission can easily overwhelm. Our audiences, or 
customers if you prefer, can seem countless, fragmented, and unaligned. And our people, while 
smart, educated and deeply committed can sometimes over-think things. Hard to believe, isn’t it, 
that a bunch of people who hold master’s degrees and Ph.Ds can over-think something? Well, it 
happens. 
 
Over the course of my career, I have found three common traits – red flags, if you will – that are the 
hallmarks of bad planning.  
 
The first trait of a bad plan is missed priorities. Community colleges shine when they meet 
community needs. Good plans focus on those community needs. Bad plans focus on institutional 
priorities. I’ll give you a quick example of that: Let’s say there’s a community college in a rural 
county with a super low literacy rate. A good plan would be to identify, articulate and enact 
strategies to double the county’s literacy rate over, say, five years. A bad plan would be simply to 
build a new library with enough space on the ground floor to bring in a coffee shop. The former 
goes right at what the community needs. The latter feels good for those inside the institution but 
may or may not actually help the people the college needs to serve. 
 
The second trait of a bad plan is a lack of measurable goals. Where you would expect to see hard 
targets, you get fuzzy and fancy words. I’ve seen institutional plans that include a goal calling for an 
institution to build cohesion. I don’t know what that means. Does it involve duct tape or model 
glue? How do you measure that? And if you can’t – as all of you know so well – if you can’t measure 
it then how do you know where you are, where you need to be and how much progress you made 
along the way? 
 
The third trait of a bad plan is that it has too many goals. There is a reality to planning and plans that 
having dozens of goals – and I’ve seen some with more than 100 goals – is simply unwieldy and 
unrealistic. The truth is that if you are trying to look at everything then you aren’t really seeing 
anything. Solid plans, I believe, have ten or fewer goals. The whole idea here is to identify, articulate 
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and pursue priorities for your institution. Those goals can and should be stretch goals. When they 
are, they will take time to accomplish. 
 
In short, I believe that a solid plan for a community college has no more than ten goals, most of 
which are stretch-goals for the institution. Those goals are all measurable. And most importantly, 
those goals respond to critical community needs. 
 
Dateline 2009 
Virginia’s Community Colleges were no strangers to planning before they hired me as chancellor in 
2001. I had no trouble finding shelves full of reports and plans – evidence of committees created, 
meetings held, and pages upon pages written. What I couldn’t seem to find though was any 
indication that the process extended beyond that – no sign of the plans connecting to each other or 
to the mission, no sign of 
goals being reached or 
failed, and no sign of 
action. 
 
Circumstances changed 
that. Virginia, like the rest 
of the nation, slipped into a 
post 9/11 recession.  
Overnight, the focus of our 
state turned from cutting 
taxes to cutting budgets. 
That wasn’t the only thing, 
however, backing our 
colleges and universities 
into a corner. We were hit 
with a wave of rising 
enrollment, more unprepared students, calls for greater degree productivity, and greater 
accountability. We knew then that we had to get better at planning our future, not falling victim to it. 
As I mentioned, failing to plan really is planning to fail. 
 
With the help of others, I called for a summertime planning retreat. It took place at my home. The 
presidents of all 23 colleges came along with my senior staff. We weren’t sure of what we were 
doing. But we knew we had to do something. After several days of hand wringing, passionate 
debates, and hard decisions, we had a plan…all 136 goals of it. 
 
The beginning of wisdom, they say, is never pretty. This was no exception. We didn’t give up, 
however. We kept after it for a few months. We cut the number of goals in half, and then in half 
again, and again until we felt like vintners squashing grapes until we had only the finest wine 
remaining.  
 
We arrived ultimately at a plan we called Dateline 2009. It was a six-year statewide plan with seven 
measurable goals. We unveiled it in 2003. We promised to increase enrollment in our credit 
programs by 19,000 students. We promised to nearly double the number of individuals served in our 
non-credit workforce training classes. We promised to be in the nation’s top ten in terms of 
retention, graduation, and job placement rates. We promised to triple the number of students we 
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helped transfer on to four-year universities. We promised to keep mandatory tuition and fees at less 
than half the comparable cost of Virginia’s public universities. We promised to triple the number of 
high school students we would serve with college classes through our Dual Enrollment programs. 
And we promised to double our collective foundation holdings to $150 million. 
 
I think, sometimes, that the hardest part of our plan was convincing our own people of its worth 
and that we were all accountable to the promises it contains. I traveled throughout the state, 
speaking to our college communities, explaining the plan and talking about why the people we serve 
needed us to accomplish these goals. I’ve since had faculty members confess to me that the first 
time I visited their campus, they thought, “Oh, that’s cute. Here’s another plan.” The second time 
they heard me talk about it, they thought, “Huh. He’s still talking about that. It will be over soon 
enough.”  The third time they heard me talk about it was when they finally thought, “Oh, he really 
means it.” 
 
There are two things that I have to do well as chancellor – and if I do a good enough job with these 
two things, all the other issues will take care of themselves: One, I have to set the right priorities. 
That’s our plan. And two, I have to hire the right executive leaders, get out of their way and unleash 
their talent.  
 
Dateline 2009 helped me do both of those things. In setting the right goals, our plan became a road 
map by which the members of our governing board could see where we were going and how quickly 
we were getting there. Board members received updates on the plan and its execution at every 
regular meeting. As far as hiring the right executive leaders, Dateline 2009 was the mold from which 
the community college presidents would shape their annual goals, for which they were accountable 
to me. They all had a hand in helping to paint these bull’s eyes. In shaping their annual goals, we 
negotiated how those translated into action on their campuses. The annual goals meeting was the 
way we could check-in without leaving them feeling micro-managed at their college. 
 
Altogether, we met – or came darn close to meeting – six of those seven goals. And the one we 
didn’t finish, the goal about reaching the nation’s top ten in terms of retention, graduation, and job 
placement helped frame where we would go in the next six-year plan. Notice I said, it framed where 
we would go. It didn’t dictate where we would go, because we knew the community would help us 
do that. 
 
Achieve 2015 
As we approached the final year of the Dateline 2009 plan, we assembled a dream team of 
community college leaders from across the state to draft our next strategic plan – what we would go 
on to call Achieve 2015. My charge to that taskforce was simple: We needed another six-year plan. It 
had to be bold. It had to stretch us as an organization. And it had to focused not on the needs of 
our community colleges but rather on the needs of the communities we serve. 
 
We began with a series of town hall meetings with the public; business leaders, elected leaders, 
community leaders, K-12 leaders, and students we served. We asked them, “What do you need from 
your community college to be successful, or more successful?” After eighteen months of collecting 
that input, putting it all together, breaking it all apart, wringing our hands, gnashing our teeth, and 
biting our nails, the taskforce produced a five-point plan. The plan’s focus includes access; 
affordability; student success; workforce; and resources – many of the very same issues upon which 
this SCUP meeting is focused.  
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Just past the halfway mark of this six year cycle, I would tell you that we got a lot of things right with 
this plan and at least one thing wrong. We were right about these goals. This public agenda placed 
our colleges on the right path, giving them a head start on those larger public policy goals that would 
later come at us from both Capitol Square and Capitol Hill. We were right to set these stretch goals. 
It made us nervous at the time. The economy hit bottom as we were putting this plan together. It 
would have been easy to just hunker-down and batten the hatches. Instead, we looked around and 
wondered how many more people we could help. 
 
We were wrong, however, in estimating what our outer limit was. We underestimated how many 
people would seek their future at our doors. And we underestimated how long it would take us to 
achieve the majority of these ambitious goals. All told, within the five goal areas of Achieve 2015, we 
have eight measurable goals. At the halfway point of the plan, three years in, we had met six of the 
eight goals. 
 
So, we recently faced an important question: What now? Do we just cruise on, safe in the knowledge 
that short of a catastrophe we will exceed every goal of this six-year plan? That didn’t feel right to us. 
It would be hard to just tap in a gimmie’ putt and then try to act like we did something significant. 
Instead, we took guidance from some geniuses – musical geniuses, that is: like the Blues Brothers, 
we got the band back together, man. We reassembled the team that that created Achieve 2015 to 
recalibrate our goals and examine if we missed a goal along the way. That panel worked through last 
fall to submit a revised strategic plan to the State Board for its January 2013 meeting. 
 
Their work became what we call Achieve 2015, Take Two. Like its predecessor, the plan focuses on 
access, affordability, student success, workforce, and resources. Hard Metrics govern each of the 
goals, though we did set the bars higher. 
 
Reengineering 
I would like to share with you some examples of these goals are being integrated throughout 
Virginia’s Community Colleges. I spoke earlier about how those strategic goals shape what our 
college presidents do every year, and how we are all accountable to our State Board on the progress 
we make. But that’s not enough to create the cultural change we need to evolve into high 
performing organizations. 
 
To help accomplish that, we have created a statewide VCCS Reengineering Task Force. This “All 
Hands on Deck” initiative allows us to re-examine everything Virginia’s Community Colleges do. 
Over the past three years, the taskforce identified ten big ideas to pursue. Those ideas are guiding 
the work of some two-dozen workgroups. Those workgroups vet, explore and refine 
recommendations for the task force to consider. Obviously, that’s a lot of moving parts.  
 
Given the intensive nature of that work and the inclusive way we go about doing it, those 
workgroups will not cross the finish line at the same time. But we’re feeling good about the ones 
that have. That includes: 
• Breaking down silos and sharing distance learning classes to more than 1,000 students across 
the state – classes they might have never seen without that reform; 
• A transition to our new developmental mathematics approach that focuses on the needs and 
the deficiencies of individual students. So far, we have only preliminary results from it. 
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They’re encouraging. And they’re preparing us for this year’s reforms to developmental 
reading and writing; 
• An audit of our academic programs to ensure that students are having to take – and having 
to pay for – only those classes that are necessary for the degree or certificate they pursue. 
That is an effort, by the way, that is ongoing. But it seems we are going to save students and 
taxpayers millions of dollars a year; and 
• A recasting of the faculty performance review system which we believe will transform a 
bureaucratic process into one that ensures our colleges are hiring the best inspiring 
instructors and focusing on their professional development. 
 
I would also like to mention our work to reform how we handle the back-office processing of 
financial aid paperwork. For quite some time, we’ve had a love-hate relationship with federal 
financial aid. It opens doors for so many of the people we serve. But for many of those people, 
getting through that door can feel like an adventure worthy of an Indiana Jones movie, poisoned 
darts, rolling boulder and snakes included. Our reforms are focused on freeing up financial aid 
counselors to maximize their time to serve students. 
 
I’ve been asked, more than once, when do I think the work of the Reengineering Task Force will be 
complete? The answer, my friends, is that it won’t be – at least not for the foreseeable future. We are 
now in what’s really an era of reengineering. That’s true, I believe, even beyond our colleges. The 
need to re-examine and reinvent ourselves – the very thing that we offer the people we serve – 
needs to become a permanent part of our M.O. 
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