After eight years cultivating Central Virginia Community College as a hub for training students for local careers, Stan Shoun will move on to become president of Ranken Technical College in St. Louis, Mo.
“I have cherished the time that I’ve had here in the region,” Shoun said Wednesday. “Hopefully I can achieve as much at my next site as I have at this one.”
Shoun, 55, started at CVCC as dean of science, math and engineering in 2001. After two years, he moved to his current position of vice president for workforce development and continuing education.
“Everything that we’ve done since I got here seems to center around industry, business, careers,” he said, and that began with his comprehensive “Grow Your Own” program in 2002.
The program has aligned CVCC with businesses and industries locally and sought to train students, from preteens to adults, for careers in demand here.
That starts at the middle school level, where Shoun has led summer camps and Lego league robotics competitions. At the high school level, it equates to dual-enrollment opportunities in college-level engineering coursework, summer internships with local businesses and a technology fair.
Beyond high school, students now can enroll in an engineering program with University of Virginia coursework that can be taken from the campus of CVCC.
All the different endeavors have equated to more than $5 million in grants in the past five years, mostly from National Science Foundation and Department of Labor.
“I know of no one else who is doing it as comprehensively across the state,” Shoun said. “All the things we’ve done, they far exceed CVCC. They’re now expectations that are engrained into the community.”
Darrel Staat, president of CVCC, said Shoun “has been involved with many, many things here.”
“He has just been untiring in his efforts on behalf of the college,” he said. “Now our big effort is to find someone who can follow up.”
He hopes to have a new person in Shoun’s current position by mid-June.
Shoun will continue serving at CVCC until May 15, he said, and begin in his new position at Ranken Technical College the following week.
Shoun will succeed Ranken’s current President Ben Ernst, who is retiring.
Ranken is a private two- and four-year college with about 2,000 students in areas such as automotive, construction, electrical, information technology, manufacturing and architecture.
Staat said that Shoun is “very prepared to do presidential work; I think he’ll do fine there.”
“I just feel very happy for him, and very sad for us.”
Shoun also said he will miss CVCC.
“We have striven very hard over the last five years to focus not just on the community college, but on the community,” he said. “If I leave a legacy, that’s what I hope it will be.”
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