When Darrel Staat closes the door to his office at Central Virginia Community College for the last time later this summer, the Commonwealth of Virginia will lose one of its most innovative leaders in higher education.
And the Central Virginia region will lose one of its best, most enthusiastic boosters.
Staat, who’s been president of CVCC for more than a decade, has been tapped as president and executive director of the South Carolina Technical College System, a 16-school campus in The Palmetto State.
Community colleges were once seen as little more than glorified technical schools. No more. Today, especially in Virginia, they’re at the forefront of training workers for the new economy, making higher education more affordable and more accessbile to a greater number of students and key to working with economic development officials in the recruitment of new businesses.
CVCC, under Staat’s leadership and guidance, has been a leader in each of those areas.
The school has partnered with such companies as Areva and Grief Bros. to establish cutting-edge training programs for students in the nuclear services and welding professions. This fall, a new culinary arts school will open.
CVCC has also opened four satellite campuses in the region in order to make its programs even more accessible to residents. Those offerings include a partnership with the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in which students can take the first two years of classes at CVCC and then transfer to UVa for the final two years of their engineering studies. Access to higher education also played into CVCC’s pioneering Early College Program, in which a high school can earn two years’ worth of college credits before receiving his high school diploma, thereby making college much more affordable to a large number of students.
And those are just the highlights of CVCC’s achievements under Darrel Staat.
Rex Hammond, president of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce, lauded Staat as a pioneering educational leader.
“CVCC over that period of time made revolutionary changes,” Hammond said. “The school became an indispensable part of linking workers to jobs being created in the Lynchburg region.”
And that was due in no small part to Staat’s leadership and vision.
A humble man who leads quietly, Staat will be a hard man to replace. And whoever the chancellor of the state community college system taps to follow him will have some mighty big shoes to fill.
Thank you for a job well done.
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