NCI: A new model
When Rob Spilman thinks about the New College Institute, a cathedral comes to mind — and he’s not envisioning the state-of-the-art new building that NCI will dedicate today on the Baldwin Block.
Spilman is thinking of NCI itself, the way it has evolved in the decade since local leaders began working to create it and the many ways he believes it can transform this community.
“Someone once told me ... ‘Hey, when you’re involved in something like this (the creation of the New College), which is a true game-changer for a community, you have to adopt a foundation mentality,’” Spilman recalled. “I said, ‘What’s that?’ And he said, ‘Well, the masons who built Notre Dame cathedral in Paris centuries ago, the guys who built the foundation, they never saw the (finished) cathedral.’
“That’s a good analogy” for NCI, Spilman said. “I think that’s what we’ve done, and we’ve just got to keep the walls of that cathedral moving on up.”
If the New College still is in the foundation stage, Spilman is one of the many masons who laid the first stones. He was chairman of the planning commission that spearheaded efforts to make NCI a reality and was part of the NCI board for many years.
He sees the existence of the $18.7 million, 52,000-square-foot building that will be dedicated today, only eight years after the first students began taking classes through NCI, as “miraculous,” he said.
But it’s far from an end point.
He and several others who were early supporters of the institute reflected this week on their first efforts, NCI’s accomplishments so far and its future.
Issuing a challenge
In 1999, state Sen. Charles Hawkins of Chatham proposed creating a public college in Southside. By early 2004, then-Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine was among the state lawmakers who supported the idea, and he spoke about it during a stop in Danville, recalled Allyson Rothrock, executive director of The Harvest Foundation.
Rothrock was the foundation’s assistant executive director at that time; Harry Cerino was the executive director. She and Cerino read about Kaine’s remarks and saw an opportunity for Harvest to act.
On a Saturday morning in January 2004, the foundation’s board agreed to issue a $50 million challenge grant toward the creation of a state-supported, baccalaureate-level college in Martinsville-Henry County.
The decision was unanimous, “and it kind of changed everything,” Rothrock said.
Harvest continues to match state funding for NCI. So far, it has committed $23 million of the $50 million challenge grant, including $8 million for the new building.
Later in 2004, retired James Madison University President Ronald Carrier began leading a group dedicated to helping establish an institution of higher education in the area, and local lawmakers were supporting legislation in the General Assembly to do the same. Rothrock remembers Carrier saying the planners needed to envision an “innovative model for education.”
“Everyone really was excited about that, about what does an innovative model look like. And what we envisioned then is pretty much what we’re seeing now,” she said, in terms of the innovation involved in NCI’s new building, particularly its advanced manufacturing program.
That program was created by a partnership of local economic developers, industry leaders and educators, and such partnerships continue today. Students this fall began the new 28-credit Advanced Film Certification program offered through Patrick Henry Community College while they take classes at PHCC and NCI and have access to equipment at Eastman Chemical and Commonwealth Laminating. Internship opportunities and guaranteed job interviews with the local firms are part of the program.
Although Rothrock see echoes of those early discussions in the new program, neither she nor others predicted in 2004 what NCI would look like now. For several years, the goal was for NCI to become a stand-alone university or a branch campus of an existing state college.
Those plans were put on hold during the recession, and today NCI works with numerous colleges and universities to offer the second two years of bachelor’s degree programs, master’s degree programs and certificates.
“It may look very different to what we thought 10 or 11 years ago that it would look like, but the dream is still the same,” Rothrock said. “This is an institution of higher learning.”
Making a leap
Leanna Blevins, the associate director and chief academic officer at NCI, was one of the first staff members hired to join Carrier’s group in 2004. Blevins said she felt passionate enough about the idea to move to Martinsville with her husband while she was expecting their first child, but she wasn’t without reservations.
“The first few years were a roller coaster, and frankly there were times when I wasn’t sure if it was going to become a reality,” Blevins recalled. “But I feel that this community is so fortunate that we had some really smart, influential, passionate people who were committed to making this happen, and that’s why the idea never died. It limped along a few times, but it was always brought back to life.”
She wasn’t alone with her doubts. Spilman remembers feeling the same way as he and others traveled to Richmond to lobby lawmakers.
“This went on for months, and I many times came back home with grave doubts whether this would ever happen,” he said. “I think in the end most of the legislators wanted to help our area but they didn’t really know how. And they needed the perspective of business and to hear that because they respond to business and jobs.”
Spilman, who is president and CEO of Bassett Furniture Industries, knew firsthand the effects globalization was having on the area’s businesses. His firm had already begun cutting local jobs and would close several plants as the economy worsened.
“In all candor, I was personally involved with those jobs — a lot of those jobs — leaving,” he said. “Even though I didn’t want it to be, it was an unfortunate reality of our business and our industry, and so I did feel somewhat of a personal obligation to the community to try ... to contribute in some way to the long-term future of the area and its reinvention.”
Spilman and others lobbying for NCI saw education as key to that reinvention. Patrick County native and former Gov. Gerald Baliles, who became adviser to the NCI planning commission after Carrier stepped down in 2005, put it this way: “Without an educated and skilled citizenry, the region cannot compete, and if it cannot compete, it cannot grow. It’s that fundamental. As education goes in the region, so goes its future.”
Barry Dorsey, who became NCI’s first executive director in 2006, credited Baliles with helping to convince him to take the job. Although Dorsey wasn’t sure at first if it was right for him, he said a visit to the area and the chance to meet people who were enthusiastic about the idea sold him on it.
“Everyone was very excited about the possibility and just very supportive,” Dorsey said. “I could tell that there was a huge amount of community support for the concept.”
Among others who were active in supporting NCI were then-Gov. Mark Warner, the late Elizabeth Haskell and local lawmakers at the time, such as Ward Armstrong, Roscoe Reynolds, Robert Hurt and Danny Marshall, Dorsey and others noted.
In April 2006, Kaine, by then the governor, had signed the legislation creating NCI, and in September of that year, the first students were taking classes through NCI in an uptown building renovated by Mervyn and Virginia King.
“According to the bill passed, we had two years (to get started), but we started that fall,” Dorsey recalled. “We were ahead of schedule and moved ahead of schedule I think through the entire development.”
NCI evolves
In addition to providing an opportunity for students to earn advanced degrees without leaving home, NCI focuses on changing the attitude toward education in the area by creating in young people an expectation to continue their education beyond high school. That will help not only the students, but their future employers, Blevins said.
“I do think if we educate the community about the importance of having knowledge and having skills that are transferable beyond one task or one particular job, that makes the individual, the employee much more valuable, and it helps our business and industry be more sustainable,” she said.
Over the years, NCI has begun to work more closely with local businesses and industry to create programs to meet the needs of the local workforce. The advanced manufacturing program is the latest example. By partnering with PHCC, Eastman and Commonwealth Laminating, NCI will help offer area residents a chance to train for jobs the companies need now.
“You can call it an educational model, but the honest truth is that without economic development and industry (input), what came from that would never have been the successful model it is now,” Rothrock said.
Speaking by phone from Washington, Kaine praised NCI’s work to build partnerships to meet community needs.
“I think it is a powerful model, the involvement of local businesses, the chamber of commerce, local governments, The Harvest Foundation,” he said. “The New College is nothing if not a hub where all these folks intersect, a center where all these partnerships arrive.”
Now a U.S. senator, Kaine said he believes advanced manufacturing will be a growth area as more businesses begin to move their operations back to the United States. That is happening as transportation and labor costs abroad rise and U.S. energy costs decrease, he said. NCI will be primed to train workers for those types of jobs, he added.
Even in the years since the idea for a new college in the region was proposed, the nature of higher education has changed, Kaine pointed out.
“It’s not just (attending college from ages) 18 to 22 and then you’re done,” he said. “It’s a lifelong learning process. Sometimes it’s a degree, sometimes it’s the acquisition of a skill that will help you get an exciting job, get a promotion, find another job. I think NCI has grown and evolved in a way that is responsive to the needs in the Martinsville-Henry County area.”
What next?
Everyone interviewed agreed that NCI’s future looks bright. Most also said they believe its ability to adapt will be the key to its future success.
Spilman said he thinks providing the third and fourth years of bachelor’s degrees and access to higher degrees will remain a huge part of NCI, but partnerships with industry and focusing on workforce needs also will be essential.
Kaine said he is intrigued by NCI’s adaptive, collaborative model, which may be able to adjust more quickly than some other models as curriculums change.
“When the name New College Institute was chosen, it was chosen not to mean ‘recently,’ but ‘new’ meant a new model, something that was different than what was out there,” Kaine said. “And I think NCI is really living up to that label.”
“I think it needs to not lose sight of not only community needs but regional, state and even beyond that needs,” Rothrock said. “We need to never take our eye off what’s going on around us and what the possibilities are.”
Dorsey hopes one of those possibilities remains a long-term affiliation with an existing four-year institution. That would mean more resources and more students, which would benefit the local economy, he said.
“I think it’s critical for future economic development to have (more) students actually reside here,” he said.
Baliles said he doesn’t think there is a “yes” or “no” answer at this point to whether NCI should become a branch campus.
“Might the opportunities for funding be greater? Possibly. Or would there be less funding if NCI were to lose its uniqueness as it became subsumed by its ‘parent’ entity?” he wrote in an email. “Many important pieces (such as governance, funding and program design) would have to be in place for a merger, of sorts, to be successful.”
Blevins, like Rothrock, thinks forming partnerships to better meet the community’s needs will be critical to success.
“Our primary target market are students who complete a program at PHCC, and so because we work together, because we are all on the same page — which is to make our students successful so our community benefits from that — we have been able to do so much in eight years,” Blevins said. “If we continue to work together, I feel like we can really transform the workforce in Martinsville-Henry County.”
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