Northern Virginia Community College: NOVA's Go Virginia Grant To Support Dual Enrollment Expansion For Information And Engineeri ...

Press release from Northern Virginia Community College:

July 14, 2021

NOVA’s Go Virginia Grant to Support Dual Enrollment Expansion for Information and Engineering Technology

Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) was recently awarded a Go Virginia grant of $1.11 million following Governor Northam’s announcement that Virginia will allocate over $11 million to help advance economic recovery efforts across the Commonwealth. NOVA will apply the funds to implement the Dual Enrollment Expansion Program for Information and Engineering Technology (DEEP-IET) with a goal to develop regional workforce capacity in IET careers.

In broadening the conversation related to technology opportunities and partnerships across the state, NOVA will collaborate with the Northern Virginia Economic Development Alliance (NOVA EDA), the Loudoun County Economic Development Authority (LCEDA) and local school districts to improve the regional producing of IET talent by investing in faculty development and student support structures. 

The grant allows for expanded programming to raise awareness of and access for underrepresented student populations in IET fields, supporting them with mentoring services, career readiness activities and internship opportunities with the goal of driving up graduation rates for students and creating highly-skilled talent to fill those positions. 

GO Virginia’s Region 7 Council has identified cybersecurity, data center operations (DCO) and cloud computing as some of fields where the talent shortage is most acute. NOVA currently offers one-year career study certificates (CSCs) and two-year applied associate degree programs in these fields, and these programs were developed in collaboration with regional industry partners. Additionally, NOVA has CSC and two-year programs in engineering technology leading to in-demand jobs in manufacturing and critical infrastructure support services.

The DEEP-IET pilot program is structured as a block-scheduling model that combines class time, wrap-around services for students and valuable internships offering hands-on experience and mentorship from experts in the field. Furthermore, this model will help ensure regional capacity-building for IET by developing the region’s secondary school teachers into credentialed adjunct faculty members who can provide dual enrollment opportunities at regional high schools. It is expected the DEEP-IET program will create 288 additional graduates and 96 new internships and expand the number of certified dual enrollment teachers in the region by summer 2024.

The program roll-out will include:

Media Contact: Hoang Nguyen | 703.425.5839 | hdnguyen@nvcc.edu

Program Contact: Josh Labrie | 703.530.2829 | jlabrie@nvcc.edu

This press release was produced by Northern Virginia Community College. The views expressed here are the author’s own.