A Conversation With The Times-Dispatch

The presidents of Virginia Commonwealth University and J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College sat down for a discussion with members of The Times-Dispatch’s editorial staff and newsroom. Below is edited transcript.

Times-Dispatch: Could the two of you walk us through your thoughts on the findings of James Crupi’s report card for Central Virginia?

VCU President Eugene Trani: The Crupi Report was a very good idea. The process was handled right, in contrast to Crupi’s report processed in the 1990s. This was an open report – many people were interviewed. The results were formally presented to the Richmond community, and the Greater Richmond Chamber is taking ownership for the next steps in the process. . . . .

There is one thing I don’t think is in the Crupi Report anywhere. This is my fourth state-capital, large university: Columbus, Ohio – Ohio State University; Lincoln, Neb. – the University of Nebraska; and Madison, Wis. – the University of Wisconsin System, where I was before I came to Richmond. This is the commonwealth’s only capital. That idea is not dealt with at all in the Crupi Report. I believe every member of the legislature ought to have two obligations: (1) to their own constituents, and (2) to Virginia’s capital in its broadest sense.

So what role should the state properly play in regard to the recommendations of the Crupi Report? How are we going to make sure the state capital is one that everyone can be proud of?

Just as one example: the convention center. Everybody wants to go to Lincoln or Madison and Columbus from all across Ohio, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. The same thing ought to be the case with state conventions. . . [Virginia organizations] ought to be coming to Richmond to really enjoy their capital with its newly redone Capital grounds, and enjoying the attractions.

Times-Dispatch: You’ve been in four other capital regions. Is Central Virginia behind the other capital regions you mentioned?

Trani: Yes.

Times-Dispatch: How so?

Trani: They work together as capital areas. . . . Clearly regionalism is an important issue.

Secondly, full economic participation in the prosperity of the area is a very important thing. . . Whatever happens in the capital region has to be done so that large groups of people are not left behind.

And the third area: . . . We all must come together to work with [Richmond's] superintendent, to work with the School Board, to work with the school leadership in individual buildings to make sure the product of the Richmond City Schools, which Crupi specifically talks about, can move easily to Virginia Commonwealth University and J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College to study, first of all – and then into jobs over at Phillip Morris or Dominion or wherever.

Times-Dispatch: What percentage of VCU students is from the capital area? And can Reynolds break it up by jurisdiction? What percentage is coming from the city?

Trani: Look at the growth of the freshman class at VCU from 1990 to 2007. From 1,612 freshmen students in 1990 to 3,882 freshmen in 2007. Transfers are about the same. A significant portion of our transfers are community-college transfers. Our leading feeder is Reynolds.

Let me answer your question by saying when VCU was 21,000 students, there were approximately 900 from Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover. This fall [VCU has 31,900 students and] there were 926 enrolled from the capital region. . . .

Times-Dispatch: Is that a good number – or could we be serving the Richmond area better?

Trani: There are 12 high schools [in the region] with 40 or more students at VCU . . . In all there were 45 kids from Richmond Public Schools in the freshman class at VCU. That is not enough.

Times-Dispatch: So why aren’t the city students taking advantage of VCU? Are they unable to?

Trani: I don’t think it is something that is drilled in them on a daily basis. It has to be drilled in – by the newspaper, by schools, by community, by parents – that they need to go to college.

Times-Dispatch: I think it was clear from the Rolls-Royce announcement – the company officials talked to us and stressed education, and that’s a prime reason they came here. They liked the educational infrastructure. They made the point that this is going to be a manufacturing and an industrial plant, but practically everyone who works there is going to need a degree or a certificate of some kind.

Trani: Absolutely. And Rolls-Royce was not the first such deal like that. Infinium, when it doubled the size of the plant in Henrico, it went from 1,000 people to 2,000 people, and from $1.5 billion in infrastructure to $3 billion in infrastructure. There were $5 million of incentives for the VCU School of Engineering that Infinium insisted be there – and they, by the way, put another $2 million in to make it a $7 million pact.

J. Sargent Reynolds President Gary Rhodes: In responding to your earlier question [about enrollment from Richmond], Reynolds is Virginia’s third largest community college, with about 18,000 students. We have about 3,600 students from the city who attend our downtown campus, and another 1,500 or so on our other campuses.

In terms of the tie with the Crupi Report, one of the things that struck me as extremely critical. . . is the notion that we have to send the Richmond Public Schools more to work with in terms of the students.

Gov. Kaine has made early childhood education one of his priorities. I think that’s very, very critical for the long term well-being of our region.

And the other part is: What do we do with those who are already in school? We can’t accept the fact that maybe it’s too late, and just let them slide through and not help them. . . In fact, we have a program at Reynolds called the “Middle College,” which is really a recovery program. And it’s to target students who have already dropped out of high school. They really do two or three different things in the program. The primary focus is to help them learn what employers call “soft skills.” In fact, soft skills are work ethics: It’s showing up to work on time, cleanliness, even how to manage their money. They learn those kind of skills, communication skills, and along the way they get a GED.

We have about a 70 percent success rate and in a good number of those students go on and take their first college class.

Times-Dispatch: Could we get some comments on the relationship between the community colleges and the 4-year institutes, specifically VCU. In recent years the commonwealth has been promoting the idea that someone can go to community college for 2 years then transfer to one of the state’s 4-years schools. I’ve heard over the years that young people who do that have a very good success rate when they go to the 4-year institution.

Trani: I can tell what our community-college transfer students who enroll with more than 30 hours from the community college – whether they graduate from the community college or not – do as well as our native, first-time freshman in terms of retention rates. We love the community colleges. I think that is a good on-ramp.

Times-Dispatch: Just to get an idea of where we are – is the Richmond school system doing better than it was 10 years ago? Is the system on an upward trajectory?

Trani: I don’t think there’s any question they are doing better. And the SOL scores are to be celebrated. But the SOL scores are sort of the floor. Our young people need higher aspirations than “I passed the SOL.” . . . They’re going to need us all working together with the superintendent and the school board. She can’t do it alone. It’s got to be the whole community – including the business community – that really works at that.

Times-Dispatch: How would you rate at how we’re doing at that right now. The whole community coming together, that is?

Trani: People are now discussing the real issues in the last 4 or 5 months. Not just celebrating what has occurred, but people are beginning to ask, “SOLs are fine, but what else can there be?” The Rolls Royce announcement is going to make that even more front and center. That here’s an international corporation that has put a significant part of its future in Virginia. But they’re telling us something. They’re telling us that education – higher education, in the case of UVa’s and Virginia Tech’s engineering and business particularly – is important. But they’re also telling us that we need a better system to have internal allocation of resources within our school systems and work training programs within one agency to another.

Rhodes: Let me piggy back on something that President Trani said about the partnership between VCU and Reynolds. The phrase he used was “on ramp.” The community college mission has 3 parts: (1) its transfer to 4-year colleges and universities; (2) it’s career programs – we have about 80 programs, whether you want to be a nurse, an automotive technician, or work in electronics; and (3) the third part is work-force development. Of our 18,000 students, about 40 percent are enrolled in courses that transfer to 4-year colleges and universities, and if students take all the right classes they can graduate with an associate’s degree and every course will transfer to the four-year institution.

Times-Dispatch: If we turn the clock back 50 or 60 years ago, I’m not sure members of the chamber of commerce would have thought, “Let’s team with the universities.” Similarly, the university leaders probably did not often think, “The chamber of commerce is where we belong.” And there clearly is a connection now. What brought about this new paradigm?

Trani: That’s an international phenomenon. . . .

China has made the national determination that the centers of economic development are going to be their universities. Look at Oxford and Cambridge and what they have done for the UK and more specifically for their home areas. Look at Ireland and what the universities have done: A country of 4 million produces more software than any other country in the world. More software at 4 million people than any other country in the world! Look at what the university of Philadelphia has done for Pennsylvania.

We have over 17,000 employees at VCU and VCU Medical Center. We’re the largest employer – it’s not even close if you put the health system and universities together.

[A university's mission encompasses:] teaching, research, community service, and participation in economic development. That is now a fourth stool leg of what universities can and should do.

Rhodes: We hear frequently that VCU is the major economic engine for the city of Richmond. People recognize that with pride, and seeking to build on that is probably a smart thing to do.

Times-Dispatch: Is there risk when you focus a university’s power on work force training. Is there a risk that you leave behind flexible people who can think and change in an economy that is requiring people to be more flexible?

Rhodes: I think there’s risk if a university is diminishing or reducing the other parts of what it traditionally does. But if you’re growing and flourishing and you’re adding these parts of your service to the community then it’s not risk at all. In fact, it’s a benefit because you become more engaged with the community.

Times-Dispatch: How do you make sure that the traditional aspects of your universities’ missions aren’t diminishing?

Trani: We have the “freshman-year experience.” All 3,882 freshman go through university college and they begin with a summer-reading assignment. They read a common book and discuss that as soon as they arrive on campus. The same 15 students take 2, 3, 4 classes together. And that is working on the skills employers want. Even a larger university like VCU has completely reorganized its freshman- year experience to address the very issue you are raising.

Times-Dispatch: In the 1970s, universities nationwide began talking about remediation – students who graduated from high school and arrive on campus not prepared for college. Is that still a problem?

Rhodes: More than half of our students go through some type of remedial training. And frankly, what I think you find is typical across the country – the math skills are worse than the reading skills. But they often need help in both. . . . It’s an ongoing challenge that we won’t see go away before we make progress with it. And I think some of those students come to us first to take some of those classes to basically build their skill set and their confidence before they go on to the 4-year universities.

Times-Dispatch: By way of comparison, are your schools doing more remediation these days, doing less, or is it about the same?

Trani: We are doing less.

Rhodes: We’re doing more.

Times-Dispatch: When you look at the challenge of remediation – why do you think you are doing more of it these days? Is it a question of teaching? Do we not know how to teach well? Are we not devoting enough resources to developing reading skills and the math skills?

Rhodes: A lot of it is that we have so many first-generation college students. My father didn’t go to college, my mother didn’t go to college. I’m a first generation college student. But I grew up assuming I was going to college. I had no idea where I would end up going when I was working my way up to that age, but it was just something my parents drilled into me. I don’t think that is what we find here. That’s why the word “aspiration” is so fundamental to what we’re talking about here.

We need to do things here with the leadership in the business world, with our church leaders, and all people identified in the Crupi report who need to be players to help change the culture here so that furthering education is an inherent thought – it’s automatic.

And not everybody needs to go to college. But they need to have some sense that they can do whatever they want to be.

Times-Dispatch: Could we backtrack just a little bit to the increase in students who need remedial education? That seems to suggest that some secondary schools are not fulfilling their role. But it’s remarkable to me that you both sound very confident that once those students get to your institutions you can educate them and get the job done that was not accomplished in K-12 schools. How do you explain your confidence in your ability to fill in such seemingly large gaps?

Trani: These are bright kids, and I think the SOLs are step in the right direction. But how can we make sure that every K-12 student going to the Richmond Public Schools is given the communications and quantitative skills that they’re going to need for the future?

Times-Dispatch: The amount of remediation that you have to does lead one to think that the pre-collegiate education isn’t working as it should. How do we transfer your ideas to the K-12 years so your schools don’t have to do so much work to get these students to square one?

Rhodes: Well, I would characterize it very differently – and probably not focus so much on the schools. I would say that their previous life experiences have let them down. Which includes the schools as one piece, but it also includes home-life as a huge piece. It includes a huge piece of what activities they have when they’re not in school – where they focus their attention. But it’s really that whole comprehensive life experience leading them up to the point where they’re old enough to go to college. And I don’t think we can pick out one or two pieces and say it’s this fault or that fault.

Times-Dispatch: How do you take a child who is living in terrible circumstances and instill in him or her the aspiration to go to college. How do you reach them?

Trani: That’s the mission for the future. As Gary said, it’s just not the schools. How do their parents come to an understanding that they have to impart larger aspirations for their children when they’ve been unable to succeed themselves? What strikes me are some of the immigrants who’ve come to the United States. The Vietnamese, for instance. You have professional people from Vietnam unable to practice their profession in the U.S. If they’re physicians or pharmacists, they’ll do anything for their kids. Their aspiration is, “I am what I am and I’m dealing with the cards I was dealt with. I can’t practice the profession I had in Vietnam but by god, my kids will be able to practice that profession.” How does that transfer?

Times-Dispatch: Is there a chance that that fundamental education policy of Virginia – testing of minimum academic competence – becomes a trap of “that’s good enough; that’s what we focus on,” instead of seeking higher aspirations? And if so, how should you deal with it?

Trani: Yes, and I think that’s a question for the whole commonwealth of Virginia. How does Virginia really compare with other states in terms of career success? Who measures careers? We’ll measure when somebody becomes CEO of a large not-for profit or a large corporation, but who is tracking to see what percent of the young people who come out of Powhatan, out of the City of Richmond, out of Chesterfield , have careers and income? I think we need to do a lot more research on our young people and what their tracks are.

Rhodes: It’s a real question to ask. At what point do we teach to a test, versus teaching life skills that will transition to whatever students ends up doing with the rest of their lives.

Times-Dispatch: Final Thoughts?

Trani: Back to universities and economic development. We have received monetary support from Chesterfield, Henrico, Richmond, and Hanover for VCU’s School of Engineering. The School of Engineering turns out to be a big boon for them as well. The research park got started with dollar support from those for governments. Very unusual for local governments to contribute to public higher education – either for the School of Engineering or the research park. But they’ve turned out to fill two great needs for our community. And both of them are doing pretty well.

Rhodes: Two quick thoughts: We have the second largest nursing program in the commonwealth. Reynolds alone graduates about 200 nurses a year. In fact we’re surrounded by VCU Medical Center, VCU Bio-Tech Research Park, and now the new Phillip Morris research center. The other piece that didn’t come up here, but we talked about it in different ways, is the shortage of teachers and the potential for a shortage of teachers nationally. And guess what: The shortage is even more critical for urban settings. We have a center for teacher education with an emphasis on urban teaching and what that means is to be successful as an urban teacher. An urban teacher may need some additional skill sets than a teacher who might teach in the suburbs and we are partnering with VCU in that particular program area.

Times-Dispatch: We’d like to thank both of you for joining us today, and we look forward to continuing this conversation well into the future.

* The Times-Dispatch participants were Todd Culbertson, editor of the Editorial Pages; Bart Hinkle, deputy editor of the Editorial Pages; David Ress, news reporter; Bob Rayner, associate editor of the Editorial Pages; and Cordel Fault, commentary editor.

ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO

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