Officials at Central Virginia Community College have announced a grant award for $400,000 from the Virginia Growth and Opportunity Board (GO Virginia) to assist in creating a Regional Career and Technical Education (CTE) Academy to serve the college’s service region which includes the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford, and Campbell and the City of Lynchburg.

The regional CTE academy will meet a need in the community that has been documented in the November 2016 Region 2000 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS), which calls for the establishment of a Regional Workforce Center to deliver necessary workforce training. A recent Employer Needs Assessment has also validated this critical need in the region.

The GO Virginia award will work in conjunction with additional state funding from February 2019, when CVCC was awarded a $267,000 planning grant from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Get a Skill, Get a Job, Give Back (G3) Program to lay the groundwork for implementing a regional CTE academy.

Programming will include a heavy concentration on the four targeted priority industry sectors of manufacturing, healthcare, information technology, and the automation segment of the food and beverage sector.

The skills-based training provided by the regional CTE academy will enable students to pursue well-defined career pathways to not simply get a job, but to also obtain higher paying jobs that are achievable with the appropriate stackable credentials and certifications. Each of the pathways includes a dual enrollment option based on existing programs offered to each of the five regional public high school divisions which includes 10 high schools.

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