Germanna ready for challenges

As the economy changes and people look to new career paths to meet their basic needs, Germanna Community College is seeing a rise in enrollment numbers and a drop in money.
According to Glenn Dubois, chancellor of Virginia's Community Colleges, people are looking to community colleges to retool themselves into new careers and as an affordable option for career-based training.
"People are coming to their community college in record numbers because they know that's where they can afford to access the opportunities that will let them start, and in many cases, restart their career," she said. "People don't stop dreaming about their future and their children's future just because the economy turns lousy. They need a way to chase those dreams and that's where our colleges come in."
Since Germanna offers many credit and non-credit classes that will allow for further career advancement or acquiring skills for a new career, it's a likely place for people seeking a new education and additional skills to go.
"Our enrollment is up 10 percent and last year it was up 12 percent," Germanna President Dr. David A. Sam said. "We were the fastest growing community college last year and one of the fastest growing this year."
According to Dr. Sam, 13,000 students will take some sort of class at Germanna over the course of this year. The additional students mean a need for more funding, but due to current economic conditions, Germanna is left trying to do more with less money.
In October, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine reduced the 2009 base budgets of state colleges by 5 to 7 percent. For 2010, Gov. Kaine recently unveiled his budget plan which includes futhering college budget reduction levels to 15 percent, except for community colleges which will see another 10 percent reduction.
"Even in this atmosphere our excellent schools, colleges and universities produce the ideas and graduates that will keep driving our economy," the governor explained. "The advances we have made in career and technical education and our restructuring of workforce efforts under the community college system enable us to better prepare our dedicated workforce."
"We recognize that in the current economic climate, sacrifices must be shared across all government agencies, indeed across society," Dr. Sam said. "We have prepared for this; we saw it coming. People are hurting everywhere; we have to sacrifice, too."
Should the proposed 10 percent be passed by the General Assembly, Dr. Sam anticipates that the cuts can be absorbed at Germanna without reducings its staff of 520 people.
According to Dr. Sam, to deal with the budget cuts, Germanna has offered early retirement to some and frozen many vacant positions. He also said that while tuition may increase, it will still be affordable.
"The goal of our mission is to be affordable. I don't think tuition will be raised dramatically," he said. "Our tuition runs about one third of state public university tuition. There will likely be some increase [as determined by the state] but it will still be affordable."
Dr. Sam also said that service hours may need to be cut and new programs will have to wait longer before being implemented but that the college will try to do the changes as smartly as they can.
"Our job is to help people find a [career goal] and achieve it," Dr. Sam said. "We'll struggle but we'll do our best to achieve those things."
Experts anticipate that budgets will remain tight for a few years until everything gets moving again. However, Dr. Sam is optimistic for the future.
"This recession will pass and when it does we have to be ready for steady growth and continue to be efficient," he said. "We will need more buildings and more programs. We'll continue to grow and continue to be the community college for this area. We want to manage our time now so that when the recession is set to turn, we'll be ready."
Germanna currently has a budget of approximately $21 million with about half coming from the state. The other half comes primarily from tuition and fees from the 13,000 students over two campuses, in Locust Grove and in Fredericksburg, and one technology center in Culpeper. The college has plans to open a center in North Stafford in 2009 and to add a third building at the Fredericksburg campus. Stafford County's Economic Development Authority approved a $300,000 grant to help with the center and the state approved $23.3 million for the new building at Fredericksburg. However, $2.6 million in local funds must be raised before ground can break for the new building.
"We would be mortgaging our future if we were to put these plans off now because of the hard times of the moment and we have to turn students away later as a result," Dr. Sam said.
The college is asking for private donations to assist with the proposed building.
Germanna serves seven counties, Spotsylvania, Stafford, Culpeper, Orange, King George, Caroline and Madison, plus the City of Fredericksburg, some of the fastest growing areas in the state.