BY SUSAN ELZEY
Work It, Sova
After serving 24 years as a Virginia state senator, William Wampler Jr., stepped down this term and faced his future with nothing really on the horizon.
A new and exciting challenge presented itself, however, and he grabbed it. Wampler, 52, is the new executive director of New College Institute in Martinsville.
But the new career feels a lot like the first, he said.
“If you believe we are truly a member of a citizen legislature, then there ought to be nothing wrong with saying 24 years is enough, and thank [the citizens] for the honor of serving them,” he said. “This is a huge change in my life, but when I get to work or leave at night, this [job] feels very much like an ex-tension of public service.”
During his years in the Senate, Wampler served on the Senate Finance Committee, with responsibili-ties over education budgets, and on the Health and Human Resources Committee, which also con-cerned funding of higher education and healthcare, so he brings years of related experience to his job as the new executive director.
His career change also required a move from Bristol — one which his wife, Mary, and two grown chil-dren supported.
Looking to the future
As Wampler looks to the future of the college he now heads, he said there are four main “unique chal-lenges and opportunities” at NCI:
“Our core mission is to enroll and graduate more students from this region.”
“I see NCI working as a Best Practices Specialist to create a pipeline with what the local school sys-tems are doing … I am very impressed with the Governor’s Schools in Martinsville, Henry County, Dan-ville and Pittsylvania County, and we need to increase enrollment and ask the four divisions to plan for a virtual Governor’s School.”
“We need to match our course offerings to what is needed in the region’s job market . . . whether we offer that under our roof or export it to their facility.”
“We will support a healthy community, not just lifestyles, but in training and retraining the health-care workforce at all levels . . . We hope to find ways to train the next generation of healthcare workers through a heavy emphasis on technology.”
The state of NCI
Wampler said the enrollment for this term is approximately 300, which is what the college had pro-jected.
“We are spending time in the first two weeks in understanding where they came from and where we need to recruit,” he said.
The college currently counts several Virginia colleges and universities as partners, but “it remains to be seen,” Wampler said whether the college will become a branch campus of a larger university.
Last year several Virginia universities courted NCI, but the plans to become a branch campus were stalled because of the declining financial support for educational institutions and questions on how that support could be sustained long range, Wampler said.
“If we become a branch that makes sense, so be it, but by not being a branch, we can pull down courses we need from partners or create new courses from new partners if we need to,” he said. “And that can become a national model.”
The college is situated in uptown Martinsville and with the current enrollment, NCI has adequate space for the college and the Governor’s School.
“However, as we increase enrollment, we will need additional space,” he said. “And that will be a good problem to have.”
Elzey is a freelance writer for the Register & Bee.