PVCC effort seeks to qualify more locals for defense intelligence work

Getting a job in Central Virginia’s growing defense intelligence community is a difficult proposition for most area residents without a security clearance, but Piedmont Virginia Community College is working to change that.

The college, in cooperation with an Ohio-based nonprofit, has opened a training program to provide the skills locals need to qualify for careers in the expanding defense industry and to help residents obtain the coveted clearances.

The 10-week “analyst boot camp” will put hopefuls through an intense program designed to prepare them for the industry. Two introductory courses are available for those interested in such careers, but the actual career training will be through boot camps, officials said.

The boot camp, with its eight-hour classroom days, carries a $15,000 tuition tag.

“It’s 400 hours with intensive training and students are expected to work on homework and projects in the evenings, so it’s a big investment of time,” said Valerie Palamountain, dean of workforce services at PVCC. “It’s not a program for everybody. It’s not the kind of program that you get into thinking, ‘I’m not sure what I want to do, so I’ll try defense analysis.’ The people who will do well are those who are already interested in the career.”

PVCC’s program came about after nationwide consolidation of military bases brought the Defense Intelligence Agency and about 800 employees to the Rivanna Station military base north of Charlottesville last fall. The base houses the National Ground Intelligence Center and the Joint Use Intelligence Analysis Facility in which the DIA is headquartered.

The DIA is relocating much of its intelligence analysis function to the Albemarle County facility and area research and office parks are attracting private contractors associated with the intelligence community. The jobs feature salaries ranging from $26,000 for a security officer to $75,000 for an intelligence analyst, according to federal documents.

Unfortunately for most area residents, many of the DIA and contracting agencies are looking to fill jobs that require specific abilities, training and security clearances that most locals don’t have. The Piedmont program is designed to rectify that.

“Although DIA has no involvement in the new PVCC course, we are interested in programs that contribute to the defense of the nation,” said Lt. Col. Thomas F. Veale, DIA spokesman.

The PVCC curriculum comes from the Ohio-based Advanced Technical Intelligence Center for Human Capital Development, also known as ATIC. The center was founded by a federal grant in 2006 for the specific purpose of training new intelligence analysts.

ATIC’s chief executive, Hugh Bolton, said the course is important now to help fill national intelligence positions and will likely continue to be important into the future.

“When you look across the defense intelligence community, more than 50 percent of the current analysts are eligible to retire. Many are staying because of patriotism and the economy, but those positions will eventually need to be filled,” Bolton said.

Bolton said that foreign languages — especially Chinese, Arabic and other languages spoken in countries developing into world powers or players — are important. So are technical and scientific skills.

“We’re actually graduating more foreign nationals from our colleges in technical fields,” he said. “We don’t, however, plan to outsource our national security to foreign countries.”

In its four years, ATIC has developed programs with several community colleges in Ohio to help create qualified intelligence analysts for contractors and government agencies near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

“We partner with academic and government agencies to develop programs that are tailored to specific needs in specific communities. Our job is to provide the curriculum, not the instruction,” Bolton said.