PVCC to greatly expand job-training program

Piedmont Virginia Community College announced Tuesday morning that it has begun work on a facility that will greatly expand the college’s job training for out-of-work Charlottesville-area residents.

“This is critically important today,” said PVCC President Frank Friedman, noting that the region has seen its unemployment rate nearly double in the past year. “We must put unemployed Central Virginians back to work.”

PVCC’s new workforce development center will be located in the former Thomas Jefferson Visitors Center on Route 20 that was operated by Monticello and the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Piedmont had hoped to receive the state’s approval to take ownership of the building in late April, but the project faced months of delays while the state conducted a legal and technical review of the project.

College officials had hoped to begin offering classes in the facility this fall, but now it won’t open until March 1.

Valerie Palamountain, PVCC’s dean of workforce services, said the new center will allow the college to expand its capacity by six-fold. Once fully operational, she said, PVCC will be able to increase its number of workforce training students from 5,000 to 30,000.

“We’re looking to provide better service to the community and to industry,” she said.

The college’s division of workforce services currently has one classroom for instruction. The new facility will have five classrooms, a conference room and offices.

The extra space, college officials said, will allow PVCC to ramp up its workforce training offerings in the fields of software applications, information technology, IT security, health care, viticulture, construction and more.

“Our purpose here is to train Central Virginians to be successful in the workforce,” Palamountain said.

PVCC has grown increasingly crowded, Friedman said, as it deals with record-breaking student enrollment. This fall, he said, PVCC has 1,300 more students taking courses for credit than it did four years. In other words, he said, PVCC is squeezing many more students into the same amount of classroom space.

The facility, located down the hill from Piedmont’s main campus, is undergoing limited renovations and upgrades, such as new paint and new carpet. All told, the project is estimated to cost up to $500,000.

Half of the money, Friedman said, comes from PVCC’s state tax allocation and half from private donors. The project’s fundraising is roughly two-thirds finished, he said.