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Conscience
of the Commonwealth
His
inauguration as
president
of the Northern Virginia
Community College
gave Robert G. Templin, Jr. another
forum to champion both opportunity and pragmatic
action.
Those
who know BobTemplin aren’t surprised to hear him speak publicly
about service to the community, about bringing
people together to get things done, about looking
ahead to see what’s coming and about challenging
oneself and one’s enterprise to achieve at a
high level. Service, collaboration, vision, energy
and accomplishment are the hallmarks of his own
family and his own life.
Starting
with an associate degree at Harford
Community College
in 1967, Templin took his doctorate in education
from North Carolina State
University
in 1976. After serving as president of the Thomas
Nelson Community College
in Hampton Roads for eight years and heading Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology for five,
Templin anchored the private Morino Institute
efforts to build community partnerships and
investment-minded philanthropy.
But
when Robert G. Templin, Jr. stood before
distinguished guests and faculty to be inaugurated
as the fourth president of the Northern Virginia
Community College (NVCC) May 12, he took things up
another notch. He looked his Northern Virginia
community in the eye and recognized two challenges
–- the shortages of health professionals that
threaten both the quality of life and the business
future of Virginia, and the extension of
opportunity, particularly educational opportunity,
for those he called “the New Americans.” The
latter, he concluded, are a piece of the solution
to the former.
“Left
unaddressed, the health care worker shortage may
result in hundreds of hospital beds being closed,
a significant deterioration of quality health care
in the region, and tens of thousands of people
(particularly children) being turned away from
access to adequate health care,” Templin warned.
“Similarly,
our failure to address issues of educational and
economic opportunities for our low-income and
immigrant population means we would not only lose
the rich human potential that exists in these
communities, but we will likely see an increase in
the social, family and health services these
communities will require at public expense.”
Such
business sense, pragmatism, humanity and, indeed,
statesmanship shines as differently as day from
night when compared to the sour, divisive tone of
General Assembly discussions of immigrant rights
to Virginia drivers licenses or Commonwealth
institutions of higher education earlier in the
year. At the same time, legislators appropriated
sackcloth for NVCC’s new 120,000-square-foot
medical education campus in
Springfield
by funding less than ten percent of what’s
needed to operate it, though the facility has the
capacity to triple NVCC graduates of nursing and
allied health programs.
Dr.
Templin assumed the reigns of NVCC, the nation’s
second largest community college, in mid-2002 as
the successor to now Secretary of Education Belle
Wheelan. Under the leadership of 30-year president
Dr. Richard Ernst and Wheelan, both of whom were
present at the inauguration, NVCC has grown to
serve nearly 64,000 different students in credit
courses at five campuses.
Templin
inherited a set of strong institutional goals
aimed at enhancing student success: to provide a
diverse, highly qualified, energetic and dynamic
faculty and staff; to develop fiscal, capital and
community resources to improve the physical
environment and tools; to provide an array of
quality support services; and to provide an
instructional program that is accessible,
affordable and educationally sound to support the
needs of a diverse student body. Applying those
goals to specific, real-world problems is the
challenge Templin relishes.
NVCC’s
president chose as his example the large and
growing health services industry in Northern
Virginia, which continued to boom even through two
years of slow economic growth. Templin estimated
that there were 150,000 health workers in the
Greater Northern Virginia region, including 35,000
registered nurses. Projections he shared forecast
41 percent growth in demand for registered nurses
between 1998 and 2008 in Northern Virginia –
over 6,000 new RN job opportunities -- and
thousands more pharmacists, physical therapists,
emergency medical assistants, ultrasound imaging
technicians and others – but “at our current
rate, we are not graduating even half the number
of workers that will be needed in this decade.”
Templin’s
solution is to link the challenge of the health
care worker shortage to the sources of talent in
lower income and New American communities in the
region. There is compassion in his words, but just
as importantly, there is what Templin called “a
sustainable business-driven strategy” that helps
business leaders, educators and others pool
resources, work together and reach out.
“It
is a vision of the college helping to assure the
region’s economic competitiveness and helping to
insure that the American dream is within the reach
of every one of our residents,” Templin
suggested.
“It
is a vision of a community that builds its
competitiveness by continuously developing its
human resources rather than depending upon
recruiting talent from outside. A vision of a
community college that works as a boundary
crosser, working with the business community and
bringing together different parts of the region to
focus our attention and resources to effectively
confront our workforce challenge.”
Knox
Singleton, president and CEO of the Inova Health
System, and James B. Cole, president and CEO of
the Virginia Hospital Center, were right there on
stage to provide immediate community feedback and
support. So were the presidents of two business
groups, the Northern Virginia Roundtable and the
Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, and chairman
of the Northern Virginia Workforce Investment
Board.
Applause
for his proposal signaled more than business and
community support for a pragmatic approach to
solving a problem. And Templin’s words outlined
more than a vision. His inaugural address,
“Pursuing the American Dream,” illustrated in
a rich and positive manner that in the almost 40
years since the Commonwealth established its
community college system, despite demagogues and
dilettantes, Virginia continues to strengthen its
conscience and its commitment to opportunity.
--
May
19, 2003
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