Completion of First Addition to Higher Education Center Expected in June
By Debra McCown
Reporter / Bristol
Herald Courier
April 17, 2009
ABINGDON, Va.
– Completion of the first of two additions to the Southwest Virginia Higher
Education Center is expected in June, with a groundbreaking on the second by
early 2010, said Executive Director Rachel Fowlkes.
“It’s coming right along,” Fowlkes said Thursday of the $2.5 million smaller
addition to the center, on the campus of Virginia Highlands
Community College.
The first phase includes a new entryway, hallway, bathrooms and classrooms.
The larger project on the horizon is a clean energy research center, an $8
million project funded by the Virginia Tobacco Commission, to help build the
region’s economy with new energy technology.
“It’s a really neat project,” Fowlkes said of the energy center. “A lot of
it will focus on clean coal technology … but they will also be interested in
other renewable energy sources.”
For example, she said, one project will involve using algae to capture
carbon – and then using the algae to make biodiesel fuel.
“It’s going to be a field laboratory for multiple universities that operate
out of the higher ed center … that want to bring university research to a field
application, and then from that we will hopefully take those applications into
some kind of commercial process or product, all related to clean energy,” she
said.
The energy center will be constructed using innovative energy technologies
and may be ready to open by late 2011.
Both projects, she said, are efforts to expand opportunities and economic
development in the region.
“I think the reason that we’re doing this is certainly two-fold. One is to
strengthen the economy of Southwest Virginia and to prepare a work force for
good jobs, for not just jobs that are here today and gone tomorrow, but to
prepare people for real job careers, and that’s why we keep expanding the
building,” Fowlkes said.
In the current economic downturn, she said those who lose jobs often want to
go back to school to “learn some new skills, maybe pursue a different career
altogether, and that’s why we’re here.”
