Event Details

Dr. Betty Hope Adams

Presentation Title: Workforce Development at SVHEC

Summary: I will provide a brief history and overview of SVHEC programs and services with a focus on workforce development and how the Center is collaborating with regional public school and community college partners to develop a worker pipeline in high demand areas such as IT and advanced manufacturing. I will highlight the Center’s non-credit technical training programs and a few of our newest programs including the Career Tech Academy which launches this fall.  

Learning Objectives related to Workforce Development

1.      Increase awareness of workforce development opportunities through the SVHEC

2.      Explain how the SVHEC seeks to complement not compete with our community college partners

3.      Discuss our newest program: Career Tech Academy

Dr. Betty Hope Adams has served as Executive Director of the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center (SVHEC) since 2009. As Executive Director, she has led the SVHEC through unprecedented growth highlighted by the expansion to a 2-building campus, addition of the Research and Development Center of Advanced Manufacturing and Energy Efficiency, formation of partnerships with international institutions of higher education, and development strategic alliances with business and industry to develop education and workforce training initiatives on which to build regional economic development.

Dr. Adams secured the SVHEC’s longevity and financial future by increasing revenue-generating programming, and by successfully shepherding the development and unanimous Board of Trustees passage of a partner cost share business model. Under Dr. Adams’ leadership the SVHEC has experienced the greatest programmatic expansion in its 30-year history. Work Ready Foundations, Welding@SVHEC, IT Academy and SoVA Center of Manufacturing Excellence initiatives were conceptualized, developed, and successfully implemented. The success of these, and other, SVHEC hands-on workforce training programs have resulted in a significant regional increase in industry-recognized credentials, and were in direct support of Governor Terry McAuliffe’s “New Virginia Economy” initiative.  In 2015, Governor McAuliffe heralded the SVHEC’s IT Academy initiative as “innovate, entrepreneurial, and proof that Southside is home to some truly bold thinkers and innovators.”

Since becoming executive director, the SVHEC has been recognized as the Halifax County Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year (2010-2011); the Virginia Advanced Manufacturers Association’s first Partner of the Year recipient (2013); and named the only non-credit Siemens PLM Academic Partner (2014).

A South Boston, Virginia native, Dr. Adams earned the Bachelor of Science degree from Radford University in 1981. She continued her academic pursuits in North Carolina earning a Master of Business Administration degree in 1988 from East Carolina University (Greenville, NC) and a Doctorate of Education degree in 2002 from North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC).  With more than thirty years’ experience developing, implementing, managing, and evaluating adult learner programs in private and public sectors, Dr. Adams’ career experiences include successful tenures within retail service, private college, regional state university, and community college settings. She developed and managed start-up of the Professional Programs Division at East Carolina University , a division targeted at serving the educational needs of the regional business community; developed, implemented, and managed comprehensive planning and effectiveness systems at rural and urban community colleges and for the 58-institution NC Community College System; and authored “The Essential Model,” a conceptual model of institutional accountability that maps out a comprehensive, integrated, outcomes-based, and user-friendly system of planning and effectiveness.