VCCS’ Opportunity 2027 and NOVA’s Pathway to American Dream Align to Benefit Students

In my office hour zooms last week, I gave an overview of the new Virginia Community College System strategic plan: Opportunity 2027. VCCS has a website with links to the full plan, a presentation outlining the plan and more information about and videos from the Strategic Plan Task Force members. I was honored to co-chair this task force with Senior Vice Chancellor Sharon Morrissey, and Librarian Julie Combs (Loudoun) served on the group, as well.

Opportunity 2027 is grounded in an overarching goal related to equity.

Virginia’s Community Colleges will achieve equity in access, learning outcomes and success for students from every race, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic group.

Building on the 2013-14 work of the Chancellor’s Task Force on Diversity, which focused on diversity and inclusion, Opportunity 2027 provides a complementary equity statement, developed by a committee of the task force and adopted by the VCCS Board. Like the new strategic plan itself, it is focused on our shared responsibility for creating an environment that supports equity in student access and success.

Equity is the existence of an environment in which policies, practices and beliefs are grounded in the principle of fairness and one that acknowledges structural racism, gender disparities and systemic poverty, while honoring the diversity of humanity. This environment explicitly prioritizes the success of all students to ensure that they have the necessary resources to fulfill their college and career goals.

Opportunity 2027 aligns with and supports both the Commonwealth’s One Virginia plan and SCHEV’s Pathways to Opportunity: The Virginia Plan for Higher Education. Significantly, it also directly aligns with NOVA’s own strategic plan, Pathway to the American Dream, which sets forth a series of seven objectives that support our goals to ensure every student succeeds, every program achieves and every community prospers.

The ability of NOVA and VCCS to achieve our strategic plan goals is dependent upon the strength of the alignment and interrelationship across these plans, both of which play a key role in determining the allocation of resources, in framing our decisions on everything from policies to positions, and in defining the ways in which we demonstrate our accountability to our students and stakeholders. As the mapping table below illustrates, the crosswalk between the plans is strong and supportive, leveraging the work at the system and college levels to achieve the shared aims of both.

In the next few weeks, after months of research and engagement by many of you and your colleagues, NOVA will launch two more plans: the Quality Enhancement Plan that is required for our SACSCOC reaffirmation process and our first ever Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan. These documents also directly support and align with Pathway to the American Dream and Opportunity 2027. Importantly, they will provide concrete strategies and action steps that will help NOVA and VCCS accomplish our shared goal of achieving equity in student access and success at our college and beyond.

NOVA and VCCS have set bold, exciting and necessary goals for building a more equitable future for our students, but as Antoine de Saint-Exupery once wrote, “a goal without a plan is just a wish.” Thanks to robust plans with measurable and defined objectives, and because of your outstanding leadership and powerful commitment to inclusive excellence, our goals are already much more than wishes: they are true opportunities to transform the lives of our students and our communities. I am grateful to each one of you for your dedication to this work.