College Wants Stafford Campus

Stafford, Va. — Germanna Community College hopes to acquire 50 acres of land to expand in Stafford County.

Enrollment at the school is up to what college president Dr. David Sam calls an “unsustainable rate,” as the school – with two campuses and two centers, including an education center at the Aquia Park Shopping Center in North Stafford on U.S. 1 – has 7,800 students enrolled. That’s up from 5,000 in 2007.

Sam briefed the Stafford County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday night and a new campus should go in a newly redeveloped Courthouse area because of its connections to transportation infrastructure, and because it’s close to where many of the students who attend classes at the already at-capacity Stafford Center live.

But acquiring land and money to build the campus remain the project’s main hang-ups. Sam said he’s hopeful that the state General Assembly will approve $100 million newly proposed education funding.

“We’re Looking at other alternatives like public-private partnerships, basically anything that’s legal and moral to get the campus up faster,” said Sam.

Germanna is part of the Virginia Community College System which includes Northern Virginia Community College – the state’s largest higher education institution in terms of enrollment. Many students who live in Stafford attend NOVA, but a new campus in Stafford could change that.

“If we can find a developer in the courthouse area, — that’s really a target area –that’s where we can help you build a community with bringing new businesses, and less inter-county commuting, and the we can work with a developer that allows us to buy the land through a deal or they can donate the land for use, that’s how [the Stafford County Board of Supervisors] can help,” said Sam.

A new campus ideally would take up 50 acres of land, and would help alleviate overcrowding at the school’s Fredericksburg Area Campus in Spotsylvania County. That campus was badly damaged in last summer’s earthquake, forcing classes to be moved to nearby buildings and students to float false rumors of the school’s demise, said Sam. Repairs to that building are expected to be complete later this year.

While enrollment at Germanna has been growing in past years, it’s flat this year. Sam attributes slowing enrollment to a national decline, to an improving economy, and said students have lost faith in higher education simply because they cannot find jobs in this economic climate.

Sam said Germanna will continue to offer popular online classes.

“We don’t need as much brick and mortar as we used to,” said Sam.

In addition to eyeing a new campus in the county, Germanna in partnership with other schools in the region will open a new technology training center at Quantico Corporate Center in North Stafford.