Robert Sandel has announced his retirement from Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke at the end of the upcoming academic year, following 24 years as its president.
He has served as a community college president for longer than any of his Virginia peers — between his time in Roanoke and an earlier stint in Big Stone Gap — and he is often credited with fostering and maintaining partnerships between the school and the greater Roanoke business community.
“When I first came aboard, I kept hearing that [Virginia Western] was the best-kept secret in the Roanoke region,” Sandel said Monday. “But being the best-kept secret was not a compliment.”
He said he worked to develop partnerships and relationships in the community, and through that work, “People have greater respect for what we are about,” he said. “We’re a first-class, quality community college.”
Sandel has overseen more than $138 million in new building construction and renovations, according to a news release from the college, including the additions of the Horace G. and Ann H. Fralin Center for Science and Health Professions in 2013, the Maury and Sheila Strauss Family Student Life Center in 2019, and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics building, which also opened in 2019.
“Dr. Bobby Sandel’s visionary leadership has significantly transformed Virginia Western Community College, resulting in more than doubled enrollment and expanded access to higher education,” David Doré, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System, said in the news release.
Sandel credited much of the growth during his tenure to the faculty and staff of the college, which was established in 1966. Last year, Virginia Western had about 8,450 students.
His personal highlights include growing the Virginia Western Educational Foundation, the school’s independent fundraising arm, from $1 million in assets under management when he arrived in 2001 to $34 million today.
That growth has had a direct impact on student scholarships: VWCC’s foundation is at the top statewide for the value of its scholarship support to students, the release noted.
Sandel said Monday that scholarships made possible through the foundation’s fundraising work provide opportunities and hope for people who didn’t think they would be able to attend college. The Community College Access Program, which launched at Virginia Western in 2008 to pay for up to two years of tuition for qualifying students across the region, has helped motivate some students to complete their diploma and make a plan for their education beyond high school, Sandel said. The program “has kept a lot of people in school,” he said.
CCAP has provided nearly $12 million in tuition assistance to students from Roanoke and Salem along with Roanoke, Botetourt, Craig and Franklin counties.
“This program has been a great benefit for students throughout the region in seeking an affordable college education,” Forest Jones, a retired Salem city manager, said in the college’s release. Salem City Schools was the first school system to implement the CCAP program.
Sandel was also instrumental in making Roanoke’s regional business accelerator a reality. The city received a grant from the commonwealth in 2017 to launch RAMP but didn’t have anyone to operate the facility on South Jefferson Street. At a meeting about that challenge, no one said anything at first, recalled Marc Nelson, now director of economic development for the city.
“And then, from the back of the room, Bobby goes, ‘We’ll do it.’ He stepped into the breach,” Nelson said Monday.
Virginia Western’s foundation managed the building for five years before stepping back during the pandemic, Nelson said, and handing the reins to Verge, which now operates the building and its programs. More than 50 companies have graduated from RAMP programs, and more than 800 jobs have been created. “And we wouldn’t have any of that” if Sandel hadn’t volunteered, Nelson said. “He really was the right person at the right time.”
[Disclosure: Verge is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
“We wouldn’t have a home for our accelerator without him,” Erin Burcham, president of Verge and executive director of the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council, said Monday. The organization continues to write collaborative grants with Virginia Western that “focus on elevating STEM-based talent,” she said. Sandel mentored her while she was working on her master’s degree thesis at Virginia Tech, and Burcham said she “couldn’t ask for a better mentor. He was always so willing” to build relationships and give his time to those he has mentored, she said.
Burcham also praised Sandel and Amy White, the college’s dean of STEM and workforce solutions, for their support of Roanoke’s innovation economy, calling the new STEM building “world-class.”
People may have a picture in their mind of what a community college is, Nelson said. “I tell people when you come to this campus and you see the facilities, you’ll be blown away. Almost everyone I talk to is.”
Details of how Sandel’s successor will be selected will be announced at a later date.
His 20-plus-year tenure is notable not just in Virginia but among all community college presidents: The average time that presidents of associate degree-granting institutions have served their current school is about 5.5 years, according to a 2023 report from the American Association of Community Colleges.
Sandel was president at Mountain Empire Community College for nine years before taking on the role at Virginia Western. His career also includes 20 years working in the technical college system in South Carolina.
Although enrollment is recovering from a pandemic dip, Sandel said the next president will do well to watch out for the enrollment cliff. That anticipated decline in college interest due to shrinking population numbers is not supposed to be as dramatic in the Roanoke region as it may be in some other areas, Sandel said, but his successor should “keep an eye” on it.
The next president will also be tasked with continuing to grow the educational foundation. “About one-third of the president’s job is to work with that foundation,” Sandel said. “You can’t just walk in as an academic.” The president should also be confident in their ability to fundraise, he said. But despite the hardships of the early COVID years that interrupted on-campus enrollment, Sandel said, “We are in financially better shape now than we’ve ever been.”
When he steps down next summer, Sandel plans to prioritize travel with his wife, Jane. Though they will split their time between Roanoke and Charleston, South Carolina, Sandel says he will continue to call Roanoke home, just as he has for more than two decades.
