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.”
dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701
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