Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 26, 1995 TAG: 9508280138
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
"Buddy, this thing is designed to reach out to the state and the world," he proclaims.
Does he think there is something special about it?
"There's not another community college in Virginia that has a resource like this," he says.
Might it help bring jobs to the New River Valley?
"If we can get a new industry prospect in this building first, I think honest to goodness we can influence that industrial decision," he said. "This can be our economic development engine."
Yes, you might say Barnes is proud.
Edwards Hall, named for earlier NRCC President Randall Edwards, will be dedicated as the opening shot of the New River Valley Industry Appreciation '95 activities Sept. 13-15.
It will be the first time that NRCC has been the host for the majority of those industrial appreciation activities in the three years they have been held. The building's 10,000-square-foot multipurpose training laboratory will be the location for displays by area manufacturers and educational institutions all three days.
Barnes' enthusiasm for the building seems to grow with each section he shows off to visitors.
He starts with the media center near the entrance, an electronic classroom "which means that we can uplink and download from anywhere in the world," he said. "We have that telecommunications capability."
Besides allowing someone from, say, the nearby Volvo GM Heavy Truck Corp. office to communicate with Volvo's home office in Sweden, Barnes said, the room could show an industrial prospect visual information on the New River Valley and advantages of locating a plant here.
When Barnes comes back out of the room, he points to the ends of the hallway, where the school's two major technology divisions will be located. At one end is the business and computing division, which caters to service industries; at the other, the industrial technologies division, which concentrates on manufacturing. The industrial prospect who has just seen a visual showcase of the New River Valley can follow up by going in either direction.
If the prospect wants to talk training, Barnes makes a quick turn down another hallway to a corporate board room, where plans can be made, and to an industrial start-up suite with computers to provide data, more telecommunications access and other accommodations a prospect might use in making a decision.
The training could start even before the prospect has a building completed, and the employees could be ready when the structure is up, Barnes says.
A window on one side of the hallway looks down one floor onto the 10,000-square-foot training lab, which looks at first glance like a basketball court for players the size of Godzilla. The concrete under the flooring could probably support Godzilla-size manufacturing machines used to train employees.
The room is equipped with dividers that can section it off into three areas, so three kinds of training could be going on at the same time. The 600-pound dividers are balanced so well that they can be moved around their ceiling tracks with one hand, Barnes says.
The building contains two distance-education classrooms from which lessons can be televised to students who never have to venture onto campus. Barnes notes that NRCC provided classes for more than 1,300 such students last year.
TeleTechNet classes broadcast from Old Dominion University, allowing students to complete requirements for their third and fourth years of college from NRCC, soon will be moved into Edwards Hall from another building. Barnes points out that classes can be beamed from other places than ODU.
As he walks briskly along, Barnes points out a fiber optics training laboratory here, a job placement service office there. The new building also will finally allow NRCC to get rid of its three "temporary" mobile classrooms which have been here since the early 1970s.
Forming the walkway in front of the building are an increasing number of bricks with names on them, bought for $50 in memory or in honor of various people. The regular bricks have been designed so they can be popped out and replaced with a "name" brick as more are purchased.
The cost of the $40 million building was supported by an educational bond issue passed by Virginia voters in a 1992 referendum.
by CNB