Kaine attends ceremony for planned TCC training center

VIRGINIA BEACH

In January 2011, Tidewater Community College medical students will have a simulated ambulance area to practice in. Aspiring occupational-therapy assistants will have a two-story simulated apartment for learning to teach injured patients how to move safely around their homes.

The high-tech wizardry got its start Wednesday when Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, TCC President Deborah DiCroce and city and health care officials drove stakes in the dirt to mark construction of the Regional Health Professions Center.

The three-story, 65,000-square-foot building on the Virginia Beach campus will include 15 labs with clinical settings featuring the latest digital imaging, 15 simulation areas and six computer labs with specialized software.

Kaine said the biggest challenge facing the United States isn't the economy or the search for new energy sources but the need to regain its place as the world's most educated country.

"We've fallen behind, and others will pass us if we don't get on the bicycle and ride really hard," he said.

The expansion at TCC, he said, "is about the future of our education system and the future of our economy."

Kaine touched on President Barack Obama's proposal, announced last week, to pump more than $12 billion dollars into community colleges during the next 10 years to teach and retrain students for jobs in high-demand fields such as health care.

Before the groundbreaking Wednesday, DiCroce said Obama 's plan fits in perfectly with what TCC aims to do - support the needs of local employers and prepare students for changes in the work force by adjusting course offerings.

"It's shining a very bright spotlight on community college as a key strategy for reinventing our national economy," DiCroce said. "Community colleges have long had a proven record in being the first line of defense."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, wage and salary employment in health care is projected to grow 22 percent between 2006 and 2016, translating into about 3 million new jobs.

TCC offers 13 health-profession disciplines, including emergency medical services, health information technologies and diagnostic medical sonography. The new center will allow f or additional programs such as magnetic resonance imaging and computerized tomography.

The center will cost about $33 million. The current health professions classrooms will be used for other teaching space once the center is completed.

Barry Durham, 45, will graduate as a respiratory therapist in May and won't have a chance to use the new building. But he appreciates how the program has retrained him in a more secure field, he said. Durham, who worked at the Norfolk Ford plant before it closed, said the pay in his new career will be comparable and he will be able to work in the evenings so he can spend more time with his two children.

He's been driving a tractor-trailer to pay the bills but is looking forward to a job that will allow him "to work inside for a change."

Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, denise.batts@pilotonline.com