Volkswagen Group of America announced a five-year, $2.1 million education initiative and partnership yesterday with six institutions in Virginia and Washington, D.C., including the University.
At the University, the initiative, called “Partners in Education,” will fund a new international component of the Rodman Scholars program and a graduate engineering student fellowship, Volkswagen Group Communication Director Jill Bratina said.
The international component will allow students to travel abroad, Rodman Scholar Program Director Dana Elzey explained.
“I’m envisioning that students will now be able to go abroad and focus their engineering studies on the global challenges facing us today,” he added.
Across the state and Washington, D.C., five other institutions — Fairfax County Public Schools, Northern Virginia Community College, the D.C.-based Excel Institute, George Mason University and Virginia Tech — will also participate in the partnership, Gov. Tim Kaine spokesperson Gordon Hickey said.
Bratina said the automobile maker decided to fund the program because of its commitment to continuing education from the high school level onward.
“The governor is thrilled with it,” Hickey said. “Volkswagen is proving to be what the governor thought and knew they were, just a great corporate citizen.”
Elzey said his program and the Engineering School will benefit tremendously from the partnership because of the funding initiative. The University will receive $500,000 during five years, distributed equally during that time period. Elzey said the new program will increase both the visibility of the Rodman Scholars program and the academic opportunity it provides, noting that the funding will be divided equally between his program and the new graduate fellowship.
Bratina said Volkswagen was attracted to the Rodman Scholars program because of the proposed emphasis on international learning experiences.
“What was interesting to us with the Rodman scholarship was the desire to have an international component for students to go to Europe or Asia,” she noted. “And obviously being a German company, this was particularly appealing to us.”
Bratina said she hopes University students will be able to get involved at either the Audi or Volkswagen headquarters in Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg, Germany, respectively. Both she and Elzey said, though, that the use of the funds is still being planned.
“A lot of the details have yet to be determined,” Elzey said. “But it’s fairly simple to make a case for it. There isn’t to my knowledge a global leadership program for engineering students ... and this will allow students to be immersed in the problems of our time.”
Initially, anywhere from 15 to 25 Rodman Scholars might be eligible each year to participate in the new international program funded by Volkswagen, Elzey said. In time, that number may grow, he noted, depending on how the program’s plans develop.
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