RICHMOND, Va. – The largest coalition of educational agencies and services in Virginia history is supporting the continued development of the innovative Virginia Education Wizard (www.VaWizard.org) – with a goal of making the online college and career planning tool available to all middle-school students in 2010. Virginia’s Community Colleges launched the Wizard in March as a one-stop resource to help students and parents explore career paths, identify college programs to reach those goals and find ways to pay for continued education.

With the support of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the Virginia Department of Education, the Virginia 529 Savings Plan and the Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC), Virginia’s Community Colleges are developing Wizard 2.0 – with new capabilities that will make it easy for younger students to assess their skills and explore related careers, prepare for college admission and attendance, explore public and private colleges and universities across Virginia, and build resumes and prepare for interviews. Wizard 2.0 also will allow guidance counselors and teachers to work with students as they create their career and educational goals with the Wizard.

“Our coalition partners are helping us evolve the Wizard to serve as the primary college and career planning resource for every student in Virginia,” noted Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System. “Wizard 2.0 will feature even more interactive tools that help students and their parents get information tailored specifically to their needs and interests. It also will serve as a vibrant resource for helping youngsters make the right steps to get to their career destination.”

 Wizard 2.0 will integrate valuable information from coalition partners and other high-quality data sources, including access to educational programs at community colleges and four-year universities and details about saving for college.

“This is a place where students can go to get all of the information they need, develop a personal college profile, and most importantly, just learn that college is possible,” said Mike Hawkes, director of college access initiatives with ECMC, which provides higher education finance services under the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program.

As a first-generation college graduate, Hawkes recognizes the value of providing young students with the right information they need to plan their future. “So many students don’t even consider that college is possible, so this goes a long way to help them,” he added.

Coalition leaders agreed that preparing future generations of Virginians for successful careers must start while students are young. Students need to understand what career opportunities are available and find the best paths that get them to where they want to be. The Wizard delivers comprehensive information about careers, education programs, and financial resources in ways that students can tailor to their interests and talents.

“The Virginia Education Wizard really focuses on the students and the parents, in helping the students to come to terms with what they want to be when they grow up,” said Patricia I. Wright, superintendent of public education for the Virginia Department of Education. “Technology is a way of life for these youngsters. It’s not a luxury. We have to deliver information in ways that appeal to the young learner.”

Mary Morris, chief executive officer of the Virginia College Savings Plan, reinforced getting students and their families to actively explore future opportunities and to save for college. “The Virginia Education Wizard helps them think about career paths and planning,” said Morris, who finds the Wizard’s interactive features fun and easy to use. “There are lots of ways to get future education – and education is a lifelong accomplishment and lifelong goal.”

The Wizard supports seamless partnerships among different government agencies. For example, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia was exploring how to build a resource that could aid high school students with the transition to college, according to Lee Andes, SCHEV’s assistant director for financial aid. “The Wizard was the tool we were looking for,” he said.

Since its March debut, the Wizard has attracted more than 171,800 people, who visited more than 217,000 times. Most visitors spend over 6 minutes at the site. Of those visitors, more than 35,700 people created profiles, with just over one-third of those already affiliated with Virginia’s Community Colleges – mostly as students. DuBois noted that the site has attracted visitors from every state and 117 countries and territories outside of the United States.

Wizard 3.0, scheduled to launch in the fall of 2010, will allow students to create and store academic and career plans, as well as merge career pathways into those plans. Guidance counselors and teachers also will be able to create Wizard reports about their students.

About the Virginia Education Wizard

The Wizard guides users from finding a career to earning the right job credentials or preparing for continued education.  The Wizard’s current features, which will be included in all future versions of the tool, include:

• Careers: Users can take Interest and Values assessments to find careers that match their interests. They also can explore a specific job and get real-time details about the demand for those jobs and local salaries.
• Programs and Majors: The Wizard details programs across Virginia’s Community Colleges, including majors and careers. Users can investigate courses offered across the state – or just those at their nearest campus.
• Paying for College: Users can find out what they can expect to pay at different colleges, then get estimates on how much financial assistance they might receive. The site also details scholarships available solely for community college students.
• Transfer: The Wizard outlines pathways to four-year degrees, including guaranteed admission to 25 Virginia institutions. The tool plans, tracks and prompts necessary steps for easy transfers.

Registering with the Virginia Education Wizard is easy. The Wizard’s life-like online guide, Ginny, helps users build their profiles, which the site then uses to tailor information according to users’ interests. Users can create their profiles in a few quick steps that take less than 5 minutes.

Virginia’s Community Colleges developed the proprietary Wizard with $2.5 million in federal funds. Programming was completed by Richmond-based Chmura Economics & Analytics and internal IT professionals at Virginia’s Community Colleges. The career and jobs features draw in real-time market data pulled from Chmura Economics & Analytics’ proprietary and patented JobsEQ.

About Virginia’s Community Colleges: Created more than 40 years ago, Virginia’s Community Colleges are 23 individual schools located on 40 campuses across the Commonwealth. Nearly half a million students take classes at one of Virginia’s Community Colleges. Together the colleges enroll more than two-thirds of the total public undergraduate population in Virginia. For more information, please visit myfuture.vccs.edu.

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CONTACTS:

Jeff Kraus, Virginia’s Community Colleges, 804.819.4949 / 804.592.6767 (mobile)
Jon Newman, The Hodges Partnership, 804.788.1414 / 804.357.4871 (mobile)