By Anne M. Kress, PhD, President, Northern Virginia Community College

Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) has six decades of experience serving a diverse student body, including military service members and veterans, and recently we challenged ourselves to be more responsive to the changing needs of the members of our military community. We started offering programs built around the new realities of military life and that commitment to responsiveness led to two programs. One is designed for active-duty sailors and marines and offers asynchronous coursework with wraparound support that address the unpredictability of military schedules. The second prepares veterans and service members transitioning to life outside the military for careers in the rapidly expanding data center industry. 

NOVA’s transformational partnership with the U.S. Naval Community College (USNCC) launched in spring 2021 to provide an opportunity for active-duty sailors and marines to study cybersecurity. Nearly 100 students began working toward an applied associate degree with the possibility of earning three career studies certificates along the way. Given the unpredictability of military life, the program is offered through NOVA Online (NOL), NOVA’s remote learning platform, meaning that it is asynchronous and fully remote. Thus, students can stay on their degree paths no matter how often their duty station changes. 

What makes the program truly responsive is the support NOVA has built around the curriculum. Salesforce-based tracking tools, developed specifically to support USNCC students, generate weekly reports on enrollment, course performance, and at-risk indicators. Automated alerts go out the moment a student’s performance dips, and a third week of concern triggers a direct phone call. To meet the needs of students serving the country on the other side of the world, NOVA had to forge and maintain relationships with them, not just offer courses. A dedicated team provides hands on oversight and management.

The second program, AWS Duty 2 Data Center, exemplifies NOVA’s commitment to building high impact pathways that connect learning to earning. Northern Virginia is home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world; veterans — disciplined, technically skilled, and mission-focused — are a natural fit for these employers.

Launched in fall 2025 with a grant from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the first Duty 2 Data Center cohort brought together 20 veterans and three active-duty service members, representing every branch of the military. Students completed 11 credits and an OSHA-10 general industry and construction certification, and 96% moved directly into full-time work following the program. A second cohort of 23 veterans just launched, and a third is being planned for fall.

What has made Duty 2 Data Center so successful? Proximity and trust. Because courses were held on campus, NOVA faculty and staff saw students regularly and advocated for them. When barriers emerged beyond the classroom — housing instability, transportation gaps, financial emergencies — NOVA was there to help. Building in the capacity to address the holistic needs of our learners is not a nice-to-have. It is what transformational completion requires.

For policymakers, the ask is straightforward. Programs like USNCC and Duty 2 Datacenter required new technology infrastructure, specialized support teams, and emergency wraparound funding — none of which traditional higher education budgets are built to provide. If the educational promise made to those who serve is to be taken seriously, federal and state investment must be as reliable as the commitment military students make to our country every single day. The talent is here. The demand is here. What these programs need now is the policy foundation to scale — so that NOVA and all our nation’s community colleges can keep doing what we do best: proudly serving as economic changemakers, transforming individual lives while strengthening entire regions by providing the career-ready talent needed today and tomorrow.