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VT SPIA Students of Richmond Campus with the Commonwealth of Virginia Governor

SPIA’s Richmond Campus allows you to achieve a graduate certificate online, apply for a full-time fellowship with the Commonwealth of Virginia, or bring leadership courses and programs into your government agency office or nonprofit. Our faculty are scholars and practitioners experienced in optimizing individual and organizational performance.  

A SNAPSHOT of VT SPIA RICHMOND:

  • Master of Public Administration degree for current professionals and recent undergraduates with in-person, hybrid, and online classes
  • Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit and NGO Management and Public and Nonprofit Financial Management
  • Leadership and Management Training Programs for public organizations and agencies
  • Research and Consultative Guidance in a variety of organizational development topics

The Richmond Campus is the hub for SPIA's sponsored research programs for nonprofit and public organizations. More than 40 faculty and affiliated faculty participate in the research, design, and implementation of sponsored programs with organizations ranging from the Governor’s Office of the Commonwealth of Virginia to an international nonprofit situated in Egypt. While the campus is based in Richmond, we go where the research, learning, and educational needs are: we are embedded scholars.

OUR PURPOSE

To be a force for education and inspiration to the people we serve

OUR MISSION

To facilitate the continuous learning and motivation of government and nonprofit leaders

OUR APPROACH

Theory comes to life in the work we do in communities. Every partner organization or state agency experiences collaborative learning.

Leadership Programs at SPIA Richmond

SPIA Richmond Virginia Management Fellowship (VMF )

The Virginia Management Fellows program is a public-public partnership of the Commonwealth of Virginia (Office of the Governor) and Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs. The program is a 2-year salaried position that engages with a host of state agencies, public administrators, and elected officials. The VMF addresses succession planning that positively affects leadership bench strength in the Commonwealth's state agencies. Prepared and trained leaders enable a productive Virginia in a vibrant and connected world. The VMF program is accessible by open application, typically occurring in November/December each calendar year.

The LAMPP program focuses on identified organization, department, or team group training needs for front-line managers. These learning goals include: skill-building around self-awareness and how to apply such awareness in the direct-service environment; the merging of management and leadership behaviors; exploring the fundamentals of influencing others; enhancing communication styles and tactics; understanding how to think and act beyond one department or team; creating a toolkit to strengthen manager and facility resiliency. Project management, planning, and introductory analytical tools are also curriculum features. Public speaking training and exercises are included through course presentations, lectures, small group work, and individual exercises. LAMPP curriculum is designed for larger state agencies, NGOs, and nonprofits with multiple operations sites. The program is sometimes deployed at the facility level, while the VPSL is offered at the agency level.  

SPIA’s Train-the-Trainer (T3) Mentoring programs are designed to train organizational mentor champions to support the development of peer mentoring programs in public agencies and non-profit organizations. We’ve provided curriculum and training for groups as small as 10, and are currently working on a state-wide effort to “train trainers” who will engage more than 6,000 employees across the Commonwealth.    

The P4 curriculum is designed for cross-disciplinary academic groups, for public and private sector collaborative funding, and for the Commonwealth’s next generation of leaders and managers. The purpose of P4 is to support learning while developing a philanthropic spirit and commitment to volunteer service. It is an experiential learning project designed to develop relationships across public and private sectors with the goal to understand how public and private entities work together to serve the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia.  

P4 Goals

Virginia Tech’s Center for Public Administration & Policy’s MPA mentoring program connects graduate students and experienced professionals across the Commonwealth. The program is a partnership of SPIA faculty and the Center for Public Administration and Policy (CPAP) faculty (home of Virginia Tech’s MPA program) .

The purpose of the program is to build shared experiences for mentors and mentees that result in a strengthened public sector. The MPA Mentoring Program is an opt-in, non-credit program for graduate students designed to complement academic and theoretical learning. A central theme in the work of Virginia Tech’s CPAP is “praxis,” the concept of putting theory to work. 

Virginia Tech SPIA Richmond Campus
2810 N. Parham Road      Suite 205
Richmond, VA 23294

Contact VT SPIA in Richmond

Cecily Rodriguez
Manager of Applied Research 
crodrig1@vt.edu 

Joe Rees
Richmond MPA Advisor
reesj@vt.edu