Statewide training keeps Virginia’s water workforce ready
Continuing and Professional Education connects operators with university, agency, and industry expertise through short schools, regional courses, and free webinars.
Every Virginia community depends on skilled professionals to keep its drinking water safe and its wastewater systems operating properly.
Most of their work happens out of sight. Operators monitor treatment systems, prepare for storms, track contaminants, maintain equipment, and make thousands of decisions that protect public health and the environment.
For more than two decades, Virginia Tech Continuing and Professional Education (CPE), part of Outreach and International Affairs, has helped strengthen this essential workforce through accessible, ongoing training.
Through a long-running partnership with the Virginia departments of Health and Environmental Quality, CPE offers weeklong short schools in Blacksburg, focused courses around the commonwealth, and a free webinar series. The training helps operators earn required continuing education hours, prepare for licensure exams, and stay current in a rapidly changing field.
The partnership demonstrates how Virginia Tech can turn university and industry knowledge into practical benefits for communities while strengthening a workforce essential to public health and local infrastructure, CPE Director Shelly Jobst said.
Faculty members, state agency specialists, industry professionals, and plant operators contribute their expertise, while CPE provides the educational infrastructure to sustain the program and reach working professionals across Virginia.
A state grant helps keep the training affordable for localities and utilities with limited professional development budgets. Regional courses and online options also reduce travel costs and time away from work.
“This is the kind of work Continuing and Professional Education is built to do,” Jobst said. “We bring together university expertise, agency partners, and industry specialists to meet a real workforce need for the commonwealth — and we do it in a way that supports both professional licensure and the public good.”
Keeping pace with a changing field
Water and wastewater operators must continue their training throughout their careers.
New regulations, emerging contaminants, changing reporting requirements, aging infrastructure, severe weather, and workforce shortages all place new demands on the people responsible for operating and maintaining water systems.
Caleb Taylor, executive director of the New River Valley Regional Water Authority, helps coordinate content for the program. He said the courses combine firsthand knowledge from treatment facilities with research and guidance from Virginia Tech faculty members and state agency specialists.
“Even if it takes years to develop a new regulation because of a new contaminant, having the university experts talk about what they are researching helps operators be prepared for what may be coming in the future,” Taylor said.
The partnership also helps move university research into practice.
Leigh-Anne Krometis, professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said her research on emerging contaminants and trust in drinking water is directly relevant to operators, particularly those serving rural communities. Operators focused on the daily work of keeping systems running may not have time to follow every developing issue before it reaches their facilities.
“I get to alert them to things that could be future problems so they can be proactive and get solutions in place before there’s an issue,” Krometis said.
The exchange works in both directions. Conversations with operators help Krometis better understand challenges that may not be visible to researchers who are not working in treatment plants every day.
“They let me know how I can shape my research to be more practically useful,” Krometis said. “It’s hugely valuable — I also learn a lot as a teacher.”
By connecting researchers and practitioners, the program helps operators anticipate emerging challenges while making university research and teaching more responsive to community needs.
Extending training across Virginia
CPE uses three formats to reach working professionals wherever they live and work.
Each summer, the Water Short School and Wastewater Short School bring operators to The Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center for concentrated instruction and exam preparation. The weeklong programs combine classroom learning, hands-on presentations, and tours of treatment facilities.
From February to November, shorter courses focused on specific topics are offered in regions across the state through a mix of Virginia Tech locations, including the Commonwealth Campus Centers in Newport News, Richmond, and Roanoke, and local water facilities. Bringing in-person and hands-on instruction to different regions helps utilities provide professional development without sending employees to Blacksburg for several days.
A free webinar series complements the in-person courses. Offered nine times a year to hundreds of participants, the three-hour sessions allow instructors to respond quickly to new contaminants, major weather events, regulatory changes, and other developing challenges. The online format eliminates travel expenses and allows operators to participate from their own communities.
Together, the formats create a statewide learning network that connects operators from urban, suburban, and rural systems with university researchers, regulators, and industry specialists.
CPE coordinates instructors and agency partners, markets the courses, manages participant and contact-hour records, and provides the logistical and on-site support for each course. That capacity allows instructors to focus on technical content while helping Virginia Tech and its partners maintain a consistent program across regions and delivery formats.
For the Virginia Department of Health, that consistency helps make required training more accessible to operators across the commonwealth.
“Virginia’s water and wastewater operators are on the front lines of protecting public health every day. This partnership with Virginia Tech Continuing and Professional Education helps ensure they have access to high-quality, relevant training throughout their careers, regardless of where they work in the commonwealth,” said Julie Floyd, training and operation certification manager for the Office of Drinking Water. “By making continuing education accessible and affordable, we’re helping utilities maintain a skilled workforce that communities can depend on for safe drinking water and effective wastewater treatment.”
That access matters not only for individual operators, but also for the communities that depend on them.
“These people are as committed as those who serve in public safety, such as fire, EMS, and police,” Taylor said. “The difference is that operators work behind the scenes keeping drinking water treated to safe levels for us to consume and, on the wastewater side, treated to be discharged in a way that does not adversely affect the environment. These operators take great pride in what they do.”
