Marketing & Communications Dept.
Blue Ridge Community College has released its 2024–2025 Annual Report, “At the Center” (PDF), highlighting a year of growth, community resilience and student achievement across Western North Carolina. Published in January 2026, the report illustrates how Blue Ridge serves at the center of regional workforce development while advancing education, recovery, and economic vitality.
Organized around the College’s new five-year strategic plan, the report showcases progress across four pillars: student success, employee success, community success and institutional success. Through key accomplishments in innovative workforce training, program expansion, student support services, and more, it demonstrates how Blue Ridge prepares learners for high-wage, high-demand careers while advancing the communities it serves.
“This annual report highlights the many ways our students, faculty, staff, donors, and partners have lived out this mission over the past year,” wrote Blue Ridge President Dr. Laura B. Leatherwood in the report’s introduction. “Together with our dedicated partners and supporters, we remain at the center of preparing people not only to transform their own lives and careers, but to strengthen the fabric of our communities.”
The report features accomplishments in workforce training and education aligned with regional needs in areas such as skilled trades, healthcare, information technology, engineering, and public safety. It also reflects Blue Ridge’s leadership in recovery following Hurricane Helene, supporting small businesses, employers, and students as the region rebuilds.
“Blue Ridge remains essential to equipping the construction and skilled trades professionals rebuilding homes and businesses, the healthcare workers, and first responders who protect our well-being, the engineers and IT professionals who strengthen our infrastructure, and the entrepreneurs who keep our small businesses thriving,” Leatherwood wrote.
The annual report also includes a message from the Educational Foundation of Blue Ridge Community College, emphasizing the role of donor support in removing barriers to education and workforce entry. Executive Director Jamie Wiener highlighted the impact of emergency assistance and scholarships during a critical year.
“Through the Educational Foundation, emergency funds helped hundreds of students replace essentials and remain focused on their education,” Wiener wrote. “Your generosity ensured that the storm would not define their future.”
This past year, the Foundation awarded 544 scholarships to students, many affected directly by the hurricane. Over the past decade, donor support has resulted in $6.4 million in scholarships and $6.2 million in program investments at Blue Ridge.
“Recovery may define our decade, but it continues to reveal the very best of our community: compassion, determination and an unwavering belief in education as a pillar of our renewal,” Wiener wrote alongside Foundation President Tom Murrill.
Production of the report was a collaborative effort between the Blue Ridge Community College President’s Office–including the Marketing & Communications Dept. and Educational Foundation–along with Crisp Communications.
“This annual report is the result of thoughtful storytelling and collaboration across the College and our community,” explained Benjamin Rickert, Blue Ridge’s director of marketing and communications. “We’re proud to share a publication that captures the people, partnerships, and progress that define Blue Ridge Community College.”
The 2024–2025 Annual Report is available alongside past reports at www.blueridge.edu/about.
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