Piedmont Virginia Community College earns Voter Friendly Campus designation

Piedmont Virginia Community College has earned the 2023-2024 Voter Friendly Campus designation, which highlights commitment and dedication to engaging the campus community and promoting voter registration and voting as part of the PVCC mission.

The Voter Friendly Campus initiative is led by national nonpartisan organizations, Campus Vote Project and NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

“Students are passionate about the issues facing our communities and world today, and they are motivated to be part of the solutions,” said PVCC President Jean Runyon. “We strive to prepare students to be engaged participants in our democracy. We are honored to be named a Voter Friendly Campus for a fourth time.”

The goal of the Voter Friendly Campus designation program is to bolster efforts that help students overcome barriers to participating in the political process and develop a culture of democratic engagement on campus.

The Voter Friendly Campus designation was presented to 258 colleges and universities that include a wide range of two-year, four-year, public, private, rural and urban campuses that collectively serve more than 3.5 million students.

PVCC is one of 41 community college designees making the roster and one of only two community colleges of the 14 Virginia-based higher education institutions earning the designation. Other schools earning the designation include Northern Virginia Community College, Virginia Tech, Norfolk State University, the College of William and Mary, Longwood University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Mary Washington, Virginia Wesleyan University, Shenandoah University, George Mason University, James Madison University, Radford University and the University of Virginia.

Campuses were evaluated on their ability to complete a three-step process, including: writing a campus plan about how they would engage student voters in 2020, facilitating voter education and engagement efforts on their campus and writing a final analysis on their efforts.

The designation is valid through December 2024.

Learn more about PVCC civic engagement and voter education initiatives at www.pvcc.edu/civic-sense.