On Monday, November 13, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine will meet with university leaders and faculty at Averett University to discuss higher education and job training and tour the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) in Danville. Kaine’s visit to IALR comes on the heels of the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) selection of the Virginia Additive Manufacturing and Applied Materials Strategy Development Consortium, of which IALR is a partner, for a grant to strengthen American supply chain resilience.

First, Kaine, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, will visit Averett University to meet with Averett leaders and faculty to discuss the state of higher education and how they are training the next generation of workers. Kaine fought to include $670,000 in the Senate draft of the Fiscal Year 2024 government funding bill for the University to strengthen job training and enhance their online programs, and will keep working to make sure that funding is included in the final FY2024 budget. Kaine has long supported efforts to make higher education more accessible and affordable and to boost job training throughout the Commonwealth. He has championed the bipartisan JOBS Act, which would help more Americans get good-paying jobs by allowing students to use federal Pell Grants to afford high-quality, shorter-term job training programs for the first time.

Then, Kaine will tour IALR to meet with key leaders and tour the Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing (ATDM) program as well as the Center for Manufacturing Advancement, which houses the Navy’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE). These initiatives align with the efforts of the Virginia Additive Manufacturing and Applied Materials Strategy Development Consortium, which Kaine will also tour parts of. The consortium recently received an EDA grant made possible by the Tech Hubs Program, which was created by the CHIPS and Science Act that Kaine helped pass. IALR and the consortium’s work will support our national security needs, including those of the U.S. Navy’s Columbia- and Virginia-class submarine construction programs and those of the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) agreement, in which Australia will purchase at least three and up to five Virginia-class submarines. Kaine, who serves as Chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower, has been a vocal supporter of the AUKUS agreement, which will benefit Virginia’s economy and strengthen the security of one of America’s closest allies. The tour will be open to press and will be followed by a media availability hosted by Kaine.