RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Dana. B. Hamel, the founding chancellor of the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) has died at the age of 99, the current VCCS chancellor announced.
According to a statement from VCCS chancellor David Doré, Hamel passed away on the evening of Friday, June 23, just over a month before his 100th birthday.
“Dr. Hamel’s leadership as the architect and first Chancellor of our community colleges was essential in opening the door for countless Virginians to gain access to higher education and a better life,” said Doré in the statement. “It was through Hamel’s guidance and dogged determination that Virginia advanced from having a collection of trade schools and university branch campuses to produce one of the country’s leading systems of comprehensive community colleges.”
Born in Maine to Canadian immigrants on Aug. 9, 1923, Hamel served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and earned a doctorate in education from the University of Cincinnati upon his return to the United States.
Hamel was hired to run the Roanoke Technical Institute in the early 1960s and later became VCCS’s chancellor when it was founded in 1966. After leaving VCCS in 1979, Hamel served as the executive director of the Virginia Center for Public/Private Initiatives and had a role in the development of the Thomas National Accelerator Facility, a nuclear physics research facility in Newport News. Hamel retired in 1995, after a career in public service which lasted nearly 40 years.
