DOBSON — Surry Community College’s viticulture and enology program is gaining notability across the country and is destined to gain even more with the opening of a new facility.

In 2009, the college broke ground on the Shelton-Badgett North Carolina Center for Viticulture and Enology. The building, which began in May, will offer a grand hall which will be available for workshops, conferences, presentations and receptions, among other events. There will also be classrooms and labs for students in the program, a wine library, a barrel storage room and a crushing pad for grapes.

“It’s a great day,” said Dr. Frank Sells, former president of SCC, at the May 1 groundbreaking. “It’s a real distinct thing to have this project happen right here in Surry County.”

The $5 million facility is slated to open for the 2010 fall semester.

The college received more than $2 million in grants from five different sources covering eight objectives. The largest chunk of that money, $800,000, came from the Golden LEAF Foundation.

That money will go towards opening SCC campuses in Elkin and Pilot Mountain. The CLEAR sites, Center for Learning, Education and Retraining, will allow residents of the towns to gain training and preparation for the workforce. The funding will support community needs assessments, staffing for the CLEAR sites and equipping classrooms and computer labs.

“We have those funds and have been working diligently,” said Dr. George Sappenfield, vice president of corporate and continuing education, at November’s Board of Trustees meeting.

Other grants deal with projects such as workforce development programs like JobsNOW, which provides a path to 12 careers in six months, and Project Skill-Up, which is funded by the NC Tobacco Trust Fund specifically for workforce development programs. The school also received grants for a distance education outreach initiative and online course development.

The SCC Foundation’s 13th annual golf tournament raised $53,000 for scholarships and the tools necessary for student learning. Since its inception in 1996, the tournament has raised $500,000 for the college.

In 2009, the college saw 519 curriculum graduates and 591 corporate and continuing education graduates. The majority of the curriculum graduates were from the school’s degree programs while the majority of corporate and continuing education graduates complete the Certified Nursing Assistant I program. There were also 202 GED graduates.

SCC athletics also had a successful 2009. The National Junior College Athletic Association named seven student-athletes from North Carolina community colleges as Academic All-Americans. Of those named, four are SCC student-athletes. In addition to being successful in their sports, the athletes took time to give back to the community through projects with the Give a Kid a Coat campaign, the Surry County Children’s Center, the Special Olympics, the Surry County Sheriff’s Office food drive, Swing for Life, Dig Pink and others.

Contact Morgan Wall at mwall@mtairynews.com or 719-1929.