Longtime Laurel Ridge English Professor Brent Kendrick has received the 2025 Chancellor’s Award for Leadership in Philanthropy – a statewide honor dedicated to those who have demonstrated great generosity within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). 

The prestigious award was created in 2006 by the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education to honor leading philanthropists from each of Virginia’s 23 community colleges. This year’s class of distinguished philanthropy leaders has collectively contributed $24 million dollars to Virginia’s community colleges.
 

For 23 years, until January 2023, Dr. Kendrick taught more than 7,000 students in a wide variety of English courses, including Appalachian Literature, Major American Writers, College Composition, Developmental English, and Memoir Writing.

His guiding principle as a teacher was “Know your students, love your students. Know your subject, love your subject.”

“His love of Laurel Ridge Community College continues through his financial generosity, including two endowed scholarships,” said Liv Heggoy, executive director of the Laurel Ridge Educational Foundation. “He has also given generously to our Student Success Fund and has included the college as one of the beneficiaries of his estate.”

Upon learning he was receiving the philanthropy honor, “the first word that popped into my mind was flabbergasted,” said Dr. Kendrick.

“I love giving,” he said. “I have always been a giver, a sharer, but Leadership in Philanthropy was the last thing on my mind.”

While he was growing up in a coal mine camp in West Virginia, it was Dr. Kendrick’s dream to become a college professor.

“But, when you’re the son of a coal miner and a minister, how do you come up with the money to go to college?” he asked. “I have been the beneficiary of philanthropy. I had a scholarship to Alderson Broaddus College.”

After a 25-year career at the Library of Congress, Professor Kendrick came to Laurel Ridge in 1998. In 2010, he received the Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. That same year, he established the Brent L. Kendrick Faculty Legacy Endowed Scholarship Fund. Preference is given to students who, like Professor Kendrick, are the first in their family to attend college.

In 2021, Professor Kendrick established the Patrick Allen Duff Memorial Endowed Scholarhship in honor of his late partner, a surgical technologist who was the director of the Surgical Technology program at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

“Allen was the one who got the Surgical Technology program going at Laurel Ridge,” said Professor Kendrick. “He was so committed to the health sciences and education. I thought, what better way to honor his memory than to set up an endowed scholarship in his name.”

He said he was delighted that the 2025 health professions commencement speaker, Deborah Zelleke-Yearwood, was a recipient of the scholarship.

“I know Allen was looking down big time smiling on that,” said Dr. Kendrick.

Dr. Kendrick insists his 2023 departure from Laurel Ridge wasn’t a retirement – rather, he is “reinventing” himself. Indeed, he has since had four books published, with a fifth due out in September. One is a scholarly edition of short stories by author Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, three consist of his creative nonfiction essays, and the latest is “Unmasking the Humourist:  Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina. 

Proceeds from his second volume of essays, “More Wit and Wisdom: Another Year of Foolin’ Around in Bed,” – which he wrote before falling asleep – support the college’s Student Success Fund. He said the book “is doing decently enough. 

“It can help a student buy a tank of gas, or some emergency food needs,” Professor Kendrick said. “I think oftentimes people who give don’t think about the small amounts that add up.”

He knows that first-hand, because while he did have the scholarship to attend Alderson Broaddus, he lacked the $150 necessary to pay for his textbooks. Thanks to a fund set up by the citizens in his town, Dr. Kendrick got the help he needed.

“That loomed as large as the solar system for me because I didn’t have that $150,” he said.

Dr. Kendrick was among more than two dozen individuals, families, and organizations who were honored with the Chancellor’s Award for Leadership in Philanthropy during a ceremony in April in Richmond.

VCCS Chancellor Dr. David Doré served as the emcee, and Mark Hourigan, founder and CEO of Hourigan, delivered the keynote address.

“Every time our donors support a scholarship, fund a new program, or an emergency grant, they are not just giving back, they are lifting up,” said Hourigan. “They are invaluable partners whose generosity can and does make the difference between a student dropping out, or staying the course and realizing their true potential.”

Dr. Doré echoed those sentiments, adding that a culture of care can have a profound impact on student performance.

“When our students realize that someone cares enough to help remove the formidable obstacles standing in their way, it’s life-changing,” he said. “The things they thought impossible suddenly become doable, and their confidence soars as a result.”

For more information about how you can help support students and programs at Laurel Ridge, visit laurelridge.edu/foundation.