VUU teams up with local realty office for ‘first-of-its-kind’ curriculum collab
VUU officials and Keller Williams representatives announced the new real estate program at an event Wednesday. (Jonathan Spiers photos)
The same day it announced that its accreditation had been reaffirmed after two years on probation, Virginia Union University celebrated the launch of a new real estate curriculum through a collaboration with a local Keller Williams realty office.
Representatives with Keller Williams’ Richmond West office joined university officials Wednesday to announce the collaboration that will establish a real estate concentration and potential academic minor in VUU’s Sydney Lewis School of Business.
The new program, which will start next semester, will provide free access to Keller Williams’ proprietary prelicensing platform and education programs to prepare prospective agents for state and national license exams.
It’ll also provide scholarships and establish a hub on campus where Keller Williams staff can assist students and alumni interested in learning more about investing in real estate or becoming an agent.
In the works for several months, the collaboration was described as the first of its kind between Keller Williams and a historically black college or university.
Felicia Cosby
“Nothing like this has been done before,” said Felicia Cosby, VUU’s dean of external relations. “It’s going to offer tremendous opportunities for our students. For the first time, we will offer a concentration, as well as certificates, in real estate along with access to industry-leading training for our students, our alums and the Richmond community.”
While real estate investment has historically been a cornerstone of wealth-building for the African American community, Cosby said, African Americans remain underrepresented in the real estate industry. According to national and state Realtors association statistics, about 6% of Realtors nationally identify as black, and nearly 9% in Virginia. VUU hopes its program will help change that, Cosby said.
“By joining forces with Keller Williams, we are not only expanding career and entrepreneurial opportunities for our students, but we are also taking intentional steps to address the persistent disparities in homeownership that continue to affect black families,” she said.
Talks between VUU and Keller Williams Realty Alliance Group, a network of Keller Williams franchises in Central and Northern Virginia, were initiated by Tara Adams, an agent in the Richmond West office. She proposed the idea for the program to Kyle Holloran, the group’s operating principal.
“I have been looking for opportunities with our agents to help young students start early on a pathway that helps them live a life worth living, and Keller Williams has created some amazing products to assist those entrepreneurs as they’re going throughout their business and their career,” Holloran said during the ceremony.
Kyle Holloran
“We look at ourselves not only as a company that is willing to serve Realtors and agents, but we’re here to serve the community in which we work and we live every single day,” he said.
Keller Williams is the largest privately held real estate company in the U.S. and typically does over $1 billion in sales in the Central Virginia market each year, Holloran said. Based in Austin, Texas, the company is often among the Richmond market’s top five producers, according to data from the Central Virginia Regional Multiple Listing Service.
Holloran, who is also director of Keller Williams’ Virginia and West Virginia regions, credited his rise in real estate to starting in the industry right out of college. He said he obtained his license during his last semester at Randolph-Macon College.
Having moved away from Richmond before returning last year to become the franchise group’s operating principal, Holloran said it was his early start out of school that set him on the path to now owning five Keller Williams franchises. He added that the program would provide similar opportunities for VUU students.
Wendy Jewell, dean of VUU’s business school, said providing the program amid Richmond’s hot homebuilding market would further benefit participants.
“We want to make sure that our students are poised for hot jobs, and I just saw something this morning saying that the Richmond area is going to be one of the hot homebuying markets in the country,” Jewell said, “so we’ll be preparing our students to go right into excellent careers.”
VUU plans to introduce the real estate program in the spring 2026 semester that starts in January.
The announcement event was held at VUU’s Living and Learning Center on campus.
Wednesday’s event coincided with VUU’s announcement that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges has reaffirmed VUU’s accreditation after a probationary period that stretched two years.
The association put VUU on probation in late 2023 because of findings that financial controls needed to be improved. VUU said at the time that it would respond to the probation by expanding its business office and strengthening internal fiscal infrastructure to accommodate the university’s growth.
VUU remained accredited during the probation but risked losing the status while probation remained in place.
In a statement released Wednesday, President Hakim Lucas said VUU “will continue strengthening our systems, refining our processes, measuring our outcomes, and elevating the standards by which we serve our students.”
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