In his 35 years, Joshua Cole has held a number of titles. Reverend. Delegate.
But, until earlier this month, one honorific eluded him: college graduate.
“I legitimately never thought I would graduate,” Cole said during a recent interview.
When Cole — wearing an African Stole and draped in a purple cord — walked across the stage at the University of Mary Washington on May 9, it marked the final steps of a circuitous journey that included as waypoints the Rev. Jerry Farwell Sr., a lost election, and a degree program that’s a credit to second chances.
Preaching to the choir boy
Cole graduated from North Stafford High School in 2009 and headed off to Liberty University that fall. Picking a major proved trivial; since age 13, Cole had spent his Sundays flitting about the ivory as a music minister. Worship and Music seemed a natural fit for the gifted pianist and aspiring preacher.
He left Lynchburg for winter break as a freshman thinking his future was set, but a conversation with his then-pastor at Church of the Promised Land in Maryland caused him to change course academically.
“He was like, ‘I need you to start focusing on being a pastor,’” Cole recalled. “So, I’m going to train you how to be a pastor.”
He officially changed his major to Pastoral Leadership and also began working for the school as a student academic advisor, a commitment that required him to switch to online classes.
“I went downhill from there,” he said of being an online student.
Around the same time, Cole was becoming increasingly aware of theological and political differences between himself and his peers and professors at Liberty.
“I think I was one of the only few handfuls of folks that voted for Obama on campus in 2012,” he said. “[Liberty co-founder] Jerry Falwell turned over his grave.”
Generally disillusioned and disinterested in his studies, Cole flunked out of Liberty.
“I wasn’t that disciplined, right?” he said. “I got caught up in making money. I got caught up in doing church stuff.”
‘Nothing but time on my hands’
Cole returned to Fredericksburg, where he filed an academic appeal — known as a Satisfactory Academic Progress, or SAP — through Liberty’s registrar’s office. The SAP left him one math and one science class shy of earning an associate’s degree.
Still, “I just never had time to like register and start the classes,” he said.
Years passed. Ministry had become Cole’s primary focus and means of supporting himself financially by that point; he even earned a certificate through a pastoral program operated by one of his mentors.
And the same politics that roiled him at Liberty? They spurred him to run for public office.
Cole’s interrupted transcript didn’t prevent him from joining the General Assembly. A Democrat, he was first elected in 2019, defeating Republican Paul Milde in Virginia’s 28th District.
After serving that term, he ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2021, losing to Republican Tara Durant.
He was still reeling from that setback when he met Rich Larochelle for lunch at the Fredericksburg Food Co-Op. LaRochelle, the chair of the Rappahannock Education Farm in Stafford County, pressed Cole on his future plans.
“With all of his achievements, he didn’t have a college degree,” Larochelle said. “And I thought it would be great for him to use that time, you know, to get a college degree.”
Right time, and Larochelle thought he knew the right place: UMW. What’s more, he had an in; his son Jeremy is a longtime Spanish professor and academic advisor at the university.
Jeremy Larochelle assured Cole that the fact that he’d flunked out at Liberty wouldn’t be a problem.
Finally, he relented.
“Fine,” Cole recalled telling Larochelle. “I have nothing but time on my hands. Let’s do it.”
A credit to perseverance
Ana Chichester is the retiring Director of UMW’s Bachelor of Liberal Studies (BLS) program, which has something of an unofficial motto.
“The mission of my program is we want Mary Washington to be the last university that our students attend,” Chichester said.
UMW’s BLS program has a few key requirements: prospective students must be at least 26 years old, and all are technically considered transfers. A “significant number” of the program’s 145 students are military veterans, Chichester said.
When Cole sat down with Jeremy Larochelle and members of UMW’s admissions office, it quickly became clear that the BLS program was his best route to earn his bachelor’s degree in the least amount of time.
He officially enrolled in January 2022, with a concentration in religious studies. His first course was U.S. History to 1865 with professor Will Mackintosh, a Fredericksburg City councilor and personal friend.
“He’s a total ringer,” Mackintosh said with a laugh. “He just knew a lot, had a lot of contextual knowledge for understanding what we were talking about.”
Cole probably could’ve taught that class, but what impressed Mackintosh most is the fact that he didn’t feel a need to.
For example, the course covers the basics of constitutional order, a concept with which Cole, a sitting delegate, is well acquainted.
“He was very aware of the other students in the room and careful not to dominate,” Mackintosh said. “He didn’t take over the classroom. What I remember most about having Josh is that he carved a lot of space for them to have a good learning experience, too.”
Joshua Cole displays a pennant for the University of Mary Washington. (submitted photo)
The defining feature of UMW’s BLS program is the opportunity for students to take a class that culminates with submitting a portfolio to earn credit for prior life experience. Cole did so, dutifully chronicling his years in ministry and the church.
Suffice to say, Chichester found the first draft lacking.
“So he presented that and I sent it back and said, ‘Well, what about your experience, you know, running for office?’”
“I didn’t think I could submit that stuff,” Cole responded.
BLS students usually receive between 12-15 credits for their portfolios, so Cole’s future calculus was based on that range. He spent the next three months following the first submission adding to his portfolio.
Campaigning. Candidacy trainings. Serving in the legislature, which he rejoined in 2023, winning election in Virginia’s 65th House District.
On May 10, 2025, in the midst of both the spring semester and the General Assembly session, Cole’s godmother — a former educator and staunch proponent of his returning to school — passed away.
Two weeks after her death, he received an email from his advisor. For his revised portfolio, he’d received 30 credit hours, the maximum allotment.
“I believe she’s the one that did it,” Cole said of his late godmother.
That left him 10 credit hours, the rough equivalent of four classes, short of graduating. He initially planned to split them up — two classes that summer and two in the fall.
“And my advisor said, ‘No,’” recalled Cole. “You’re going to do all four of your classes this summer. And you’re going to finish in August.”
For the fourth and final of those classes, Cole traveled to Greece to research an academic paper on the effects of the Council of Nicaea.
When Cole walked across the Ball Circle stage that Saturday morning, his fellow graduates included volunteers from his prior campaigns for the House of Delegates, and the purple on his cord represented his work with UMW’s James Farmer Multicultural Center.
“It was surreal,” he said. “Like I said, because I never thought that I would get there.”
But where Cole is concerned, the BLS “motto” doesn’t quite apply.
In August, he’ll begin pursuing his master’s of theological studies at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, which counts among its alumni the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
