H. Martin Lancaster
President, NC Community College System
James Sprunt Community College
Kenansville, NC
May 28, 1998
Thank you, President Reichard. Mrs. Boyette. Dr. Herring. Ladies and gentleman.
I am honored to be with you on this historic day of celebration. Those of us who work on behalf of community colleges in North Carolina think of this campus and this county as the system=s spiritual Mecca! The pioneering spirit and splendid vision of Dr. Dallas Herring, Duplin County=s favorite son, illuminate the work we do in Raleigh and on 59 campuses every day. Dr. Herring=s philosophy and eloquent writings are the foundation on which our system was built and is daily sustained.
The Methodists in the crowd will understand what I mean when I say we should add to our Aopen door@ symbol a picture of the AAsbury flame.@ The community college missionary spirit ignited almost four decades ago burns brightly and strongly among our leaders, our faculty and staff members and, of course, among almost 800,000 students who come to our community colleges every year.
Helen Boyette has an honored place among the keepers of the flame. She stepped forward to be a charter member of the Board of Trustees of James Sprunt Community College, when the very idea of community colleges was still fresh and unfamiliar, and has served well ever since. She has led your board as chairman during a time of great change and success. She has invested time and energy in issues of statewide concern as a member of the executive committee of the North Carolina Association of Community College Trustees. Her long service on the Board here combined with her longer service to the people of Duplin County as a supporting and active partner of her husband, Dr. Ed Boyette, the good doctor of Chinquapin, have meant that Helen Boyette has probably had a positive impact on more lives in Duplin County than any other person with the possible exception of Dallas Herring.
The building that bears Mrs. Boyette=s name is a splendid testimony to her decades of devotion to the community college ideal -- and to the wisdom and generosity of the General Assembly, county commissioners and private donors who have supported this building and all the other efforts of the college.
It is especially fitting that the Helen A. Boyette Building is a concrete reminder that the open doors of the community college work in both directions. They welcome students into the excitement of learning; they also serve as portals for the many resources of the college going back into the larger community. That diversity and breadth of service through this building are further reflections of the diversity and breadth of Helen=s service.
A few years ago, the Carnegie Commission called on our community colleges to strengthen their roles as conveners of civic life. The programs housed in this new facility reinforce that role dramatically for James Sprunt Community College.
The Small Business Center connects the practical skills and education available at the college to the quintessentially American dream of entrepreneurship and independence.
The Continuing Education division represents the reality of lifelong learning. It is wonderful to pursue new knowledge for intellectual growth, for spiritual health, and for fun. In today=s climate of dizzying technological change, it is also essential to do so for economic survival.
Ponder this thought from Geraldine Ferraro: AIt was not so very long ago that people thought that semiconductors were part-time orchestra leaders and microchips were very, very small snack foods.@
If you think that today, watch out...you=re destined to be road kill on the Information SuperHighway!
The library and the distance learning facilities in the Helen A. Boyette Building will help keep that from happening. I am proud of the great strides that the community colleges are making using technology to reach people who need our services the most -- and to create new services undreamed of in the early years of our system.
Many of you were a part of those early years. You remember that today=s system of 59 institutions began as a handful of Industrial Education Centers and a few two-year colleges with academic programs. Melding them into strong system of comprehensive community colleges took years of careful planning, much negotiating with the General Assembly and strong leadership, including the personal commitment of the late Governor Terry Sanford. Virtually all of the tributes to Governor Sanford following his recent death cited the creation of the system in 1963 as one of the most important accomplishments of his remarkable life in public service. How fortunate North Carolina was to have Terry Sanford at the helm at this important juncture in our history, with Dallas Herring as his navigator, always showing the way to a brighter future for all North Carolinians, not just the select few who could afford an education in the liberal arts -- pushing for an education that would combine the technical skills needed for the workplace with the exposure to the arts and the humanities that would make the person whole.
Our system=s focus on the whole person is and always has been a great strength -- it is particularly so now, with the tremendous need for job training and re-training occurring at a time when the study of the arts and humanities is often ignored in our pursuit of the dollar. However, there has always been a continuing, creative tension between what we are -- and what we should be. How easy it would have been to decide 35 years ago that this was an Aeither-or question@...either we were technical institutes providing only skills training, or we were junior colleges devoted solely to academics.
How fortunate that Dr. Dallas Herring did not and does not view the world in Aeither-or@ terms. From the earliest days, he has championed the Jeffersonian idea that the most important role of education in a democracy is the creation of citizens who are productive and responsible -- capable of earning a living, making informed decision, and stepping into leadership.
Dr. Herring challenged the colleges "to instill that enthusiasm for knowledge and understanding in your students, to help them to search out the deep and abiding truths which mankind has discovered over the centuries, by example and by precept, to teach them to love the great books and to hunger for the majestic ideas that make people free." For this continued exposure to the arts and humanities as a part of all of our curricula, we are eternally grateful to Dr. Herring.
Thanks to the vision of Dr. Herring and decades of leadership from Helen Boyette and her colleagues on local boards, our community college students do indeed acquire the skills they need to land good jobs in today=s high-tech working world. However, they also acquire the fundamental education that underlies good decision-making, flexibility and the desire to keep learning -- the best defense against obsolescence when today=s technology turns into tomorrow=s scrap heap -- the surest path to a life that combines a richness of spirit with prosperity and material wealth.
Education is, of course, more than just insurance against unemployment. As I said in my inaugural address last fall, we must never assume that workers who are technically trained to work in our businesses and industries do not also need a broad background in the arts and humanities. They are not automatons trained simply for efficient production, but they are citizens and members of society who deserve to share in its cultural and intellectual gifts as well as its economic benefits.
The essential role of North Carolina=s community colleges in nourishing widespread appreciation of the arts and humanities is a powerful part of their history.
I take personal pride in my role in creating and supporting the Visiting Artists program during my term as chairman of the North Carolina Arts Council and while I was in the General Assembly. I know that James Sprunt Community College was an enthusiastic participant in that program. I want you to know that I am committed to developing new efforts -- and new funding -- that will raise the visibility and appreciation of the performing and visual arts and humanities on all our campuses, but in new and exciting ways.
Alice and I are proud of the course that she designed at Wayne Community College a number of years ago that introduces the humanities to students enrolled in technical and vocational programs and which continues to be a popular course at Wayne, now happily taught by Margaret Baddour, the wife of my former law partner and the person who holds my seat in the General Assembly. I am pleased that other colleges have replicated this course and included it in their technical and vocational curricula.
We have made a start in recognizing the uplifting nature of the visual arts in one=s environment at our System Office. Thanks to the talents of more than fifty instructors, staff members, students and alumni of North Carolina=s community colleges, our System Office building in Raleigh is now enhanced by paintings, drawings, metal sculptures, spectacular quilts, photographs, creations of bone and feathers, pottery, baskets, a hand-made Windsor rocking chair and a stuffed roller-skating waitress fondly called Gertie by my staff.
Late last year, I invited artists in our system to submit slides and photographs of work that they would be willing to lend us for a year. Hundreds of submissions inundated our office, offering overwhelming evidence of the level of talent in our system and the need to show it off!
You should be proud, by the way, that the artwork selected from James Sprunt Community College has by far the greatest visibility. Lisa Wollman Bolick of your advertising and graphic design faculty submitted a digital collage, created by and for computers. It is the one artwork posted on our Website -- perfectly combining art and technology! Thousands of visitors to our Website will see this fine work.
I take the time to share this with you because the response of the colleges speaks to a creative vitality that spills over into every aspect of community college life. We asked the artists to tell us what the opportunity to practice their art in community colleges means to them. Here are some of the things they said:
Deborah Harbison is a student who rediscovered pottery at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. She wrote: AI moved to NC in 1992 from Denver, Colorado. I had practiced making wheel-thrown pottery for about three years in Colorado; however, I Amerely dabbled,@ as the saying goes -- I was not at all serious. A serious hand accident took me away from the clay for many years and as time passed, I felt a growing urge to redicover the clay -- perhaps for the first time. I finally gave in to the urge, and have discovered a passion that cannot be suppressed.@
Beth Engel teaches painting at Blue Ridge Community College. She told us:
AI have always been intrigued by the nuances of the human body and gesture. For all we seem to know in these post-modern times, people are still pretty mysterious. My colors are the colors of the world as I feel it...a world so intense with daily sensory epiphanies that I want to capture some of them in order that they not be overlooked.@And finally Toni Voit, a young woman who teaches at Wake Technical Community College:
AThrough teaching a course in realistic drawing, I have been able to share with students my love and commitment to the fine arts, while helping them learn to express themselves through drawing. In teaching realistic drawing, my emphasis is on the importance of learning how to see clearly. Once one has mastered the ability to see clearly, drawing comes easily.@It may well be that once one has mastered the ability to see clearly, most things come easily -- especially if we could see more clearly into the future. I don
=t pretend that any of us can do that. All we can do is prepare ourselves -- and our children -- by providing the best possible education to every North Carolinian. And that education must always include a significant exposure to the arts and literature of our forefathers -- the great thoughts and recordings of history captured in our books -- the stirring of the soul and spirit which comes from the religious writings of the centuries -- the challenges of the future laid before us by the great minds of the past. But at the same time we focus on these great and thoughtful ideas of the ages, we must prepare for a new age.A number of years ago, Margaret Mead made this observation about the challenges of education in the 20th century:
AWe are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.@How much more true will that be in the twenty-first century? God willing, we will all be around to find out...and to help our children and grandchildren meet their challenges.
Mrs. Boyette, I congratulate you...and I thank you on behalf of the entire community college family for the foundation of educational excellence you have established for all of us. I wish you many more decades of accomplishment.
Thank you very much...###
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