H. Martin Lancaster, President
North Carolina Community College System
NC IIPS Conference
July 23, 2007
Thank you. As always, I appreciate the chance to be with you. One of the many things I like about being president of the North Carolina Community College System is the opportunity to work with very smart people -- and the people in this room certainly qualify!!
And you are also among the most POWERFUL people in education today. In our fast-changing world, information really IS power, and you are the people we pay to gather it, analyze it and present it, so we can use it to make the case for community colleges.
Since this is my last year as community college president -- and this is likely my last conference with you -- I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what's changed in my decade with the System -- and what we've accomplished together.
There's no question that the areas in which YOU work have seen the most dramatic changes.
When I look around the Caswell Building, where the System Office is located, I can see the most obvious ones. When I arrived in July of 1997, the System Office was still on its FIRST generation of desktop computers -- until the mid-1990s, "dumb terminals" were the rule, email non-existent, and some managers were PROUD that they couldn't type. The System website was text-only, used almost exclusively by IT folks for computer-related information. We had a staff library, where staff members leafed through thousands of pages of printed reports when we needed to know census data, economic statistics and other vital information. Distance learning mostly meant broadcast telecourses and video classrooms on the NC Information Highway, with a handful of pioneers experimenting with on-line courses.
Today, computers grace EVERY desk, including mine -- although for some reason my PC isn't NEARLY as fancy as the sleek flatscreens in IT and Finance! The staff library is gone -- replaced by excellent census data, economic reports and much more readily available -- and constantly updated -- on the web. Distance learning registrations top 180,000 a year just in curriculum in hundreds of courses.
The system staff itself is now packed with professionals whose job it is to know about technology. We have about 200 total positions at the System Office -- 76 of those are in information technology or distance learning -- almost 40 percent.
A significant part of that growth is due to the successful implementation of three massive projects -- the Virtual Learning Community, the data warehouse and our college information system -- known to all of you as -- C-I-S. I know that you have detailed updates coming later in this conference. However, I want to take the time to thank all of you for your countless hours -- and many years! -- of hard work on all these efforts. With full implementation of C-I-S about to happen -- maybe it's a good time to take a moment to CELEBRATE and to realize what a substantive difference these huge projects have already made in our ability to fulfill out mission -- to provide education and training to prepare North Carolinians for productive lives and to support our state's economic prosperity.
I thought I was making a bold statement in 1998 when at the first System Instructors' conference I attended, I said:
When advances in computers and software come about, we must be careful to incorporate them into our methods of instruction so as to maximize the student's potential to learn. Of course, it may mean that we have to change our methods of instruction so as to utilize the great potential of these new technologies. It may mean that you may need to teach a course over the Internet.
As the young people say -- "duh." Doesn't that sound naive? It's a safe guess that almost EVERY instructor uses some form of technology -- at least Power Point or email communication. And our business partners tell us that anybody who ISN'T in the technology game isn't really interested in reaching today's students.
In February, the State Board of Community Colleges hosted the annual meeting of the Joint Education Boards. We met at the gorgeous campus of the SAS Institute in Cary, home of the world's largest privately owned software company. Our host, SAS co-founder Dr. Jim Goodnight, welcomed us with a striking thought that has really stuck with me. He said
Today's students live in an interactive, technology rich, communications dominated environment, with cell phones, iPods, PDAs, computers and video everywhere. They have a very sophisticated understanding of how to use them. And then we send them to school to sit in rows, listen to lectures and look at the blackboard. No wonder they're bored and eager to drop out. We can't keep doing that!
Jim was talking mostly about K-12 schools -- but I was listening, too!
I've already touched on the scale of distance learning in our system, thanks in large part to the great success of the Virtual Learning Community. Curriculum enrollments in distance learning have grown from about 34,000 to more than 180-thousand in less than a decade -- that's a more than FIVE-FOLD increase.
The VLC is a wonderful example of a true partnership -- guidance from community college presidents, expertise from faculty and instructional administrators and strong support from IT and student services.
It's obvious that the imaginative use of technology has expanded our concept of the "open door" to opportunity that community college education represents in North Carolina. Access now means any place, any time.
Our embrace of distance learning and system-wide data collection has also opened the door to NEW collaborations with our educational partners, especially now that our colleagues in the University of North Carolina --under the exceptional leadership of President Erskine Bowles -- have begun to realize the value of a systemwide perspective.
When people ask me about major progress in our System since I've been president, I have to rank greatly expanded and improved partnerships with universities -- including private ones -- right near the top. I certainly don't claim all the credit, and it isn't just about technology. Semester conversion and the comprehensive articulation agreement were hammered out mostly before I came to the system and rolled out the first year I was here -- solving many of the policy and turf squabbles that had made college transfer such a tough road for many of our students in the past. UNC-Wilmington and Coastal Carolina had begun their work on "two-plus-two" in teacher education and other programs bringing baccalaureate degrees onto community college campuses. Mount Olive College was just one of several private institutions offering similar programs at other community colleges.
Today, announcements of new partnerships are literally cascading into the System Office -- MANY of them focused on distance learning. The Appalachian Learning Alliance and Wachovia Partnership East have expanded two-plus-two teacher preparation dramatically, in part through distance learning.
Last month Craven Community College entered into a partnership called “University Connections,” with ECU and NC State University. This partnership starts next month and will enable Craven Community College students to get bachelor's degree from East Carolina or N.C. State without leaving home. Seventeen degree programs — including business, communications, health information, industrial technology, education and nursing — will be available through University Connections totally on the Craven campus. Some programs can be completed solely online from a student's very first class.
In April, Wake Tech signed an historic agreement with East Carolina University that enables students who earn a two-year Associate in Applied Science (AAS) degree in 23 industrial and technology-driven fields to transfer into ECU’s College of Technology and Computer Science to complete a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology (BSIT) degree. Five of the seven concentrations are offered through distance learning.
What about collaborations in the OTHER direction -- with our colleagues in high schools? Again, that's a business we've been in for decades, through Huskins, dual enrollment, and College Tech Prep. Then came the New Schools Project, Middle College High Schools, Early College High Schools and Governor Easley's Learn and Earn initiative -- and now, the Governor's determination to use distance learning to extend the opportunity for college courses to every North Carolina student who wants them.
It's a bold concept. When we first heard about it, I'll confess that early reactions included -- "He wants it WHEN?" "And who's going to pay for this?" But our staff and the professionals at your institutions figured out how to make it work, fired up the website and as of last week were set up to register Learn and Earn on-line students for this fall in forty-four of the 58 community colleges, with more coming. And contrary to the usual wisdom that "No good deed goes unpunished," this "good deed" in extending access WILL be rewarded.
In large part because community colleges have stepped up QUICKLY to support Learn and Earn, we have commitments from the Governor and the General Assembly to support a big part of our budget request for technology infrastructure. Based on the House Budget and Senate Appropriations Committee Recommendations, we are in line for more than $5.3 million in new money to provide the System with bandwidth to expand e-learning services in general, the capacity to develop and share quality digital learning content, the capacity to collaborate with UNC programs and staff to increase services to both Systems, and the capacity to adequately support critical e-learning services to students and instructors. All of these capacities fully support Learn and Earn Online students as well as all students enrolled in NCCCS institutions AND improve data connectivity, videoconferencing, telephone services and other digital services beyond instruction.
Let me assure you that I understand that those OTHER digital services are absolutely essential to the success of community colleges.
I'm spending so much time talking about distance learning because that's perhaps the most visible "face" of technology in community colleges today -- the part that so obviously touches our students. I rejoice with you that our great successes there are helping provided the resources you need to support all your work.
When I spoke to you three years ago, I told you how much I have come to depend upon up-to-the minute data to do my job, which is most importantly to make the case to the General Assembly, the Governor and the taxpayers that community colleges are the best investment that the state can possibly make.
I need INFORMATION that tells me what we're doing; how well we're doing it; how many people are better off -- what we need to do next -- and how much it will cost. Without question, the presence of the data warehouse, with both "right now" snapshots and multi-year comparisons -- and the final implementation of CIS, with its huge efficiencies in processing and collection of information; and the Virtual Learning Community, at last being supported by technology and financial infrastructure -- deliver the data at the level our state now demands.
I need to be able to understand that data, and I need to make sure all those DECISIONMAKERS do, too. All of you sitting out there REALLY understand the information you deal with -- after all, as Saundra Williams likes to say, it's really just two numbers -- it's zero and it's one! What's the big deal? For a lot of us, however, it's not quite that simple -- and we need all the help we can get.
At long last -- we are learning to translate all those numbers into COMMUNICATION that continues to boost our public profile AND is helping produce the numbers we like best -- DOLLARS for much-needed infrastructure and programs.
Here are a couple of examples:
A few weeks ago, our public affairs staff got a call from reporter in Greensboro working on a story about "reverse transfers" -- community college students who already have bachelors degrees or higher. The reporter had some information from Guilford Tech and wondered whether there were statewide trends. Two calls and five minutes later, Rick Newsome of the System Office was on the line with the reporter, supplying current statistics and multi-year trends, courtesy of the data warehouse. The Greensboro paper ran a major story, and we got a thank-you from Wilson Davis at Guilford Tech, saying that the immediate availability of accurate statewide data "turned the corner" on a story he had been working on for weeks.
Last week, the System Office received an email from Randy Young, Vice President for Instruction at Piedmont Community College. Piedmont was one of seven colleges to receive "perfect" scores on performance measures this year -- twelve out of twelve. Piedmont's public information office followed up our statewide release with an excellent local story -- and Dr. Young said he had more community response to that article than any other that has been written about the College.
It's fun to collect success stories like this -- especially in my last year in the President's Office! But it's important to all of us -- and especially for those of you who WILL be working in community colleges next year -- to focus on what we need to create our NEXT successes, too.
I know a number of you do that for a living. As planners and institutional effectiveness professionals, you are expert at trends and projections. Here are a few of my predictions about the challenges that our community colleges face, particularly in technology.
Flexibility is essential. I know that we think of technology as a TOOL for helping us respond quickly to changing needs, and it can be. However, let's face facts. It's expensive, and on a system-wide basis, it's complicated and increasingly dependent on big systems that represent a LOT of sunk cost. It's very hard to resist the mindset that says, "We bought it, we programmed it, it's too expensive to tweak it, take it or leave it." We must be willing to give systems TIME to work, evaluate them HONESTLY and find sensible ways to build the capacity for change into them.
We can't control all those factors, of course. The General Assembly's insistence on adherence to the long approval processes of Senate Bill 991 makes fast response to immediate needs difficult in technology. We must keep looking for ways to make that process better.
We have to pay attention to how POLICY and TECHNOLOGY fit together -- and most of that work needs to come from those of us who AREN'T mostly in the technology business. Right now, technology is creating new opportunities to extend our instructional services so quickly that our creaky structure for setting and changing policy literally cannot keep up. New programs and new laws are creating new demands on technology to count, code, classify, share AND keep secure all kinds of data.
Community colleges operate under a tangle of state law, regulation, State Board policies and local requirements. Unlike the University System, we have to submit our regulations for everything from curriculum to age limits to proprietary schools to the Rules Review Commission, which adds six to 18 months to EVERY proposed change. The work that many of you do requires MUCH faster response, and I hope the System will continue to press to streamline those processes.
And finally, we always, always, always must remember the business we're in . Again I'll quote Saundra Williams who constantly reminds her colleagues on my senior staff that technology, as wonderful as it is -- is a TOOL -- it doesn't define the business, it just helps it get done in the best possible way. The business that we are ALL in is improving the lives of every North Carolinian by providing world-class education and training that prepares them to succeed in the global economy.
Or as the late Dallas Herring was fond of saying, moving them "one more step" toward where they want to be.
We can measure a lot of things, largely due to the great work done by the people in this room. Sometimes, though, we have to measure our personal successes by those steps that the people we touch take toward their own dreams.
Am I thinking about my own legacy? Well, sure, as I look toward the completion of this very satisfying phase of my career.
I leave you today with some thoughts that have often been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson -- current scholars say they come from elsewhere, but I like them well enough to share them with you anyway. When I measure the past decade of my life, yes, I'll be looking at budgets and enrollments and benchmarks. But I'll be looking at other things, too -- with deep gratitude that my time with all of you has helped me achieve them as well.
The measure of success --
- To raise a child,
- To leave a garden for others to enjoy,
- To bring happiness to someone else;
- To know someone has been helped in times of adversity by what you did or said,
- To leave a part of you with someone younger;
- To grow from someone older.
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Thank you for your time and attention -- I will be happy to take your questions.
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