Thank you. I am delighted to be with you today. Leadership North Carolina is an important vehicle for identifying North Carolina’s rising stars. I am proud of the distinguished participation of so many members of the community college family, including board members Dr. Don Reichard of Johnston Community College and Dr. Delores Parker, Vice President for Academic and Student Services of the North Carolina Community College, and current class members Judith Mann of the System Office and Linda Ramsey of Johnston Community College. I am also pleased to see Central Piedmont Community College among this session's supporters. Central Piedmont is our state's largest post-secondary institution, and it ranks among the country's finest community colleges.

Now more than ever, North Carolina community colleges are focused on our primary mission -- preparation of our state's citizens for productive work on the job, at home, and elsewhere in life.

With apologies to those who already know us very well, let me tell you what our community college system is. We are 59 institutions enrolling between 700-thousand and 800-thousand North Carolinians every year. Each institution has its own Board of Trustees, and each board governs with a great deal of autonomy. The State Board of Community Colleges sets overall policy and distributes statewide funding, largely for programs, faculty and staff. Local governments bear large responsibility for facilities and operations.

North Carolina's Community Colleges are the first stop, the intermediate step, and the last resort for many of your neighbors, your employees, your friends, and your families.

Your community colleges are educating tomorrow's work force. Community colleges equip North Carolinians for real jobs with real futures. Community colleges provide North Carolina's industries with quality workers. Community colleges help the economy move forward by growing new jobs with the promise of great futures.

In North Carolina, we don't have to look far to find smart workers who have turned technical education at a community college into spectacular success. One of my favorite examples is Bob Moss, who grew up in Charlotte and lost his dad during his teen years. Bob worked hard and earned his degree in building and construction at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. Today he runs Centex-Rooney, a $750 million dollar business doing huge construction projects in 20 states, including North Carolina.

Behind these individual success stories are hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians who have found satisfying careers, thanks to technical education at community colleges.

Community colleges educate almost two-thirds of North Carolina's registered nurses and a huge number of technicians, hygienists, certified assistants and other essential personnel on whom the health care industry depends. They train 95 percent of our firefighters and four out of five law enforcement officers.

Community colleges help North Carolina attract, grow and keep industries. One of the programs most closely identified with North Carolina's Community Colleges is the New and Expanding Industries Training Program, which helps keep North Carolina near the top in business expansion year after year. Established industries benefit from Focused Industrial Training Programs and from Specialized Technical Centers. The North Carolina Center for Applied Textile Technology pioneered the concept of focusing sharply on a single industry. Now we have specialized centers for hosiery and telecommunications, and we have the potential for others.

Equally important in workforce education are occupational extension programs offered through all of our community colleges. These programs help our employees and our industries upgrade, retrain and adapt to change. In fact, our community colleges enroll many more students in occupational extension and other continuing education than they do in "degree" programs.

During the past two years of economic shocks throughout North Carolina's basic and high-tech industries, displaced workers have cascaded into our community colleges, seeking new skills. We must be able to accommodate them. Lifelong learning is what our colleges are about. In the future, it is what all educational institutions must be about, if our state is to continue to prosper.

The key to maintaining our leadership is always working hand-in-hand with industry on the next idea, the future improvement, the cutting edge.

I am pleased, for example, that the North Carolina Community System and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center are partners in an initiative to prepare workers for the growing number of high-paying manufacturing jobs in the state's biotechnology, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

Community colleges also play an active role in creating the businesses that provide the jobs. Our 58 Small Business Centers are centers for training and assisting entrepreneurs.

Community colleges teach basic language, math and job skills. More than 19-thousand adult high school diplomas and GEDs were awarded last year. That's about one out of five of all high school diplomas awarded in North Carolina. Our role in providing basic literacy is important also, especially in light of the recent surge in demand for English as a Second Language for Spanish-speaking immigrants, Southeast Asians, and others who are our newest North Carolinians.

Community colleges are opening doors to four-year degrees and more. It is sometimes tempting to talk about the college transfer programs of the community colleges as different and apart from our workforce education efforts. That kind of talk is a mistake, because baccalaureate and professional degrees are workforce education for many people, including most of us. Our college transfer program is vital for those who need convenient, caring, affordable, flexible options for starting baccalaureate education. It becomes more important every year as the vast numbers of echo boomers reach college age. You have already heard how our universities are challenged to come up with the money for facilities and faculty to handle this growth.

Thanks to the foresight and persistence of the General Assembly, the Community College System now has a comprehensive transfer agreement with the University System and with many of our independent colleges and universities. Working together, we have solved many of the nightmares of lost credits and repeated courses.

Community college students who finish their associate degrees enter the University as full-fledged juniors; those who transfer earlier have the benefit of a much smoother process than in years past. This cooperation saves the students and the state money, helps senior institutions avoid the tremendous attrition of freshman and sophomore years, and encourages more North Carolinians to seek higher education. Our state's college-going rate still needs improvement, and we must work together to make that happen.

Serving the vast range of students in North Carolina's community colleges requires dedicated faculty, counselors, support staff and administrators. Despite all of our hard work in recent years and some generous investments a couple of years ago from the General Assembly, our faculty and staff salaries are still stuck near the bottom in the region and the nation. We cannot expect effective change without rewards for those who must make it happen.

Salaries and enrollment growth remain our overwhelming legislative priorities as we deal with economic change and the escalating demand for our services.

We will need the interest and involvement of strong leaders like you even more in the future than we have in the past. A number of years ago, Margaret Mead made this observation about the challenges of education in the 20th century: "We 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 is that in the twenty-first century? God willing, we will be able to help our children and grandchildren meet the challenges they face.

Thank you. I welcome your questions. ###