H. Martin Lancaster, President
North Carolina Community College System
Lumina Foundation Meeting
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Caswell Building, Raleigh, NC
Thank you. On behalf of the students, faculty, staff and leadership of North Carolina’s Community Colleges, I am honored to welcome you to the Caswell Building for this most important meeting. Thank you for investing your time and energy in this vital effort to help all the students in our community colleges "achieve their dreams" of success. Last year, that was more than 800,000 adults enrolled in 59 institutions -- well worth almost any investment!
Dr. Parker has asked me to describe for you how our system’s strategic plan addresses student success and how that plan guides our work across the system.
Student success is what we all work for. Period. We measure it in a number of ways. We talk about it with a variety of words and phrases. But student success is the only important measure of our success in managing this enormous system. We don’t judge ourselves on the quality of the students coming into our campuses, as many higher education institutions do. No – we’re all about what comes out of community colleges – results.
Let me borrow the words of Dallas Herring to explain what I mean. We consider Dr. Herring the spiritual "godfather" of our system – to mix metaphors, truly the architect of the open door. Here’s what he said about student success when our system was founded more than 40 years ago:
We must take people where they are and carry them as far as they can go within the assigned functions of the system. If they cannot read, then we will simply teach them to read and make them proud of their achievement. If they did not finish high school, but have a mind to do it, then we will offer them a high school education at a time and in a place convenient to them and at a price within their reach. If their talent is technical or vocational, then we will simply offer them instruction, whatever the field, however complex or however simple, that will provide them with the knowledge and the skill they can sell in the marketplaces of our state, and thereby contribute to its scientific and industrial growth. If their needs are in the great tradition of liberal education, then we will simply provide them instruction, extending through two years of standard college work, which will enable them to go on to the university or to senior college and on into life in numbers unheard of in North Carolina. If their needs are for cultural achievement, intellectual growth or civic understanding, then we will simply make available to them the wisdom of the ages and the enlightenment of our times and help them to maturity.
Does that sound like "Achieving the Dream" to you? It does to me! Dr. Herring’s challenge tells us WHAT to do. Our strategic plan spells out HOW we go about doing it, and our CRITICAL SUCCESS factors measure how WELL we are getting the job done.
You have a full copy of our current Critical Success Factors Report in front of you. The report does an excellent job connecting plan to task to result. There’s no need for me to go over it in detail with you; however, I do want to call your attention to a handful of important points.
First is that the opening section of the report deals with the requirement of the law that we demonstrate that we’re doing what we’re supposed to do. In February 1999, the North Carolina State Board of Community Colleges adopted twelve performance measures for accountability in response to a mandate from the North Carolina General Assembly to define standards of performance to ensure programs and services offered by community colleges in North Carolina met quality and efficiency standards. These twelve performance measures are our "Core Indicators of Success," for they capture the essential elements of the mission of all community colleges in North Carolina. The measures focus primarily on student success and serve as the System’s major public accountability tool. . Do students achieve their own goals? Do they get good jobs and satisfy their employers? If they transfer, do they get good grades at the next level? To be ranked "superior," a community college has to meet or exceed a specific number. In this our fourth year of measuring, 36 of our colleges earned that highly-sought-after designation – and five went 12 for 12.
The balance of the Critical Success Factors Report deals with our system’s progress in meeting the changing goals and objectives of the Strategic Plan. The current plan addresses four critical challenges –
- Economic and Workforce Development;
- Enrollment Management; ;
- Accountability in Technology;and
- Resourcefulness.
While I can certainly make the case that the entire plan is about student success, enrollment management deals most directly with the issues on today’s agenda. Our stated goal in enrollment management is "To meet increasingly diverse learners needs through innovative non-traditional and traditional programs. Our objectives within that goal are to:
- Increase college flexibility in curriculum program start-up and delivery.
- Utilize local, regional, and statewide partnerships to address the educational and skill development needs of learners.
- Implement strategies that promote and increase participant success.
As you look through this report and pursue your discussion today, you will discover a great deal of information about how successful our colleges are in meeting that goal, and where we need to improve.
One of the areas I have counted as a success since I came into the system in 1997 is the degree to which our student demographics mirror the state’s population. According to the 2000 census, the adult population of North Carolina is about 72 percent white, about 22 percent black, almost five percent Hispanic, and a little bit more than one percent Asian and American Indian respectively.
In most of our programs, people of color are represented at a higher level than they are in the general population. Judging by the more than 52 percent of our curriculum students who receive financial aid, we are also doing well in reaching people who need education and training to do better economically.
So where’s the first place we need to improve? Remember I said that MOST of our programs have great participation from people of color? When you have a chance to study the report, check out page 65, and you’ll see one of the biggest challenges we face, at least in my opinion. North Carolina has the nation’s fastest growing Hispanic population, an explosive phenomenon of the last ten years or so. Almost a fourth of our Basic Skills students are Hispanic, and that’s a terrific first step to the first rung of the ladder of success here. But so far, a frustratingly small number are testing the next rung – the skilled training in occupational extension and the education of curriculum programs, where they can find what they need to establish real careers with genuinely productive futures. A similar under-representation and a similar challenge exists with regard to African-American males of all ages.
We also face tremendous challenges in every ethnic group with older, low-skilled workers suddenly thrown out of the only jobs they’ve known by the collapse of textiles, furniture, agriculture and other traditional industries. What will "student success" mean for them?
I am confident that we will find many of the answers through the partnership that begins today with the Lumina Foundation. I know, however, that we will never have them all. The needs of our students and of our state change – these days, at a dizzying pace – and we must measure our success by how well WE change to keep up with them. In that part of education most committed to lifelong learning, that just makes good sense.
Again, I thank you for being here. I look forward to the results of what I know will be a most productive day.
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