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President’s Report |
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to the |
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State Board of Community Colleges |
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March 15, 2001 |
It seems like you were here only yesterday! However, in that brief two weeks, a lot has happened. Of course, the legislative and budget process continues to dominate what we are doing. Much of the staff is involved in responding to questions from the Governor’s Office, the State Budget Office, and the Legislature. This is particularly true of Kennon, Suzanne, Paul, and me. I have been in a number of meetings, including meeting with the Council of State earlier this week to be briefed on the budget before it is released. You know by now that the Governor has included in his budget proposal $6.9 millions over and above the 2 percent pay increase for all state employees to begin the implementation of a plan to raise faculty and professional staff salaries to the national average. We hope that we can increase those dollars during the legislative deliberations. The Governor has also given support to our "grow your own" teacher preparation model that is well underway now at Appalachian State University, Western Carolina and UNC-Wilmington and community colleges in their service areas. With regard to enrollment growth, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the Governor has included full funding for enrollment growth, but the bad news is that this is at the expense of our students who will see their tuition go up 12.71 percent. Our tuition will still remain among the lowest in the entire country, but this will hit students of modest means very hard. Our challenge in the General Assembly will be to moderate the tuition increase and/or to have some of the increase set aside for increased financial aid. We are also spending significant time on substantive issues before the General Assembly as well as the budget.
Following our State Board meeting in February I went to Winston-Salem to meet with the Forsyth Technical Community College Board of Trustees on the selection of their president and on to Hickory to meet with the first joint meeting of our public information officers and resource development officers. It was a very successful joint meeting and I was pleased to be able to update them on the legislative process and the progress of the Foundation.
On Friday of that week, I spoke to a symposium on Training for Technology sponsored by Representative Joe Tolson and hosted by the Global TransPark Technology Center in Kinston. It was an excellent meeting with outstanding speakers on a wide range of topics dealing with technology and economic development, especially in Eastern North Carolina.
The Annual Law Seminar sponsored by the NC Association of Community College Trustees began that weekend. I joined them for dinner on Sunday evening. As the law conference ended, the Global Education Conference began, also at the Sheraton Imperial. From all reports, this was the best professional development conference ever put on by the System Office. Dr. Delores Parker and her staff are to be commended for the wonderful job they did. The colleges are also to be commended for their outstanding support of this conference and their hard work during it. Fifty-two colleges participated and each of them took back to their college a plan for infusing all aspects of their programs and student life with a global perspective. A follow-on conference will be held in the fall to assess the progress made towards implementation.
I met with Julia Carpenter of the North Carolina Global Center who is putting together a series of documentaries for television on the globalization of our economy. She has focused her attention on the Community College System as a key to that globalization.
In the ongoing globalization of this office, Dr. Steve Scott hosted Fumiya Onaka, a Japanese educator from Japan Women’s University, who is in the United States researching community colleges and the transition from high school to community colleges and from community colleges to universities. Various members from Dr. Parker’s division, including herself, did an excellent job of describing our comprehensive articulation agreement, the common course library, performance measures and standards, and tech-prep.
Several of the staff and I met with Russell Doggett and others from WTVD-TV which is putting together a campaign of special programming and advertising focusing on "Making It In America Starts Here." This effort will focus the attention of viewers in this area on the important role of manufacturing in our economy. Most people in the Triangle think naturally about the information and service economies, but few realize the important role that manufacturing plays.
Brenda Rogers and I met with Representative Verla Insko and legislative and agency staff who are working on a legislative proposal to bring North Carolina’s disabilities statute in line with the federal ADA law.
Planning continues with regard to the visit of education leaders from Thailand that will take place following the conference that I will participate in next week in Hawaii. Our Thai visitors will be here the end of the following week as they plan for the implementation of a community college-like program for their country.
Members of the staff and I met earlier this week with corporate leadership at Cisco and Red Hat as we continue our ongoing efforts to meet the needs of the information technology industry of North Carolina.
Yesterday I met with Robert Barth of Sentrisystems.com who is also interested in our role in enhancing and maximizing the use of the Internet in our distance education courses using a program developed at North Carolina State University and now being marketed to institutions of higher education.
In the afternoon, several of us met with House leaders to discuss our appropriations package and the Governor’s budget proposal. We will be meeting soon with leaders of the Substantive Committee on our Substantive bills.
Steve and Dr. Brenda Rogers met with Sandy Babb at the Rural Center to discuss teleworking centers in rural areas, e-commerce training and capacity building in rural communities.
Dr. Donny Hunter and Delores Parker continue their excellent work with the North Carolina School Improvement Panel and the Public School Forum as we continue our support of public education and seamless education from kindergarten through college.
Donny participated in a seminar conducted by the North Carolina Research Council on school finance in North Carolina and the nation.
Donny continues to work with Education Cabinet staff on resolving issues raised by the legislature as they relate to public schools, community colleges and universities, in particular the controversy of weighted credit for high school courses taken through community colleges or universities.
Karen Yerby participated in a meeting in Atlanta of a subcommittee of the Southern Regional Education Board relating to distance education policies.
Distance learning continues to be a priority of the System and a source of great success and pride. Ken Farmer is working with UNC-TV on next year’s telecourse schedule. Allen McNeely and Ken Farmer continue to work on the Army and Navy initiatives to provide college courses to their personnel using distance technologies. Our Accounting Curriculum Improvement Project had as its objective to develop three on-line accounting courses that would utilize the Blackboard.com platform. This initiative has been completed successfully.
Judith Mann was recently honored by the Brunswick Community College Foundation for her support of health programs at Brunswick Community College.
We are pleased that Judith Mann and Mike Pittman were selected to serve as readers for U.S. Department of Education grant proposals.
Dr. Randy Whitfield attended the Adult Literacy Media Alliance Advisory Board meeting in New York on March 2 and spoke at the Congressional Adult Literacy Forum in Washington on March 9.
Members of Dr. Parker’s, Dr. Rogers’ and Dr. Ralls’ staffs participated in the North Carolina Community College Adult Educators Association conference in Asheville last week.
In addition to dealing with budget issues in the General Assembly, Kennon Briggs and his staff have spent incredible hours since your last meeting on putting the final touches on the approval of bond projects for this meeting. He and Phil Albano also presented to the Trustees Association on this subject.
Kennon’s staff is very focused on helping colleges manage their cash, since the distribution has been monthly and tightly controlled by the State Budget Office. This is a great challenge for our staff and for the colleges.
Dr. Brenda Rogers gave the opening keynote address at the regional conference of the American Association of Women in Community Colleges in Charlotte and presented at the North Carolina Association for Institutional Research.
‘Tis the season of association meetings, it seems. Pam Doyle and others presented at and participated in the Library Resources Association Annual Conference.
Keith Brown served on a peer review team at Durham Technical Community College in assessing institutional research and planning, a process suggested by the Community College Planners and Research Organization as a way of meeting SACS criteria in this area.
The Planning and Research staff continues to work with verification of data on performance measures. A preliminary report on ten of the twelve measures will be presented to the Joint Education Appropriations Committee and the State Board in April. The remaining two measures will be available by June.
The Information Systems for the Future Steering Committee met and confirmed the commitment to implementing the new financial information system at eight Phase I colleges on July 1, 2001. They also endorsed the new statewide electronic procurement system that is being developed. This will all be integrated into our financial system during the coming year. We continue to move through the approval process with the Information Resources Management Commission. Despite questions previously asked by that Commission, they ended up commending our collaboration with public schools and the University System.
Arthur Hohnsbehn was promoted to Director of Information Services upon the retirement of Steve Ijames. We congratulate Arthur and wish him well and wish Steve the best in his retirement.
Personnel Services has held a number of information sessions for employees with regard to various state benefits. The annual EEO plan has been submitted to the Office of State Personnel. We continue in our strong commitment to equal employment opportunities within the agency.
The Economic and Workforce Development Division has completed their training program for the "Carolina Keys to Quality" seminar series for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. This was sponsored as a part of our Joint Initiative for Biotechnology Workforce Training and has been extraordinarily popular. Twenty North Carolina companies have participated. Susan Seymour and her staff conceptualized and coordinated the program which was made possible by House Bill 275 funding. She and others who participated should be commended for the fine job they did.
Dr. Scott Ralls and Stephanie Deese hosted representatives of the Virginia Community College System interested in our workforce development programs. They also visited Wake Technical Community College.
Scott and Maureen Little, as well as representatives of Davidson County Community College, met with representatives of the Society of Plastics Industries regarding the Level II plastics program for the Manufacturing Certification Program. This program will enable individuals to sit for national certification in various plastics fields.
This is a very challenging time to be a part of your System Office. We are expected to do more with less and to respond instantly to inquiries from the field and from government. We could never do all that we do without an incredibly competent, hard working, and dedicated staff. You and I should be very proud of them and pat them on the back every chance we get.
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