The agenda calls for a "response" from me. The only appropriate response to this extraordinary announcement is: thank you on behalf of North Carolina’s Community Colleges to all who have made this announcement possible.

First, thank you to Wachovia. We are extremely grateful to Wachovia for providing the funding to meet this important need. When the private sector partners with education, great things happen. Thousands will benefit from this investment.

I am certainly not surprised that this astounding investment has come from Wachovia. It’s one more piece of evidence that we made the right choice last week when the North Carolina Community College System nominated Wachovia for a national award for its decades of generosity to Community College education. The contributions of your company, in its current and previous incarnations, mark you as one of our finest corporate citizens.

Second, thank you to East Carolina University and your colleagues within the university system who have worked so hard and so quickly to create partnerships and, very importantly, to knock down and jump over obstacles to their success! The Community Colleges involved in Partnership East are proud to play a role in one of the best collaborative efforts in the state designed to educate our future "homegrown" teachers.

And third, thank you to the leaders, faculty and staff of Craven Community College; Edgecombe Community College; Wayne Community College; the College Of The Albemarle; the System Office; and other Community Colleges already involved in "homegrown teacher" partnerships in public and private universities. Yes, to some extent you’re sailing in uncharted waters…everybody involved in this is. However, we all know what the destination is – a quality education for every North Carolinian. I look forward to a day in the not-too-distant future when partnerships like this aren’t news because everybody has them, and everybody already knows how good they are!

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