H. Martin Lancaster, President
North Carolina Community College System
North Carolina's community college family has been reminiscing the past few days. We've lost our spiritual father -- Dr. Dallas Herring of Rose Hill, who devoted most of his 90 years to making sure every North Carolinian had a chance to obtain education essential for success at work and at home.
We've shared memories of his decades of service on the State Board of Education and of his essential support of the North Carolina Community College System. The "open door of opportunity" was Dr. Herring's vision, and his intellect and passion helped make it a reality.
If we dwell only in memory, however, I think we miss perhaps the most important part of Dr. Herring's legacy. Although he was a fine scholar of the classics, Dr. Herring had a relentless focus on the future, a philosophy demonstrated dramatically when we honored him during the 40th anniversary celebrations of our system in 2003.
I worked with our statewide foundation and Eastern North Carolina business leaders to create an endowment to fund fellowships for the Institute for Future Presidents. In December of 2003, we invited the first Herring Fellows for lunch with Dr. Herring and the donors. I expected that Dr. Herring would reminisce about his work with Governors Hodges and Sanford to merge industrial education centers and junior colleges into the system we have today. I also guessed that Dr. Herring might also flatter this first class of fellows by sharing his pride in what their institutions are today -- part of a system that now enrolls 800-thousand students.
I could not have been more wrong. Dr. Herring wanted to talk ONLY about the future. He wanted to know from these extremely bright future presidents ONLY what they were going to do next. He told them,
“A community college in North Carolina has one essential job --- to work with your community to determine what product or service your community can make or provide that will offer good jobs for the people of your community. You must help them find the next great idea. Your essential job as the president of that community college will be to make sure that your college provides the education and training that your people must have to develop the skills to get those jobs and to keep them. It’s up to you to find the next great idea for North Carolina.”
For two hours, an 87-year-old businessman from a small town in rural eastern North Carolina grilled these men and women about their ideas for the future. It was an astounding and extremely challenging afternoon.
I believe that the North Carolina Community College System can best honor Dr. Herring by answering that challenge every day. Biotechnology is one "great idea" now thriving in our colleges, including those of the Coastal Plain. Nanotechnology is up and running. Boatbuilding is growing dramatically.
What's next? Whatever it is, rest assure that Dr. Herring is watching to make sure that the system he did so much to build is leading the hunt to find it!
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