H. Martin Lancaster, President
North Carolina Community College System
October 22, 1997
Wayne Community College
Goldsboro, N.C.
Thank you, Governor Wicker, for your warm and generous introduction, and thank you Chief Justice Burley Mitchell for administering the oath. And special thanks to Dr. Herman Porter, Dr. Ed Wilson, and Chancy Kapp, the co-chairs of the Committee which planned and executed this great occasion. You, the other Committee members, and the entire staff of Wayne Community College have worked hard in making this day such a great success. I am grateful for your careful planning, for your hospitality, and for your drawing upon the talents and energies of so many members of the community college family from across the state.
I am deeply grateful, too, to the program participants, from the musical presentations which preceded and enriched these ceremonies, to the speakers who have so generously given of their time and made space in their very busy schedules to participate, to those who have made the preparations for the reception which we will enjoy following the ceremonies. And last but not least, I must also give thanks to God for making this wonderful opportunity available to me and for this wonderful day for celebration of the Community College.
This is a special day for Alice, our daughters, my mother and sisters, other family members and me--a day made more special because we are here at home among the friends and family who make this such a special place for us. It is these friends who have supported and sustained me through all of my endeavors and will surely continue to do so in this my greatest challenge and accomplishment. For Alice and me it is very special that we gather at Wayne Community College, the college of my home county and the institution that brought her here to teach, resulting in our meeting and marrying. The faculty and staff of Wayne Community College have been our close friends and supporters for more than twenty years.
I am also honored by the presence here today of the great education leaders to whom we owe so much for the founding and sustenance of the North Carolina Community College System during its almost four decades. These leaders include our current Chairman and Lt. Governor, Dennis Wicker, Governor James B. Hunt Jr., former Governor and System President, Robert W. Scott, former Legislator and System leader Ned Delamar, and most important of all, the father and intellectual spirit of this System, Dr. Dallas Herring, to whom I owe so much for his inspiration and for many of the words and thoughts in this speech today.
Dr. Herring is truly North Carolina's renaissance man, the closest thing we have ever had to Thomas Jefferson, a man of arts and letters whose creative spirit and energy are evident in much of the progress we have made in our public schools and community colleges since the 1950's. We thank you, Dr. Herring, for your gifts of love and intellect and perseverance.
I am pleased also by the symbolism and substance of the presence of leaders from the General Assembly, the business community, the public schools, the University System, the private colleges and universities, and most important at all, from all fifty-nine institutions in our Community College System, the System's office staff, and the State Board of Community Colleges.
t is fitting that we gather for this special purpose in Wayne County, the home of Governor Charles B. Aycock, that great education leader who placed us on the road to universal public education of which the community college movement has been the ultimate flowering. I have always been especially proud that my roots are sunk so deeply in the soil of a farming community just this side of the Nahunta Swamp on the other side of which is the birth place and home of that great and visionary leader.
Among visionaries, no one has ever more eloquently, more succinctly, or more accurately stated the mission of the Community College than Dr. Herring did in June of 1964 at one of the early conferences following the creation of the Community College System. On that occasion he said, "The only valid philosophy for North Carolina is the philosophy of total education; a belief in the incomparable worth of all human beings, whose claims upon the state are equal before the law and equal before the bar of public opinion; whose talents (however great or however limited or however different from the traditional) the state needs and must develop to the fullest possible degree. That is why the doors to the institutions of North Carolina's system of community colleges must never be closed to anyone of suitable age who can learn what they teach. 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."
To that great mission, I pledge my energies and devotion. It is a mission as relevant and true today as it was more than 30 years ago when this statement was so eloquently articulated. It is a commitment to a Community College System that is comprehensive and it also reflects the philosophy enunciated by Walter Hines Page, that great North Carolinian who early in this century laid the intellectual ground work for education, the kind of free and universal education which the Community College System is the ultimate exemplar.
He said, "I believe in the free public training of both the hands and the mind of every child born... "I believe that by the right training of men we add to the wealth of the world. All wealth is the creation of man, and he creates it only in proportion to the trained uses of the community; and, the more men we train, the more wealth everyone may create. "I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, in the immortality of democracy, and in growth everlasting." It is to this training of both the hands and minds of every North Carolinian to which I am committed. It is the successful accomplishment of that goal which will make North Carolina great and prosperous. The more people we train, the more prosperous we will become. To fulfill this great goal we must "take the people where they are and carry them as far as they can go."
Unfortunately, many come to us lacking the basic skills which most students possess when they leave the public schools. For them we must give the tools of success in work and society and prepare them for greater educational accomplishments once they have mastered those basics. Others come to us with abilities to absorb and benefit from technological training that boggles my mind and probably yours as well, but which training is essential, if we are to master the technology of the future. That mastery will keep North Carolina at the forefront of research, service, and manufacturing in the various fields which use high technology as a tool. But that great effort and accomplishment will be possible only with the commitment of our State's resources to retain and attract the very best minds, the most creative and effective instructors, and the most dedicated administrators. That technology which has become such an important component of our economic prosperity must also be a tool for our educational process, serving both administrative and instructional purposes. Distance learning technologies must be extended without haste to every college so that all may benefit from the best teachers in our system and the savings which sharing resources will bring.
The education which we seek to provide to our students must be qualitative and quantitative. "A system... which reaches every (student), but which fails in its qualitative purpose can hardly be worth its cost either in money or human effort. Conversely, the system which achieves an acceptable qualitative goal, but which reaches only the few, even if they are the gifted, can never really build the commonwealth because it is too limited in its reach," cautioned Dr. Herring. This qualitative and quantitative success will depend, he declared, on "a curriculum with the power to break the sorry shackles of monotonous mediocrity--to let loose the full genius of every student to unfettered flight in its own intellectual orbit."
To that end I challenge the faculties of each of our institutions "to instill that enthusiasm for knowledge and understanding in your students, to help them to search out the deep and abiding truths which mankind has discovered over the centuries, by example and by precept, to teach them to love the great books and to hunger for the majestic ideas that make people free."
Likewise, each of you here today and each member of the Community College family must be equally committed to full involvement in the life of our campuses, to encouraging all of our citizens of all age to seek every educational opportunity we offer from which they may benefit, and to respect and promote the value of every individual. I reaffirm my personal commitment to educating men and women for the jobs which North Carolina and its industry demand.
However, as those of you who know me well know that my life-long personal commitment also has been to the full flourishing of the spirit as well as the mind. We must never assume that workers who are technically trained to work in our businesses and industries do not also need a broad background in the arts and humanities. They are not automatons trained simply for efficient production, but they are citizens and members of society who deserve to share in its cultural and intellectual gifts as well as its economic benefits.
"To every man belongs the right," as Thomas Wolfe said, "to become whatever his manhood and his vision can combine to make." But while our commitment is to educating whole persons, their hands, their heads, and their spirits, the highest goal of our System must always be the development of good citizens.
"If we are to be free," Dr. Herring emphasized once, "if we are to live up to the heritage of our past and to be worthy... of the freedom our forbearers won for us, then we must not lose sight of the higher values of education" which will prepare us for and commit us to the responsible exercise of our duties as citizens.
Such commitments will not be cheap, but I am prepared to take my stand "among the giants of our past who saw in... education, not an expense, nor an extravagance, nor a waste, but an investment in the human resources of which our greatness or our poverty consists."
To achieve that greatness will require a commitment on the part of our people as reflected in the actions of their elected representatives to make available to the Community Colleges of this state the resources we need to provide the people, the equipment and the facilities that are essential to the successful undertaking of this great challenge.
I pledge to you my leadership, my commitment, my determination, and my best efforts to create the consensus and support among the people of North Carolina for this great undertaking. It will not be easy and it won't always be fun, but it will always be right and good.
As Charles Brantley Aycock said in his address to the Legislature in 1903, " There is but one way to serve the people well, and that is to do the right thing, trusting them, as they may ever be trusted, to approve the things which count for the betterment of the state."
Note: The quotations not otherwise attributed are the words of Dr. Dallas W. Herring.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.