| President’s Report |
|
to the |
| State Board of Community Colleges |
|
February 28, 2001 |
It has been a long time since our last meeting and a lot has gone on. As you might imagine, much of the time since we last met has been spent in preparing for and beginning the new session of the General Assembly. We have had countless meetings among our own staff as well as individual and group meetings with leaders of the General Assembly and their staff and with State Budget officials and members of the Governor’s staff. Most of the news is bad. As you have all heard, we have had to come up with significant cuts out of this year’s budget to erase the red ink of this fiscal year and we have begun working within the staff and with others on permanent cuts for the next biennium. We are all sincerely disappointed that just at a time when the momentum was going in our direction, the money disappeared. We continue to hold out hope for the adoption of a plan to address faculty and staff salaries, though we realize that little money will be available to fund the first year of that plan. We also are reasonably optimistic that House Bill 275 will be reauthorized which will give us much needed funds for job training, equipment for our new buildings, and continued additional funding for services to business and industry.
Your Legislative Strategy Committee has met twice and will be working with Paul Pulley, Suzanne Williams, Kennon Briggs, other members of your staff, and me in making the best of the situation.
When the presidents met for their quarterly full-membership meeting, the problems of the budget dominated their discussions and the reports of your vice presidents to them.
I have met with several professional staff groups and individual professional staff members from across the System in an effort to reassure them that our salary initiative addresses their needs as well as the teaching faculty.
I attended the Governor’s State of the State Message to a joint session of the General Assembly and attended the reception at the Governor’s Mansion following the speech.
Much time has also been spent, especially by Dr. Donny Hunter and myself, on the Robeson Community College accreditation problems. Donny has attended several meetings of the Robeson Board of Trustees and I have traveled to Lumberton to speak to a joint meeting of the Rotary Club and their Chamber of Commerce. I have had many telephone conversations and personal visits from concerned citizens and college employees. I am happy to announce that last week the Board of Trustees at Robeson adopted a plan to address the recommendations of the Southern Association Reaccreditation Team in a meaningful way. Of course, we will continue to monitor the progress towards the implementation of this plan, but we are confident that we are well on the way to turning things around at Robeson. The matter of President Fred Williams’ continued service in that endeavor remains up in the air.
The New Hanover/Pender County JobReady Program and Cape Fear Community College held an interesting and important Industry and Education Summit at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington that several members of the staff and I attended.
I attended the Legislative Seminar co-sponsored by AACC and ACCT in Washington along with your Chairman. Because of the serious constraint on our travel budget, other members of the State Board and the System Office staff elected not to go this year. It was a very successful trip with individual and group meetings with members of the North Carolina Congressional Delegation. Good pitches were made to them all with regard to community college priorities at the federal level.
I participated in a luncheon hosted by Wake Technical Community College for representatives of the National Science Foundation with regard to a major grant to assist in the funding of the new plastics consortium program between Wake Tech and five other community colleges in the region. It was an excellent luncheon in the midst of a full day of exploratory meetings by the staff.
We hosted the School Improvement Panel in the State Board Room and continued our important collaboration between public schools, community colleges and universities in support of public education.
I received a midcourse briefing from Rockett Burkhead and Winslow on the work they are doing for the Foundation in refining and enhancing the image of our System. They have conducted many focus groups and individual interviews with community college family members and stakeholders, from Board members to students to leaders in politics and businesses. Their findings are interesting and when they complete their work they will give you a full briefing.
I participated in the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry Legislative Conference and was heartened by the frequent references to the importance of community colleges and the quality of community colleges that came from speaker after speaker.
I serve on the Board of the North Carolina Global Center that met last week in Chapel Hill.
As always, it was fun to meet with the Barbecue Club at Parker’s in Wilson. Many of you know that this is a time when presidents of community colleges east of I-95 get together at Parker’s to discuss their mutual concerns and to build relationships among the eastern colleges.
As a result of my visit to Thailand with Governor Hunt, I met with a number of Thai education and workforce development officials with regard to the community college concept. Quite by coincidence officials of the U.S. Department of Education followed closely our visit to Thailand with their own visit. Out of their visit grew sponsorship of a forum, which will be conducted at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii in late March. Six community college leaders from the United States and six education officials from Thailand will meet to map out a strategy for creating a community college-like system for that country. At the request of the Thai officials, I was invited to be one of the six Americans. Following the forum in Hawaii, the Thai officials will visit community colleges in California, Iowa and North Carolina. In California they will look at urban models; in Iowa they will look at rural models; and in North Carolina they will look at economic and workforce development models. We have begun the planning for this visit.
I have met with officials of the First in Flight Commission who are planning events surrounding the centennial of the Wright Brothers flight on the Outer Banks. They are eager to involve community colleges from across the state in that celebration.
I spoke to the Mount Olive Jaycees’ Annual Distinguished Service Award Banquet. Of course, it was good to see so many friends from home.
I attended the College Board meeting in Charlotte, including a discussion group of community college leaders on ways in which the College Board and the Education Testing Service can have greater impact on community colleges and their programs.
Alice and I greatly enjoyed our opportunity to attend a Broadway touring company’s production of "Crazy for You" at Richmond Community College in its beautiful new auditorium. Of course, President Joe Grimsley and the manager of his theater and civic center, Joanne Bruce, were wonderful hosts for our visit. It is a magnificent auditorium and it was a wonderful performance.
Dr. Steve Scott is heading up a taskforce to develop a plan for spending the $300,000 received from The Gold Leaf Foundation to assist families from tobacco-dependent communities obtain a community college education. A draft is now being reviewed by colleges in those areas of the state.
Yesterday Steve and Delores represented our System at a press conference of Congressman David Price at which he announced the introduction of legislation to create a federal Teachers Fellows program that will include a community college component to support our "grow your teachers" initiative on community college campuses.
Steve and Dr. Brenda Rogers continue to work with presidents and other college representatives in the final implementation of reporting on Performance Measures.
Steve’s interest in global education manifests itself now in his work with Dr. Delores Parker and her staff as they finalize the plans for the Global Education Conference and by serving on the Advisory Committee for the North Carolina-Moldova Partnership Committee to promote the expansion of cultural, academic, scientific, business, governmental, and military ties between North Carolina and the Republic of Moldova.
We are all excited about the Global Education Conference that will be held next week at the Sheraton Imperial in the Research Triangle Park. Fifty-two community colleges will be participating and at the conclusion of the conference, each will have outlined their action plans for infusing globalization in every aspect of their campus life and curricula.
Sillar Smith, Compensatory Education Coordinator, announced receipt of a $20,000 grant for Bridges to Practice training for persons with learning disabilities. She anticipates additional funding being approved soon.
The North Carolina Family Literacy Consortium has been approved for 2001-2002 funding and its Steering Committee has developed its work plan and started a strategic planning process.
Dr. De Boyer, along with Dr. Diane Barber of Appalachian State University, will begin a series of seven one-day regional workshops to prepare local programs for the new GED 2002 Test and the higher standards for the Adult High School program.
We are pleased that East Carolina University has appointed Dr. Diana Henshaw as Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. She has been charged with strengthening ties between East Carolina and our System. Dr. Parker, Elizabeth Isler, and Mike Pittman recently met with Dr. Henshaw to discuss ways to strengthen the partnership.
Dr. Parker and other members of her staff recently met with Dr. Carol Kasworm, department head of Adult and Community College Education at North Carolina State University, and her staff to discuss professional development needs of community college instructors.
Dr. Parker and Ken Farmer recently presented at the 2001 Futures Assembly in Florida as finalist for the Bellwether Award. The nomination was for the Virtual Learning Community Initiative. We also had other finalists for this award: Forsyth Technical Community College in conjunction with Tidewater Community College in Virginia, and the Western North Carolina Technology Consortium, consisting of the twelve community colleges in the western part of North Carolina (Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community, Blue Ridge Community College, Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, Catawba Valley Community College, Haywood Community College, Isothermal Community College, Mayland Community College, McDowell Technical Community College, Southwestern Community College, Tri-County Community College, Western Piedmont Community College, and Wilkes Community College).
You will recall the wonderful partners that the Cooperative Extension Service staff members were in our bond passage. We have now begun working with them to find ways that extension agents can teach early childhood education courses for us in rural areas where colleges are having difficulty in obtaining instructors with the proper credentials.
We are very proud that Elizabeth Brown has been asked to serve as chairperson of the newly established Postsecondary Issues Committee of the National Association of State Directors of Vocational and Technical Education.
Dr. Brenda Rogers and her staff continue the complex process of implementing the College Information System. We are pleased that Marcia Daniel, formerly the Vice President for Educational Programs and Student Services at Randolph Community College and the co-chair of the project management team, has accepted the responsibility to coordinate the work of the college teams. You approved that contract at your January meeting.
The data warehouse project is progressing nicely and is already being used in generating reports. Our staff and our partners from ACS have done a wonderful job of keeping this project on course and on time.
You have heard me report on our efforts to obtain Instructional Television Fixed Service licenses from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Those licenses will be used to implement a wireless network for educational purposes across the state. All of this hard work may come to naught if the FCC decides to reallocate the spectrum that has been reserved for educational entities for commercial purposes. We have begun a letter writing campaign to try to stop this raid. Brenda and our colleges are working very effectively with public universities, private colleges, and public schools on this project and hope someday, if we do not lose the spectrum, to have the ability to use wireless technology through a statewide network.
We are pleased that for the first time in several months we are now fully staffed in Program Audit Services. Glynda Lawrence, the new director, and her auditors, old and new, are back on schedule in completing audits of our colleges. However, we continue to be challenged with staff turnover throughout the System Office, but especially in information technology. From a recent News & Observer article, all of state government is experiencing the same high turnover and short tenure that we are. Because of low salaries, we have become the training ground for business and industry in ways we had not planned for.
I am really proud of the work that Kennon Briggs, Phil Albano, Dee Burns, and other staff have done in pulling critical information from our colleges to provide to the Higher Education Facilities Bond Task Force, chaired by James Woody. This information was instrumental in developing a cash flow model for the use of our bonds. You have already heard about that this meeting. Kennon recently testified before the Appropriations Subcommittee about the progress in getting projects approved for the use of bond proceeds. Yesterday Kennon and I presented our expansion budget request to that same subcommittee.
Kennon and his staff have been especially busy in providing information to the Governor’s Budget Office and the General Assembly with regard to our next biennial budget. We face the daunting task of justifying many of our programs and lines in the budget under the modified zero based budgeting approach the legislature will use to identify fund cuts to meet the current budget shortfall.
The Small Business Center Network and REAL Enterprises have received a $123,000 grant from the Babcock Foundation to further our Hispanic Business Development initiative. We will use the grant funds to create a Spanish version of the business start-up curriculum for Small Business Centers as well as to support many grants to selected Small Business Centers to pilot and deliver the program.
Dr. Scott Ralls and his staff continue to be challenged by the record pace of New and Expanding Industry Training, including some very large training initiatives.
The Human Resources Development Training Academy met in Durham in early February and not only benefited from a tremendous professional development agenda, but also celebrated twenty people with over 20 years of service in the HRD program. We congratulate and thank those faithful and hardworking staff.
The Manufacturing Certification Program continues to be incredibly popular across the state with important partnerships being forged with Chambers of Commerce, Economic Development Commissions, Departments of Social Services, and others interested in giving basic manufacturing skills to citizens of their counties.
The Economic and Workforce Development Division is working with Central Piedmont Community College to create the Charlotte Regional Information Technology Collaborative.
Dr. Ralls participated in a one-day trip to Washington with Joan Myers and Nick Heinke of the North Carolina Electronics and Information Technology Association, to meet with members of the North Carolina Congressional Delegation about the need for federal funds and other support for information technology training in North Carolina.
The Community College System will play an important role in the development of the Rural Internet Access Authority with Don Altieri and Cecil Groves, two of our presidents, serving on the Authority, and with Tim Rhodes, Scott Ralls, Barbara Boyce, and Peggy Graham serving on Committees of the Authority. We are being looked to as the centerpiece for many of these rural Internet initiatives.
Scott was asked to lead the weekend retreat for Mitchell Community College Board of Trustees as they focused on workforce development in their service area. He and Hilda Pinnix-Ragland spoke at the dedication of Wake Technical Community College’s new Business and Industry Training Center in Cary.
We continue to share your pride and approval of the hard work and effectiveness of your staff and I appreciate the opportunity to work with you and them.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.