President’s Report
to the
State Board of Community Colleges
April 10, 2003
Only a brief time has passed since we last met and I spent several of those days in Dallas at the American Association of Community Colleges annual convention. Therefore, I have little to report this month. In Dallas, I participated on panels on terrorism first response training, bio-manufacturing, and the Thailand Community College initiatives. Dr. Delores Parker also attended.
Of course, the legislature continues to consume an incredible amount of my time and that of many of your staff members, especially Kennon Briggs and Suzanne Williams. Things appear to be going as well as we can expect given the tight fiscal circumstances and the number of new members. I have completed the dinners for freshmen legislators and most of them accepted our invitation. I am very impressed with the caliber of the new members of the General Assembly and of their support for community colleges. Your Legislative Strategy Committee continues to meet and plans have been finalized for the barbecue the end of this month. I hope that some of you can come. Please contact Suzanne Williams or me if you are able to do so. The date is April 29.
Week before last we hosted six community college leaders from Thailand, including chairmen of the board of trustees of three of the ten new community colleges in that country. While here they were briefed by System Office leadership and visited Montgomery Community College and Johnston Community College. It was a good visit for all concerned.
Last week I attended a meeting of the Global TransPark and spoke at the Licensed Practical Nurses Association.
We continue to have many meetings, telephone calls, and other efforts in support of the bio-manufacturing Initiative. We have now appeared twice before the Golden LEAF Foundation and continue to work with the university system in creating a consolidated proposal, including a single budget.
In addition to responding to an unusually large number of legislative requests for information, Kennon Briggs and his division have continued to provide assistance in developing solutions to the finance module of the CIS Project. As the person with primary responsibility for implementation of the CIS, Dr. Sandra Williams has been exerting extraordinary effort to get us over the rough spots in the implementation. Working with our colleges, the vendors, and the Steering Committee, she is doing a wonderful job keeping us on track.
Dr. Sandra Williams was the guest editor for the Journal of Workplace Learning on the topic of "Design and Evaluation: The Dual Nature of Workplace Learning Programs." She has been reappointed to the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal.
Fred Williams represented the System at the dedication of the new North Campus at Cape Fear Community College, the first building of which was named for Dr. Eric McKeithan.
Dr. Delores Parker and her staff continue to do a great job of finding external resources for our System. The Golden LEAF Foundation has awarded $300,000 to us for scholarships to students who live in the 55 tobacco- dependent counties of the state and meet certain need criteria. We already have had over 350 applications for these scholarships.
A Minority Male Mentoring Initiative Grant by the Governor’s Crime Commission has been pre-approved for $73,580.78 to increase graduation rates of minority males through personal development training (mentoring) and substance abuse prevention education. Five community colleges will serve as "Pilot Sites." Those colleges will be selected through a competitive process.
Our Federal Vocational Education staff has been invited by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to submit a final version of a proposal entitled "The North Carolina Network for Excellence in Teaching: Building a Cost-Effective System for the Delivery of Community College Faculty Development." A preliminary proposal was submitted in February, but only ten percent of those preliminary proposals are accepted for further consideration.
The annual meeting of North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry included a Community College System booth at which we emphasized careers in biotechnology and life sciences. Dr. Larry Keen and his staff took the lead role in running this booth.
Business and industry often tell us that critical thinking is a key skill to be inculcated in our students. Dr. Keen has recently created a new training partnership with Kepner-Tregoe to develop this training for the future.
Our System, the Division of Employment and Training, and the Commission on Workforce Development have partnered to develop and deliver the "Money Smart" train-the-trainer sessions across the state. The goal is to offer these training modules to customers of the JobLink Career Centers on a statewide basis through the cadre of trainers we will train.
Please let me remind you to contact your legislators and impress upon them the need for adequate funding if we are to do the training expected of us to turn our economy around.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.