President’s Report
to the
State Board of Community Colleges
May 18, 2001
As you can imagine, the General Assembly has dominated almost every waking moment of mine and several of your staff since our last meeting. On most days it has not been fun. Having experienced the euphoria that we all felt with the passage of the bond vote and having enjoyed three good sessions of the General Assembly, having to face the realities of limited resources and drastically cut budgets has put us all in a grand funk. During the last four weeks, we have worked diligently and cooperatively with the legislative leadership, recognizing the fiscal trouble the state is in and wanting to be a part of the solution and not wanting to add to the dismay the members of the General Assembly all feel. Though I am not at liberty to disclose the details of the proposed budget reductions, since those details were given to me in the strictest of confidence, I can say that the cuts will be very painful indeed. Valuable programs that have served our System well for years will be eliminated or drastically changed, hundreds of full-time and part-time faculty and staff will lose their jobs, and thousands of students will be closed out of courses they need to take in order to complete their programs on time. Now is the time for each of you to feel a special obligation to walk the halls of the General Assembly discussing the impact of these cuts with members of the General Assembly and doing your best to convince the General Assembly that the economy of North Carolina will suffer as we suffer if these cuts are not reduced.
We have also been working with other legislative issues since our last meeting. I have been working with Senator Bill Purcell, representatives of the dental community, the dental hygiene community, and the lobbyist for the Dental Society to modify legislation that is intended to increase the number of dentists and dental hygienists available to meet the dental health needs of North Carolinians. The dental hygiene community and I have been concerned that the original proposal significantly lowered the standards by which dental hygienists could enter the profession. I am pleased that significant progress is being made in this work and believe that ultimately the legislation that will pass will meet the quantitative and qualitative needs of dental care in North Carolina.
I am happy to report that all of our substantive legislation is either enacted or well on the way to enactment. We do not see any significant difficulty with the legislation, with the possible exception of the Umstead Act exemption legislation that will facilitate the development of incubator facilities, product testing capabilities, and cooperative information technology, outsourcing development and support. We are working with the telecommunications industry in an effort to address their concerns with this legislation.
We have been meeting with the leadership of the State Budget Office and the Department of Commerce to address our growing concerns with regard to New and Expanding Industry funding. Because of a very successful year of economic development, we face the prospect of having to slow down or cut off our commitments to new industries unless those funds can be found. One way to free up additional resources for New and Expanding Industry Training is to reorganize the workforce development programs now scattered through many agencies of the state. That has been an important part of recent discussions and has now become a topic of interest to members of the General Assembly.
Of course, we have met with the Presidents’ Association and the Trustees’ Association in their regular April meetings to keep them apprised of our challenges and to enlist their support. I have also spoken to the Education Committee of the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry to make them aware of our challenges as well.
As you know, we are not alone in the fiscal challenges we are now facing. I serve on the Board of UNC-TV. We met this month to deal with likely cuts that that important agency faces as well.
Alice and I were honored to be included with other interviewees of Bill Friday’s North Carolina People Show as we celebrated the 30th anniversary of that wonderful program.
One of our oldest and most generous supporters has been Sprint. Their annual scholarship luncheon was in Rocky Mount and it gave all of us an opportunity to thank Sprint and to celebrate with the new scholarship recipients. Approximately $50,000 a year is spent by Sprint on scholarships to students in their service area.
On a trip to Washington, DC, to attend the annual meeting of the Association of Former Members of Congress, I was able to meet with Congressman Dave Camp, a friend of mine on the Ways and Means Committee, with regard to the need for modification of Pell Grants so that they are of more benefit to community college students, and to Congressman David Price to discuss several community college related issues which he champions. These include a national initiative similar to North Carolina’s Teaching Fellows Program and the initiative I have been pushing in the General Assembly of home-growing teachers through community colleges, the extension to community college libraries of the use of e-rates now available only to public school libraries and public libraries, to give us much greater access to these funds to upgrade the technology of libraries, and federal assistance to expand our program curricula through our distance learning initiatives using the North Carolina Information Highway and our Virtual Learning Community.
Maureen Little and I met with Rick Sturgis of the Plastics Association in our attempts to gain the wholehearted support of that Association for our new initiative to provide certification in plastics skills standards.
Dr. Ed Boone and I continue to work on an initiative with our counterparts in the United Kingdom to fund and implement an exchange program between university and community college leaders so that we might learn from each other how to better cooperate between universities and community colleges.
I participated in a visit of Ernst Schwanhold, the Minister of Economic Affairs, Energy and Transport from North Rhine Westphalia. His visit was in support of the Biotech Agreement entered into between North Carolina and that German State during Governor Hunt’s last visit to Germany.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Ward hosted President Molly Broad, Dr. Hope Williams and me at dinner at his home for us to discuss further the ongoing problem of how to assess extra weight for honors and college-level courses taken by high school students.
I spoke to the Albemarle Rotary Club at the invitation of President Mike Taylor and was able to update them on the situation in the General Assembly and in our System.
A number of us in the System attended the retirement party of Dr. George Baker. Many of you know that he and Governor Bob Scott have collaborated on leadership courses at North Carolina State University for many years. George’s creation of the National Institute for Leadership and Institutional Effectiveness has been the vehicle for leadership training for community college presidents and senior administrators all over the country. Many of them came to Raleigh to honor George on his retirement.
With funding from the Kellogg Foundation, we have begun a visioning process for the System Office with a morning-long meeting with a facilitator and our vice presidents. This effort will be extended to various directors working under the vice presidents later in May.
Last Friday night I spoke at the graduation at Western Piedmont and began the graduation season. On Wednesday night of this week I spoke at the graduation exercises of the College of The Albemarle, which also celebrated its 40th anniversary. This is a happy time for me, our students, our faculty and staff, and all the families of the successful students.
A number of you participated in the Academic Excellence Luncheon on Tuesday. That, too, is a happy time in our System as we recognize excellence across the System. We were pleased that there was a large number of legislators who participated, and that for the first time ever, the Governor came and gave a rousing speech in support of community colleges.
Scott Ralls and I met with Greg Poole and other leaders of North Carolina Industries for Technical Education to discuss how we might better meet the needs of heavy equipment companies.
Our regular legislative strategy session was this week at which time we planned various approaches to our current dilemma in the General Assembly.
Dr. Steve Scott and representatives from the Academic and Student Services staff have been meeting with CISCO representatives in an effort to address a number of collaborative and cooperative programs we have under development with them.
The Division of Administration participates in many statewide committees to ensure that community colleges are included in all information technology plans and activities. Dr. Rogers and Bob Blackmun serve on the NC Net Coordinating Council where Dr. Rogers chairs the Fiscal Committee. Bob serves on the Technical Committee and chairs the Requirements Subcommittee. The Education Information Technology Coordinating Council meets on a regular basis to coordinate ways in which our System, the University, and the public schools can cooperate and collaborate in technology. Dr. Rogers has been working with MCNC on the Internet2 initiative which would give our community colleges high-speed connection to educational entities in other states.
Keith Brown and his staff have completed the 2001 Critical Success Factors report and have posted it on the System’s Web site. Dr. So-Young Yim, a new staff member, has played a major role in completing this report.
Our colleges have completed their IPEDS report to the US Department of Education. Keith Brown, our IPEDS coordinator, will be attending an IPEDS State Coordinators’ meeting in Washington in late May. The new IPEDS requirements will be discussed at that time.
The Library Resources staff has scheduled three one-day acquisitions workshops across the state to assist library and business office personnel as they make the transition to a system of local acquisition of library materials. Kellogg grant funds obtained by Dr. Parker will reimburse attendees for mileage and other expenses.
Ruth Bryan, Coordinator of Library Information Technology, learned at a Sirsi Users Group meeting in Huntsville, AL, that other users of Sirsi who have migrated from Dynix have experienced the same difficulties we did. With John Wood on board as our new Sirsi System Administrator, we hope that many of these problems can be ironed out.
It will be a real challenge to maintain our old information system while implementing the new administrative software system over the next three years. However, Information Services staff across the System are doing a good job. We are already enjoying the fruits of our labor with the Data Warehouse Project. Training is underway on the use of this system and already we are seeing its value.
We are all focused now on meeting the July 1 date for implementing the financial system of the College Information System at the eight Phase I colleges. For those of you who attended, you got a full report on this project at yesterday’s issues session. We are especially appreciative to the eight presidents and their staff at the pilot colleges for their time and dedication in this extremely important effort.
Dr. Scott Ralls and his staff have worked with Guilford Technical Community College and the Piedmont Triad Center for Advanced Manufacturing to conduct a series of train-the-trainer programs for new instructors in the Manufacturing Certification Program. Thirty instructors from 15 colleges participated and gave excellent reviews of the training.
Several Small Business Center Directors worked with Gayle Harvey to develop an outline of professional development classes in several subject areas for directors and staff in the Small Business Center Network.
We congratulate Dr. Ralls on assuming the role of President-elect at the recent meeting of the National Association of Industry-Specific Training Directors in Oklahoma City. Next year North Carolina will host this national conference.
Scott also attended the launch of the new Manufacturing Skill Standards introduced last week in Washington. We have worked closely with the Framework Committee for Manufacturing Skill Standards Council in developing these standards.
Jennifer Frazelle attended the Southern Regional Electronic Campus meeting in Atlanta along with representatives from the UNC System and Distance Learning Coordinators from several states to discuss distance learning initiatives across the south.
Carolyn Snell has been appointed to serve on the Governor’s More at Four Pre-Kindergarten Task Force.
Ray Harrington attended the Basic Law Enforcement Training Revision Committee Meeting in Kill Devil Hills. This committee is working on the distribution of training curricula to school directors for a more efficient and cost effective manner of using technology in law enforcement training.
The Interagency Committee on Correction Education met in the System Office and discussed education services at the Division of Prisons and other issues of mutual concern.
We are pleased to announce that thanks to the hard work of Lin Frye and our Resource Development staff, 20 colleges have received TRIO Student Support Services grants, with four of these being new grants totaling $190,000 each. This means that North Carolina will receive close to $4 million new dollars over the next 4-5 years. Our Resource Development work is more than paying for itself!
Sillar Smith, Compensatory Education Coordinator, has conducted two-day regional training sessions in April and May across the state.
Several staff members presented at the Community College Instructional Administrators annual meeting on a wide range of topics.
An important meeting of the Curriculum Review Committee met prior to the Instructional Administrators meeting to continue approving additions and changes to the Common Course Library.
Last week early childhood educators from across the state met at the System Office to identify priorities that must be addressed by the our System. Strong consensus was achieved on how to improve this important initiative.
As I indicated in my opening remarks, Kennon Briggs and his staff continues to be consumed by and focused on the work of the General Assembly in adopting our budget for the biennium. This includes meeting with State Budget officials, legislative staff, and members of the General Assembly. We are concerned about cash carry-forward for equipment and books, summer term, performance funding, and New and Expanding Industry as well as the new budget. Kennon and his staff have done a good job of keeping presidents and business officers informed of these efforts.
They have also, along with Dr. Rogers and her staff, been very involved in the implementation of the new "E-Procurement" system. Much more time and system integration will be needed prior to full participation in this new venture.
Significant cooperation between the divisions of Business and Finance and Administration has been necessary to work out the further implementation of the College Information System contract. Chairman James Woody and Vice-Chair Herb Watkins have been eminently involved in this effort and you heard about that initiative at the Issues Luncheon yesterday.
Kennon has requested that I express to you his appreciation for the expressions of sympathy received upon the death of his wife’s mother.
In closing, let me urge you once again to make every effort to personally contact every single legislator you know to share with them your concern about proposed budget cuts and to encourage them to give high priority to the workforce development needs of our state and the fairness of the allocation of resources among the various state agencies. Now is a critical time and you will do nothing more important as a State Board Member than to make these contacts on our behalf.
Thank you.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.