President’s Report
To the
State Board of Community Colleges
July 16, 2004
As we meet this week, the General Assembly is completing its work. We believe that this will be our largest budget ever with many of our important priorities funded, including the first of several steps to the national average for salaries of our faculty and professional staff.
I sincerely appreciate your personal intervention with members of the General Assembly and the hard work of trustees, presidents, and our own staff.
Your Legislative Strategy Group has met approximately every two weeks since before the session began to closely monitor the situation and work with the staff on addressing legislative issues as they have arisen. We also appreciate their hard work. Of course, many of your staff, especially Suzanne Williams, Kennon Briggs, and I, have been involved on a daily basis (including nights and weekends) in dealing with the General Assembly.
Since we did not meet in June, this report may be longer than usual.
Your Foundation Board met the week after your May meeting to approve the investment strategy for the coming year and to approve spending by the Foundation. We are already beginning to see the positive impact of the Foundation in the support of initiatives that would otherwise go unfunded or underfunded.
The first week of June, the Golden LEAF Board met to give final approval to our BioNetwork Initiative, including approval of the Competitiveness Centers and the grants for equipment and innovation. Susan Seymour and her staff are hard at work implementing our BioNetwork Initiative. There is incredible enthusiasm throughout the System and for that matter, throughout the state.
Susan, a graduate of a BioWorks class, an executive at Nova Nordisk, and I appeared on OPEN/Net recently to take calls from around the state after our explaining our BioNetwork. There really is a lot of interest and excitement about the future of biotechnology in North Carolina.
Susan Seymour, a number of representatives of community colleges from across the state with biotechnology programs, and many representatives of biotechnology industries in North Carolina all descended on San Francisco for BIO 2004, the international conference on biotechnology. I was on a panel on Sunday and expected to stay through meetings, presentations, and a North Carolina reception, returning on Tuesday. However, with House action set for that Monday afternoon, I flew out to San Francisco, spoke, and came right back to be present for that action. The rest of the North Carolina delegation stayed and represented us well. There was much interest among the participants in the BioNetwork. After I spoke, a person from California came up to me and said, "When I came to this meeting I thought we were so far ahead, but I now see that we have a lot of catching up to do."
Also, during the first week of June, our Small Business Center Network hosted a group of persons from Thailand who will become instructors of entrepreneurship at Small Business Centers in Thailand as they implement a Small Business Center Network similar to ours as a part of their community college initiative. We were ably assisted by NC REAL and its fine staff in doing this training. Kenan Institute Asia funded the training.
The NC Association of Community College Trustees held its annual meeting at the Sheraton RTP, with many members of your staff making presentations during the meeting.
The Nursing Task Force, on which Elizabeth Isler and I sat for the last year, made its report that endorsed several initiatives to increase the number of nurses produced across the state. They made very helpful recommendations, including the need for more master degrees in nursing and more funding for nursing education. With the assistance of the Hospital Association, we have obtained a US Department of Labor grant that will award grants to clinical instructors in our nursing programs so that they might return, receive their master degrees and come back to teach on the instructional side of the nursing program. These grants will be in excess of $20,000 per year and will enable these nurses to attend graduate school full-time in pursuit of their masters’. The budget may also give us additional money for nursing programs as the first step towards differentiated funding for high cost programs such as nursing.
The Biotechnology Center had a grand opening of its Western Office on the Enka Campus of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (A-B Tech) as a part of its regular Board meeting. I was present in my capacity as a member of that Board, but also as the President of the System. A-B Tech President Ray Bailey and his staff did a magnificent job in making this a special occasion.
The North Carolina Community College Student Leadership Institute met for a week in June. A number of your staff, including myself, spoke to the students during the week. They stayed and had their sessions at Peace College and spent some of their time in the General Assembly learning that process.
I have met with General Rudy Rudisill, the Deputy Secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety, with regard to our concern that little or no funding is coming to community colleges to train first responders in how to deal with terrorism. Though lunch with General Rudisill was very pleasant and encouraging, Crime Control recently announced its grants for the coming year and though we had worked incredibly hard on a number of grants at the System level and at the college level, none of our grants were approved. Instead, Crime Control and Public Safety continues to pass out the money to buy "gee whiz" equipment and continues to ignore the incredible training needs of first responders. If North Carolina has a terrorism event,
I hope that this fancy equipment that has been bought for every law enforcement agency in the state will be an adequate substitute for good, sound training of the people who must deal with the terrorist act. I have communicated that message to Secretary Bryan Beatty and General Rudisill.
Dr. Dennis Massey, President of Pitt Community College, had an offsite leadership institute in New Bern at which I spoke.
We continue to work with executives of Duke Power in the implementation of its major gift in support of economic development. Over the next four years, $12 million will be set aside for grants to be awarded to community colleges in support of economic development initiatives in their communities that cannot be funded by existing funding streams.
Lynda McCulloch and Kristi Snuggs (System Office), Richard Thompson (UNC-Office of the President), Kathy Sullivan (Department of Public Instruction), Mary Lynn Calhoun (Dean, University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Vivian Covington (East Carolina University) and I attended a summit on the role of community colleges in teacher preparation sponsored by the Education Commission of the States in Denver, Colorado, in late June. Of course, we were very proud of how far ahead we are of most states in degree completion on community college campuses, but we were disappointed at how far behind we are on lateral entry and how reluctant the Department of Public Instruction and the universities are to allow any significant role for community colleges in lateral entry. In many other states community colleges play a significant role in this important avenue into the teaching profession.
We have had four significant retirements since our last meeting, Brenda Splawn, Dr. Larry Gracie , Phil Shepard and Gayle Harvey. All were long time employees in the agency and will be greatly missed. At the end of this month David Britt will be leaving to attend a Masters in Fine Arts program at the University of South Carolina.
I am pleased to announce that with the receipt of a significant gift from Philip Morris, the return exchange of North Carolina higher education officials to the United Kingdom will take place in October. Representatives from Johnston Community College, North Carolina State University, North Carolina A & T State University, Appalachian State University, Wilkes Community College, Caldwell Community College & Technical Institute, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte will be visiting universities and Colleges of Further Education (the United Kingdom equivalent to our community colleges) in London, Leicester, Staffordshire, and Northern Ireland. We regret that Central Piedmont Community College and Guilford Technical Community College, both hosts of our United Kingdom visitors, have elected not to participate in the return exchange.
After owning the land for a north campus for many years, Wake Technical Community College, under the leadership of Dr. Stephen Scott, broke ground earlier this week. We are excited that Wake County will finally build a campus convenient to a very large part of its population in North Raleigh, Wake Forest and Rolesville.
This has also been a busy period for meetings, including Communities in Schools, NC Economic Development Association, Information Resource Management Commission, Latino Advisory Board, Faculty Association rally and demonstration at the General Assembly, NC Child Advocacy Institute, Agency for Public Television, Global TransPark, Goldsboro Arts Council’s 40th Anniversary, and an Executive Institute at SAS. I also spoke at the Bladen County Chamber of Commerce and the Careers Start Partnership Conference, which celebrated the partnerships between community colleges and local Departments of Social Services in offering educational training as a part of receiving Food Stamps.
University of North Carolina President Molly Broad, State Superintendent Mike Ward and I were honorary chairs of this year’s Education Ball, a huge event that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for Communities in Schools, an after-school program for at-risk youth. Many of these programs are housed on community college campuses across the state or have significant community college involvement in their operations.
Fred Williams and Jane Phillips attended the first State Health Leadership Summit, the purpose of which is to engage state leadership in the area of employee health and to initiate action on work site wellness initiatives. The System Office Safety and Wellness Committee will be working to introduce a healthsmart program.
In the last two months, much of Kennon Briggs’ time has been spent on budgets – getting this year’s passed, closing out last year’s and beginning to work on next year’s. Much of that time has been spent in the General Assembly, but he has also made presentations to the Trustees, the Presidents, a Wake Technical Community College Staff Development Workshop, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, leadership of the State Employees Credit Union (concerning a scholarship program soon to be announced), and the Association of Community College Business Officers Executive Committee.
Kennon and Dr. Saundra Williams continue to work closely on the CIS contract extension and further implementation.
Larry Morgan and his team have been working hard to close out the fiscal year with the financial offices of our colleges across the state.
Phil Albano made a presentation to the Higher Education Bond Oversight Committee at its quarterly meeting. We are hard at work determining the amount of equipment funding needed to equip the buildings now under construction or in the planning phase.
Dr. Saundra Williams is pleased to announce that all 58 of our colleges are now "live" with the financial system of CIS, which means they are all running the financial software. Additional training contracts have been approved with Central Piedmont Community College and Wayne Community College to provide additional training for Phase 2C colleges as they proceed with their implementation.
The Critical Success Factors Report has been completed and Keith Brown is pleased to announce that this year 36 colleges attained the "superior" ranking. Keith has also served as a reader/reviewer of papers/proposals for the Association of Institutional Research.
Congratulations are in order for Dr. Saundra Williams who just completed the Leadership North Carolina program. She will now serve on the Education Program Committee for the next class.
Dr. Delores Parker proudly announces the approval by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of renewed funding for the Bridges to the Future program. We know this as North Carolina Transfer Assistance to Biomedical Sciences, a joint venture between our System and the University System, with community colleges taking the lead. This grant of $600,000 will fund the program through October 2007 and will increase the number of minority community college students entering careers in biomedical research.
Dr. Parker attended last weekend the Lumina Foundation’s Summer Institute at the University of Texas-Austin to learn more about "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count," which will be funded in five states with several colleges in our System participating.
Student Development Services Director Wanda White and Associate Director Karen Yerby coordinated a meeting for our System to review current admissions, testing and placement practices that may affect the Occupational Course of Study.
Dr. Parker and her staff held a staff development retreat at Camp Caraway on May 25-26, made possible by a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
As Susan Seymour has moved into the full-time position of BioNetwork Director, Kirk Smith has assumed her former position as a Regional Training Director. Smith comes to the Research Triangle Park Region from Haywood Community College, bringing with him a wealth of experience and statewide understanding of training needs required by industries.
US Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao announced on June 28 a Biotechnology Grant in the amount of $5 million to Forsyth Technical Community College and four partnering community colleges to create the National Center for the Biotechnology Workforce.
Thank you again for your help with the General Assembly and for your support of me during this very fast seven years we have worked together. My anniversary with you was on July first.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.