| President’s Report |
| to the |
| State Board of Community Colleges |
| August 18, 2000 |
This has been a fast and furious three weeks since we last met.
Steve Zelnak and I met for lunch immediately following the State Board meeting to discuss the reimaging campaign for our System. I have had follow-up meetings with our two finalists for developing that campaign and will have more to report to you later. Ken Otis, a member of the Foundation Board, and I visited Dennis Barry with the Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro. I also met with Frank Holding of First Citizens Bank and Steve Zelnak and I made a series of calls in the Charlotte area, including Philip Morris, Lowes Speedway Motor Sports, and The Duke Endowment. We continue to be encouraged by our progress with the Foundation effort.
After the last Board meeting, I left for Montgomery Community College where I spoke at graduation and the next day went to Boone for a meeting of the Appalachian Learning Alliance at which the bond campaign was the major focus of discussion.
UNC-TV has begun filming an hour-long documentary on our facility needs to complement the one they already did on university facility needs. I have been interviewed for the documentary, portions of which were shown on NC Now last week. The film crew has visited a number of our colleges and we are excited about this opportunity. President Molly Broad and I taped an interview with Tom White, Chief Executive Director of the Durham Chamber of Commerce, focusing on the bond issue. That program has run several times on the local Time Warner Cable System and we hope that they will run it on all of their systems across the state. Leslie Bevacqua and I have met since our last meeting to discuss the bond campaign.
I am really pleased that she is doing this important organizational work for us.
I continue to enjoy my work with the Information Resource Management Commission, a position given to me by the General Assembly in the short session. I am really excited about "North Carolina @ Your Service," the new North Carolina State Internet portal that gives instant Internet access to an incredible array of state information and services. I would encourage you to check it out. The address is www.ncgov.com.
Last weekend I spoke to the Young Scholars Program in Lenoir County, an academic and social enrichment program funded by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and on Saturday night to the North Carolina County Commissioners Association annual meeting. Both of these speaking engagements gave me the opportunity to talk about the importance of passing the bond issue.
Dr. Carol Kasworm, the North Carolina State University Department Chair of Adult and Community College Education, and I met to discuss our continuing cooperation between that Department and our System. She is a delight to work with and I am convinced of her sincere commitment to being of great service to our System.
Several of us met with Dr. Dennis McBride, the State Health Director, to deal with Latino health challenges. We also discussed the need for Spanish language training for health department and the Department of Social Services staff. They see a significant role for community colleges in reaching this community. We have also applied for a major grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to establish a Hispanic initiative that will address many educational and social needs which that community faces.
Before heading to Atlantic Beach for the meeting of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges, I met with the UNC-TV Board of Directors. By statute I am a member of that Board, but for many years Fred Manley has been the designee from the President’s Office on that Board. On this occasion we honored Fred for his more than fifteen years of service to the Board.
Last week we honored Fred with a wonderful luncheon here on the fifth floor. Governor Hunt dropped by to present to him the Order of the Long Leaf Pine and Governor Scott attended the luncheon. It is not often that someone retires after forty-one years of state service, almost all of it in the Community College System. We will all miss Fred.
The National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges annual meeting went very well, thanks to the incredible support we received from members of the State Board, presidents, and community colleges across the state. I have already given you a report on that meeting by way of e-mail, fax and mail.
This week I have spoken at the opening convocation of Piedmont Community College and met with the trustees at Forsyth as they begin the process of finding a successor to Dr. Desna Wallin.
On Monday I depart for the Far East with Governor Hunt and Secretary of Commerce Rick Carlisle. Though we are accompanied by a couple of staff persons, this is a very different trip than any of the others I have accompanied the Governor on. It is all focused on industrial recruitment, with the Governor tying up loose ends with companies with which he has been dealing over the last twenty-five years. We will be visiting companies in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. The Governor and Secretary Carlisle will go first to Korea, but I will join them when they go to Japan.
The Community College System continues to be intimately involved with rural development through Steve Scott’s membership on the Board of Directors of the Rural Center. He has also spoken this month to the Law Enforcement Conference at Elon College, focusing on campus safety and passage of the bond referendum. Dr. Scott also spoke at the Vance-Granville Community College graduation where he made a pitch for the bonds as well.
The Administration Division continues our collaboration with the National Guard in completing electronic classrooms with both video and computer capability. The three most recently completed classrooms are at Cape Fear, Craven and Davidson County. We have also improved our own Information Highway room with a large plasma display screen and other improvements.
We are running into some problems with the library automation project, but the contractor and our staff are working valiantly to address them.
We continue to collaborate with UNC-General Administration and the Department of Public Instruction on information technology as required by the General Assembly.
Unfortunately, a bidder who failed to get the contract has protested our MIS contract. We are working through that process and remain optimistic that significant delay in implementation will not occur.
Kennon Briggs and his staff have spent much time since our last meeting addressing questions about budget allocations from colleges across the state. They continue to work on the next biennial budget which we have heard reported on today. Of course, we will need to give final approval to that budget request at our September meeting.
The Academic and Student Services Division continues to do good work in resource development, having just completed TRIO workshops in Southern Pines. Thirty-nine participants representing twenty community colleges, one public university and one private university attended.
The Federal Vocational Education Section completed a series of five technical assistance workshops across the state to discuss completion of and changes in the required local plans colleges must submit to access Perkins funds.
The Basic Skills/HRD Professional Development Institute was held in Charlotte with over 700 people participating. Dr. Tony Zeiss got rave reviews for his keynote presentation at the closing session. This conference was jointly planned and executed by the Divisions of Academic and Student Services and the Economic and Workforce Development.
Dr. Randy Whitfield continues to represent us well at the national level attending this time the National State Directors of Adult Education Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Delane Boyer attended the GED Administrators’ Conference, also in Phoenix.
Terry Shelwood and Dr. Whitfield conducted two training sessions on the National Reporting System and the implementation of the "Lose Control; Lose Your License" law. That team will be conducting five regional training sessions on the National Reporting System.
Mike Thompson attended the U.S. Department of Education technical assistance meeting at which the national postsecondary pilot data project, in which we participated, was discussed. Because of our system’s capability to report the required Perkins data elements, North Carolina is well ahead of the other states in complying with the Department of Education’s reporting requirements.
The North Carolina Model Teachers Education Consortium got much needed funding in the short session and we are hard at work now implementing that program with eight new counties participating, including Wayne, Bladen, Camden, Onslow, Beaufort and Washington.
The Virtual Learning Community continues to make dramatic progress in the development of courses and student services on-line.
An initiative, which has been developed in cooperation with the University of North Carolina, called Pathways will provide Internet access to an incredible array of information on higher education opportunities in North Carolina. We are excited to have this program on-line and running.
Dr. Scott Ralls and the Economic and Workforce Development Division has recently published an electronic newsletter profiling the significant initiatives taking place across our System to support economic and workforce development. If you have not had a chance to review this newsletter, I hope that you will. It is full of information about the activities of this division and of the economic development regions across the state.
Gayle Harvey and the Small Business Center Directors have been working closely with NC REAL on a grant application to the Babcock Foundation for the development of a small business development program targeted on addressing the needs of the North Carolina Hispanic population and Hispanic entrepreneurs. We are already offering Small Business Center seminars in Spanish over the Information Highway in a program developed and coordinated by Pitt Community College. We have also submitted a major grant proposal to the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation for funding for two positions to create a Hispanic initiative in the President’s Office.
Susan Seymour and others in the division have developed a seven-part seminar series for pharmaceutical and bioprocess manufacturing companies that will be conducted at the NC Biotechnology Center and at six cooperating community colleges starting in October. This is in the furtherance of our Biotechnology Initiative which was begun a couple of years ago.
The Manufacturing Certification Program continues to be rolled out to rave reviews. Ninety instructors have now been trained to deliver training at colleges throughout the state.
In a continuing recognition of the quality of our workforce development programs, the Fifth District Federal Reserve Bank recently featured our programs in its newsletter, Region Focus. The focus of the article was on helping workers make the transition from traditional industries to the industries of the future.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.