President’s Report
to the
State Board of Community Colleges
August 15, 2003
At the System Office, we had all hoped that after the legislature left town things might settle down to a more normal pace. They have not! With the Pillowtex closing, multiple meetings (some out of town), staff vacations, etc., we have been busier than ever.
Perhaps the most exciting news of the month was the announcement last week of the Golden L.E.A.F. Foundation Grant to the University System and the Community College System. The funds are for the implementation of the Biotechnology Business Plan that has been developed over the last year in close collaboration between the Systems and business and industry. Our System will receive $9.4 million over two years as startup cost for this initiative, with ongoing operational funding to come from the General Assembly after that period. At the university level, facilities and programs will be implemented at North Carolina State University and at North Carolina Central University. At North Carolina State, a Biotechnology Training Center (BTECH) will be constructed on Centennial Campus, which will have 12,000 square feet of space dedicated to community college use for the final training phase for community college students enrolled in our biotechnology/biomanufacturing programs across the System. This space will include clean rooms and other instructional space for a wide range of training programs to meet the needs of the entire biotechnology cluster. Our students will also have access to full-scale biotechnology equipment that will be used in bioprocessing and biomanufacturing. North Carolina Central University will be offering four-year degrees and higher in biomanufacturing and will be doing related research.
After hiring the biotech staff at the System Office, we will also began the process of selecting five colleges initially (more later) to be statewide resources for community colleges across the state. The colleges will be called upon by other colleges to meet the training and other resource needs of biomanufacturing facilities which may locate in their service area. We will have centers in biopharmaceuticals, bioprocessing, agribiotechnology, curriculum development, professional development and bioprocess incubation. A mobile lab will be acquired and operated by the System to provide for immediate training needs on community college campuses that cannot wait for the upgrade of laboratories to meet the needs of existing biomanufacturers for upgrading their workforce and for the training of new employees of recruited industries. This program will clearly set North Carolina apart from all other states in the Union and should maximize the potential we have for moving from traditional industries to biomanufacturing as the basis of our manufacturing economy. The University System has had significant personnel and financial resources to put into the development of this plan. We had no money and our staff was already stretched thin by the demands of their regular jobs. However, Larry Keen, Susan Seymour, Edith Lang, and Vonna Viglione put in incredible hours and are all to be commended for the incredible job they did in developing this initiative on top of already very busy work schedules.
I am pleased to announce that the North Carolina Community Colleges Foundation has employed Helga Mattei as the director of our Latino Initiative, which was funded by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. We are excited about the prospects of more appropriately and more adequately addressing the educational needs of the Latino community beyond providing language training. Helga will join us on August 20. We are grateful to the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation for this grant.
Your Chairman, Helen Dowdy and I appeared on Open Net, a call-in program of the Agency for Public Television. The focus of our call-in program was the 40th Anniversary of our System and the impact we have had and are having on our communities across the state. It was a lively program with great calls.
Elizabeth Isler and I continue to work with the Nursing Task Force to address the critical shortage of nursing personnel across the state. We continue to have significant challenges from those in the nursing community who would like to see the associate degree nurse and the licensed practical nurse disappear from the health scene to be replaced by holders of four-year degrees.
Alice and I went to Sparta for the dedication of the new Alleghany Center, which combines at one site an excellent teaching facility, the JobLink, the Economic Development Office for the county and region, and an incredible incubator facility for the development of Small Business jobs in Alleghany County. It is a model collaboration that should be implemented widely across the state.
The community college presidents and the Foundation have begun meeting with potential consultants to do an economic impact study for our System and each college. This will be a cooperative effort by the Presidents’ Association and the Foundation and will focus on local and statewide impacts.
Drs. Jeff Hockaday and Donny Hunter have recently completed the classroom part of an Institute for Future Presidents, which they are conducting. Ongoing reading and discussion will complete the program. Of course, five of the participants in this program were Herring Fellows announced last month. A significant majority of the students were from colleges in our System, though some of the students were from out of state.
Week before last, your senior staff and I participated in the annual Presidents’ Association meeting in Flat Rock. President David Sink hosted an excellent meeting, which combined quality professional development for the presidents along with rich discussions between the presidents and your System Office leadership.
Alice and I left from that meeting and went directly to Michigan where the Council of State Directors (my counterparts from around the country) met in Traverse City. Good discussions were had on a wide range of topics, with much of our time focused on professional development sessions, current research on community colleges, and updates on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act and the Perkins Act. As always, I came away from this meeting feeling fortunate to be president of your System. Though we were disappointed with the level of funding possible in this legislative session, we are certainly better off than a number of states, some of which could not even participate in this year’s meeting because of the drastic cuts made in their budgets. At this meeting, I was elected to chair the Council for the upcoming year.
We continue to struggle to meet the needs of teacher preparation in the state. Two very successful and creative programs developed by Central Piedmont Community College and Sandhills Community College, which had been approved by the Alternative Licensure Section of the Department of Public Instruction, were threatened just days before the summer classes were to begin by complaints lodged against those programs by Dr. Zoe Locklear on behalf of the Deans of Colleges and Schools of Education at four-year institutions, both public and private. It has been widely misrepresented that we were offering upper division courses to lateral entry teachers in violation of our mission and of our accreditation. The programs were developed at the request of the local school systems to give non-credit courses that would lead to teacher certification of persons already possessing a bachelor’s degree but not possessing a teaching certificate. We have had numerous conversations with superintendents, personnel of the Department of Public Instruction, Dr. Mike Ward, Chairman Howard Lee, and community college personnel involved in this endeavor. After much discussion, our programs have been authorized to continue through the spring semester, at which time most of our students will be in a position to receive their teaching credential. Between now and then, Chairman Lee and Superintendent Ward are committed to working with us to address the role of community colleges in assisting lateral entry teachers to obtain their credentials in an inexpensive and convenient manner. Many local superintendents are requesting similar programs at their community colleges and hundreds of lateral entry teachers are seeking this avenue to certification rather than returning to a traditional College of Education, in some cases at four-year institutions some distance from their homes.
Your Finance Committee, Dr. Saundra Williams and her staff, and Kennon Briggs and his staff continue to work very hard with our colleges and our vendors to address the continuing problems with cash reporting and implementation of other phases of the College Information System (CIS). All Phase 2B colleges are now using CIS for financial transactions and are beginning the training for the human resources module.
Dr. Soyoung Yim and Dr. Saundra Williams have recently published important research they have completed.
Dr. Larry Keen, Dr. Stephanie Deese Giddens (congratulations are in order for Stephanie Deese on her recent marriage to Danny Giddens) and Maureen Little have worked closely with other state agencies and colleges in the areas affected by the Pillowtex bankruptcy. Rowan-Cabbarus Community College, Rockingham Community College, Central Piedmont Community College, South Piedmont Community College and Stanly Community College are all working with displaced workers affected by this closure. Thousands of these unemployed textile workers are without even a high school diploma, so our challenges are especially great.
The good news in other parts of the state is that industrial announcements, which translate into new jobs, are increasing. In just the last month announcements have been made in Alamance, Alleghany Ashe, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg, McDowell, and Wilkes counties, which will result in more than 1,000 new jobs. Of course, we were involved in each of these recruitments and now will be involved in training their workforce. Other major recruitments are underway.
Elizabeth Brown and Bob Witchger have joined Ken Smith and Bill Price of DPI in conducting annual reviews of Tech Prep programs. As the state looks to more and more highly trained workers, Tech Prep becomes more and more important.
The Basic Skills and Family Literacy Conference was held in mid-July in New Bern with 792 participants. Beaufort County Community College unveiled its mobile computer lab which will be used to deliver literacy training into communities all over Beaufort County.
Basic Skills staff received training from Mindy Oppenheim, a nationally known trainer from California for people with developmental disabilities.
Dr. Delores Parker spoke at Vance-Granville’s graduation in August and Ken Whitehurst was elected Secretary of the National Council on Black American Affairs at its July Board meeting in Minneapolis.
Kennon Briggs and his staff were able to get out the budget allocations in less than a week after you approved them at the July meeting. Annette Dishner and others on the staff worked with colleges to close out the fiscal year, establish new budgets, and provide budget allocations. Kim Van Metre also worked to get financial statements out to the colleges to meet our reporting deadlines to the State Controller. They have been working with Senator Steve Metcalf on implementing the new "Youth Development Centers Scholarship" program, implementing the additional financial aid of various kinds provided by the General Assembly, and implementing the new legislative matching program to encourage local foundations to increase their fund raising.
Tim Brewer is hard at work on an orientation program for the new State Board members and new presidents. This will be on the Wednesday and Thursday before the September 12 meeting. This is open to "old timers," too. Y’all come!
I failed to mention last month that I celebrated my sixth anniversary as your President on July 1. Thank you for the opportunity to work with you and you here and across the state in meeting the needs of adult learners in workforce development and higher education.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.