President’s Report
To the
State Board of Community Colleges
November 17, 2006
Fortunately, the pace slackened slightly between your last meeting and this one. Let’s hope that the rest of the year continues at the current pace instead of the breakneck pace which has characterized the year up until October.
Following the fantastic retreat at Lake Lure, I stopped in Charlotte to attend a portion of the International Conference on Information Technology sponsored by the National League for Innovation in Community Colleges. While there I had an opportunity to meet with a delegation of administrators from the Scottish Colleges of Further Education who were in attendance. I will be flying to Scotland the day after Thanksgiving to keynote a conference they are having as they consider ways to restructure postsecondary education in Scotland, much like Northern Ireland, the country with which I have been working now for about 5 years.
President Erskine Bowles and I did another joint presentation almost identical to the one we did at the System Conference in Greensboro, this time at East Carolina University. The Leadership Forum was sponsored by Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Theta Kappa and their affiliate chapters at colleges and universities across the state.
That night I met with the Trustees at Randolph Community College as they continued their search for a new president whom you have approved at this meeting.
Dr. Harold Martin of The University of North Carolina-General Administration and I met with others on a telephone conference call with regard to the future of the Higher Education Center in Hickory. We continue to work closely in fashioning a solution to meeting the higher education needs of that area.
Later that week, Dr. Delores Parker, Kennon Briggs, Kimberly Jernigan, and I met with David McCoy, the Director of State Budget, Dan Gerlach, Senior Policy Advisor for Fiscal Affairs in the Governor’s Office, and their staff members on the challenges we face and the cost associated with those challenges for implementing a proposed rule by the Board of Nursing that would require all of our nursing faculty, including clinical faculty, to have a master’s degree.
The following week, I spoke to the Texas Association of Community College Presidents and Trustees at their annual conference in Austin, Texas, on workforce development.
Fred Williams and I participated in the groundbreaking for the fourth building on the Northern Wake Campus of Wake Technical Community College.
That afternoon, senior staff met with Millie Ravenel and her volunteer leadership and senior staff on our hosting the Center for International Understanding as they were exploring a separation from The University of North Carolina-General Administration (UNC-GA). In the end they decided to stay with UNC-GA, but they would like to explore ways to work with us on our global initiatives.
I have also met with Tony Moyer, the Director of the North Carolina Japan Center at North Carolina State University, regarding his interest in a similar relationship with our System. He is facing the loss of state funding and wondered if there might be a home for him in our System. I explained that we would not be able to support him through funding or by requesting funds for his program through our System. However, I suggested a similar relationship that we have with NC REAL if he wanted to explore that.
John Crites, the new CEO of the NC Microelectronics Center, met with me with regard to opportunities for that organization to provide high speed internet and other IT services to our colleges.
The North Carolina Community Colleges Foundation Investment Committee met by telephone to review quarterly performance of the Foundation corpus. We have experienced good growth in the last quarter.
We have begun meeting with the committees of the NC Citizens for Business and Industry as they craft their legislative priorities for the coming session. We continue to be hopeful that, as in the past, they will support at least some of our budget priorities.
Harry Payne, Chairman of the Employment Security Commission, Tom White and Roger Shackleford of the NC Department of Commerce, Hawley Truax of the Governor’s Office, Stephanie Deese, Cleveland Lewis and Willa Dickens of the Division of Economic and Workforce Development, and I met with Jeff Cramer and Paula Berardinelli of the Futures Group which has developed Pipeline North Carolina, a new Internet/Open Source program to connect employees and potential employers by matching their respective needs. Consideration is being given as to whether or not a pilot project using this new program should be implemented at several of our colleges.
Last weekend I attended a meeting of the Community College Advisory Panel of the College Board in San Diego at which I spoke on the growing cooperation and collaboration between two- and four-year higher education in North Carolina. I also participated in a session on Transfer Centers on Community College Campuses to assist transfer students in finding their way through the weeds of college transfer. I have asked Pres. Erskine Bowles if we could discuss this issue when our respective senior staffs meet next.
This week I made a presentation to the Subcommittee on The Healthcare Workforce in the General Assembly laying out the crisis and how we might be a part of responding to it. That afternoon, Willa Dickens participated in a session with the House Select Committee on the Rural Economy.
On Wednesday of this week I spoke to the congressional staff of Members of the Congressional Community College Caucus. Congressman Brad Miller is the founder and co-chair of the Caucus. The subject of my remarks was the role of community colleges in worker retraining. I returned in time to have dinner with President Bill Carver of Nash Community College, Senator A.B. Swindell, and former Congressman Tim Valentine, and their respective spouses.
We are very pleased that our Chairperson, Hilda Pinnix-Ragland, was invited to be the keynote speaker at the North Carolina Association for Developmental Education Conference in Wilmington.
Dr. Saundra Williams and her staff and our CIS contractors are completing the planning and design phase of Release 18. She and her staff continue the training, data conversion and testing for the CIS student system implementation in the Phase 2C colleges. This will complete implementation of CIS, with Phase 2 colleges participating in the Release 18 migration in the late fall.
Dr. Bill Randall and Dr. Saundra Williams have initiated an Online Help Desk to support our Virtual Learning Community for the entire System. Those two leaders also attended the Conference on Information Technology sponsored by the League for Innovation in the Community College. Dr. Linda Nelms from the Academic and Student Services Division also participated in the Conference.
Dr. Larry Keen attended the Trans-Atlantic Technology and Training Alliance International Conference in Whitefish, Montana, and was a keynote speaker at the Oklahoma Governor’s Summit on Economic and Workforce Development. He also has just returned from Minneapolis, Minnesota, attending the meeting of the National Governors Association. He attended as a core-team member of the Policy Academy on Accelerating State Adoption of Industrial Sector Strategies. The first sector under consideration in North Carolina is the allied healthcare industry. Dr. Stephanie Deese was a speaker at Mississippi’s Governor’s Conference on Workforce Development.
You are aware that one of our strategies for meeting the nursing shortage is to dramatically increase the number of nurses with advanced degrees. Our Project HEALTH Fellowships have now been awarded to 27 nurses, 18 of whom are graduates of community colleges and currently clinical instructors in our programs. The other Fellows are graduates of other programs, live in 24 counties and teach in 20 of our community college programs. With 70 nurse faculty vacancies across the System, our work is cut out for us. However, this project will be of great assistance.
We are pleased to announce that Matt Meyer has joined us as BioNetwork Director, returning to North Carolina after a three-year sojourn in Virginia. We are pleased to have him back home.
Kennon Briggs and his staff have been working incredibly long hours in putting together the Continuation and Consensus Expansion Budgets. Unfortunately, I suggested changes in the justification for some of our requests at the last minute and this added additional work for them which I regret. However, I believe that this ambitious budget request is our best in the last ten years and the justifications make a strong case for each request.
They have also been working on the Results-Based Budgeting documentation, finalizing the Internal Fiscal Control Audit response to the State Auditor, allocating the two-percent bonus funds to the colleges, preparing for the quarterly Higher Education Bond Oversight meeting, completing the Facilities Grant Allocation Process, working on the new payroll and human resources program being developed by the State Controller, completing the equipment survey and assessment, implementing the computer program to determine employability of foreign nationals, and developing a much needed and long-sought major renovation of the Caswell Building to address “healthy building” issues.
Dr. Delores Parker and her staff have been working on curriculum improvement projects in Early Childhood Education and Associate Degree Nursing. Forsyth Technical Community College and Wake Technical Community College are hosting, respectively, these two projects. Dr. Peggy Teague will be managing these efforts.
Dr. Parker attended the annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in Anaheim, California.
NC GlaxoSmithKline Foundation funded participation of six of our colleges (Davidson County, Durham Technical, Forsyth Technical, Pamlico, Pitt, and South Piedmont) to attend a meeting with participating colleges from other states. These colleges are participating in the Breaking Through Initiative to assist low-skill workers accessing programs in our colleges which lead to degrees and certifications.
Dr. Edith Lang presented at the NC Partnership Conference on Workforce Development with an update on the current status of biotechnology programs in the state and Ken Whitehurst presented a workshop on the topic of “High Schools Go to College,” focusing on our services to add rigor to our high school curricula.
Dr. Peggy Teague has been appointed to the Executive Committee of the NC Institute for Early Childhood Professional Development.
Fred Williams represented the System at the dedication of a technology building at Catawba-Valley Community College in honor of retired President Cuyler Dunbar.
Since we do not anticipate meeting in December, let me take this opportunity on behalf of Alice, the staff, and myself to wish you and your families a happy holiday.
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Monday, November 20, 2006 06:05:17 PM
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