| President’s Report |
| to the |
| State Board of Community College |
| March 17, 2000 |
What a month this has been! We have hardly caught our breath during the entire month. The Rural Prosperity Initiative chaired by Erskine Bowles made its final report to the people, to the Governor and to the General Assembly on the Monday following our meeting and since that time, I have spoken on several occasions to various groups substituting for Erskine Bowles or speaking specifically to the education recommendations of the report. As you know, one of the recommendations of the Task Force was to implement my idea of homegrowing our teachers through degree completion programs offered by four-year institutions on our campuses. Other education initiatives included leadership development and capacity building in communities across the state, in many cases utilizing community college resources; fully funding the model teacher consortium, another idea for teacher education; and full funding for NC TEACH, the lateral entry program for persons with degrees in fields other than education.
Dr. Janyth Fredrickson, Dr. Larry Norris, Mr. Fred Manley and I visited with the Assistant Secretary of the Army, P.T. Henry, to discuss the Army initiative to give every soldier an associate’s degree during their initial enlistment using on-line curricula. We believe that this initiative has tremendous potential for growing our Virtual Learning Community and providing the resources to that initiative from which all of our colleges will benefit. We were encouraged by the meeting and will be participating by invitation in a symposium on the idea on June 9 in Washington at which time we will make a presentation on our on-line courses and curricula which are available and which we anticipate being available in the near future.
Though the Emerging Issues Forum did not have the community college/workforce preparation focus that it had last year, several speakers spoke with persuasiveness and eloquence on our role in North Carolina’s economy.
On a separate trip to Washington I participated in the Annual Legislative Seminar co-sponsored by AACC and ACCT. While there I took advantage of the presence of many Members of Congress to discuss with them the problem many of our colleges have experienced with a change in federal communications policy that will require that wireless licenses which had hitherto been available to educational institutions exclusively with allocation based on points to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Under the Balance Budget Act of 1996 the wireless frequencies, which had not been assigned under the old policy, were made available for auction by the Federal Communication Commission. On a previous visit to Washington I had met with Commerce Committee staff who told me that this auction mandate had been a drafting error, but that correcting the error would require finding $10 million in revenue from another source to replace the revenue anticipated from the auction. On this visit I saw Congressmen from all over the country who are leaders in the telecommunications field, including the Chairman and Minority Ranking Member of the Telecommunications Subcommittee and the full Commerce Committee. I believe that I have helped them have a better understanding of the dilemma our colleges face in competing with commercial interests for these wireless licenses which are essential to distance education in communities where fiber optic networks will not be available for many years. However, I have still not found $10 million for them.
From Washington I flew to Asheville where I spoke to CORD, giving them an update on our Foundation efforts and various initiatives that are underway, thanks to the leadership of Dr. Delores Parker, to find external resources to enhance our programs. I am happy to announce that a long-time friend and well-known development official at Pitt Community College will be joining us in a consulting capacity. As I told them, we are now over halfway to our goal on the Foundation and making steady progress. We will hate to lose the leadership of Greg Poole when he steps down as Chairman of the Foundation later this month, but we are excited to have Steve Zelnak, the Board Chairman and CEO of Martin Marietta Materials, to take his place. Steve is a respected corporate and philanthropic leader who will give us the enthusiasm and new ideas to take us over the top.
En route back to Raleigh from Asheville, Elizabeth Isler, Chancy Kapp and I met with the officials of the Kate B. Reynolds Healthcare Trust in Winston-Salem to make a Foundation presentation to them. We are encouraged to think that they will make a significant gift in the Fall in support of an ambitious new dental care initiative.
The next morning I met with Tom Bacon, the head of the AHEC’s of North Carolina and Ken Otis, the CEO of BlueCross BlueShield and a member of our Foundation. Ken, Greg, and I are working on a major allied health careers planning initiative through the Foundation to help us become more proactive in avoiding healthcare personnel crises. It was a very positive meeting and that initiative is being well-received in the healthcare industry.
Planning continues for the meeting we will host this August of my counterparts from around the country which will take place in Atlantic Beach. Clyde Higgs and I spent a day in the Morehead City/Atlantic Beach area working on the details of that meeting. We hope that some of you will join us for, at least, part of this meeting.
The Governor’s Education Cabinet has met three times since our last Board meeting, including yesterday. We have been putting the finishing touches on the Governor’s First In America Initiative and rolling it out to legislative leaders and the news media. This initiative and our role in it have been well-received. We will be working on family literacy issues to help parents become better "first teachers" of their children, early childhood development personnel training, teacher preparation, safety training, etc.
Our staff met with officials from Cisco preliminary to a meeting convened by the Governor several days later to discuss Cisco Academies and how we might provide networking training in high schools and community colleges across the state. We are excited to be working with Cisco in this important initiative.
Dean Joan Michael of the School of Education and Psychology at North Carolina State University and I co-chair a Vision 2030 Science and Technology Training Task Force. We hosted a meeting of that Task Force on March 7 using her distance technology classroom with remote sites at East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Asheville. We had good community college participation of the three sites. Later this month, we will host the second meeting of this Task Force using our Information Highway classroom here in this building with remote sites at Martin Community College and McDowell Technical Community College. We hope to come up with a long-range plan for secondary, community college, and university educational programs to meet the needs of science and technology jobs of the future.
Kennon Briggs and I taped a program for the North Carolina News Network primarily focused on our facility needs, but covering other issues of importance to community colleges. I hope you heard the interview.
We hosted a meeting with officials from Bladen Community College, North Carolina State University, and the Extension Service with regard to Bladen Community College’s desire to have an animal science and food production center on its campus. A study has recently been completed by North Carolina State’s Urban Affairs Division on this initiative. There are still many kinks to be worked out.
The Geographic Information Coordinating Council, which I serve as Vice Chairman, met to discuss various initiatives in North Carolina that use the satellite technology for many purposes from surveying to community land use planning. They will soon have up and running MapQuest, an exciting Internet site, which will have all of this information available to the public as well as governmental entities and companies.
In preparation for a meeting I had requested with Chancellor William McCoy at UNC-Chapel Hill, I met with the UNC Director of Admissions, Dr. Jerry Lucido, to discuss a recently announced the UNC-Chapel Hill requirement that all community college transfer students must take the SAT as a part of their admission process. We strongly object to this new policy on a matter of principle, feeling that it intentionally frustrates the comprehensive articulation agreement. The Education Testing Service makes clear in its literature that the SAT is designed to predict success of students as freshmen, not to predict their success as juniors. We believe that graduates of our associate degree programs have demonstrated their ability to handle college level work at the junior level and should be admitted to Chapel Hill on the basis of their community college transcript, not the SAT. We consider this requirement a slap in the face and one which I will work hard to have modified. Though the issue has not been resolved, I had very positive meetings with Dr. Lucido and Chancellor McCoy. I believe that each of them has a clear understanding of our concern. I hope that they will be able to articulate that concern to the Faculty Committee that recommended the requirement of the SAT. We certainly do not want the tremendous advances which have resulted from the Comprehensive Articulation Agreement to be frustrated by impediments to transfer that are unrelated to success at the junior level.
Your distance education staff and I met with Robert Sanregret of Global Knowledge to discuss the possibility of a partnership between a private provider of information technology training and community colleges.
I have met with Dr. Gretchen Bataille, the new Chief Academic Officer of the University of North Carolina General Administration. Dr. Bataille comes to North Carolina from Washington State and is a strong advocate for cooperation between community colleges and universities. Her record of cooperation in Arizona, California and Washington gives me reason to be very encouraged about cooperation between our systems in North Carolina.
At the request of Walter Davis, long-time friend of the University System, I met with him to discuss the facilities needs of the University System and the Community College System. He is strongly supportive of a package that would fully meet community college and university needs and I believe that we can count on him to be an influential voice on our behalf.
Earlier in the month I had presented, along with Kent Caruthers, our Facilities Needs Study to the Facilities Needs Study Commission of the General Assembly which shows a new construction need of $1.2 million and repair and renovation needs of approximately $200 million. On new construction, using a low-wealth formula for matching, we have presented a state need of $800 million. An ad hoc group has been meeting during the past month under the leadership of Phil Phillips, Mac Everett, and Phil Kirk of the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry trying to achieve consensus between the University System, the Community College System and the business community on a joint package and a joint strategy for implementation. This cooperative relationship is very encouraging. The Study Commission has begun its field visits. We are pleased that they are visiting community college campuses as well as university campuses and are hearing reports from community colleges with special needs, but whose campuses they have been unable to visit.
As many of you did, I participated in events of the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry Annual meeting on Wednesday. I also talked with Dr. Diane Suber, the new President of St. Augustine’s College with regard to teaching opportunities on community college campuses for instructors she has had to release as a part of her reorganization as she tightens the belt of that institution.
The Economic Development Board Workforce Committee met Wednesday, as well as participants from the Latin American Trade and Industry Mission last summer. The latter group got together to talk about what has happened since that trip to develop relationships between North Carolina and Latin America. We are pleased that our equivalent institutions in Brazil are trying to schedule a visit to North Carolina and higher education institutions in Mexico are interested in offering our on-line courses to their students.
Drs. Steve Scott and Janyth Fredrickson and representatives of approximately fifteen of our community colleges met with North Carolina State University faculty and staff to improve access for community college students to State programs.
Steve, Janyth and Suzanne Williams met with Representative Joe Tolson to plan a visit for Israeli community college representatives to North Carolina.
We hosted the Carteret Community College Board of Trustees Retreat and a number of our staff members made presentations to them. We have received very favorable comments from them with regard to our hospitality and the briefings.
Steve, Stephanie Deese, Scott Ralls, Susan Seymour and representatives from Vance-Granville Community College met to discuss biotechnology programs.
Steve has replaced Barry Russell on the North Carolina Rural Center Board and provides valuable input to that Board’s work with regard to our colleges as an asset to rural development.
Many senior staff and staff from colleges across the state have been involved as Dr. Brenda Rogers and the Division of Administration continue the process of updating our Strategic Plan. The Planning Council met this month and will meet next month following a satellite down-link to all of our colleges and North Carolina Information Highway meetings, all designed to get input from the field before we move forward.
Dr. Rogers and the Library Resources staff are completing the final details of the library system contract with Sirsi, Inc. Sirsi is beginning to work with our colleges so that this new program can be implemented this summer.
Work continues on implementation of the Data Warehouse System, the first important step to the full implementation of a management information system for all of our community colleges. Significant work has been done in the last month in the review of the proposals for the next step.
Be sure to take a look at our new Web page which will go on-line next week. It is a much more attractive and user friendly Web site than we have ever had.
We have recently updated our Equal Employment Opportunity Plan and are pleased to report to you that in the past year we have increased the number of minorities from 39 to 48 who are employed in the System Office and increased the number of females from 105 to 111. We are committed to full equal employment opportunities for all persons and are pleased with the progress we are making.
Kennon Briggs and his staff continue to provide a very high quality of information to all of the various capital needs initiatives that are underway. Special kudos are due to Phil Albano and his staff for their hard work.
Kennon has assembled a working group to implement performance funding which will include Hilda Pinnix-Ragland and various representatives from the staff and the field. Kennon and Keith Brown made a presentation on implementation of performance funding to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee. He and his staff continue to work on the implementation of House Bill 275, the first funds from which will begin arriving in May.
Scott Ralls and the Economic and Workforce Development Division sponsored their Annual Focused Industrial Training Conference at the Freightliner Training Center last week. Over sixty college representatives attended. The meeting featured a rollout of two exciting new programs: the North Carolina Manufacturing Certification Program and "The Great Game of Business", an economic literacy program. Scott made a presentation on the Manufacturing Certification Program to representatives of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Center for Workforce Success in Washington. They were so impressed that they have endorsed the program and have agreed to allow us to use their national logo in association with our implementation of this program.
While in Washington, Scott met with representatives of the Manufacturing Skill Standards Commission to further involve our System with this national effort.
Two weeks ago, the Plastics Technology Training Program, a joint effort of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and the Mountain Area Workforce Development Board, was recognized as a finalist for the Theodore E. Small National Workforce Partnership Award given by the National Association of Workforce Development Boards.
Thanks to the hard work of Stephanie Deese, our System is receiving a half million dollar demonstration grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to develop an Eligible Training Provider System in partnership with the Governor’s Commission on Workforce Preparedness and the Employment Security Commission. We will develop an on-line data processing system to help in reducing the paperwork of our colleges in complying with the Workforce Investment Act.
Stephanie has also been working with the Department of Health and Human Services and several of our colleges to review their progress on the Pathways to Employment grants.
Six of our colleges were among the grant recipients from the North Carolina Division of Social Services to address problems of families with significant employment barriers and to reduce intergenerational poverty. Barbara Boyce played an instrumental role in this process.
Scott Ralls and Peggy Graham visited Stanly Community College along with representatives of Cisco Systems to learn more about a Cisco pilot project being developed at Stanly.
Our Small Business Centers are working with the Laurinburg Electronic Commerce Center to develop business training for electronic commerce. I might add that I serve on the E-Commerce Committee of the Information Resources Management Commission.
We have continued our initiative with the trucking industry to enhance and expand our training for that important industry. We are meeting with corporate officials from John Deere and Chrysler Corporation on potential statewide pilot projects in that area.
Dr. Delores Parker and her division have begun planning for an exciting national Global Education Workshop which we will host in Greensboro in 2001 with the support of the Stanley Foundation.
Dr. Scott and Bill Muench have been involved in strategic planning for State JobReady, a collaborative program between community colleges and public schools in career exploration and development, the federal funding for which is about to expire.
Elizabeth Brown of this System will be coordinating a postsecondary data collection pilot project for the U.S. Department of Education. We were one of ten states chosen because of our ability to collect data and our reputation at the national level. We will explore the impact that different measurement approaches have on the performance levels of the core indicators in the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act.
Sillar Smith, Coordinator for Compensatory Education, hosted a very successful statewide conference for her coordinators in the field with over 65 participants.
Dr. Randy Whitfield attended a regional workshop for State Directors of Adult Education in Chicago last week.
Lastly, we should all congratulate and thank Dr. Parker for her work which resulted in a $20,000 grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to engage our colleges in a visioning process around key issues and trends for the future. Focus groups will be conducted by region throughout the next year.
Lancaster is a thoroughly English name, but surely I must have some Irish blood to merit my having "the luck of the Irish." I am so lucky to be able to work with this Board and our wonderful and hard working staff. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.