President’s Report
to the
State Board of Community Colleges
June 18, 1999
In addition to these appropriations which will benefit the entire System, there are a number of special appropriations that benefit individual colleges. Furthermore, work continues on a capital funding package which would benefit both universities and community colleges, if that is passed. We are working on various scenarios which would bring hundreds of millions of dollars into the System for repairs and renovations of existing facilities, full catch-up on our equipment needs, and new construction on many and perhaps all college campuses. We do not know at this time the impact of the overwhelming defeat of the school bond issue in Wake County on how the General Assembly will approach these capital needs.
In additional to dollar appropriations in the bill, there are special provisions that also impact us. Among them is a study on nine-month versus 12-month employment for faculty and the need for summer school funding; further study of cooperation between our colleges and public schools in offering courses for high school students; a performance-based budgeting program which would allow us to keep up to 2 percent of our reversions to be distributed based on performance on the campus; a provision allowing us to transfer over-realized tuition and fee receipts to our equipment reserve; some reduction and flexibility in transferring funds from the salary allocation into other purposes; and a study to determine how community college capital construction might be streamlined.
Your personal contact with members of the General Assembly during the past several weeks has been much appreciated. Don’t let up yet! All the votes aren’t counted yet. In addition to your efforts, we have had unparalleled cooperation and participation by presidents, faculty and staff members, trustees, and the business community in support of our legislative initiatives. North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry has been particularly active and effective, especially Phil Kirk, Leslie Bevacqua and Phil Phillips. As you can imagine, the staff here at the System Office has devoted untold hours to these efforts. We are happy to see this cooperative approach working.
In our continuing efforts to work cooperatively with the University System to provide enhanced services for the public schools, I joined with the Governor in announcing a LEARN NC initiative with the University at Chapel Hill. This program will provide Internet educational resources to public school teachers that will assist them with lesson plans and technology enhancements for the classroom. The Community College System through its presidents has agreed to provide training to all of the public school teachers in North Carolina in how to use this valuable resource at no cost. In return we will be receiving significant technology assistance from LEARN NC which will greatly benefit the implementation of our virtual learning community initiative.
The Foundation Executive Committee held its first meeting to take care of routine legal business and continue the planning for the campaign which will begin later this summer or early fall. I am happy to announce to you that the work continues to go very well with more than $1 million already pledged, though no formal solicitation has begun.
Since our last meeting, I have met with the Alamance CC and James Sprunt CC Boards of Trustees on their presidential selection and have met with one president and his Board chairman to discuss his imminent announcement of retirement. Since that announcement has not been made, I am not at liberty to reveal that name. You have approved the new President of Alamance; we expect to approve the new President of James Sprunt at our next meeting.
In early June, the North Carolina Association of Community College Trustees held an incredible reunion of trustees, past and present, at Guilford Technical Community College. The program included speeches from important leaders of the System going back to and including an incredible presentation by Dr. Dallas Herring. Other speakers included Ben Fountain, Bob Scott, and Raymond Stone. It was a grand and glorious occasion which allowed us to celebrate our successes and to reminisce about the hard fought battles and funny incidents that resulted in those successes.
Speaking engagements during the month included two civic clubs and the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry Executive Committee. I attended the meeting of the Board of the Center for Applied Textile Technology in Belmont. Dr. Scott Ralls filled in for me at Roanoke Chowan Community College for its annual Small Business Center Awards, an event I had to cancel because of legislative demands. I welcomed the new continuing education directors at their meeting in our wonderful new meeting space on the fifth floor. If you did not visit that space last month, please do so today before you leave. You will be impressed!
We continue to lose valuable staff with the recent retirement of Bill Cole, Director of Program Audit Services, and Leslie Reiff from my staff.
Dr. Beth Johns accompanied the School Improvement Panel to Portland, Oregon to participate in a conference on proficiency admissions standards as we continue to struggle with the issue of remediation in community colleges and universities. She also worked with the North Carolina Commission on Volunteers and National Service to implement an exciting non-credit course on volunteer management being piloted this summer at Western Piedmont, Catawba Valley and Caldwell Community Colleges. Dr. Randy Whitfield made a presentation this week in New Orleans at the League of Innovation on our Pathways Project.
Dr. Brenda Rogers and her Division have recently completed the annual Reporting Plan which will improve the timeliness and accuracy of reports from the field to the System Office and then from us to the General Assembly. The Planning Council met yesterday to review the new set of performance measures and standards and the proposed revision of the Critical Success Factors report. We will continue to work on our goals and objectives for the 1999-2001 Strategic Plan and she will make a presentation to the Board when we meet in retreat in Brunswick County in September. A further working session on strategic planning will be held in October. We hope that you will participate in this planning effort.
Our System Office policies and procedures are now available "on-line." We do not intend to make hard copies of this document. This will save significant printing expense and allow us to revise the manual as necessary throughout the year. As a part of our continuing effort to upgrade the equipment in the System Office as well as on our campuses, we have been busy installing new computers and loading new software onto them. In further assistance to the field, our new Customer Services Unit in Information Services is now fully staffed. This will provide invaluable and increased support for the administrative software that we provide to our colleges. All of these improvements were made possible by additional appropriations received in the Short Session.
Much of the success we have enjoyed in the General Assembly this session has been the result of incredible work of the Division of Business and Finance. We have been able to provide accurate and prompt information and analyses as issues have been considered in the General Assembly. These efforts have all but consumed that division and its entire staff. These Herculean efforts with regard to General Assembly funding issues have been on top of the year-end close-out process, itself an incredible task.
Though your entire staff has worked hard throughout the year and especially in recent weeks, we all thank you for the consistent and strong support you give us in those efforts. You make it a pleasure for all of us to work here and we thank you for that.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.