President’s Report
to the
State Board of Community Colleges
September 29, 1999
It seems like a long time since we last met, not only because of the two months, but because so much has happened since July 16. The big news of the recent past has been Hurricane Floyd. You would be very proud of the manner in which your System staff responded to this crisis. On a personal level, we have collected load after load of paper products, cleaning supplies, food, etc., for distribution. On a professional level, we are coordinating assistance for colleges in the East using the outpouring of offers of that assistance from our other colleges. They will donate money and products, counsel students and staff, fill out grant and loan applications at Small Business Centers, clean homes and businesses, and repair homes and cars. If you can think of it, someone will be doing it.
Of course, the other big news continues to be the wonderful legislative session that ended soon after our last State Board meeting. By all assessments, this was our best year ever. Because this report is going to be so long anyhow, I will not repeat the details of our legislative successes since we have reported them to you several times since our last meeting. Suffice it to say that we received more than $80 million in new money for this fiscal year and more than $110 million in new money for next. This is after having averaged about $25 million in new money each year for the last ten years. However, all of our priorities and needs were not met and significant challenges remain for the short session.
At the top of our challenges for the new session will be the facilities bond issue. Of course, we were all disappointed that in the end no new construction dollars were approved in the regular session. We were pleased with the $250,000 per campus that was ultimately appropriated for repairs and renovation, but we had hoped for and worked hard for full funding for our repair and renovation needs and significant new construction dollars.
I learned in conversation with President Molly Broad on our trip to Latin America that there is a misperception in the University community that one of the reasons the bond package failed in the end was a lack of enthusiasm among community college leaders for the package at a critical time. I have assured her that this is incorrect and that we did all that we could to be supportive of the original university proposal of full funding without a vote of the people until the very end. It is important that we now work to remove that misconception about our role in the regular session and work closely with university leadership between now and the short session to make certain that the optimal package is approved. Our consultant, MGT, is updating our capital needs package for presentation to the Legislative Study Commission on Higher Education Facilities. You will recall that the package presented in the regular session was based on a 1997 study of current need at that time. Therefore, this study was flawed in two ways: it did not take into account projected growth and it was two years old, so it did not accurately reflect present current need.
We will also have challenges in the short session in obtaining adequate resources for salary increases for faculty and staff across the System, continuing education funding parity, Small Business Center enhancements, and other priority needs not met in the regular session. With this meeting, we have begun the process of validating our priorities and developing those details for the short session.
The Foundation work continues at a fast clip. There is $1.7 million now pledged and there are proposals outstanding almost equal to that amount from other givers. Regional meetings are now taking place that will broaden the appeal to non-foundation board member companies and foundations. When the annual Foundation meeting occurs in October, we hope that we will have requests outstanding well in excess of the $5 million goal. I have asked Greg Poole to give you a full report at the October meeting.
Greg and I have been meeting with public relations firms to assist us with the public phase of the campaign as we look toward a re-imaging of our System. This will add value to technical and vocational degrees with parents, students, and counselors. It will make clear the important role we have to play in academic degrees at the associate and baccalaureate level. Greg Poole continues to be an amazement and an inspiration to us all.
In addition to several regional meetings of Foundation Board members, Greg and I met with leaders at BellSouth and Wachovia about major gifts from those two already generous corporations. Former Senator Marshall Rauch hosted a group of potential contributors who are close friends of his for us. We presented to them more information about the Foundation, its goals, and their opportunity to give. Since our last meeting, three important additions have been made to the Foundation Board: Ken Otis, CEO at Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Bob Ingram, Chairman and CEO at Glaxo Wellcome, and Barry Eveland, Senior State Executive for IBM in North Carolina. The quality of the Foundation Board continues to delight us all.
I have met twice since our last meeting with Chancellor Frank Borkowski at Appalachian State University to discuss issues of cooperation and collaboration between his university and the community college presidents in that region. The most recent meeting was weekend before last in Boone with those presidents in attendance as well. There is incredible demand for degree completion programs to be offered on our campuses by Appalachian State. There is similar interest all across the state with varying degrees of support for such initiatives by the respective chancellors. I met with Chancellor Alvin J. Schexnider at Winston-Salem State University and community college presidents in his service area and learned of their upper division courses being offered on community college campuses including several very successful degree completion programs for a B.S. in nursing.
The summer meeting of the Presidents’ Association was a productive and happy occasion in light of the successful legislative session. I left there and went to Santa Fe where the meeting of my counterparts from across the country was held. As always, I came away from that meeting feeling good about our System, but also learning ways that we can be better. A Minnesota collaborative program between their universities and community colleges in teacher preparation is an idea about which I have testified before a Congressional Education Committee field hearing in Raleigh and before the Rural Prosperity Task Force meeting at James Sprunt Community College.
An issue we are likely to hear more about in the future concerns pay of adjunct salaries. Of course, there are now benefits for 30-hour employees. However, I have heard rumblings of long time 30-hour employees being reduced to 25 hours to avoid paying them benefits. In addition, pay for part time faculty continues to be abysmally low. In Washington State, a successful class action suit was filed by part-timers. Not only did the suit cost their System a lot of money to defend, after losing they had to pay a huge sum in back pay and benefits and they had to pay the legal expenses for the plaintiffs.
An added treat of this meeting was the happy coincidence of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association’s meeting in Santa Fe overlapping ours. This permitted a very useful joint meeting with university counterparts. It should be noted that North Carolina will host these statewide community college leaders at their annual meeting next summer at Atlantic Beach. I hope that many of you will be involved in that gathering.
With regard to the North Carolina Rural Prosperity Task Force, I chair the Human Resources/Education Working Group. We reported at the meeting of the Task Force at James Sprunt week before last. I am very pleased with the quality of the papers prepared and presented on this occasion, especially with the presentations by Dr. Scott Ralls and Dr. Randy Whitfield on worker training and retraining and literacy/HRD, respectively. As I indicated, my paper (done in collaboration with Dr. Charles Coble of UNC-GA) was on teacher preparation, recruitment, and retention in rural communities. In August the full task force met at Mars Hill College with regard to infrastructure needs in rural North Carolina.
I spoke at two graduations since our last meeting, at Brunswick and Asheville-Buncombe. As always, I came away from those speeches bursting with pride at the variety of programs offered, the quality of the graduates, and the excitement of family and graduates at their accomplishments.
I met with Sampson Community College and Southeastern Community College Trustees regarding their presidential searches and have now received, but too late to report to you, the finalist at Nash Community College.
I spoke to the Governor’s Workforce Development Commission regarding our budget success, having met with them previously to urge their support for our initiatives. Speaking of workforce development, I am happy to report that Expansion Management Magazine has again chosen ours as the best workforce development program in the country.
For two weeks in August I accompanied the Governor and about fifty other North Carolinians on his Latin American Mission. Though trade and investment were foci of this trip, for the first time higher education became a focus of his mission. Molly Broad and a number of university leaders from across the state were involved in addition to President Charlie Russell of Pitt Community College and me. In Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, meetings were held with leaders in higher education and workforce development to explore ways in which we might cooperate. There was particular interest in various distance technologies and the sharing of courses using those technologies. There was especially high interest in our Internet-based courses, something that Dr. Charlie Russell could speak to directly.
When I returned, I met with Gordon Smith and Bill McCrea at Exploris. This is an exciting development for education from birth to old age. They are eager to involve community colleges in utilizing this rich new resource in science and global education and to perhaps create more formal relationships between public schools, community colleges, and universities on site.
Dr. Reid Parrott and I met with Dean Joan Michael of North Carolina State University to discuss the problem we will face when Dr. George Baker retires and his distinguished professorship returns to the School of Textiles from which it was borrowed when Dr. Baker came to North Carolina. Dean Michael is interested in pursuing a fund raising initiative to create a distinguished professorship that would be permanent to the school and allow us to attract a person of Dr. Baker’s stature to replace him. It would require fund raising of $500,000 to accomplish this. If you have any ideas, please let me hear them.
In early September I returned to Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College to celebrate their 40th anniversary. A great time was had by all!
Week before last I spoke to the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce and thanked them and other business leaders across the state for the important role they played in our legislative success in the recent session. They were pleased with my report on the session and pleased with the growth at Cape Fear Community College, a true indication that Dr. McKeithan and his staff are meeting their needs.
Week before last I also met with the Executive Committee of the School Improvement Panel on which I sit. We continue to deal with the Governor’s challenge for us to develop programs to make North Carolina number one in public education by the year 2010.
Later in the day I met with leaders of the trucking industry who are concerned about the inadequate number of truck drivers and diesel technicians that we are able to train in our System. We are going to explore several options, including new programs in strategic areas of the state.
The Trustees Association met in Raleigh week before last and they were a happy bunch, too. Several members of your staff presented to them during their meeting. Except for the restriction on flexibility of transfer of funds which was added to this year’s appropriation, the trustees are uniformly happy with our most recent legislative session.
Last week your vice presidents and I met with Dr. Carol Kasworm, the new chair of the Department of Adult and Community College Education at North Carolina State. Dr. Kasworm made clear her excitement to be in this new position and her willingness to look creatively at how that program could better serve our System Office and our individual campuses.
Dr. Beth Johns continues to provide outstanding leadership in encouraging cooperation between community colleges and the public schools. Dr. Johns and Dr. Hunter continue to work closely with the School Improvement Panel and with DPI on policy development related to exit exams, early math placement testing, and other initiatives for administering community college placement tests to high school juniors. You have already at this meeting approved the High School Articulation Agreements which represent excellent work between DPI, our boards, and the Presidents’ Association in establishing policy guidelines that significantly improve seamless education. Drs. Johns and Hunter continue to collaborate with the University on various initiatives to increase the college-going rate in North Carolina.
The Federal Government has approved North Carolina’s transitional State Plan for the Workforce Investment Act, which includes all of our literacy programs. We are now at work on the four-year plan, due next April. A real challenge this fall has been implementing the new financial aid programs made necessary by the generous appropriation of 5 million dollars in financial aid by the General Assembly.
Dr. Johns’ division has processed 98 cooperative agreement contracts between public schools and our colleges for the 1999 Fall Semester. This is a significant increase over last year. The interest in Huskins and Dual Enrollment programs is growing with our continued push for those programs. Last year showed a dramatic increase over the previous year, and we believe that this year growth will be more impressive.
An exciting initiative is underway between the Medical Society and our colleges to meet the needs of rural medical office practices with programs tailored to meet the needs of staffs of smaller physician offices. We continue to lead the nation in Geographic Information Systems training, and you will be pleased to receive a major report from the Advisory Panel at the October meeting.
July and August are always the busiest months for the Division of Business and Finance as they deal with closing out the previous year and allocating the budget for the coming year. The process went smoothly this year, but not without tremendous staff overtime. The division has worked closely with the Presidents’ Association in realigning the formula budget allocations and in dealing with the budget transfer limitations issue. Final budgets were distributed before the end of July, the earliest in anyone’s memory. They are now hard at work with the Legislative Issues Study Group responding to legislative mandates and preparing for new issues.
The Division of Administration continues their very long and arduous job of contracting for the library automation project. However, that will pale by comparison to the challenge they face now with the design and implementation of a management informations system. An important element of that project is the data warehouse for which specifications have recently been completed. Our Web page has been redesigned to be more attractive and "user friendly." It is good to have Harvey White working full-time on this with the assistance of Ken Whichard. The updating of our strategic plan has begun with a one-day conference scheduled for October 21st. I hope many of you will be able to participate in that conference.
As you might imagine, our colleges are very interested in the new performance measures and standards and in the possibility of incentive funding for meeting and exceeding those standards. We will be participating in a pilot project for telework which will allow employees to work a portion of the week in their homes by computer. The divisions of Administration and Academic and Student Services have been hard at work on the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools team visit to approve substantive changes in our distance learning programs at 38 of our colleges. This will occur October 10-14 when we will have 29 visitors from across the Southeast swarming all over North Carolina examining our distance learning offerings. This is a scary but exciting prospect.
In recognition of the critical mission of our System and workforce development and economic development, you have approved at this meeting the creation of a new division. It will combine certain functions previously in the Division of Academic and Student Services with Economic Development--a section that previously reported to me. This will assure that we will continue to provide quality workforce and economic development services that will justify our continued national reputation in this field. The Small Business Centers continue to show improvement in the quality and consistency of their projects. Their annual meeting in Southern Pines was very successful. We are pleased with our partnership with UNC’s Small Business Technology Development Center to provide Y2K training to small businesses across the state. Dr. Ralls and his staff continue to work very closely with other state agencies in workforce development. They played an important role in the recent Governor’s Conference on Workforce Development in Greensboro, showcasing a number of our projects such as customized training for Caterpillar at Central Carolina Community College and our bio-tech initiative between the Biotech Center, Novo Nordisk, and Vance-Granville Community College.
In closing, let me say that we are off to another record breaking year across the system. Despite the tuition and continuing education fee increase, early indications are that those increases have not significantly reduced enrollment. There is incredible interest in the new financial aid which appears to address any concerns which might have otherwise developed. Enrollment appears to be up across the system. Additional funding for equipment, repairs and renovation are making a real difference on each of our campuses. Your hard work with the legislators throughout the session can be credited for the good situation our colleges find themselves in this fall. Thank you for your continuing support.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.