President’s Report
to the
State Board of Community Colleges
August 17, 2007
The legislature has gone home leaving us with a smaller portion of
the education budget than normal, much of which we funded ourselves
with a cut in our budget and a tuition increase for our students.
However, in the end, we ended up better than I thought we might. As
always, we are grateful for what we did receive.
Following your July meeting, I began what seems to be nonstop
traveling, starting with a speech to the IIPS Conference in
Charlotte the following Monday. The next day I visited with Dr. Myra
Johnson, the new president at Isothermal Community College, and
traveled on to Asheville to meet with the trustees at
Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College on their presidential
selection. You have approved today Dr. Betty Young for that
position. The next day as I traveled on to Murphy for the NC
Association of Community College Presidents’ summer meeting, I
stopped at Haywood Community College to visit with the new
president, Dr. Rose Johnson, and then in Sylva to visit with Cecil
Groves. The Presidents’ meeting was very good. It was especially
good for all of us to be reminded of the travel burden that the
presidents at our two extreme ends of the state shoulder to attend
meetings in the center of the state.
The following week, I participated in the budget bill signing in the
State Capitol and visited the BTECH to see our fantastic space in
the shared facility on Centennial Campus at North Carolina State
University.
The next day I traveled to New Bern to speak at the Basic Skills
Conference.
The next day I visited with Ahmed Hajji and Willa Dickens to talk
about workforce development in Morocco. In a subsequent news
interview, Dr. Hajji appeared to be very impressed with what he
learned in his visit with us. Following that appointment, Fred
Williams and I participated in Willa Dickens’ first all-staff
meeting of her division.
Last week, I spent the first half of the week in Williamsburg,
Virginia, at the annual meeting of the Council of State Directors of
Community Colleges, a council of the American Association of
Community Colleges. As always, a very substantive program was
beneficial to us all. I have not been in the office long enough to
prepare a synopsis of that meeting, but I will forward that to you
when I am able to do it for you and our colleges.
From there I went to Washington for a conference on the role of
higher education in international development. President Don
Reichard of Johnston Community College and Doug Long of the System
Office staff made a presentation on our Thai initiative, which was
well received.
Earlier this week we had a “meet and greet” for all of the new
employees who have come to work in recent months. That afternoon the
Public School Forum Executive Committee met.
On Tuesday we met with our Duke Energy colleagues to approve
economic development grants for colleges in the Duke service area
from funds set aside by Duke for those purposes.
That afternoon we celebrated and mourned the departure of Ken
Whitehurst upon his retirement. As you all know, Ken has been an
incredible Associate Vice President for Academic and Student
Services who will be missed by all of us.
That night I spoke to the Cary American Legion Post, giving them the
traditional civic club speech.
Yesterday I participated in a panel with State Superintendent June
Atkinson, Chancellor Kenneth Peacock of Appalachian State
University, and Kathy Lee of the SAS Institute at the NC Technology
Association meeting in Pinehurst. That necessitated Fred Williams
and the other vice presidents covering for me at the Presidents’
Association Executive Committee meeting.
You can see from this recounting of my activities that I have not
been in the office very much since you last met, necessitating lots
of night and weekend catch-up time. However, the good news is that
your ever competent System Office staff carried on quite well in my
absence for which I am grateful.
Richard Sullins has begun the planning for the fall retreat at
Halifax Community College, including the possibility of a
performance at the new Randy Parton Theatre. The spring off-site
meeting will be at Mitchell Community College in Statesville and a
summer meeting will be scheduled in Boone hosted by Caldwell
Community College and Technical Institute. Richard and the System
Office staff are already working on the orientation sessions for new
presidents and State Board members which will be held in November. I
hope those of you who have not participated in such an orientation
will make a special effort to be with us for this excellent
presentation.
For the first time in our System’s history, one of our own will
receive the Governor’s Award for State Government Service, in
essence “state employee of the year.” Elizabeth Brown is to be
congratulated by all of us. She was last year’s recipient of our
President’s Award and her name went forward to compete at the state
level.
Fred Williams participated in the retirement dinner honoring Dr.
Larry Norris for his outstanding service at Fayetteville Technical
Community College. He also represented me and our System at a
conference hosted by Governor and Mrs. Easley on meeting the needs
of the children of military personnel in North Carolina, including
the deployed forces of National Guard. The conference was called
“Living in the New Normal / Supporting Children through Trauma &
Loss.” While the conference focused on the needs of military
dependents, the programs and lessons from this conference have broad
applicability in family stress situations unrelated to the military.
Last month, I reported to you on the Interactive 3D technologies
which we hope to be able to use in our training programs. Since only
a few of us could go to Alabama, we requested that Navigator repeat
the briefing and demonstration here in the Triangle. Participating
in that briefing and demonstration were President Erskine Bowles,
Chancellor Jim Oblinger from North Carolina State University, and
several from our System Office staff. All were impressed.
Drs. Delores Parker and John Pettitt attended the Bridges to the
Baccalaureate training program at the National Institutes for Health
in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Parker has been the Project Director for
this innovative grant and through the years twelve colleges and four
universities have benefited from this program. The guidelines for
the program have changed dramatically and attendance at this meeting
was very important.
Ken Whitehurst, Antonio Jordan, Linda Nelms, and Bill Randall have
been working hard on the implementation of “Learn and Earn Online,”
a major initiative of the Governor. They did an excellent
presentation on this initiative at the Presidents’ meeting at
Tri-County Community College.
Dr. Edith Lang, Antonio Jordan, Charletta Sims Evans, and Vonna
Viglione attended the Achieving the Dream Policy Issues Conference
in Dallas. Dr. Parker, John Pettitt, Vonna Viglione, and So-Young
Yim attended an Achieving the Dream State Leaders Meeting in
Florida.
Our six colleges participating in the Breaking Through initiative
(Davidson, Durham, Forsyth, Pamlico, Pitt and South Piedmont) met
with our national partners, Jobs for the Future and the National
Council for Workforce Education, to explore strategies for getting
low skilled adults back to college and on to better employment
opportunities. Our participation in this initiative is funded by the
GlaxoSmithKline Foundation.
For the first time this fall, all of our colleges are registering
their students using CIS. This is a significant accomplishment which
we all celebrate. There continue to be bumps in the road, but our
Help Desk is working hard to address each of them. Likewise, the
Release 18 migration project continues to make outstanding progress
with the successful installation of Release 18 at three “early,
early adopter” colleges which confirmed that issues identified by
the six Pilot colleges have been resolved satisfactorily.
The NC Community College Distance Learning Alliance has merged with
the North Carolina Distance Learning Association to better
coordinate the use of e-learning technologies from pre-kindergarten
through graduate school.
Kennon Briggs’ shop has been a whirlwind of activities since the
legislature went home. They have all been working on the budget
allocation of more than a billion dollars available to our colleges
for the next fiscal year.
In addition, Sharon Rosado and Tom Hunter have been working on a
process for allocating the advance planning for facilities funds
appropriated this year. These will be the first funds ever available
for facilities planning funded by the state.
Bobbie Jo Moore, Annette Dishner, and their colleagues closed out
the fiscal year one week earlier than at anytime in our history. A
record amount of $36 million was carried forward from the 2006-2007
budget to this fiscal year which will be used for funding equipment,
New Industry training, and a record $14.9 million for Performance
Funding.
Willa Dickens has hit the ground running as the newly appointed Vice
President for Economic and Workforce Development. Willa brought her
regional training directors to Raleigh for a comprehensive meeting
to look at best practices for managing Customized Industry Training
and New and Expanding Industry Training projects. The new guidelines
which you approved at your last Board meeting were a focus of much
of this meeting.
The Human Resources Development Advisory Board met on August 9 with
eleven college representatives present.
Diane Steinbeiser and Jan Hastings have completed a revision of the
Career Start Operational Guidelines which are now being reviewed by
our three partner agencies.
The Small Business Center Network has recently implemented a Client
Management System, with all of our Centers using the new technology.
Now that the legislature has gone home, the hard work of prudently
and effectively spending the appropriations and carrying out the
legislative policy mandates begins. You will be hearing more about
both in the months ahead.
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Friday, August 17, 2007 04:19:09 PM
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