President’s Report
to the
State Board of Community Colleges
November 15, 2002
Since we last met, elections have occurred resulting in a very changed landscape for the coming session. The Senate Democrats have a narrower margin than in the past and the House appears to have changed to a Republican majority. New members elected in the House and Senate total 51, requiring education and "friend-making" with many, if not all of them. Some come with strong records of community college support, but others are unknown. Your assistance will be needed in giving us information about new members whom you know and in helping us educate them all.
The Public School Forum, on whose Board I sit, is one of several agencies grappling with the teacher preparation and "No Child Left Behind" challenges. We continued that work at our recent meeting. Other boards on which I sit that have met this month include the Rural Center, the Information Resource Management Commission, the UNC-TV Board and the Workforce Development Commission.
We continue to work with the Biotechnology Center and the universities in addressing the workforce development needs of biotechnology manufacturing companies in North Carolina. I have met with the president of the Biotechnology Center and Susan Seymour has been working, along with me, on grants to move forward the studies ordered by the General Assembly.
One of the happy duties of this position is installing new presidents of community colleges. It is a time for colleges to celebrate their past and look to their future with new leadership. I was pleased to be a part of Dr. Diane Honeycutt’s installation as president of Richmond Community College. Also during the month, I met with the Trustees of Robeson Community College to provide your assessment of their finalists and with the Trustees of Davidson County Community College as they begin the process of choosing a new president upon the retirement of Dr. Bryan Brooks.
Many of the System Office Staff and staff from a number of our colleges participated in another successful Biofrontier’s tent at the State Fair. This was a wonderful opportunity to expose thousands of people to biotechnology careers and how they might obtain the appropriate education through a community college in their home county.
The Education Cabinet met. As has been the case at most of our recent meetings, teacher preparation was a focus of this meeting. A follow-on meeting will occur soon after the first of the year.
Teach for America is an initiative that brings community leaders into classrooms that have Teach for America teachers. This is a national program to bring very bright college graduates who are not prepared by their degree for teaching into the classroom with appropriate in-service training. I taught a 7th grade class in Louisburg and was greatly challenged by the experience.
The Presidents’ Association had a very successful meeting at Surry Community College. The presidents enjoyed seeing that beautiful campus and especially enjoyed their Viticulture and Enology Technology programs developed to serve the needs of the burgeoning wine industry.
Dr. Larry Keen and I broke away from that meeting at Surry to attend the Workforce Development Awards dinner in Greensboro. Dr. Stephanie Deese of our staff received the George Autry Award for distinguished service in workforce development. We are all very proud of Stephanie.
Your staff wrapped up another successful Combined Campaign that once again went significantly over our goal, which was $18,000 this year. To date, contributions of $19,154 have been pledged. I have said it before and I will say it again, you have a wonderfully generous staff.
Fred Williams and I met with the eastern deans of continuing education at Wake Technical Community College to provide them information on our budget request for the next biennium. Fred met with them on a number of other issues as well.
The Former Members of Congress Association, of which I am a member and officer, sponsors Congress to Campus." This program brings a Democrat and Republican former Congressman to a college campus for a three-day residency to help students, faculty and community leaders have a better appreciation of Congress, how it works, the contributions it makes to our country’s governance, etc. This past year we have been fortunate to have three of these residencies in North Carolina. There was a joint residency at Cape Fear Community College and UNC-Wilmington, a joint residency with Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and UNC-Asheville, and the most recent one at Sandhills Community College. No state has ever had three residencies in one year, much less three that involved community colleges. Our joint university/community college residencies are also unique to the program. I was able to visit the Sandhills residency earlier this week.
Last night I participated in one of the events at the General Hugh Shelton Leadership Initiative at North Carolina State University which is headed General Hugh Shelton, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Our meeting yesterday and today made it impossible for me to participate in anything other than the dinner. I look forward to the challenge of this service in the months ahead.
The staffs of Dr. Saundra Williams and Kennon Briggs are working very hard on ironing out problems in the College Information System implementation. Training goes on while programming problems are resolved.
Dr. Williams was the keynote speaker at the Fall 2002 Student Leadership Conference of the North Carolina State Chapter of Black American Affairs held at North Carolina A&T State University.
Once again, Dr. Delores Parker and her staff have successfully pursued a grant, this time a $3,000 mini grant through the American Association of Community Colleges to hold a regional service learning workshop. We are very proud that the Golden L.E.A.F. Foundation’s recent grant announcements funded 13 community college projects and a System grant for scholarships. These totaled $4,159,612.56.
Dr. Parker was the G.E.D. graduation speaker at Forsyth Technical Community College.
The Transfer Advisory Committee, in cooperation with our System Office and UNC-General Administration, organized and held four training sessions to clarify and answer questions about the Comprehensive Articulation Agreement manual that was written by Elizabeth Isler. There were 397 participants from the community colleges, the University System, and private universities and colleges that attended the sessions held at Guilford Technical Community College, Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, Pitt Community College and North Carolina State University. We are now working on an initiative to do a comprehensive look at that agreement at the five-year point.
Kennon Briggs and his staff successfully completed work on our continuation and expansion budgets and have transmitted them to the State Budget Office. We will work from now until the Governor’s budget is released to the General Assembly on refining that request into a final gubernatorial budget.
Phil Albano and his staff reported to the Higher Education Bond Oversight Committee on October 28. The presidents of Alamance Community College, Durham Technical Community College and Vance-Granville Community College reported on the status of their bond projects. As always, our report was well received.
Kennon has been on the road explaining the budget requests with presentations at Guilford Technical Community College, Lenoir Community College and Durham Technical Community College.
Dr. Larry Keen and his staff have been actively involved during the last month in several major industry recruitment efforts. It is hoped that these efforts are evidence of the beginning of a turnaround in our economy.
The Media Development Office had a particularly busy month in producing training and promotional videos for industry and for our programs.
Gayle Harvey did a presentation at the North Carolina Economic and Workforce Development Conference on the role of community colleges in providing the FastTrac "Business Feasibility" program which was made possible for displace workers through the Kauffman Foundation grant.
Since this is our last meeting before the holiday season, on behalf of the entire System Office staff I would like to wish each of you a joyous holiday season.
This page maintained by Chancy Kapp.