Big things happening at LCTCS
By Dr. May | April 4, 2008
There’s only one word that I can use to describe the mood in our System right now: Excitement! A lot of great things are going on.
I recently returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia in which a landmark agreement was signed between our System and the Jeddah Community College. The accord covers academic assessment and accreditation, joint degree programs, faculty development and distance learning. It was a remarkable trip and students and faculty on both sides will definitely benefit from this agreement.
On Thursday and Friday we’ll be hosting our sixth annual conference day for the purpose of enriching our faculty and staff. Conference Day is a great opportunity for the employees of our system to come together, network and learn best practices from each other. It’s very important for us to meet together once a year and reaffirm our vision for the system. We can also reassure each and every person that they have an important role to play in the future of community and technical colleges and in the future of Louisiana’s workforce.
The theme of this year’s conference is “Transforming Our Landscape: Removing Barriers – Expanding Access.” There are four areas of interest that our speakers will be covering: academic and student affairs, workforce and economic development, institutional operations and System initiatives. There are a lot of very interesting sessions on the agenda and we have two wonderful keynote speakers, Craig Spohn, Director of the Cyber Innovation Center and Tim Barfield, Secretary of Department of Labor. I’m sure both will have many wonderful things to say about the future of Louisiana’s workforce.
Since the creation of our system almost ten years ago, we have exceeded expectations. We have grown by leaps and bounds and now we are essential to the state’s economy. That point came across loud and clear in Governor Jindal’s recent announcement of his plans for the future of Louisiana’s workforce. I was elated to hear his vision and honored that he has recognized the significant role that our System must play in addressing workforce training needs.
I believe that with the continued support of our state leaders and with the hard and diligent work of all those in the community and technical college system, we will truly make a big difference in tomorrow’s workforce. The need is there and we are here to meet it. We stand ready to answer and fix Louisiana’s workforce challenges.
I will keep you updated in the weeks to come on the status of the Governor’s legislation regarding our System and. You may also sign up on our website to become a community and technical college advocate and to receive regular legislative updates from our system. Please visit the following link: http://www.lctcs.edu/governmentalRelations.asp.
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Welcome!
By Dr. May | March 3, 2008
Welcome to my blog! As President of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, I feel that one of my most important roles is that of a communicator. This is a great opportunity to share my thoughts with you and to update you on our progress and challenges.
Exciting things are happening in community and technical colleges in our state. We just got off to a great start for the spring semester with record enrollment at our schools. As of fourteenth day class enrollment figures, our system is now serving 51,788 students. We are actually up by 11.7 percent from last spring and I’m so proud of this accomplishment. I feel that this positively reflects the hard work done by everyone in our system and I want to extend kudos to those that are working so diligently to change lives and create futures.
While I am extremely proud of our schools, I realize that there is still much work to be done in the area of workforce training. It is projected that we will need to enroll 160,000 students by the year 2012 in order meet our State’s workforce shortages. Yes, the workforce challenges of our state are vast, but there is no other agency in Louisiana that offer the quality of workforce training programs that we do. Our system is committed to educating the citizens of this state and to providing the programs needed to help strengthen and bolster Louisiana’s labor force and economy.
Our colleges have many exciting opportunities and developments on the horizon. I’ll be sharing more with you about these innovative developments along with information on our 2008 advocacy agenda in the weeks to come. Please continue to check my blog regularly and feel free to share your comments and thoughts.
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