Courier-Journal
December 17, 2004
Louisville advances in education
Bachelor's degree ranking still low
Louisville's work force is going back to school in record numbers to update
skills and find better-paying jobs, ranking the city No. 1 for awards and certificates
earned last year in a study of 16 metropolitan areas, according to a study released
yesterday.
But the Human Capital Scorecard also shows that among the cities studied, Louisville
continues to rank near the bottom in bachelor's degrees.
"This is hard to turn. ... It's really long-term work," said Paul
Coomes, a University of Louisville economist who helped research the inaugural
study for the work-force development agency KentuckianaWorks. "We're growing,
but everybody else is too, so our ranks haven't moved much."
Jefferson County's bachelor's degree ranking fell one spot to 14th from the
year before while its graduate- and associate-degree rankings rose one spot
each to eighth and seventh.
The education level of a city's work force is key for companies considering
relocation, and the scorecard is intended to give the Louisville area a way
of measuring where it stands against potential competitors, such as Nashville
and Indianapolis.
Louisville has the 11th-largest population of the 16 metro areas studied, and
the city's rankings partly reflect that.
The dramatic jump in certificates awarded — the study found the number
has tripled in the past few years — was the bright spot in the survey,
with the Louisville region's ranking jumping from 11th to first in just one
year. Jefferson Technical College, Spencerian College and Louisville Technical
Institute were among the institutions that greatly raised their certification
activity, the study said.
"The demand for them has really increased," said Lisa Brosky, spokeswoman
for the Jefferson Community and Technical College District. "We've added
41 certificate programs in the past couple of years."
Those programs include fields such as residential electrician, computer network
administration, Cisco professional and interdisciplinary early-childhood education.
The school awarded 68 certificates in 2000-01. By 2003-04, that number soared
to 581. The number of associate degrees awarded jumped to 635 from 383 in the
same period.
"Most of our students are not the traditional college-age student,"
Brosky said. "These are folks coming back because they realize the need
for additional credentials to advance."
One-year diploma programs like practical nursing and surgical technology are
popular because students "can get through school a lot faster and get into
a lucrative career pretty quickly," Brosky said.
"But then you'll also see people in information technology who just want
to add to their credentials. ... People have to be retrained because the technology
is moving so fast."
Coomes said the survey was launched to provide a more accurate and immediate
picture of Louisville's educational attainment than the U.S. census provides
every 10 years.
Many were alarmed when the 1990 census placed the Louisville area dead last
in adults with bachelor's degrees among the same 16 cities used in the scorecard.
In 2000, the city was 15th.
"When you looked at just those two points, it really looked bleak,"
Coomes said. "When we looked between those two years, we confirmed a V
pattern with a drop in the mid-90s and toward the end it's coming back up."
KentuckianaWorks' board wants to not just raise educational attainment, but
to do so at a faster rate than competitors and improve Louisville's rankings,
said Michael Gritton, the agency's executive director.
"We have good things going on," Gritton said. "The Everyone
Reads program at the K-12 level, and our adult ed both in Jefferson and Bullitt
counties are some of the best in the state."
But many programs face funding issues and marketing problems, he said.
"When you put up wages per person and you map it, it maps almost identically
to the educational attainment levels of the people in those cities," Gritton
said. "So it's no coincidence that Nashville and Indianapolis earn more
money than we do. They have more people with higher education levels than we
do."
Bowling Green Daily News
December 17, 2004
BGTC’s Thomas taking new position
Leader will now oversee
Jack Thomas, president of Bowling Green Technical College, is moving to a new
leadership position in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.
KCTCS president Mike McCall announced at the BGTC Board of Directors meeting
Thursday that Thomas was appointed to oversee corporate and industrial training
in the KCTCS, a move that would bring Thomas’ expertise to the main system
office in Versailles.
McCall acknowledged the impact Thomas has had on the college, as well as the
community.
“Dr. Thomas has been such a tremendous asset to this institution and to
KCTCS,” he said. “He’s engaged this community; he has tremendous
respect throughout the business community, and admiration. People are going
to miss that.”
Bringing those same qualities to the KCTCS office was a top priority for McCall
when he created the position.
“I see that as a real strength he could bring to the system office and
to the state as well,” he said. “Dr. Thomas was clearly the type of
person that I wanted for that position.”
Thomas expressed his fondness for the college, once a small technical school
that he helped transform into a multi-campus facility.
“Our goal was to – collectively we sat down and talked about it –
become the premier technical college in the southcentral part of the country
and I think we’re very, very close to achieving that,” he said.
The quality of the faculty, campuses and students are all things Thomas mentioned
as improvements in recent years.
“We’ve gotten to the point now that all faculty have earned degrees,
and that’s a really special thing for a technical school,” he said.
“We’ve gone from two campuses up to four, and two more on the way.
We’ve watched students come in increasing numbers and change their lives.”
Thomas added that the enrollment in the last five years has gone up 130 percent.
He said that when he started in 1990, he had 85 students, nine employees and
two buildings on the other campus.
“Now we’ve got 2,500 students, four campuses and 120 employees,”
he said. “ ... That’s a lot of capacity to train people.”
One particular story demonstrated to Thomas the positive effect the institution
has had on the residents of Bowling Green.
While in a grocery store, Thomas said, a former BGTC student approached him
and told him that he graduated in tool-making from BGTC two years earlier. The
man said that he was doing well, and when Thomas asked what that meant, the
man replied by saying he made more than $70,000 the previous year.
“When you hear those types of stories, when you see people come in and
they’ve been treated roughly in life and they haven’t had opportunities
and they’re scared and they don’t know if they can do it, and two
years later they finish and they go out and get that special job, I mean, that’s
what it’s all about,” he said. “Our motto is changing lives and
soaring beyond expectations.”
McCall said it would be a “very inclusive process” to determine the
next president of BGTC. He stressed the importance of the board members in this
decision, and hoped to field inquiries from a number of qualified candidates.
“We need to know each candidate,” he said. “Not just a piece
of one.”
Clements Group Newsletter
December 2004
Henderson Community College Receives $175,000 in Pledges
Henderson Community College's year-old "Fulfilling the Promise"
fund-raising campaign received a significant boost with the donation of $100,000
from Ohio Valley National Bank and $75,000 from the local Preston Family Foundation.
Thanks to a matching gift opportunity that was part of a Title III federal grant
obtained by the college earlier this year, the two contributions are expected
to be matched by federal funds.
Lisa Piccolo, HCC chief institutional advancement officer, said the OVNB and
Preston Family donations are earmarked for the campaign's Student Scholarship
Endowment and that designation qualifies them for matching federal money. There
is, she said, a $360,000 ceiling on those matching funds. Scott Davis, campaign
chairman, as well as a representative of the bank and the Preston Family Foundation,
said the two contributions and their federal matches bring the campaign total
to about $1.1 million thus far and the effort is still in its initial stages.
The campaign, which was launched in October, 2003, does not yet have an announced
pledge goal. Piccolo said this week that "We're still in the lead gift
phase and need to get through this phase before determining a goal." Pledges
will be paid over a six-year period in the campaign which is expected to be
completed in mid-2005.
"Fulfilling the Promise" is a project for all of the Kentucky Community
and Technical College institutions. Each school is conducting its own campaign
and is establishing its own individual goal. KCTCS President Michael McCall
said the campaign has statewide initiatives that "will fulfill the promise
of a brighter future for all Kentuckians, enhance economic development and community
growth, and enhance Kentucky's emergence as a global economic powerhouse in
the 21st Century."
Locally, there are three campaign objectives:
- A campus Child Development Center, intended to be a state-of-the-art facility
that will meet the needs of students with children, employees of local business
and industry, and the community at large. It also will provide a learning
environment for students pursuing education studies.
- Technology Infrastructure Advancement, which will allow the college to remain
current with today's rapid changes in technology via cutting-edge equipment
and well-trained faculty.
- Student Access/Student Success programs and scholarship endowment to meet
the needs of an ever-growing enrollment.
Davis pointed out that the campaign "is an important undertaking for the
college" which not only has received no new state money for its programs
in recent years but also has had to deal with budget cuts. "As a community,
we need to be supportive of an institution that educates our workforce,"
he said, adding that HCC provides numerous two-year programs and also allows
traditional students to receive their first two years of college here. Davis,
who is vice chairman of the OVNB Board of Directors and administrative manager
of the Preston Family Foundation, said it's essential that HCC "be able
to address continuing enrollment trends and serve students with quality, state-of-the-art
education." HCC President Patrick Lake noted that the bank and the Preston
Family Foundation have been long-standing supporters of the college and have
set an example for others in the community. "We are grateful for their
generosity and leadership."
Lexington Herald-Leader
January 3, 2005
Personnel File
Kentucky Community and Technical College System: James White has been
named state director of the Kentucky Center for Excellence in Automotive Manufacturing,
part of a multi-state collaborative between education and industry that focuses
on the development and implementation of automotive manufacturing technology
and training.
Lexington Herald-Leader
December 15, 2004
Professor honored in China
Lexington Community College Professor David Wachtel was made an honorary
citizen of Changsha, China, during his visit to that city in late November.
His goal: to recruit and lead other American teachers to travel to a small college
located in the poorest and most densely populated part of Changsha to teach
conversational English to Chinese English-language teachers.
The students of Wachtel and the others are elementary and high school teachers
from the most rural areas of China. In China, English mastery is required for
college graduation. Of the 23 honorary citizens of Changsha, Wachtel is the
only educator; the rest are businessmen.
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