Patton has praise for Muhlenberg campus
Patton tours Muhlenberg community college campus
Princeton lineman school all lined up to train first class of students
Budget Ax Falls Hard on State Higher-Education Agencies
The Messenger
September 7, 2002
Patton has praise for Muhlenberg campus
Dr. Judith Rhoads, president of Madisonville Community College, is proud of the school’s Muhlenberg County campus in Central City.
She is proud of the building, the staff that mans the facility and the effort by the people of the county to make the educational resource a reality. She also speaks highly of the students who take advantage of the satellite campus.
Rhoads made no secret of her pride Friday afternoon as she guided Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton on a tour of the Muhlenberg campus.
“The people of Muhlenberg County decided they wanted post-secondary education within the borders and did what needed to be done to raise the money,” she said. “The people who live here knew that for the county to prosper, education had to be a priority. They made it a top priority, and look at what they have. This is truly the county’s college.”
The people of Muhlenberg County raised approximately $3.2 million of the $4 million needed to construct the two-story, 22,000-square foot classroom building. State government contributed $800,000 in building funds, and takes care of operational costs for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System campus.
“This is a perfect example of the positive change a group of concerned citizens can affect,” Patton said. “I have made my belief in education known, and the people of Kentucky have rallied behind it. If we can educate Kentucky, there is no limit to the contribution this state can make for the rest of the world.”
The governor said the only other facility with a story close to the Muhlenberg County satellite of MCC is a Cynthiana classroom building in Harrison County.
“I wish more Kentuckians would follow the lead of Muhlenberg and Harrison counties,” Patton said. “So often we hear that people want this, or say they need that, but they want the state to foot the entire bill. When cooperation exists, with motivation, much more can be accomplished.”
Rhoads told the governor there were tentative plans in place for a future expansion to more than double the floor space of the current facility.
John Peters, MCC Director of Development and public affairs, said those plans - he referred to them as Phase II - include an addition to the current building and another free-standing building. That construction would add an additional 30,000 square feet under roof on the campus.
“Our plans are to make this facility a full training center for traditional students and occupational certification students,” he said. “We are all excited about the work being done here and look for only great things to come.”
Muhlenberg County students enrolled in MCC total 789, with about 520 attending classes in Central City. Campus director Harold Morris said the duplicated head count at the facility is 865. Totals for majors programs are:
• 151 undecided
• 211 Allied Health
• 46 business
• 58 engineer technology
• 163 transfer
• 21 non-degree
• 100 dual credit
• 39 B & I
Forty-two sections of classes are offered on the Muhlenberg campus, with 521 county students receiving $1.07 million in financial aid assistance.
Seventy-four Muhlenberg residents graduated with a degree from MCC in 2001-02, while 49 others received occupational certificates.
The Muhlenberg campus of MCC sits on 20.8 acres of real estate donated by the Everly Brothers Foundation in 1995. The campus opened for classes Aug. 31, 2001.
Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer
September 7, 2002
Gov. Paul Patton on Friday praised Muhlenberg County’s efforts in getting a community college campus and wished fellow Democrats well in the upcoming election.
During a 40-minute official state visit of the county, Patton also stopped in Drakesboro to view one of a dozen homes being built for low-income families with a $1 million state grant.
Patton spent most of his time touring the branch of Madisonville Community College in Central City that opened last August.
The community raised $3.3 million for the building, while the state contributed $700,000.
“That is just amazing what this community did,” Patton said. “This community really stepped up . . . “
“A lot of people are coming back to school who ordinarily wouldn’t,” said MCC President Judy Rhoads. She and County Judge-Executive Rodney Kirtley guided Patton through classrooms on both floors of the building.
Patton questioned Rhoads about the site, which had 480 students in the spring semester and has an estimated 550 this fall.
The governor also asked about the building’s capacity.
Rhoads said the site could find room for students. But there was a limited amount of space for specialized equipment or classrooms needed to offer courses such as nursing, machine tooling and information technology.
An announcement is planned for Oct. 10 concerning Phase II of the campus, Rhoads said.
By spring, an announcement will be made about being able to offer associate of science and arts degrees, she said.
“The community goal is that this be a stand-alone campus one day,” state Rep. Brent Yonts, a Greenville Democrat, told Patton.
“You have done yourselves proud,” Patton said while standing in a glassed-in corner of the second-floor break area and looking at the nearby woodlands.
Yonts acted as Patton’s guide, meeting with him in front of the Muhlenberg County Democratic Party’s headquarters on East Main Cross Street before the MCC tour.
Patton shook hands with about 30 people, several of them wearing “Vote Democrat” T-shirts; signed “Patton for Governor” hats; and posed for pictures with a variety of local candidates.
“Y’all have a great organization here,” Patton said before stepping into the headquarters, which officially opened Wednesday, for a quick inspection.
Princeton Times Leader
September 9, 2002
With a dirt lot now home to 40 power poles, Princeton’s Lineman Apprenticeship training program is less than a month away from seeing its first students.
Princeton will be the site of a training lab for classes conducted by correspondence through Hopkinsville Community College.
The labs will be held at the State Fire School site on U.S. 62 West behind AFCO and are scheduled to begin Sept. 30, with a climbing lab running through Oct. 4.
A construction lab follows, held Nov. 4-8, with an operations lab Dec. 2-6, said Danette Scudder, logistics and development specialist for the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association (TVPPA).
The TVPPA Education and Training Department helped sponsor the program in cooperation with the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) and the Municipal Electric Power Association of Kentucky (MEPAK).
With its enrollment open to virtually anyone, the lab offers a chance for training that is hard to find elsewhere in western Kentucky.
Arthur Dunn, principal of the Caldwell County Area Technology Center, hoped the program would be beneficial to his graduates.
Until the program was developed under the supervision of Princeton Electric Plant Board Superintendent John Humphries, seniors graduating from the vocational school’s electricity program had few opportunities for entry-level training.
A school in Paducah offered lineman training, but enrollment was open only to power company employees, Dunn said.
The Princeton site will offer the same educational opportunities to experienced linemen and newcomers.
And in an industry with high competition for positions, training counts.
The lab’s poles were set in early August, with time and materials donated by various public power companies in the state.
Their efforts illustrate the amount of statewide support the Princeton school has garnered, Humphries said.
For more information about the lineman training program, contact the Princeton Electric Plant Board at (270)365-2031.
As state governments struggle to keep their budgets balanced, several have chosen
their higher-education agencies for especially deep spending cuts.
Just last week, California lawmakers adopted a budget for the current fiscal
year that slashes spending on the state's Postsecondary Education Commission
by more than 40 percent, or $1.4-million. The cut leaves the agency, which collects
data on colleges and advises the governor and lawmakers on higher-education
policy, in the position of having to reduce its staff and substantially narrow
the scope of its research.
Elsewhere in recent months, state lawmakers have reduced financial support for
Missouri's higher-education coordinating board by 27 percent and cut the budget
of Arizona's coordinating board for community colleges by 66 percent, forcing
both agencies to scale back their activities and operate with far fewer employees.
Other state higher-education agencies have escaped such severe budget reductions
-- in some cases, narrowly. But many have seen their state appropriations
trimmed by up to 10 percent -- and are expected to remain vulnerable to
deeper cuts as long as the economy remains in the doldrums. The State Council
of Higher Education for Virginia, for example, suffered an 8-percent reduction
in its budget for the current fiscal year, but has been told to make plans for
a midyear cut of possibly 7 to 15 percent.
The recent downsizing of California's Postsecondary Education Commission "demonstrates
the precariousness of statewide agencies that have a very important role but
are not perceived by legislators as direct providers of education," says
Warren H. Fox, who resigned as the commission's executive director in June,
after 11 years, when it became clear to him how much it would shrink.
Because such agencies are independent of public colleges, and have no alumni,
students, or faculty members, they do not have constituents that they can count
on to rally behind them in the legislatures. "The independence of a statewide
agency is one of its strengths," Mr. Fox says, but "that independence
can put you at risk."
It is shortsighted of states to diminish such agencies, says Paul E. Lingenfelter,
executive director of the State Higher Education Executive Officers, a nonprofit
group based in Denver. For the most part, he says, higher-education agencies
are still regarded by state lawmakers as valuable, playing a key role in getting
public colleges to work cooperatively and to tend to their states' needs in
terms of workforce and economic development.
"As budget times get tougher, and our ambitions for higher education in
society continue to rise, that kind of leadership at the state level will become
even more valuable and more crucial," Mr. Lingenfelter says.
Jumping Ship in California
The budget that California lawmakers adopted last week reduced the commission's
annual appropriation to just under $2.2-million, from $3.6-million.
Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, had proposed cutting the appropriation by 80 percent,
to about $720,000, to help close a state budget gap estimated at nearly $24-billion.
The Legislature chose to reduce the commission's budget by only half that much,
but Mr. Davis could still use his line-item-veto power to bring the appropriation
in line with his proposal.
Last week, a legislative committee assigned to craft a new master plan for higher
education in California recommended abolishing the Postsecondary Education Commission
altogether and replacing it with a new state agency that would advise lawmakers
on elementary and secondary education as well. Charles A. Ratliff, a senior
consultant to the Legislature's Joint Committee for Developing the Master Plan
for Education, says his panel would like to see the commission remain fully
in operation until it is replaced, in part because it has played a crucial role
in advising his own panel's work.
The budget bill awaiting Governor Davis's signature "reduces the analytic
capability of the commission and reduces its responsiveness," Mr. Ratliff
says. He adds that, because the successor agency being proposed by his committee
would have more responsibilities and a larger budget than the current commission,
the downsizing raises questions about the state's willingness and ability to
make the financial commitment necessary to carry out the new master plan.
Seventeen of the commission's 43 staff members have already left their jobs
in anticipation of the layoffs to come. Mr. Fox, who left to become a scholar
in residence at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, at the University
of California at Berkeley, noted that the commission had already recovered from
one major retrenchment, during the recession of the early 1990s, and that he
did not want to remain at its helm while it was again rendered unable to perform
much of its work.
"A very bleak future was being presented," he says. "Agencies
like this should not come and go depending on the vagaries of the economy. The
issues are too large, too important."
Commission officials last week were trying to determine where to trim the budget.
David E. Leveille, the deputy director, says the agency may no longer be able
to produce several of the documents that it routinely issued in the past, like
annual reports on faculty salaries and on the performance of various higher-education
institutions. Many of its research efforts will have to be narrowed in scope
or performed less frequently, he adds.
Deserted in Arizona
While California's commission has been curtailed strictly as a cost-cutting
measure, the near elimination of Arizona's State Board of Directors for Community
Colleges was seen by some as politically motivated.
As part of the state budget for the 2002-3 fiscal year adopted by the Legislature
in June, the board's annual appropriation was reduced to $237,000 from $700,000,
and 8 of its 13 full-time staff positions were eliminated. What's more, the
board was stripped of much its rule-making authority, its role as the agency
that certifies community-college instructors, and its power over local community-college
districts' ability to put particular bond measures on the ballot. Those powers
and duties were transferred to the state's 10 community-college districts.
"Truthfully, we did not see the downsizing coming. It was pretty much a
shock," says Karen F. Rizk, the board's chairwoman. As a result of the
cuts, "there are some menial clerical-reporting requirements that the board
will be providing, but that is really all that is left," she says.
The lawmakers who called for the retrenchment argued that much of the board's
work was unnecessary, duplicated the administrative duties being performed by
the community-college districts, or infringed on the districts' policy-making
authority.
The downsizing of the board was opposed by officials of two districts -- representing
Pima County and Mohave County -- but the others took no position on the
issue and expressed confidence that they could take on the administrative duties
that the state board had been performing. The Arizona Community College Association
likewise remained neutral in the debate.
One of the primary legislative advocates of the move was State Rep. Laura Knaperek,
a Republican, who is chairwoman of the House of Representatives' Appropriations
Committee. Many community-college presidents and local-board members called
her to express support for the measure, in part because the state board was
"intruding into the policy realm of the community colleges" by doing
things like devising a strategic plan for all community colleges, she says.
The board's defenders, meanwhile, accused her of having a vendetta against the
agency, with which she had clashed in the past.
Gov. Jane Dee Hull, a Republican, let the budget bill become law in June, but
refused to sign it, specifically citing the gutting of the community-college
board as one of several changes she opposed. In a letter explaining her decision,
she wrote: "I believe that 5 to 10 years from now a future Legislature
will look back and question why all the oversight authority was eliminated from
this board. In the end, the state has surrendered almost all oversight to local
districts and maintained a board that has no authority."
Lawmakers contemplated a proposal to abolish the Missouri Coordinating Board
for Higher Education before agreeing to reduce its budget by 27 percent, or
$350,000, in the 2002-3 fiscal year. Even with such a reduction, the board is
still slightly better off than it was last fiscal year, when lawmakers withheld
about a third of its tax-dollar support.
The drive to eliminate the board was led mainly by some legislators who have
complained that it had mistreated public colleges in their electoral districts
by not giving them enough state funds, among other things. Missouri's General
Assembly went along with the 27-percent reduction in the board's appropriation
mainly because the state faced a budget gap of more than $370-million.
The cut has forced the board to eliminate 7 of its 32 staff positions. Among
the jobs eliminated was a liaison who worked with community colleges to come
up with programs in workforce development and technical education. Joseph L.
Martin, the board's associate commissioner for finance, says the personnel reductions
have slowed the agency in dealing with proprietary-school certification and
student scholarships.
In Nebraska, Gov. Mike Johanns, a Republican, proposed slashing the budget of
the state's Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education by 31 percent,
or about $322,000, in this fiscal year. Legislators refused to go along, however,
and the budget that was adopted made a comparatively minor cut of 9 percent,
or $94,000.
"The commission works well with the [Unicameral Legislature's] Appropriations
Committee -- a lot of our data goes to them -- so I think they can
see our value," says Patsy C. Martin, a spokeswoman for the commission.