New president challenges Gateway

NKU, community college to share resources

MentorLinks: bringing students and experts together

The Kentucky Post
November 16, 2002

New president challenges Gateway

G. Edward Hughes envisions the fledgling Gateway Community and Technical College as one day being a premiere institution recognized nationally for addressing the needs of the region's work force.

Friends and colleagues say if anyone can make that happen, Hughes can.

He was inaugurated Friday at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center as the first president of Gateway, formerly known as the Northern Kentucky Technical College.

Using the ceremony's theme of "Dare to Soar," Hughes challenged Gateway's staff, students and supporters to help the college realize its vision.

Last year Hughes left a successful, 16-year tenure at Hazard Community College to take on the challenge of becoming the founding president of the new institution. Those who know him say Hughes has the experience, the expertise and the character to help Gateway reach its goals.

Hughes transformed Hazard Community College in Hazard, Ky., from a one-building institution with 600 students to a comprehensive community and technical college with more than 3,800 students. He also oversaw two capital fund drives that brought in more than $13 million in private and public funding for the school.

Hughes was inspired to seek the new position after hearing University of Kentucky President Lee Todd give a commencement speech to Hazard students.

"He seemed to speak directly to me," Hughes said when Todd told the graduates to seek "challenge over comfort."

Michael McCall, president of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, called Hughes a dreamer, an innovator and a leader whose faith and values will help him succeed.

In less than a year the college has seen a 50 percent growth in students and established its first endowed scholarship with $25,000 donated by The Bank of Kentucky.

Gateway has 2,500 students on three campuses in Covington, Edgewood and Highland Heights, Ky.

The Kentucky Post
November 14, 2002

NKU, community college to share resources

Northern Kentucky University and the new Gateway Community and Technical College have agreed to share many of their resources in hopes of helping each other grow and prosper.

The presidents and other officials of the two schools met Wednesday with NKU's Board of Regents to outline their cooperative plan, which includes:

• Using NKU as an interim provider of Gateway's general education classes.

• Developing a dual admission program to encourage students at two-year Gateway to continue their education at NKU.

• Transferring some NKU remedial classes for inadequately prepared students to Gateway.

• Coordinating academic calendars and educational outreach programs.

• Limiting duplication of associate degree programs at the two schools.

"It's an unbelievably comprehensive agreement," said NKU Board of Regents Chairwoman Brenda Wilson.

"We are creating a culture of cooperation with the new college," said NKU President James Votruba. "We will support and reinforce each other's work."

Gateway President Ed Hughes said cooperation with NKU was "essential" to help get the new community college off to a good start. He said, for instance, it was important for Gateway students to be able to use NKU's library because money isn't currently available to build a big library at Gateway.

Votruba said in places where four-year and two-year colleges haven't cooperated, both institutions have suffered.

"A university that sits on its hands can lose a large number of students," he said.

Votruba said he expected NKU to lose a small number of freshmen to Gateway, but to make up for it with Gateway graduates transferring to NKU as juniors.

NKU, founded in 1968, has 14,000 students and Gateway, which is making the transition from a technical college to a community college, has 2,500. Both schools are expecting enrollment increases in the years ahead.

"We're going to be recruiting more broadly and marketing our quality academics," said Votruba. "We're becoming more of an upper division university, with more graduate students."

Also at Wednesday's Northern Kentucky University regents meeting:
• School officials said $30 million has been raised toward a $40 million goal to pay for scholarships, endowments, programs and facilities. Another $5 million is expected to be raised by the end of the year.

• Regents met privately to hear a report from a professional evaluator of college presidents who has been assessing Votruba's performance at NKU the past five years. Nothing was said publicly, but people who have talked with the evaluator said Votruba has received very high marks.

• George Rieveschl Jr. was selected to receive an honorary degree at NKU's December commencement. Rieveschl, a University of Cincinnati graduate who became a UC vice president, is an arts patron and scientist who discovered the first commercial antihistamine agent, Benadryl.

Community College Times
November 12, 2002

MentorLinks: bringing students and experts together

Imagine having a helpful colleague who is an entrepreneur, National Science Foundation grant recipient, or author of degree programs with experience running the nation's largest fish hatchery, a state drinking water program, or forging partnerships with Indian tribes and forestry companies. The recipients of AACC's MentorLinks grants do not have to imagine. In mid-October they met six mentors who collectively have these attributes.

Although the campus-based grant recipients, selected in a national competition, are assigned one mentor, the MentorLinks program encourages participants to draw on the expertise of all members of the mentor team through face-to-face meetings and a project listserv.

"There are pockets of excellence out there, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel," Ellen Kabat Lensch said during the six mentors' first meeting with the instructors and administrators from the seven colleges that won the grants. Kabat Lensch, director of the Advanced Technology Environmental Education Center in Bettendorf, Iowa, was a mentor during the grant's pilot phase, which concluded last year. She was a featured speaker during the MentorLinks meeting that preceded the annual, three-day ATE national conference in late October at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program is a congressionally-mandated National Science Foundation effort to improve technician education and training through community colleges.

AACC uses part of its $2 million NSF-ATE grant to fund MentorLinks. The grant recipients get $7,500 to pay for release time to develop their projects and write new curricula. They also receive money for travel to their mentors' colleges and to attend discipline-related conferences. More importantly, the project provides technical assistance, networking and professional development opportunities. Mentors receive an honorarium and money for travel expenses.

AACC uses the remainder of its ATE grant to disseminate information about ATE through publications, a Web site, a leadership summit, the annual national conference, and ATE-related meetings.

The MentorLinks meeting was more than a meet-and-greet. Consultant Carl Spenser led the group in a brainstorming session to organize the steps needed to complete their projects during the two-year grant. Oscar Lopez, associate dean of Student Support Services at Richland Community College, Texas, gave participants examples of how to infuse stronger relationships with campus student services into their academic programs.

The grant recipients, in a wide range of disciplines, began to develop strategies for enhancing their technician training programs in their first meetings with their mentors.

Mike Rudibaugh has crafted a new Geographic Information System (GIS) curriculum for Lake Land College in Mattoon, Ill., but cannot convince administrators and students of the new technology's value. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System has the opposite problem. KCTCS administrators and business leaders want GIS courses; the system has even purchased the expensive software. Unfortunately the Kentucky system does not have a GIS curriculum.

Rudibaugh's and KCTCS's mentor is Tim Sharp. Before he became a community college professor he worked for DuPont, then started and sold two businesses of his own. He teaches agriculture technology students at Jackson State Community College how to use GIS as a tool for precision agriculture.

Flathead Valley Community College Vice President Lisa Stitch has a natural resources technology program with only a few students despite her college's location near the crown jewel of national forests in Kalispell, Mont. Her mentor is Susie Kelly, who as project director of the Northwest Center for Sustainable Resources has developed partnerships with timber companies and Indian tribes. She also holds summer workshops that draw community college educators from around the country to Chemeketa Community College, Ore., where the center is located.

Marine Biologist Hugh Hammer wants to revitalize Gadsden State Community College's aqua-fishery program but is having difficulty attracting students to the hatchery across the state from Alabama's catfish farms. His mentor, William Falls, uses his ATE grant to expand the aquaculture program at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Fla.

Kevin Begley, workforce development manager at the Valencia Campus of the University of New Mexico, hopes mentor Phyllis Owen can help him develop IT programs with rural high schools. Owens leads the computer graphics department at Camden County College, N.J., where she used a Microsoft-funded Working Connections grant to expand tech-prep programs for 300 middle and high school students.

Robert Silbaugh, a network technologies instructor at Riverland Community College, Minn., hopes his mentor, Donald Astrab, can help him create an advisory board that will unify the technology program at his Minnesota college's three campuses. A PhD. chemist, who at one time ran Hawaii's drinking water program, Astrab is collegewide dean of technical education at Brevard Community College, which has four campuses.

Developing a 2+2+2 biotechnology technician program is the goal of Jenna Johnson, dean of health occupations at Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute, N.M.. Joy McMillan, associate dean of Madison Area Technical College, Wis., has been the principal investigator for several ATE grants and heads the Midwest regional center for BioLink, the National Center for Biotechnology Education.

After the two-day meeting Johnson said McMillan was already helping her through the maze of new program development. "We'll be able to come up with a mush better product because of our affiliation with the grant and Joy's rich knowledge about what we're doing."

For more information see www.aacc.nche.edu/Mentorlinks.