WCC board chooses leader
By Steve Herring
Published in News on June 19, 2016 1:45 AM
Normally under the state's Open Meeting Law a public body can consider the qualifications of a candidate in closed session, but the actual appointment has to be made in open session.
However, Shante Martin, general counsel for the N.C. Community College System, said that in this case the final authority is the state board.
The local recommendation will first be reviewed in closed session by the state board's personnel committee, she said.
It then goes to the full state board that will also discuss it in closed session. Since it is the final authority, the state board vote will be in open session, she said.
No further action is required from the WCC board of trustees if the recommendation is approved by the state board since the WCC board has said this is the person it wants, Ms. Martin said.
"We had six excellent candidates," Mrs. Martin said. "We had a lot of good candidates. It was kind of hard to get it down to the six finalists. We brought those in, and we were really impressed with the quality of people we talked to.
"We tried to make this as open and transparent process as we could. We've tried to have it so that we got input from all different groups. We had the school superintendent and the head of economic development on our search committee as well as representatives from the faculty and the staff and the foundation and the trustees."
A lot of people have been interested in the process because the college is such an important part of the community, she said.
"Choosing a president it is not only important to the faculty, staff and students, because it is all about the students and trying to help our students be successful, learn, get good jobs and go onto college" Mrs. Martin said. "So we are pretty pleased with how well our process has gone."
But in the end, it is the trustees' responsibility to choose a president, she said.
As part of the process, each candidate met with board of trustees members for an in-depth interview and were taken on a tour of the campus. They also attended meet-and-greet events open to the public and college community.
The final session was Thursday.
The six candidates who were under consideration are:
* Dr. David Brand has been senior vice president and chief academic officer at Fayetteville Technical Community College since 2012. Prior to that, he served as director of the Department of Education with the U.S. Army, Special Operations Command, at Fort Bragg. He also was chief academic officer and dean of Bauder College in Atlanta and regional director of operations at DeVry University and Keller Graduate School of Management in Atlanta.
* Dr. Michael Elam has been president of Roanoke-Chowan Community College in Ahoskie since 2013. He was interim chancellor at Central Louisiana Technical Community College from 2012-2013 and had previously served as president of College of the Mainland in Texas, vice president for student development at Daytona State College and interim chancellor at SOWELA Technical Community College in Louisiana.
* Dr. Deborah Grimes became senior vice president of instruction and student services at Lenoir Community College in 2015, preceded by stints there as vice president of academic and student services and several other roles, including assistant to the president.
* Dr. Ted Lewis has been vice president for academic affairs at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tenn., since 2012. From 2003 to 2012, he was dean of instruction at Lone Star College in Texas and served as a dean and department chair at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas.
* Dr. Ralph Soney has served as vice president of corporate and continuing education at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C. since 2013. From 2005 until 2012, he was president of Roanoke-Chowan Community College and had previously been vice president for academics at Pitt Community College. He also has an earlier connection with WCC, having been a division director there from 1997 until 2000.
* Dr. Thomas Walker has been campus president of Central Community College-Grand Island in Nebraska since 2014. Among his other experiences, he was executive director of the Knowledge is Power program in St. Louis and dean of administrative services at Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley in Kansas City.