Alabama Two-year College Chancellor Bradley Byrne speaks to the Jasper Rotary Club Tuesday about Bevill’s new president Anne McNutt and proration.
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01-23-2009
Alabama Two-Year College Chancellor Bradley Byrne visited the Jasper Rotary Club Tuesday to introduce Anne McNutt, the new Bevill State Community College president, and to discuss issues with proration in Alabama’s education budget.
Byrne recalled sitting in his law office when he was on the Alabama State Board of Education and receiving a call about observing the Walker College campus in Jasper to hopefully merge it with Bevill State Community College.
“I had never seen the college and I was just blown away when I saw this beautiful campus and buildings. Both because of what I saw in this college, but also what I saw in this community, I knew on the spot that was a good marriage for our system,” he said. “So I was glad to be involved in the effort to merge Walker into Bevill State and have Walker a part of our two-year college family.”
Byrne, who interviewed the top three finalists in Bevill’s presidential search, praised McNutt’s credentials and said he feels confident she will be an efficient president for the college.
“We had just a fine group of finalists, but I can tell you that when I and my staff got finished with the interview with Dr. McNutt, the only question I had in my mind is do we make her the president of that college or should I resign and make her chancellor,” he joked.
Going from working in the state legislature to becoming the two-year college chancellor in May 2007 was not an easy transition since the state’s two-year college system was under investigation for several indiscretions during that time, he told the audience.
“We had four CEOs in 12 months. That’s not a good situation, but this system, which this college is a part, is pretty important to the future of this state,” Byrne said. “We are the delivering mechanism for the state in workforce development. We are the delivering mechanism for the state of Alabama for adult education. We have a half million people in this state under age 65 without a high school diploma. We have to get those folks a GED. They’ll have no chance in this economy. So you can’t let a system like that go down the tubes just because of the inappropriate conduct of a few people.”
Byrne talked about some hard decisions he had to make as a result of those investigations including firing several people and making changes in policy in the system.
He also discussed cuts that had to be made because of proration in Alabama’s education system, which had an extreme effect on two-year colleges.
“At the end of this legislative session when they passed the budgets for next year, we would have cut as a result of those problems a minimum of $100 million out of the state revenue because of our system,” Byrne said. “To put that in context for you, our total amount of state revenue at the top was $440 million. So far, we have been able (to make those cuts) without cutting back on any one of those core services that we offer here and throughout the state of Alabama.”
Despite the recent economic downturn, community college enrollment is up 5 percent.
“So we’ve got more people we need to serve with less money,” he said.
Byrne said he believes there will be more proration cuts in the next fiscal year, which he expects to made this summer.
However, the chancellor assured the group that the state’s economy is not in peril by quoting a portion of newly elected President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech.
“He said one thing today that I’ve been trying to say for the last several months — that we all need to hear — and that is that ‘the fundamentals of the American economy is still good.’ We are still a productive people. Our means of production infrastructure is still there. There’s still a demand for what we do so well in America,” he said. “The only way we’re going to get out of the economic mess that we’re in in this country and in this state is to produce our way out of it.”
Byrne said even though the country is in an economic downfall, Alabama is doing well in several areas. The automotive industry is down, but is still in better shape than the rest of the country and Future I-22 is a major influence in that survival for Walker County, he said.
“Toyota is absolutely committed to its presence in this country and building that plant in east Mississippi. And we know, we know that a lot of those suppliers are going to locate along Corridor X,” he said.
He also said the Mercedes plant in Vance and the Kia plant opening in Georgia will help strengthen Alabama’s economy.
“Those suppliers know that some of the most productive auto workers in the world are in Alabama and that is a major selling point for us in the eastern part of the state and we believe it’s a major selling point for you over here in the western part of the state,” Byrne said.
Bevill State will play a key role in that development through its technical and workforce training courses, Byrne said.
Elizabeth Higgins
reprinted by permission Daily Mountain Eagle |
