WELCOME MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT

President’s Message - Winter 2008

As most parts of the country come out from under the heart of winter and our thoughts begin to turn to sunshine, flowers, spring, and the annual AACC Convention, I thought that I would take this opportunity to update the president’s message.

NCBAA continues to be concerned about issues that impact our very existence in the American Community College enterprise and will continue to both raise issues for AACC consideration as well as to provide leadership in developing reasonable and humane solutions to those issues. We accomplish these ends through several mechanisms.

For several years the NCBAA Board has developed resolutions, based on careful analysis of issues impacting African Americans and other persons of color involved in community and technical colleges nationally, and introduced them to the AACC Board for consideration and adoption. These endeavors have been successful primarily because of the emphasis placed on appropriate and strategic communication and collaboration with our liaisons and representatives to the board.

Another method that we continue to utilize is our strategic initiative process. Annually we determine which strategic initiative(s) will guide our thinking and focus our efforts. It is this strategy that will be the focus of this update. I view this as fulfilling the commitment made in my first message, on behalf of the NCBAA Board, to focus on enhancing our organizational communication and to build an effective electronic presence. Our web page continues to make positive strides and I want to take advantage of the opportunity to more widely communicate the values upon which we operate. Over the long haul we hope to reduce the number of queries: “what do you guys do; what’s NCBAA all about?”

Employing our strategic initiative process over the last several years we have been engaged in raising the level of awareness regarding the plight of young black males in our system and what we can do to assist them in becoming more successful in reaching their educational and career goals. Through example, research, and analysis, we have created dialogue and successful programs have been initiated as a result of these and other efforts. We will continue our emphasis on this important initiative and will present a forum in collaboration with the College Board, AACC, the President’s Roundtable, ACCT, and representative institutions at the convention in Philadelphia. We hope to not only explore ways to create a national level dialogue with a strong research base, but also to provide examples from successful programs for those who want to focus on the “how to.”

The issues that impact the success of black males, like life, do not exist in a vacuum. As we have learned more about this issue, we could not help but notice the high correlation between students’ home/living situation and the number of young black males who were the products of foster care living environments. Through the efforts of representatives from the western region of NCBAA we have come to learn a good deal more about emancipated foster youth. As a result at its most recent board meeting the NCBAA Board accepted a recommendation from the Western Region to embrace one of the region’s strategic initiatives to more effectively address the needs of emancipated foster youth.

The reasons for this acceptance are compelling but too numerous and detailed to effectively address in this message. As such, I will direct your attention to information elsewhere on this site that speaks directly to our Foster Care Alumni Success Initiative and inform you that we will also offer a workshop at AACC that focuses on these issues that will provide additional information on ways that you might involve yourself or your institution.

As has been said and in conclusion for this update, a part of NCBAA’s mission is to articulate positions on issues affecting African Americans in the formulation of policy and decision-making. It is incumbent on all of us to embrace this national initiative. We must continue to improve and to expand the capacity of community colleges to develop services and programs that insure that students from foster care achieve greater academic success.

James L. Bennett, Ph.D., President