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North Carolina’s community college system has a new leader: Monty Sullivan, who ran Louisiana’s community college system for more than a decade. During his time in the Bayou State, the number of graduates doubled and its foundation assets tripled.
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After announcing his retirement, he now comes to North Carolina, a state known for its robust community college system. The News & Observer spoke with Sullivan on Thursday to learn more about his career in higher education and his vision for North Carolina’s system.
Sullivan’s nomination must still be confirmed by the General Assembly, so he will serve as the acting president for now.
The new leadership comes as the state implements Propel NC, a new funding model for the community college system that ties funding to labor-market data, directing investment toward in-demand sectors.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
I’ve been in the community college business now for over 30 years. You get to know those states that rise to the top from a quality perspective, because you want to emulate the great work that is going on there. For a student of the community college mission, North Carolina has always been a state in that top tier that stands out as understanding the community college mission, and the workforce aspect of it in particular.
The draw for [my wife] Kelley and I to North Carolina is as much about time and opportunity as it is anything. We find ourselves in a place where we’ve graduated four girls from college and they’re off doing their own thing.
We have an opportunity now to find a community to sink our roots into and really invest ourselves in through this mission for the people of North Carolina.
And the other side of the coin is that you have a legislative body that has just come forward with substantial resources behind this mission through Propel NC. There are a number of opportunities for us to do a better job aligning our curricula to the workforce demand and transforming the student experience. We want to ensure that every student in every part of North Carolina has the opportunity to be educated and skilled.
When you see these kind of job advertisements come out, you can anticipate some that are tired and recycled. That’s not what the North Carolina community college system board chose to do. Instead, they went out and engaged with a huge number of stakeholders, some 1,300 involved. It said flat out that this is “the most important job in North Carolina.”
This isn’t about coming in and changing. It really is about coming in and making sure there is a quality experience for every student. This business is about ensuring that students in every corner of North Carolina get a quality opportunity and get into programs that are aligned with regional market demands.
While we may look at programs and say we feel pretty good about the alignment today, the fact of the matter is that the economy is constantly changing. Alignment is a moving target for us. We’ll continue to see that work through Propel NC and a number of other initiatives.
I look at this not as change for change’s sake. I look at it as an opportunity to continue to skate to where the puck is headed for North Carolina’s community colleges.
One of the things I’m probably most proud of is the Foster Promise program. We created an opportunity for adults in Louisiana to be able to return to college free of charge. That’s not something that existed previously, and frankly, some states have tried that and not been able to [sustain] funding the program.
Probably the largest challenge — and it’s sort of in the rearview mirror now, and I don’t think it’s on the horizon for North Carolina in any form or fashion — was dealing with the budget circumstance there. We saw a number of budget challenges, and we navigated those.
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While it was challenging, the thing I’m most proud of is that we made decisions that were focused on the mission and in the best interest of the students. That is the mantra, and people that I’ve worked with over the years can attest.
The circumstances in North Carolina are so different that there probably is not much comparison between the two. You’re talking about a state of 11 million people [compared to Louisiana’s 4.6 million], with quite a difference in the number of colleges, the curricular variations, and the growth in the economy.
This is a state that’s growing in population. We see states, particularly in the Deep South, that are losing population. So that in itself is part of the environment that we’re excited about moving into.
To color in a little bit more of the circumstances, I had faced a pretty difficult health circumstance while attempting to do this job. Now, mind you, this is a role that we’ve been in for 12 years. We had accomplished an incredible amount. But we found ourselves dealing with not only back surgery, but a difficult time when I had to go back for additional time down because of an infection.
That put us in a place where we really needed to take a pause for a second and take care my health to get things back up and going again to return to this mission.
It was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made to step away from this mission in order to make my health work. But an interesting thing happened along the way: My father passed away. Because of the health circumstance, I had an opportunity to spend the last few weeks of my father’s life right there holding his hand.
As a leader of a community college system, you don’t typically have the time to do that. So as I look back on this time, I feel it was written by someone other than me. The good Lord above had his hand on us as we walked through some very difficult times.
But look at the opportunity that lies ahead. When you think about the renewed sense of energy in the state around the community college mission, I think there is just so much possibility ahead of us.
What’s important is to always go back to the mission. Our mission in community and two-year colleges is about lifting people. I think there is something to be found in every political party that is for that notion of lifting people. It could be around economic mobility and economic opportunity. It could be around providing a strong business workforce to see our businesses succeed in the state. It could be both.
I really don’t think of our mission as being partisan, so much as I think of it as being mom-and-apple-pie. It is the party of mom and apple pie, and that continues to be a focal point. There’s not a student out there — be they a student without a high school diploma or a student with a doctoral degree who just wants to go back and gain language skills — that doesn’t have a place at a community college.
It’s really important that we focus on the notion of an open door, ensuring everyone has access, and that the access they have is common. Your ZIP code should not determine the quality of the service you receive.
The thing that I look forward to is engaging in communities across North Carolina. Kelley and I are so excited to meet the people of North Carolina — to get to know you, and get to know the state even better, and to really focus on how this mission can help North Carolina succeed and thrive. The people of North Carolina deserve that, and it’s our job to get it done. And we will.
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