May 8, 2006

Dr. Connie Buckner, director of A-B Tech’s Madison Campus, presents Erskine Bowles, president of the University of the North Carolina System, with a box filled with Madison County farm products during Bowles’ visit to A-B Tech April 19.

Exactly one week after he was inaugurated as the sixth president of the University of North Carolina System, Erskine Bowles told officials from A-B Tech and two other Western North Carolina community colleges he is committed to eliminating as many barriers as possible between the state’s two-year and four-year institutions.

“My first love is … and was … for community colleges,” Bowles said during a brief meeting in the College’s Simpson Conference Room with administrators from A-B Tech, Haywood and Southwestern. “I believe our future economic well-being is here.”

Bowles was accompanied by N.C. State University Chancellor James Oblinger during the visit, arranged by the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service. Cooperative Extension provides citizens with access to the resources and expertise of N.C. State and N.C. A&T through educational programs, publications, and events.

Bowles applauded a partnership between A-B Tech’s Madison Campus and the Madison Extension Agency designed to transition farmers from their traditional cash crop, tobacco, to more sustainable agricultural products. Through the collaboration, A-B Tech and the extension agency have offered courses on such topics as landscaping, greenhousing, and marketing. The extension agency has held more than 1,000 events at the Madison Campus, and A-B Tech carpentry students framed out the building that serves as the agency’s new home.

“That’s wonderful,” Bowles said. “That’s the way it should be.”

Max Queen, vice president of Continuing Education, told Bowles about Blue Ridge Food Ventures, a commercial kitchen housed in former warehouse space at A-B Tech’s Enka Campus. “This is another way of helping local farmers …. We’re trying to encourage them to take their products and give them a longer shelf life.”

Officials also discussed the need for increased transferability of applied science courses from community colleges to four-year institutions, with Dr. Sharon Morrissey noting that A-B Tech recently signed its first-ever associate of applied science articulation agreement with UNC Asheville, in digital media technology.