Community-Technical College Board of Trustees (CGS 10a-71, 72)

• The board consists of 24 members, 22 appointed by the governor and two elected by students. At least six members must have expertise and experience in business, labor, or industry.

• Appointed members serve six-year terms; students serve two-year, staggered terms.

• One chamber confirms.

• The board administers the community-technical college system, develops a mission statement for the system, establishes policies for the colleges and plans for their development, approves institutions’ budgets for submission to the Board of Governors of Higher Education, and appoints a chancellor for the system and the presidents of each college.

QUESTIONS

1. How does a board of trustees member help the community-technical colleges (CTC) achieve their mission?

2. What particular expertise do you bring to the board and in what areas of board activity are you most interested in working?

3. What are the greatest challenges facing the CTCs and what is the board doing to address them?

4. How has the state’s budget situation affected CTCs and their students? Can the CTCs maintain up-to-date facilities for training allied health professionals and technical workers? At what point do tuition and fee increases restrict access to the colleges or change the composition of the student population? How can the CTCs maintain their availability for low-income students?

5. How many students who begin a degree or certificate program complete it. How long does it typically take? What do the colleges do to retain students and help them complete their programs?

6. How much debt do CTC students typically accrue during the course of their studies? What is the trend? Does this affect student retention and program completion?

7. Many students use CTCs to learn or enhance job skills. Do the CTCs track students’ post-college employment rates and starting salaries? What do they show? What industries recruit CTC students? How do the CTCs reach out to industries?

8. What is the success rate of CTC graduates who go on to four-year colleges? What are the barriers to successful transition and graduation from four-year institutions?

9. The CTCs figure prominently in the state’s economic development plan, Partnership for Growth II. How have the CTCs addressed the workforce needs of the state’s major industry clusters? To what extent do the CTCs work with industry groups to assess their training needs, set worker skill standards, and develop curricula to train workers to those standards?

10. A growing percentage of Connecticut’s population is foreign born. Has the proportion of non-English speaking students at CTCs increased and, if so, how has this affected faculty and programming?

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