Most of last week’s meeting was taken up by Morton’s report — which had plenty of good news for the college, but did not touch on the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), CFCC’s accrediting body, placing them on warning for ‘significant’ noncompliance in the areas of full-time faculty and student achievement.
Morton read from over 70 PowerPoint slides for close to an hour, first telling trustees to “get comfortable and enjoy the show.”
During this review, Morton touted enrollment figures, full-time equivalency (FTE) hours that are used to calculate their overall budget, and new programs on campus.
However, according to Community College Review, a national analysis site for community colleges, which uses data from the National Center for Education Statistics and other school-verified data, enrollment has stayed “relatively flat” over the years Morton’s been president.
The data also shows that the school’s diversity has also declined by 26% over the last five years. In addition, CFCC has a slightly higher student-to-teacher ratio (10:1) than the state community college average (9:1)
Morton also joked about his tenure at the college.
“This is my sixth year, and you may not know it, but actually, I'm the third longest serving president of this institution out of 10 presidents,” adding, as trustees laughed, ”so it's a tough job to maintain, apparently.”
Lee’s predecessor, Dr. Amanda Lee, resigned without explanation under a cloud of internal politics in 2017; according to reporting in The Assembly, at least one former trustee argued she was undermined and pushed out by people who wanted Morton — who lacked many of Lee’s qualifications — to have the job. Lee had been named president after serving as interim in the wake of Dr. Ted Spring’s abrupt resignation. Spring’s three-year stint as president was tumultuous; he was accused of inappropriate spending, but later sued the college and won nearly $500,000.
Morton also spoke about community support for the college — pointing to higher levels of local and state government funding, and that “companies are writing us checks. Grants are being awarded to us because they believe in us,” referencing the New Hanover Community Endowment grants of $10.1 million and $5.5 million to CFCC’s Foundation. The $10.1 million was to take part in the Health Care Talent Collaboration with UNCW, NHCS, and the Greater Wilmington Chamber Foundation, and the $5.5 million was to connect high school students with career pathways in manufacturing and ‘other’ industry sectors.
CFCC also recently received its largest naming donation, $3 million from Dan and Sheila Saklad, to name the college’s newest building at 319 N. Front Street (the former Bank of America building). It’s now known as the Dan and Sheila Saklad Health and Human Services Center.
Faculty Association President Nelson Beaulieu also gave a mostly positive report, thanking Morton specifically for giving staff three $1,500 bonuses in the last 18 months. One was recently announced this January. (This is all while Morton has received a close to 40% jump in salary over the past three years. His $361,296 salary is even higher than Jeff Cox, the community college system president. Michelle Lee, his newest chief of staff, has received a 50% jump in this timeframe.) One sad note in Beaulieu’s report was the passing of longtime CFCC professor Bob Brennan.
After the president finished listing more of the college’s accomplishments, one trustee said, “Is the media here?”
Morton responded, “They don’t come with good news.” Trustees then laughed and one said, “That’s a shame.”
Trustee Zander Guy said, “I would encourage all of you [the trustees] when you get ready to go home, I’d like you to text me and tell me how many steering wheels are in your car. So Jim, let me congratulate you [on] being our leader.”
SACSCOC Accreditation Warning
Missing from the president’s year-end report — and questions or comments from the trustees — was that CFCC, in December 2023, was put on warning by the school’s accrediting body, SACSCOC, something that hasn’t happened with the last three presidents who preceded him, Dr. Eric McKeithan, Dr. Ted Spring, and Dr. Amanda Lee.
This meant the college was put on notice for “significant non-compliance” in the areas of full-time faculty and student achievement.
SACSCOC said that these standards expect CFCC to hire an adequate number of full-time faculty to support the institution and to use and publish multiple measures of student outcomes.
In the disclosure statement sent by SACSCOC, it said that CFCC “fail[ed] to make timely and significant progress towards correcting the deficiencies and fail[ed] to comply with policies and procedures” with the accrediting body.
While this does not mean the college has lost its accreditation, it is a serious measure. Because of this warning, in 2024, CFCC will have to submit a monitoring report to SACSCOC on how to address these noncompliance areas, but the board asked for no update on this impending report that accredits their courses and allows students to receive degrees from the institution.
SACSOC will decide the next steps for the college in December 2024. These could include the following: removing the warning, continuing the warning, placing CFCC on probation, or removing the institution’s accreditation altogether.
Also unmentioned
The SACSOC warning is not the only issue that didn’t merit mention in Morton’s report or discussion by the board.
A day before the board met, WHQR reported that 50 instructors were asked to return overpayments (a collective $31,536) to the college right before the December holidays. Public records show 18 of those 50 employees were asking payroll to explain the mistake in writing, but they never received this. HR went as far as specifically telling payroll in one instance to not put the explanation in writing and continue to call about the error. Several employees told WHQR on background that while they understood they’d have to refund an overpayment, they were confused and in some cases upset by the college’s refusal to put anything in writing. The college declined an interview to discuss the situation, and neither Morton nor the board mentioned it.
Additionally, CFCC Trustees have never had a public discussion about the college miscalculating FTE budget hours and having to return money to the state, concerns over misusing state funds for contract buyouts, state labor market funding increases going to top administrators, the fallout of culling top administrators over past years of what faculty call, ‘Bloody May’, or addressing the compelling accounts of former CFCC program directors, an FTE auditor, a dean, FA officers, and the marine technology students.
There is some evidence that public criticism of Morton or fellow board members is not welcome at CFCC.
Over the past two years, trustees Jimmy Hopkins and Ray Funderburk have both been removed from the board under dubious circumstances. Both trustees say they were kicked off the board because they spoke out against decisions made by the board and administration. Funderburk is still pursuing a suit against the trustees, one of them being defamation of character. Hopkins, too, filed one over his legally questionable removal but later dropped it.
Culture
Before Morton ended his report, he said, “In the beginning, when I started, we had a lot of issues here, and it has been a challenge to change the culture. But leadership changes a culture, culture changes performance. Culture is what gets results. And that's what we have now; teams working together, this doesn’t happen with people working alone, it works by working together, so these results are because of that.”
However, Morton has continually been reluctant to have his leadership and CFCC’s culture evaluated.
Back in 2020, the Faculty Association (FA) conducted comprehensive a faculty climate survey after WECT broke the story about his alleged toxic work environment on campus, but Morton suppressed the results when they came out. One of the findings, over the prior two years, was that 82% of the faculty respondents agreed that morale had declined. Morton had assumed the presidency in 2018.
Fast forward to 2021, Morton tried to avoid conducting another climate survey, until Trustee Jonathan Barfield pushed him to do one.
Because Morton saw the 2020 FA survey as illegitimate, the Faculty Association had voted for and supported a third-party survey, suggesting NC State’s Belk Center conduct one, but the college ended up doing it on its own. The resulting 2022 survey was circulated without questions about the president or the board’s leadership, unlike the prior FA one.
Nonetheless, only 48% of staff reported feeling “CFCC value[d] them.”
There have been no subsequent surveys since 2022.
A new face
At the beginning of the meeting, New Hanover County Commissioner Dane Scalise was sworn in as the newest Cape Fear Community College Board of Trustees member.
Scalise is filling out the remainder of Commissioner Bill Rivenbark’s term on the board. Rivenbark told WHQR that he left his seat about a year before the end of his appointed term because he wanted to give Scalise a chance to serve, as he’s “young and ambitious.”
Link to past CFCC reporting
