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Governor visits Peabody for forum

Posted 1/26/2011

Gov. Bill Haslam offered opening remarks at a forum on higher education in Tennessee Jan. 26 at the Wyatt Center Rotunda. (John Russell/Vanderbilt University)

Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development provided the setting for Gov. Bill Haslam and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission to measure progress on the Complete College Tennessee Act.

The act was passed by the General Assembly last year in preparation for Tennessee’s successful Race to the Top grant application to the U.S. Department of Education.

In information distributed beforehand, organizers indicated that the Jan. 26 event would seek to assess what has been accomplished in the first year, what remains undone, whether elements of the act have been “lost in translation” between Nashville and university campuses and how to sustain momentum.

Sponsored by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, the forum brought together the commission’s Master Plan Steering Committee, which includes representatives from Cleveland State Community College, East Tennessee State University, Pellissippi State Community College, Tennessee Technological University, University of Tennessee, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the Tennessee General Assembly, State Board of Education, Tennessee Business Roundtable, Tennessee Board of Regents, Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association and THEC staff. Representatives from the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Austin Peay State University, Sync Strategies, University of Memphis, Nashville Business Journal and Vanderbilt also attended.

On the agenda were regional or national perspectives on trends in higher education from  Pat Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education; Nate Johnson, a higher education consultant with HCM Strategists of Tallahassee, Fla.; Dewayne Matthews, vice president for policy and strategy with the Lumina Foundation for Education, which provided support for the forum; and Dave Spence, president of the Southern Regional Education Board.

Contact: Kurt Brobeck, kurt.i.brobeck@vanderbilt.edu