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September 20, 2011 Portlandbiz

New SMCC prez: How to grow education and jobs

Not yet four weeks into his new job, Southern Maine Community College's new president, Dr. Ronald Cantor, was greeted by a new report measuring the yawning distance between jobs in Maine and the workers who can fill them. The report was commissioned last year by SMCC's outgoing president, James Ortiz, to help determine what associate-degree programs it should offer at its new Brunswick campus. The report found that in certain sectors, including IT and precision production, more than 4,000 positions requiring associate-degree holders could go unfilled in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, there will be an oversupply of workers for the health professions and business management jobs, among other fields. So what's a new community college president to do?

Cantor, who was born in Albany, N.Y, comes to SMCC from Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, N.Y., where he was associate vice president and dean. He received his bachelor's degree from University of New Hampshire, his master's degree from University of Nebraska and his PhD in cultural foundations of education with an emphasis in history from Syracuse University. He says he and his wife, when they were considering places they'd like to live, put Maine high on their list. Soon after they arrived in Portland, Cantor recalls watching a man walk across a downtown street wearing a business suit and L.L.Bean galoshes. "These are our kind of people," he recalls his wife saying soon after their arrival. "We can be comfortable here."

Cantor spoke about his new position at SMCC and his job-creating vision last week with Mainebiz. He's starting his job as the college is launching a satellite campus in Brunswick at the former navy base that will offer programs in composites, pre-engineering, multi-axis machining and nursing, among others. About 100 students are studying there this fall. Eventually, Cantor says the goal is to increase enrollment at the midcoast campus to between 2,000 and 3,000 students.

An edited transcript follows.

Mainebiz: What brought you into the education field?

Ronald Cantor: Way back when I was an undergraduate at UNH, I was an RA, and I felt like I was sort of a paraprofessional member of the staff of the college. When I graduated, I thought I wanted to go into business, and I got a job in business management, and after the first year, I said it seems to me I value what goes on in the business world but the higher education world is really what I [feel] to be better at, so I was eager to get back to the education world.

What was it about academia that suited you better than the business world?

There's an old debate about whether colleges are businesses or not. And you can get faculty all dug in on that one. I really think the answer is yes and no. I run this business like an operation; we employ 700 people here, we have a [$39 million] budget, we have 45 buildings and we're in more than one location. This is running a business. I like that. At the same time, there's something about academia that to me feels to be something more than a business. Our mission, I think, to serve not only students, but students who really need us, and ... the community -- that to me is a broader noble mission than you typically find in a business management position. And that somehow has an effect upon the entire culture in academia, and it's that effect on culture that makes it the kind of place I like to work.

What attracted to you this job in particular?

For many years, my ultimate goal was a college presidency. When it finally came time for me to think about a presidency, I looked around the country. I wanted to find a solid, comprehensive community college. I wanted to be in a place where my family would find themselves comfortable, because I have a wife and two young daughters [ages 5 and 8]. ... Maine was a place that was on our short list. And when we found out about this place, we knew this was the one. And, of course, part of it was how beautiful it is to have a campus on a small peninsula where you can see the water in every direction. ... We found that the people in this community were more welcoming, more supportive than anywhere we've ever been.

As the new report shows, there's a gap between the skills needed for the future economy and the skills students are graduating with. What are you going be doing to help close that gap?

We are going to make sure that our programs, our degree certificates, our non-credit short-term training, everything that we do here, is focused on where the jobs are. ... We have well over 7,000 students -- most are here in South Portland, some of them are in [Brunswick] and we have more online. But we've got 45 programs roughly, and every one of them needs to be geared toward the real world. And we do that through advisory committees, and listening to the employers and the accrediting bodies. But it means listening better and recognizing that what we hear is no longer good for five years; it's good for five minutes. Business is changing so fast, whether it's technology or whether it's international competition or whether it's regulation, whatever, the work force of tomorrow is not the work force of today, let alone yesterday. Most of the jobs we're filling didn't even exist a short time ago when we talk about things like composites or cyber-security, and all sorts of other things.

Will you be reaching out to businesses more, or in new ways, or integrating them more in the college?

You bet. I've been impressed in my short time here what I've seen about this college's connections to the business community. I come from a college that's roughly the same size. This college has far more connections to the business community than my previous college had. At the same time, I don't think we've begun to scratch the surface here of the productivity that we can get from those connections. ...

[What] I'm really talking about is the more innovative entrepreneurial part, whether it comes from our idea or [a business's] idea or, more commonly, an idea we had together ... and [we] say, "Hey how about training your workers in this field?" Or, "Have you ever thought about this?" Or an employer who needs 10 people trained in something, and it's not cost-effective for them to do it and it's not even cost-effective for us to do it ... and we're talking to another employer over here who's got something very similar who's got 12 people, and now we've got 22 people, and that makes [the training program] cost effective. That's one simple example, but certainly things like that come out of the synergy when you build the long-term relationship with the employers.

I also want to stress, when I was saying before ... that we haven't yet begun to scratch the surface, much of that is in non-credit programs. That is one huge goal, whether it's short-term or specialized custom-made training. A lot of times businesses and employees, potential employees, they need skills. They need skills yesterday, they need specific exact skills yesterday. They don't need a two-year degree or even a one-year certificate. And from their perspective, pieces of that longer certificate [program]... some of it might be irrelevant. And we want to help them get what they need to get the job, and [to] get the job done.

Is part of your vision expanding or growing the college with more programs, or new campus locations?

In some ways the answer is yes, but yes not because we want to be big or we have big egos, etc. In some ways our lives would be easier if we could not grow so fast. The fact is, our appropriation from the state keeps shrinking. And the demand is here: we're turning away students and our enrollment is growing. It's a financial fact that our enrollment has to grow because the only way we can fund our growing operation is through increased enrollment. ... We have to grow fast in order to keep paying the bills and supporting the need the students keep bringing to us and the businesses keep bringing to us.

What would you like to have accomplished in one year here? Five years?

In one year what I would like to accomplish is I would like all the faculty, staff and students to trust that I have come here to join them to support their good work, which they're already doing, which is tremendous. Choosing a new president is always scary, and I want to send the message that I value what's being done here and I want it to continue. In five years? 10 years? Let's see: In five years, I want to see the midcoast campus reaching its size we talked about, but more important than size are those partnerships with the community and employers, we really need those. In five years, I think we can be attracting national attention to the innovative model in the midcoast, not because it's exciting in theory but because it's producing results and we'll be able to tell a lot of stories about businesses that are up and running only because they got the work force they needed.

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