Thumbs Up
Kudos goes to the Sampson Community College Board of Trustees for not only their selection of Dr. Bill Starling as its newest president, but also for the transparent way in which they conducted the search.
Starling, our choice from the get-go, should flourish in the president’s chair. Having spent his career at SCC, no one knows the ins and outs of the college — its needs and its potential for growth — more than he does. And from our vantage point, we can’t imagine anyone who will work harder than Starling to meet those needs and build upon the rich heritage of education, both college-oriented and technical, that our community college has been know for year after year.
We congratulate Dr. Starling on his appointment, we wish him well and we urge him to do all the things we know he can do to forge relationships, grow the campus and make SCC a bright star in the state’s community college system.
As for the Trustees, a thumbs up goes to them as well for the way in which they conducted their presidential search.
We believe in transparency and it is always refreshing when a board makes every effort it can to do so with matters that often balance the slippery slope between a personnel matter and a public one.
The search for a new community college president is more of a public matter than a personnel one, and the trustees recognized that from the start. They opened wide the doors to keep the community well informed about what they were doing from the day current SCC President Dr. Paul Hutchins announced his resignation until this week when they announced his replacement, something we have appreciated and now applaud.
While it is no more than trustees should have done on the one hand, the fact that they did it without hesitation deserves mention.
The Board of Trustees deserve two thumbs up: one for their appointment of Starling and two for their handling of a search that was both open and expedient without once feeling rushed.