ALBEMARLE — At the Stanly Community College Board of Trustees’ Aug. 13 meeting, the board appointed its chairman, vice chairman and secretary positions for the academic year.
Joe Brooks was re–elected to the chair position while Joseph Burleson was elected as vice chairman. Additionally, SCC President Dr. John Enamait was elected to continue on as the board’s secretary.
“The board elected Joe Brooks to serve his second term as chair — he has experience doing that,” Enamait told SCJ on Friday. “The board elected Joseph Burleson to be vice chair and this will be his second year on the board. We’re looking forward to seeing him and his experience on the board continue to grow. I’m pleased with the meeting and everything went pretty smoothly as far as those things go. We’re doing about as well as any college can be doing in the middle of a pandemic.”
The meeting commenced with the reading of the government ethics act, the introduction of two new trustees and the announcement that two trustees were reappointed. After that, the nominating committee brought recommendations to the floor for the chairman, vice chairman and secretary positions.
Enamait said that while the August board meeting is usually longer than other meetings due to the election of officers, this recent meeting was even more extended due to the backlog of new hires that needed to be introduced. Because of the pandemic, a few months of hires went unintroduced to the board until last week.
“I gave a report of the goings-on at the college and we talked about the pandemic and the preparations that the college has made,” Enamait continued. “We talked about the outbreak in the prison and the potential impact that will have on the college. We then talked about the trades facility a little bit and provided an update on where we are — we’re still very early in the design phase. The board did approve some budget adjustments and it approved a year-end financial statement.”
Enamait told SCJ that the SCC Foundation will meet this week and likely approve a financial audit that will return to the Board of Trustees for approval.
Stanly’s enrollment numbers for the fall semester (which began on Monday) are within one percent of 2019’s fall enrollment. While registration numbers started out lower than normal, the SCC president confirmed that enrollment has caught up despite the college offering a little more than half of the face-to-face classes that were offered last fall.
“The faculty and staff have done a great job,” Enamait said. “The college is ready and the faculty have been working hard to prepare for the semester. I’d be a fool to assume that there won’t be any hiccups but I think we’ve taken a balanced approach to ensure the safety of our students and employees.”