Meador: Colleges working together, but merger not planned

South Central Louisiana Technical College and Fletcher Technical Community College are partnering to share administrative costs and faculty members, but administrators have no plans to merge the two colleges, Earl Meador, regional director for South Central Louisiana Technical College and chancellor of Fletcher Technical Community College, said Monday.
Meador was the guest speaker at the St. Mary Industrial Group meeting Monday at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City.
After former Fletcher Technical Community College Chancellor Travis Lavigne retired in June 2014, Meador took over as chancellor of the college.
South Central Louisiana Technical College and Fletcher Technical Community College are separate colleges and will remain separate, but are sharing administrative costs while still meeting the needs of both communities, Meador said.
“We created a Workforce Development Advancement team so we have a team of people for each of the industries that meet in that team. And we brainstorm, and we make sure that the colleges combined are serving the needs of our community,” he said.
In the 2014 regular state legislative session, an act was passed to allow technical and community colleges to sell bonds to build facilities, Meador said. “We had to go out and raise a 12 percent match in the communities,” he said.
As a result of the legislation, South Central Louisiana Technical College raised $1.1 million in 2013 for a marine and petroleum training center at the college’s Young Memorial Campus in Morgan City and two buildings in Reserve, Meador said. The Morgan City project will cost roughly $3.7 million and the Reserve projects $8.5 million, he said.
Officials will hold a groundbreaking for the new marine and petroleum training center April 8, he said. Land for the center in Morgan City was donated by the H&B Young Foundation.
College leaders also have plans to build a student services center at Fletcher Technical Community College, he said. School officials are in the process of raising the 12 percent match required, he said.
South Central Louisiana Technical College’s existing marine and petroleum training center trains about 5,000 students annually for the past 15 years, Meador said. “That facility ... has been named No. 1 or No. 2 in the nation for short-term training for a number of years now,” Meador said. Fletcher trains about 1,000 students per year at its facility, he said.
Short-term safety training courses can last from two days to two weeks, he said. The colleges have combined staffs to teach those 28 to 29 courses at the two campuses, Meador said.
Though Fletcher Technical Community College and South Central Louisiana Technical College are partnering in certain ways, Meador said he does not want the two colleges to merge. “I can assure you that there’s no political process that could make Young Memorial not be Young Memorial,” he said.
If the colleges were ever to merge, nothing would change, he said. “We believe that with our partnership with the Fletcher staff moving back and forth, combined, we’re definitely going to be the No. 1 training organization in the nation,” Meador said. “There’s a lot of people that come and stay at the local businesses and hotels. Local people get jobs. The list goes on and on.”
As two-year colleges, administrators must recognize that the colleges have different types of students including the one who comes to college with an academic background having prepared the student for a four-year college, and other students who either only want a two-year education or cannot afford to attend a four-year school, he said.
Students who attend technical and community colleges also have different reasons for going to school than four-year university students do, Meador said. The students Meador talks to at Nicholls State often give answers, such as their parents told them to go to college, or they thought it was a good thing to do, or they received TOPS. “It’s a different perspective because, for them, their goals are further down the road. They understand it’s going to take them a few years to get that four-year degree,” Meador said.
Technical and community college students have much more short-term goals, and therefore, usually give a direct answer for why they are attending school, he said. Those reasons include needing to get a job and needing to provide for a family, he said.