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Let the record show that the building does not leak.
That's important because it helps gauge where our community has come since 1987, and McNutt's role in it. When she arrived as head of what was then known at Beaufort Technical College, every roof leaked in every building.
That was symbolic of everything at the school as McNutt became South Carolina's first female president of a technical college (21 years later, there are only three).
McNutt says she found a budget that was balanced only because positions were left vacant. Faculty salaries ranked at the bottom of the state's 16 technical colleges. Today it is first. The total allocation from the four counties the college serves -- Beaufort, Jasper, Hampton and Colleton -- was $80,000. Today it is $2.54 million, with Beaufort County still paying almost all of it. And over the last five years, TCL has raised
$8.5 million in grants and special allocations.
Enrollment has more than doubled, good faculty and administrators have been hired, buildings have been patched and remodeled, a new health sciences building was added on the Beaufort campus, a building in Colleton County is on the drawing board, and the New River Campus soared to life in 2006 in an award-winning 31,000-square-foot building across from Sun City Hilton Head.
Partnerships with businesses, the University of South Carolina Beaufort, local high schools, school districts, nonprofits, hospitals, foundations and many other institutions have grown significantly. Scores of new programs and areas of study are offered, live and via the Internet, to students seeking degrees or certificates, and to workers on the job. Equipment is state of the art. Programs are getting glowing reports from accreditation agencies.
"The college is in good shape," McNutt said Friday morning as a storm hurled sheets of rain at her office window. "Today, TCL is the high-performing college the Lowcountry deserves."
THE GOOD JOBS
Changes at the McNutt household are a good way to see the value of education.
McNutt said she will rest a while, then probablyresurface in another position or consulting job. Her husband, Tom, continues to sell real estate in Moss Creek, where they've lived all these years and where they reared their son, Tommy. He's a former Hilton Head Preparatory School valedictorian who earned undergraduate and law degrees from Wake Forest University and is now engaged and studying philosophy in Norway.
And changes at TCL over the past two decades are a good way to look at the full community.
We see a migration of growth from Hilton Head Island and Beaufort to the Okatie area. Today it seems laughable that both TCL and USCB served southern Beaufort County from an office building near Sea Pines Circle just a few years ago.
We see jobs migrating toward health care. TCL had a small nursing program on the verge of accreditation in 1987. Now it has programs in nursing, radiologic technology, surgical technology and physical therapy. Hospitals, particularly Beaufort Memorial Hospital, have helped make that happen.
"Health care is really where the good jobs are in the Lowcountry -- with benefits," McNutt said.
Real estate courses and the program for paralegals have recently seen a downturn.
The only engineering at TCL is civil engineering technology.
But it has a popular massage therapy program, and programs that involve leaders in many local professions, including heating and air conditioning.
TRANSFORMING LIVES
Through it all, TCL still targets hope for a better life for those willing to work to improve themselves. The average age of its students is 27. They want to be there. They make sacrifices to be there. Enrollment is 71 percent female, 49 percent minority and 67 percent part-time.
It's an open-enrollment school, and the cost is low, especially now with help coming from the S.C. Education Lottery.
That pot is sweeter because students can get their first two years toward a bachelor's degree there and transfer those credits to a state university. This "college transfer program" was introduced in 1990, and McNutt says it's huge.
"It's a very small piece of what we do," she said, "but the climate it created for the community and the students to aspire to greater educational goals is hard to measure."
TCL works with USCB so students who are not initially accepted at USCB can take courses at TCL and then get into the four-year school.
TCL reflects a society where many students lack solid foundations, especially in math and science. And too many students don't stay the course. It's open enrollment guarantees access, but it cannot guarantee success. McNutt said that's a national issue for community colleges, where the graduation rate lurks around 12 percent to 18 percent.
As McNutt leaves, TCL is diving into a national initiative to help students succeed called "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count."
McNutt worked hard to make TCL count, and that has been very important to this community.
"We absolutely transform lives," she said.
