[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 78 (Thursday, May 27, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6435-S6437]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO BOB CLARKE

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today I rise to recognize Bob 
Clarke, who has served for nearly 15 years as President of Vermont 
Technical College in Randolph. Under Bob's leadership, VTC has seen its 
annual budget quadruple, its annual donations have increased twelve-
fold, and VTC's standing in the community has grown immensely.
  Bob brought to VTC a new perspective for technical education. He has 
established unique relationships between VTC and the high-tech 
community. Currently, Vermont Technical College is providing training 
to employees of companies such as IBM, BF Goodrich Aerospace, and Bell 
Atlantic. In addition, Bob has listened to the concerns of small 
businesses in the state. When Vermont faced a shortage of trained auto 
mechanics, he established a training program in automotive technology. 
His willingness to listen to the needs of the business community has 
resulted in increased opportunities for VTC students and alumni alike, 
and VTC has created a qualified pool of applicants to meet the growing 
needs of Vermont's high-tech industry.
  Over the years, I have worked closely with Bob and VTC on issues 
including education, workforce retraining and business development. I 
have been most impressed with Bob's innovation in addressing the 
evolving needs of the business community. His work is truly inspiring 
and the results have been felt across the state. Bob has truly raised 
the bar for technical colleges around the country.
  An article recently appeared in the Vermont Sunday Magazine which 
details Bob's accomplishments during his tenure as President of Vermont 
Technical College. I ask that this article be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

              [From Vermont Sunday Magazine, May 23, 1999]

                          Cutting-Edge Clarke

                            (By Jack Crowl)

       Bob Clarke doesn't exactly fit the central-casting image of 
     a New England college president. He doesn't have an Ivy 
     League degree; in fact he doesn't have a traditional academic 
     Ph. D. at all. Neither does he have a particularly 
     deferential air toward the life

[[Page S6436]]

     of the mind, nor the aversion to cozy relationships with 
     businesses that many academic leaders fear might skew their 
     priorities and jeopardize their indpendence.
       Instead, the president of Vermont Technical College is best 
     known for his impish grin, the twang in his speech--he's from 
     the Eastern Shore of Maryland--a love of fast cars, and a 
     passion for hard work and getting things done. Pass him on 
     the street unknowingly and you'd likely say, ``That guy must 
     be a salesman.''
       Which he is. Largely by selling himself and his institution 
     to a bevy of businesses, Clarke has transformed that small 
     and sleepy two-year, engineering-technlogy school into a 
     statewide dynamo with substantial influence in the highest 
     circles of industry, education, and government.
       In his nearly 15 years as head of VTC, Clarke has seen its 
     annual budget grow from about $5 million to more than $21 
     million, plus more than $13 million in new or renovated 
     buildings and facilities. Additionally, the college has spent 
     more than $750,000 a year over the past decade on new 
     equipment and for several years has boasted of a totally 
     ``wired'' campus for the information age.
       Gifts and grants that once amounted to a paltry $25,000 a 
     year now total $3 million annually. And the endowment fund, 
     which didn't even exist when Clarke arrived in 1984, now 
     amounts to about $3.6 million, VTC employs nearly 500 people 
     and offers two-year associate degrees in 18 different 
     technical areas, plus two recently added bachelor's degrees.
       But Clarke's contributions to Vermont are more significant 
     than simply the upgrading of a single institution, important 
     as that may be. In the process of selling VTC, he's also been 
     selling the concept of higher education to more and more 
     people. He's played a big role in changing the tenor of 
     public discussion about the importance of higher education 
     and helped move the debate from the theoretical realm of 
     ideas to the practical world of jobs and profits.
       At meetings large and small throughout the state, Clarke 
     continually chants his twin mantras about the importance of 
     techology in our modern society and the crucial role that 
     higher education plays in a healthy economy because of that, 
     ``We have to have higher education as the centerpiece of our 
     economic development plans or we're going to be in trouble 
     when the next recession hits,'' he says.
       Clarke was a member of Vermont's Higher Education Financing 
     Commission, which last winter urged substantial increases in 
     state funds for colleges and students, and whose 
     recommendations have been taken seriously by the governor and 
     legislature. He brought Massachusetts economist Paul 
     Harrington, an adherent of using occupational-education 
     programs to help boost the economy, to the attention of the 
     panel. Harrington's ideas were important in its 
     deliberations.
       Some traditional academic types are somewhat dismissive of 
     Clarke in private, calling him a ``showboat'' or an ``empire 
     builder.'' But he has big fans in business and government, 
     and he has converted some of his harshest critics over the 
     years. ``If a college president's job is to promote the 
     institution and raise money, then by God, he does the job 
     well,'' says Russ Mills, a longtime VTC faculty member and 
     former president of the state-college faculty union. ``He 
     does a good job of making the college indispensable to the 
     business community,'' he adds.
       And Clarke's boss, Chancellor Charles Bunting of the state-
     college system, calls the VTC president ``an outstanding 
     model of leadership.''
       Robert G. Clarke was born in Lewes, Del. (best known in the 
     mid-Atlantic area as the terminus of a ferry line across 
     Delaware Bay from Cape May, N.J.), but his family soon moved 
     further south on the Eastern Shore to the tiny Maryland town 
     of Snow Hill. After high school, he spent two years at nearby 
     Salisbury State College, where he met his future wife.
       He then joined the Air Force, where he spent seven years, 
     picking up along the way a bachelor's degree in occupational 
     education from Southern Illinois University and a master's 
     degree in the same field from Central Washington State 
     College.
       In 1978, Clarke joined the faculty of Northampton Community 
     College in Bethlehem, Penn., where in six years, he rose to 
     Dean of Business, Engineering and Technology while also 
     earning a doctorate in Higher Education Administration and 
     Supervision at Lehigh University.
       In 1984, VTC was in the doldrums. Its enrollment was 
     declining. No new buildings had been built in 12 years. It 
     had no endowment and few private gifts. The Vermont State 
     College trustees tapped the 33-year-old Clarke, giving him 
     the charge to rescue the college and lead it to new heights. 
     The rest, as they say, is history.
       Last fall, the state Chamber of Commerce honored Clarke as 
     the 1998 Vermont Citizen of the Year and the accolades flew 
     fast and furiously. Vermont's entire congressional 
     delegation, state and college officials, and businesspeople 
     of all stripes joined in paeans to Clarke's hard work, 
     vision, and leadership. He was called, in no particular 
     order, ``A man who fixes things;''. ``A man in a hurry;'' and 
     ``Not just a man with a plan, but a man who gets things 
     done.''
       Said Gov. Howard Dean, who presented the award: ``Bob 
     Clarke was talking about workplace investments and public-
     private partnerships before anybody else knew what they 
     were.'' And, he added, ``What I know best about (him) is his 
     ubiquity. I've never been to any meeting about education and 
     jobs, in my 7\1/2\ years as governor, that he or someone who 
     works for him wasn't either at the meeting or was next on the 
     appointment list.''
       In his acceptance speech, Clarke noted that it was 
     relatively rare for both an educator and a non-native-
     Vermonter to receive the coveted award, and that he was awed 
     to be mentioned in the company of the other honorees--most of 
     them governors, statesmen, or captains of industry. He 
     unsurprisingly reviewed his college's accomplishments and 
     thanked his colleagues. But he ended on a different, bolder 
     note. ``Much still needs to be done,'' he said. ``Consider 
     that:
       ``Vermont ranks 49th among the states in per capita support 
     of higher education.
       ``Unlike most states, Vermont's two-year colleges receive 
     no local support.
       ``Vermont has no post-secondary vocational education 
     system.
       ``There is a tremendous state need for workforce education 
     and training.
       ``There is a shortage of skilled Vermonters to fill high-
     paying jobs.''
       At the end of the banquet, the Chamber of Commerce's chair, 
     Millie Merrill, announced that the organization's board that 
     day had unanimously and strongly endorsed the concept of 
     additional funds for higher education. When Clarke arrived 
     the next morning at a meeting of the Higher Education 
     Financing Commission, the assembled college presidents and 
     state legislators gave him a standing ovation.
       The chief feather in Clarke's off-campus cap is the IBM 
     Educational Consortium, under which VTC, is partnership with 
     the University of Vermont and the other state colleges, 
     manages all employee education and training for the state's 
     largest private employer. The consortium has 22 full-time 
     employees on-site at IBM. Gov. Dean lauds it as ``a model 
     program, not only for the state but for the whole country.''
       Landing the IBM contract was a major coup for Clarke and 
     VTC. The big computer manufacturer has for many years taken 
     great pride in running its own training department, and it 
     took some serious horse-trading and a trial period before IBM 
     officials agreed to turn over all their training to the 
     consortium.
       In many other places, a small two-year college would be 
     expected to be only a junior partner in such an arrangement, 
     not the organizer. But, says Clarke, with obvious pride: ``We 
     do education and training. We're good at it. Often businesses 
     are not. That's why I job out my campus food service and 
     bookstore operations to outside experts.''
       That's not, of course, VTC's only business-training 
     contract. Clarke has developed a slew of them, and he's been 
     willing and able to make special arrangements for companies 
     with different needs whenever traditional training programs 
     seem unlikely to work. Two examples:
       He's delivering a program that leads to a two-year degree 
     in engineering technology on the premises of BF Goodrich 
     Aerospace in Vergennes. In that partnership, Goodrich 
     executives are working with the VTC faculty to develop the 
     curriculum, and faculty members travel across the state to 
     teach the courses.
       He's arranged for selected Bell Atlantic employees, who are 
     scattered all over the state, to come to the VTC campus in 
     central Vermont once a week to work toward a degree in 
     telecommunications technology. The telephone company 
     orchestrates the work schedules of student-employees to 
     accommodate the program.
       Clarke likes to point out tat ``90 per cent of Vermont 
     companies have fewer than 20 employees. We need better 
     training not linked to specific programs.'' So in 1992, the 
     college took over the Vermont Small Business Development 
     Center, which had been housed at the University of Vermont. 
     Since then, it has served more than 7,000 clients, providing 
     small Vermont companies with counseling, training, help in 
     marketing and financial management, and assistance in finding 
     money for startups or expansion. As part of its outreach 
     program, the center maintains offices at five different sites 
     around the state.
       The center helps put on trade shows and seminars and works 
     in conjunction with other colleges, state agencies, trade 
     associations, and the federal Small Business Administration 
     (which provides most of its operating funds).
       It also maintains an environmental assistance program, 
     which conducts workshops and confidential environmental 
     assessments for businesses that Clarke maintains might be 
     reluctant to deal directly with government agencies, which 
     have the power to levy penalties for rules violations.
       Vermont Interactive Television is another pioneering Clarke 
     innovation. Headquartered on the VTC campus in Randolph, it 
     coordinates 12 sites around the state, where businesses, 
     government officials, educators, and non-profit organizations 
     can conduct meetings, training, and hear and see what folks 
     at the other sites are saying and doing, all without the 
     costly statewide travel that can be onerous or even dangerous 
     during winter.
       VIT has been in operation for more than 10 years. It has a 
     contract with the state for meetings and training, and it 
     collects user fees for non-state-government meetings. 
     Individual sites donate the use of their facilities. A 1996 
     study reported that the state government was saving some 55 
     percent on

[[Page S6437]]

     meetings conducted over VIT instead of having employees 
     travel around the state to one central location. Many 
     committees of the state legislature conduct public hearings 
     via interactive television, so they can collect input from 
     citizens without forcing them to travel to Montpelier.
       A more recent innovation is the Vermont Manufacturing 
     Extension Center, a joint venture among VTC, the state's 
     Department of Economic Development, and a couple of units of 
     the U.S. Department of Commerce. In three years, this center 
     has worked with more than 500 Vermont manufacturers in 
     projects involving a number of trade associations, colleges, 
     and other non-profit organizations.
       The center has been in the forefront of efforts to raise 
     Vermonters' awareness about the potential problems of Y2K or 
     the Millennium Bug, which could cause most computers to 
     malfunction on Jan. 1, 2000, because they may not be able to 
     recognize the date. VMEC is closely affiliated with the 
     state's Y2K Council and it's working with manufacturers to 
     identify and head off any computer problems that could occur.
       Whenever his institution lacks the expertise to pull off a 
     full-fledged training program on its own, Clarke develops 
     partnerships with other post-secondary institutions. Too many 
     exist to name here, but VTC currently has 18 such joint 
     projects with the University of Vermont alone.
       Meanwhile, back on the campus, Clarke encourages 
     innovation, but he runs a tight ship. Too tight for some 
     faculty members, who over the years have chafed at the 
     directions he wants to take the school, the speed with which 
     he likes to make changes, and his impatience with those who 
     disagree with him.
       Early in his tenure, one teacher who was vocally less than 
     enthusiastic about Clarke's plans did not have his contract 
     renewed, despite the strong support of the rest of the 
     faculty, who felt he was an outstanding teacher. Incensed, 
     the faculty called for Clarke's resignation by a two-to-one 
     margin. Clarke refused to resign, and he was wholeheartedly 
     backed by the state-college trustees. That ended the faculty 
     rebellion, but left many teachers with a long-simmering 
     dislike and distrust of the president.
       Some faculty leaders now argue that Clarke has changed 
     since that confrontation. They think he's a bit more fair-
     minded and can now consider others' points of view, even when 
     he disagrees with them. ``He's developed a delicate touch in 
     personnel matters,'' says Russ Mills, the veteran faculty 
     member, who thinks that, if confronted with the same 
     situation again, Clarke would react differently today.
       Nonetheless, there's no question that Clarke likes to be in 
     control of what's happening on his campus. Even today, he 
     boasts that he personally interviews all finalists for campus 
     jobs.
       A quick review of several campus innovations by Clarke and 
     his academic colleagues offers some idea of the breadth of 
     his interests and concerns:
       Several years ago, the college took over the state's 
     training programs for Licensed Practical Nurses. It continued 
     to offer the standard one-year program at four sites 
     throughout the state, but added a second year for students 
     interested in becoming Registered Nurses. And it offers 
     academic credit for its programs, so that nursing students 
     who wish to get bachelor's degrees can transfer to a four-
     year institution.
       In 1989, the Vermont Academy of Science and Technology was 
     founded. Under that program, gifted Vermont high-school 
     students can enroll at VTC and simultaneously complete their 
     final year of high school and their first year of college 
     work. VTC is accredited as a private high school for that 
     purpose. Students who complete that year's work can continue 
     there or transfer to another college.
       The college plays host every summer to a Women-in-
     Technology program. About 250 young women spend a week on 
     campus, where they engage in classes, seminars and workshops 
     with female scientists and engineers, as a way of providing 
     role models and encouraging more young women to consider 
     careers in science and technology.
       The Vermont Automobile Dealers' Association, worried about 
     a critical shortage of auto technicians who can deal with the 
     technology of modern cars, built and equipped an automotive 
     technology center on the VTC campus, so that the college 
     could add a two-year degree program in automotive technology. 
     It now also provides scholarships for auto tech students.
       Clarke seems to be willing to talk with just about any 
     interest group that could conceivably help his institution. 
     He once struck a deal with the state to buy a farm adjacent 
     to the campus where officials wanted to locate a veterans' 
     cemetery. He agreed to manage the cemetery--and VTC still 
     does--in order to get the remainder of the land for campus 
     expansion.
       Not all such proposals come to fruition, however. Clarke 
     offered land to the Woodstock-based Vermont Institute of 
     Natural Science when it was looking for a new home last year 
     (it decided to move elsewhere) and he had serious 
     negotiations with Gifford Hospital in Randolph (where he once 
     served on the board) to establish a nursing home that didn't 
     work out, either. It was during that time, when negotiations 
     were also under way for an early-childhood education program, 
     that one faculty wag observed at a VTC meeting: ``Now we can 
     have it all--cradle to grave, without leaving campus.''
       What's next on the agenda for Clarke? For starters, he says 
     he's committed to staying in Vermont. He admits that when he 
     first took the job, he viewed it as a stepping stone, but he 
     says the people here have been so welcoming and unlike the 
     flinty New Englander stereotype, that he and his wife Glenda 
     have fallen in love with the state and plan to stay. The 
     college provides housing on the campus for the president, so 
     the Clarkes built a ``weekend'' home in Addison, near Lake 
     Champlain.
       On the college front, he's planning more relationships with 
     businesses. He's working to develop one with IDX, the 
     Burlington-based medical-software company, which recently 
     announced an expansion. He hopes to provide a six-month 
     program of technical training to liberal-arts graduates.
       Clarke also wants to assist Vermont businesses to get into 
     what he calls ``e-commerce,'' selling their wares over the 
     Internet. ``We know the technology and we can help,'' he 
     says. ``Most businesses are barely scratching the surface.''
       And he wants to encourage the state to come up with a 
     coordinated effort to deal with vocational-technical 
     education.
       He applauds the efforts of the Higher Education Financing 
     Commission on which he sat, but feels the key to having its 
     recommendations work is a multi-year commitment by the state. 
     For example, he notes that the new Trust Fund just passed by 
     the Legislature is about $8 million to start and its use is 
     limited to the earnings from the amount.
       ``It's an important first step,'' he says, ``but one that 
     will have marginal impact until it grows.'' For each of the 
     state colleges, the fund will produce about $20,000 a year 
     for scholarships as it now stands. He's disappointed, 
     however, that there are no ``workforce development'' funds. 
     Most states provide funds for training and re-training 
     workers, but in Vermont the cost must be borne entirely by 
     the companies.
       Unless, of course, some clever entrepreneur somewhere--
     someone like Bob Clarke--can find the money and the backing 
     to put a package together.

                          ____________________