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Profile: Earl Hale to Retire From Community College Board |
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Written On: November/December 2005 |
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Written By: by Paul Schlienz |
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After 19 years at the helm of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, Earl Hale is retiring.
"It’s been a great ride, but it’s time to move on," Hale reflects.
Hale, who was reared in Cheney, first joined the SBCTC in 1970—only three years after Gov. Dan Evans established the state’s two-year college system. As a public agency, the board represents the community and technical college system to state government on policy matters, approves workforce training programs, and distributes state appropriated funds to the colleges.
Hale came to the board with a background in government and public policy, and degrees from Eastern Washington State College and the University of Washington.
The two-year college system Hale joined in 1970 was very different from the system that serves Washington today.
"When I joined the system, community colleges were designed as an inexpensive way to bring education to the Baby Boomers, who needed more capacity than was available with the state universities," Hale remembers.
While providing lower division undergraduate courses for students who would ultimately transfer to four-year universities remains an important part of the community colleges’ mission, this is no longer their dominant thrust. Forty-five percent of all students now attend for purposes related to job training. In addition, community colleges provide basic skills training, including literacy education; English as a second language; and high school completion programs for adults.
Workforce training has become a key service of the community colleges under Hale’s leadership. Indeed, Hale has worked closely over the years with statewide organizations, including AWB, to develop effective worker training programs that meet the business community’s needs.
"Both the private sector and the students are our customers," Hale stresses.
Hale is proud of the workforce training program’s results. After all, 85 percent of workforce training students are placed on the job for which they trained with an average starting wage of $13 per hour.
While Hale finds satisfaction in the community colleges’ achievements during his 19 years as SBCTC’s executive director, he is ready for new challenges and adventures.
"My wife, who taught at Centralia College, retired last spring, so we’ll probably do a little traveling," Hale said. "I also hope the stack of books on my night stand—mostly histories and biographies—will be smaller a year from now than it is today."
Hale’s Olympia office is full of photos of himself and his wife and two daughters in the great northwestern outdoors. Not surprisingly, outdoor activities—hiking, boating and cross-country skiing—feature very heavily in Hale’s retirement plans.
Nevertheless, don’t expect Hale to completely disappear from the community college scene he knows so well when he retires on December 31.
"I hope to stay in touch, doing some consulting work," Hale reveals. "I’ll be an interested observer of state government and the various higher-ed issues that come along over the next few years."
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