BATON ROUGE, La - Today, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System Board of Supervisors announced its new board officers. Supervisor Paul Price Jr., of Winnsboro will serve as Board Chair, replacing outgoing Chair Stephen Toups.
Willie Mount of Lake Charles was elected First Vice Chair and Alterman "Chip" Jackson of Lafayette will serve as Second Vice Chair.
Price was appointed to the Board in July 2009. He was a Drafting and Design Technology instructor at the Winnsboro Campus of Northeast Louisiana Technical College before retiring in 1999. He is an active member of the Winnsboro community. He has served on the Franklin Parish Catfish Festival Board of Directors since 2001, and has served as the director of the festival since 2007. He's also been a member of the Franklin Medical Center Board of Commissioners, serving as board chairman since 2009. Price served two terms as President of the Winnsboro-Franklin Chamber of Commerce, and served as the board chair of the Princess Theatre for three years. He currently serves on the Winnsboro Main Street board, and is the co-chair of the annual Chamber of Commerce Christmas parade committee.
"When I stepped into the drafting classroom as the new instructor at the vocational school in Winnsboro back in 1978, I certainly never saw something like this coming", said Price. "The confidence my fellow board members have shown in me is humbling, and I hope to somehow measure up to the outstanding leadership this board has had in the past."
Willie Mount was appointed to the Board in January of 2014. In 1993 she was elected the first female Mayor of Lake Charles. After serving over six years as Mayor, Willie became the first woman elected as a Louisiana State Senator from District 27 in 1999. She served three terms in the Senate, where she held a variety of leadership roles, including chairman of the Health and Welfare Committee, Chairman of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee and Vice-Chair of the Education Committee.
Alterman "Chip" Jackson was appointed to the Board in July 2017. Jackson has spent his entire professional career working in higher education. He has held various leadership positions at Millersville University, the Graduate School at Hahnemann University of School of Medicine (currently Drexel University College of Medicine) in Philadelphia, PA, Harrisburg Area Community College in Harrisburg, PA, Baton Rouge Area Community College, and at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where he retired as the University Registrar in 2015.
Two new student board members were also announced. Tara Mitchell is enrolled at Baton Rouge Community College (BRCC) and majoring in business administration with a concentration in entrepreneurship. She is a native of Baton Rouge. Mitchell was elected BRCC SGA President in 2019 and was recently reelected to serve a second term leading her college.
Joshua Turner is the Executive SGA President at Central Louisiana Technical Community College (CLTCC), where he leads and coordinates an elected body of his CLTCC Campus presidents. A resident of Pollock, Louisiana, he is a second level Practical nursing student at the CLTCC Rod Brady campus. Both students will serve one year terms.
Price added, "Our Louisiana Community and Technical College System continues to thrive despite the many challenges we face in today's world, and this system plays a big part in successfully creating the workforce our state needs. As a board member for the past 11 years, it's very obvious to me that this system has some of the finest and most conscientious people working for our students and our state. It's an honor to be a part of it."
The Louisiana Community and Technical College System's Board consists of 17 members. The LCTCS Board is composed of 15 members appointed by the Governor with consent of the Senate, two from each of the six congressional districts with three at-large members. Each member serves overlapping six-year terms, and the Board is constitutionally required to be representative of the state's population by race and gender to ensure diversity.
There are two students members - one elected by and from membership of a council composed of the student body presidents of the community colleges and one student elected by and from the membership of a council composed of student body presidents of the technical colleges under the supervision and management of the LCTCS Board.
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