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The Western Carolina Partnership
The Rural Community College Initiative (RCCI) is a national project
funded by the Ford Foundation that helps community colleges in rural
areas increase access to education and develop regional economies.
When the Ford Foundation decided to extend RCCI to additional community
colleges in 2002, the Cherokee Preservation Foundation brought together
the three area community colleges that serve the seven counties of
westernmost North Carolina — Southwestern Community College, Haywood Community College and Tri-County Community College — to
make them aware of RCCI and to help them explore how they might work
together and apply for inclusion in the program.
The convening sessions resulted in the three community colleges’ decision to form a partnership and apply to participate in RCCI. The Western Carolina Partnership (WCP) they formed was accepted by RCCI, and it is RCCI’s first instance of multiple schools in a region collaborating to create a shared vision and work together to improve the quality of life of people they serve. The RCCI designation has provided a process to develop ways of utilizing local resources to address regional needs.
Following RCCI's acceptance of the WCP
into its program, the Cherokee Preservation
Foundation awarded $5,000 each to Southwestern
Community College and Haywood Community
College to support their involvement, and
Tri-County Community College received a
$5,000 grant from RCCI. The grants
enabled a team to attend the RCCI-sponsored
Institute, facilitated the team's
ability to make field trips to see community
development best practices firsthand, and
enabled WCP to convene community residents.
The WCP's work to identify the economic
issues that warrant a multi-county educational
solution has resulted in the partnership’s
decision to initially help the local tourism
industry improve customer service so that
visitors will spend more in the region
and make repeat visits. Tourism is
the region’s primary industry, and
as Betty Huskins, the former chair of the
North Carolina Tourism Council, puts it, “the
front line (the people who works at hotels
and motels, restaurants, attractions, gas
stations and convenience stores) ultimately
impacts the bottom line.”
Working with other partners who want the
region’s tourism industry to excel
at customer service — the Cherokee
Travel and Promotion Program, Advantage
West (western North Carolina's regional
economic development commission) and local
Chambers of Commerce — the WCP will:
- Conduct a needs assessment among travel/tourism employers on the Qualla Boundary and in the seven surrounding counties;
- Research best practices for training of front line workers;
- Benchmark successful customer service programs; and
- Develop a pilot customer service program for improving customer service within the Qualla Boundary.
The assessment, research and planning for the pilot program will be accomplished with the help of a $20,000 grant awarded by the Cherokee Preservation Foundation in March 2004 and with additional resources from the EBCI and the three community colleges. The goal is to develop a training program that will help hospitality workers serve customers better, and that will improve these employees’ job satisfaction and job retention rate. After lessons are learned from the pilot project, WCP intends to extend the customer service program to other western North Carolina businesses so everyone in the region can benefit.
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