BusinessTN

If Bruce Blanding has his way, Jackson State Community College will become the center for public higher education in the region.

Blanding, the college’s new president, wants Jackson State to triple its enrollment by increasing the use of its online degree programs and providing flexible schedules for non-traditional students. The college currently serves 4,000 students from all over West Tennessee,

“There’s no reason why we should not be serving twice, if not three times, as many people as we do now,” Blanding says.

The 58-year-old ex-Marine and former director of the Tennessee Technology Center in Jackson also wants to beef up existing partnerships with four-year institutions—particularly the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee at Martin—that will allow students to stay at home and earn a four-year degree seamlessly through their community college.

“We will make it all available in Jackson,” he says. “We will allow people to do what they haven’t been able to do before.”

Blanding has a good relationship with University of Memphis President Shirley Raines and UT-M’s Chancellor Nick Dunagan. In 2002, he and Dunagan worked out an agreement where all of UT-M’s Jackson-based classes would be taught at the tech center, a first-of-its-kind arrangement for a UT school and a Board of Regents school. It’s a precursor to what he envisions for Jackson State.

In order to grow in spite of cuts to state budgets—and with a likely influx of lottery scholarship students in the fall—Jackson State will have to play on its strengths, particularly its flexibility.

“For the larger schools to offer more classes, they need to build buildings,” Blanding says. “We can offer a math class on a Tuesday at the local high school. They can’t do that.”

Also, Blanding wants to work out more partnerships with area businesses like the one Jackson State already has with health care giant West Tennessee Healthcare, a regional network of hospitals and clinics. WTH donated money to Jackson State’s nursing program, and the school will soon build an addition dedicated to nursing and allied health.

Blanding served as the tech center’s director for the last four years. The center is one of 26 Board of Regents institutions dedicated to providing technical and professional certificates and diplomas in diverse fields such as automobile technology, health care, and tool and die.

He began working for the Regents system at a community college in Chatta- nooga in 1988 and was the director of the tech center at Elizabethton before coming to Jackson. In February he took the Jackson State job from the retiring Charlie Roberts, who headed the school for six years. Blanding’s salary will be $108,610.

A native of Michigan, Blanding’s career in education has taken him around the world, including education administration posts in Liberia and the West Indies. He’s also worked in the U.S. Department of Education, in administrative posts in Tennessee, Michigan, Florida and Illinois and as a consultant.

Supporters, like Jackson Board of Regents member Jonas Kisber, say Blanding is the right man at the right time.

“Dr. Blanding is a highly respected leader in the Regents system,” Kisber says. “Under his leadership at the tech center in Jackson, the school has sustained significant growth and is highly respected in the community.”

A Vietnam vet, Blanding says his most defining moment—the one that has shaped who he is and guides his life today—was his 14-month tour of duty as a Marine. It taught him what to value in life, he says.

“I have to do things that are meaningful and important to other people,” he says. “I have to try to make the world a better place.”