Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from N.C. Community College System President Jeff Cox’s address to the State Board of Community Colleges on May 15, 2026. Ahead of his retirement on June 30, these remarks were the last time Cox formally addressed the Board as system president. Following these remarks, Cox was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the state’s highest civilian honor.
I would like to take one quick moment to thank a few folks who I believe have contributed significantly to our system’s success over the last three years.
I would like to thank my senior leadership team, our entire system office team, our 58 presidents and their respective boards of trustees and all of their faculty and staff, our system foundation and board, all of our business and industry partners, our philanthropic partners, with a specific shout-out to the John M. Belk Endowment and Arnold Ventures, our K-12 and university partners, our strategic partners at the Belk Center for Community College Leadership & Research, myFutureNC, the NC Chamber of Commerce and the NC Rural Center, the NC General Assembly and Gov. Stein and his team, and all of you all on the State Board.
I am proud of what we have accomplished over the last three years working together and I will be watching as the system and our 58 colleges continue to soar into the future.
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My parting words of wisdom to all of the stakeholders I just mentioned are these.
I believe North Carolina has the best community college system in the country. We have a unique governance structure that is not always the most efficient, but it forces collaboration and compromise — and those are two valuable things in a world with sharp political divides that have made collaboration and compromise dirty words.
Our system represents a unique blend of state authority and oversight by the State Board and system president and his/her system office team with a strong dose of local autonomy and local decision-making by our 58 presidents, their boards of trustees, and their employees.
I believe it is this very structure, as frustrating as it is sometimes, that is our secret sauce. There are opportunities in front of us where the system can and should play a greater role in taking advantage of our economies of scale in making statewide purchasing decisions that should save our colleges a lot of money and allow for more seamless sharing of data and resources to accelerate our success as a system.
Think ERP, LMS, CRM, ILS — pick your favorite acronym. These are all areas where the local colleges could benefit from the system’s buying power and leadership in coordinating some statewide purchasing.
But there are also many other areas where local autonomy is critical for all 58 colleges to meet their local needs, to support their local students and their local businesses and industries.
This is a real team sport, including all the partners I mentioned and more. Board members, just because you have the authority to pull more decision-making to Raleigh doesn’t mean you should. Presidents, just because an idea came from the State Board or system office doesn’t make it a bad idea.
It is essential that all the stakeholders in this economic development ecosystem keep working together for the common good of our great state and for the good of each individual community represented by our Great 58 local colleges.
I am confident you all will get this right!
Student success stories
I will wrap up my president’s report as I always do, sharing a student success story. Over the last four years, every time I have addressed the board, I have wrapped up my report showcasing great student success stories from all across our Great 58 colleges. But because this is my last opportunity to do this, I am going to double down today and share two quick student success stories, both of which are a little more personal for me.
I want to begin with sharing a story of Monica Torres, who was a bright-eyed young girl named Monica Santos when I first met her as a third grade student at Piney Creek Elementary School in 2005, when I began I was serving as superintendent of Alleghany County Schools. Growing up as a biracial child to a single mother in Alleghany, Monica had more than a few financial challenges to overcome. Monica first caught my attention because of her prodigy-like musical talent in our Junior Appalachian Musicians program — she actually published her first CD in elementary school.
I was there on the stage at Monica’s eighth grade promotion in 2010 to witness this milestone.
Monica went on to Alleghany High School, where she continued to shine and excel academically while working as a waitress at Mis Arados Mexican Restaurant. I was there on the stage again for Monica’s high school graduation in May 2014.
As I transitioned to the role of president of Wilkes Community College in 2014, Monica started the nursing program at Wilkes Community College that August. She graduated in May 2016 with her associate degree in nursing. Once again, for the third time, I had the privilege of being there on the stage as Monica achieved yet another educational milestone — this time at her nursing pinning ceremony.
I will never forget what Monica told me out in the parking lot that day after her pinning ceremony. She told me that while she was in high school she couldn’t imagine ever being anything other than a waitress at Mis Arados. Now she was going to be a nurse and have a whole different life than she could have ever dreamed of.
Monica began her nursing career back in our hometown of Sparta, working at Alleghany Memorial Hospital. She worked at the hospital for eight years in multiple departments such as med/surgery, ER, OR, and doing case management.
Not surprisingly to me, Monica continued her education, attending UNC Wilmington online while working at the hospital and graduated with her bachelor of science in nursing in 2023. Monica transitioned to AppHealthCare in May 2024 when they opened the Trojan Health Clinic in Sparta Elementary School, and she is now taking care of folks in the K-12 public school district that gave Monica her foundation and the ability to dream big.
Monica got married after graduating high school in the summer of 2014. She has been married for almost 12 years and has an 8-year-old son, Zeke, and a 4-year-old daughter, Isabella. They both attend Sparta Elementary School. Zeke is in second grade and Isabella is in preschool. This, folks, is the American Dream personified!
For my last student success story, I am going to ask my lovely wife, Reba, to join me here at the podium. She didn’t know I was going to call her up here. She will love this attention — not really.
For my final student success story, I go way back to 1993 when I was a young teacher at Alleghany High School. I met a young lady that year who had not had a great experience in some of her early schooling, and she wasn’t confident that she could be successful going straight into a university after high school.
But the more I got to know her, the more I realized she was plenty smart and could do anything she set her mind to do. She just needed to build the confidence in herself that I already had in her.
She took classes at both Surry & Wilkes Community Colleges and built the confidence she needed to enroll in the bachelor of nursing program at Winston-Salem State University. She excelled there and graduated with her bachelor’s degree two years later.
She went on to have a very successful career in nursing, holding various positions over the years in different hospitals from a particularly memorable stint on a GI unit to critical care on a cardiac unit. She went on to explore other opportunities outside of the hospital environment, including roles in clinical research, a position as a health coach, and another as COVID travel nurse.
During the height of COVID, she accepted a job as a COVID nurse in Tyson Foods’ Wilkesboro plant, when hundreds of sick employees threatened to halt food production vital to our country. More recently, she worked as an intake nurse for Hospice, helping families navigate one of the most difficult decisions they would ever face, to place a loved one in Hospice care for their final days.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, this special final student success story I’m sharing is about my own lovely wife, Reba. She wouldn’t have had the wonderful, impactful career she had if not for the foundation she built at two of our community colleges.
This was the two of us in the early 90’s chaperoning a high school prom. Reba has been with me since that first date on Oct. 17, 1993, earning her bachelor of nursing degree and then excelling in her career, doing amazing life and death work as a nurse, impacting thousands of lives, all the while raising our three boys plus a future daughter-in-law we took in to live with us in her final two years of high school, and encouraging, supporting, and inspiring me to have the wonderful career I have had over these last three decades.
Sometimes when you are married to a guy in high profile positions for 20-plus years, you might want to step back from that constant spotlight, you might even feel like others don’t always see you or appreciate you for who you are and what you have done in your own life.
I want you to know, Reba, I see you and I have appreciated you every day for the last 34 years.
Please join me in showing your appreciation for Reba and Monica for their tremendous impact in the communities they’ve served as nurses.
Mr. Chairman, Board members, that concludes my final report to this Board. I thank you all for hiring me into this role and working with me over the last three years to advance the mission of our system, to support our 58 colleges, and most importantly to support the 600,000-plus students we are all privileged to serve.
It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve as the North Carolina Community College System President. Thank you.
Editor’s note: The John M. Belk Endowment and Arnold Ventures support the work of EdNC.
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