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Photo: PE interim president Brad Cowgill (l) and Lindsey Wilson College President Bill Luckey. (Courtesy Duane Bonifer, LWC via ColumbiaMagazine.com)

By Duane Bonifer, Director Public Affairs, Lindsey Wilson College

Kentucky’s top higher-education official visited with Lindsey Wilson College’s leadership on Wednesday afternoon, December 19, 2007, to learn about how Lindsey Wilson College contributes to the commonwealth’s postsecondary education goals.

Council on Postsecondary Education President Brad Cowgill met with Lindsey Wilson President William T. Luckey Jr. and Vice President for Academic Affairs Bettie Starr to discuss LWC’s plans and talk about the CPE’s goals, especially the council’s “Double the Numbers” initiative.

“Double the Numbers” refers to the statewide push for Kentucky to have 791,000 bachelor’s degree holders – roughly twice as many as the state currently has.

“President Luckey and I had an extremely productive conversation on the subject on the council’s ‘Double the Numbers’ plan,” Cowgill said. “From that conversation, I’ve learned even more than I already knew about what a great contribution Lindsey Wilson College is making to the achievement of state goals.

“I applaud the Lindsey Wilson leadership here for their service to this region of the state. I look forward to looking with President Luckey and with other representatives of the college, and I want them to always feel welcomed at our offices in Frankfort.”

As state lawmakers gear up for the 2008 session of the General Assembly, which will get under way in early January, Cowgill said that his agency will continue to lead the charge for the state to focus on the goals of the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997. He also noted that it’s important for state leaders to remember that Kentucky’s economic future is tied to continued support for colleges and universities.

“Our principal priority in the General Assembly this year will be to re-energize the state’s commitment to its educational attainment goals,” Cowgill said. “The goals that the state set for itself 10 years ago are still as good as it could have ever set for itself – the educational attainment goal, the research goal and our workforce-development goal. These are the best goals we could have had for ourselves and they were properly hitched backed then to the economic foundation of the state of Kentucky.”

Cowgill said that while continued progress in postsecondary education will require a significant investment by the state, it also demands for the state’s leaders to remain creative.

“All of this has a significant funding implication, but achieving our goals won’t depend only on adequate funding, it will also depend on having good ideas,” he said. “And so the council’s responsibility as the state’s chief higher-education education adviser means that we, more than anyone else, need to keep bringing good ideas back to the Governor’s Office and to the General Assembly.”

“We are so grateful to Brad Cowgill for spending time on campus and listening to how Kentucky’s private colleges continue to make a difference in our state and contribute to Kentucky’s long-term goals,” Luckey said. “One of the great things about Lindsey Wilson is that it’s rooted firmly in Southcentral Kentucky and committed to making a difference in this region.”

This article also appears on ColumbiaMagazine.com.