BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — Tennessee Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development Jeff McCord is one of four finalists for the president’s job at Northeast State Community College.
The former head of Kingsport’s Regional Center for Advanced Manufacturing has been Gov. Bill Lee’s labor commissioner since Lee took office in January 2019. He led the agency through Tennessee’s most acute employment crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic when state unemployment systems were overwhelmed with claims and had to quickly add systems for federal pandemic unemployment benefits.
Northeast State’s search advisory committee whittled the applicant list to four on Monday and Tuesday, according to a release from Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) Chancellor Flora Tydings.
Other candidates who will be interviewed on campus July 11-14 include:
- Connie Marshall, the school’s interim president. With a background in radiology, Marshall also has degrees in organizational management, education (masters) and educational leadership and policy analysis (Ed. D).
- Eric Heiser, the provost at Central Ohio Technical College in Newark, Ohio. Heiser has associates and bachelor’s degrees in business administration as well as a master’s in adult and postsecondary education and a Ph. D in education and human resources studies-higher education leadership.
- Robert Brandon, vice president of academic and student services at Southwest Virginia Community College in Richlands. Brandon holds bachelor’s, master’s and Ph. D. degrees in English.
McCord, whose wife CeeGee has held a prominent role at Eastman Chemical Co. for years, has a bachelor’s degree in management from Georgia Tech, an MBA with an information systems concentration from Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and an Ed. D in learning and leadership from the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.
The Regional Center for Advanced Manufacturing (RCAM) partners with Northeast State and provides an off-site teaching location for training a qualified technical workforce for the region’s manufacturing sector. McCord’s state bio says that in addition to leading the development of the RCAM, which opened in 2009, he also led the development of the state’s first registered apprenticeship program through a post-secondary institution.
TBR Regent and Kingsport Chamber of Commerce CEO Miles Burdine chaired the search committee, which Tydings wrote produced “four excellent finalists.”
The July interviews will be public and will also be viewable online using a link that TBR will provide.
