Area college president to leave for post in North Carolina

8/8/2007

ARCHBOLD, Ohio Northwest State Community College President Betty Young is resigning from the college to lead a school in North Carolina.

Ms. Young will become president Sept. 1 of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in Asheville, N.C. She will spend next month in transition between the two colleges and leave Northwest State at the end of September, Ms. Young said.

Asheville-Buncombe is more than three times the size of Northwest State, with a student population of about 25,000. Northwest State serves about 7,000 students.

This kind of opportunity at a school like Asheville is really more about the kind of positive work we ve done here than me personally, Ms. Young said.

She joined the Northwest State administration in September, 2003. She has overseen the college s opening of campuses in Defiance and Metamora, expansion of the distance-learning program, implementation of department chairmen, and more.

But Ms. Young might be best known for her Lessons for Leno trip in September, 2005, when she rode her Harley-Davidson motorcycle to Burbank, Calif,. in response to snide comments Tonight Show host Jay Leno made about community colleges on his show.

She told the talk-show host after a taping of the show that his Jaywalking segment featuring random people on the street giving inane answers to basic questions shows there is a national emergency in education, and that community colleges can be an integral part of the solution.

She will be the first female president at A-B Tech in its 48-year history.