Description
Dr. Ronald C. Newcomb was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1949, but grew up in southwest Georgia near his mother's childhood home. He graduated from Lee County High School in 1967, received an AA degree from Albany Junior College in 1969, and earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Georgia 1971. For the next ten years he was a graduate student in Political Science at UGA, earning an MA in 1978 and finishing everything but the dissertation for a PhD. His career plans changed, however, when he did an internship in 1980 at the Georgia General Assembly where he met Joe Frank Harris, who at the time was chair of the House Appropriations Committee. When Harris ran for governor, Newcomb worked for the campaign as research director. When Harris won, Newcomb served the next four years as Special Assistant to the Governor. The Harris administration was noted for its educational reforms, and Newcomb played a role in the development of the 1985 Quality Basic Education Act and the creation of the Board of Postsecondary Vocational Education. In 1988 Newcomb was chosen to be a vice president of the newly created North Metro Technical College in Governor Harris' home county of Bartow. He arrived before a single building had been constructed or student enrolled and remained for the next couple of decades, with the exception of the years 1999-2002 when he was on assignment to state government as educational advisor for Governor Roy Barnes. Throughout this time, he lived in Smyrna and also held elected office for twenty years (1991 to 2011) as a city councilman, working with the city leadership on a number of redevelopment projects. During the Great Recession of 2007-09, pressures mounted for the merger of area technical schools, and Newcomb worked on a committee supporting the consolidation in 2009 of North Metro with Chattahoochee Technical College and Appalachian Technical College. By then he had returned to graduate school to earn an EdD in higher education from the University of Georgia with a 2011 dissertation appropriate to the problems of the day, titled "Understanding the Resistance of County Leaders to the Mergers of Technical Colleges in Georgia." At the time of the merger, he was acting president of North Metro. When the three school were consolidated as Chattahoochee Tech, he became provost and executive vice president. Then in 2012 he moved up to the presidency, a position he held until his retirement at the end of August 2024.
Citation
Dr. Ron C. Newcomb, 45646Cobb County Oral History Series, 1973-, Series 1. College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Thomas A. Scott. KSU Oral History Project, 1973-2022, KSU-45-05-001. Kennesaw State University Archives.
Rights
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Identifier
ksu-45-05-001-01_104
Format
video/mp4