News

GTCC’S ED BOWLING TO LEAD GATES FOUNDATION INITIATIVE

Contact: RoBurchette@gtcc.edu (Released 8/26/11)

JAMESTOWN - Ed Bowling of Guilford Technical Community College has been named North Carolina executive director for Completion by Design, a program designed to increase the number of students who complete a marketable credential at their community college or transfer to a four-year college to finish their degree, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

GTCC is the lead school among five North Carolina community colleges selected for the Gates Foundation initiative. The group also includes Davidson County Community College, Central Piedmont Community College, Martin Community College and Wake Technical Community College.

Bowling also will be working with his counterparts in Texas, Ohio and Florida where the Gates Foundation also funded Completion by Design Initiatives. Their missions will be to devise and implement new approaches to make the college experience more responsive to today's student, according to the foundation. Bowling said that he hopes the colleges in the program can "develop a pathway for students that can be used throughout North Carolina."

Bowling of High Point has been coordinator of GTCC's Developmental Education Initiative grant, and will continue to handle that job until his successor is selected. Besides hiring his successor as DEI coordinator, Bowling will hire an administrative assistant for the North Carolina program.

North Carolina received a first-year planning grant of $495,000 from the Gates Foundation, with additional grants expected for the remainder of the five-year program.

Bowling, an Indiana native, moved to North Carolina in 1988 to work for Wachovia Bank where he spent nearly14 years and became senior vice-president and manager of investment product development and solutions.
He was a Developmental Education reading adjunct and time limited instructor at GTCC before becoming coordinator of the Developmental Education Initiative grant.

Having been a teacher before going into baking, Bowling said, "I felt there would be a time when I would return to teaching."
He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree (cum laude) in 1979 from Indiana Wesleyan University; and a Master of Arts from UNCG in 2007. Bowling also completed the Wachovia Executive Management Program at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in 1997.

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