LINN, Mo. -- Don Claycomb, State Technical College of Missouri president since 1993, told the school's board of regents Friday he plans to step down from that post on June 30 - next year.
"It's a good time," Claycomb said in a Friday afternoon telephone interview. "It's been a wonderful experience.
"I can't imagine, as I've told people, anything having been any more rewarding, as far as a career is concerned, for me."
The Linn R-2 School District started the technical education program in the 1960s. It grew with the help of state and federal career-education money, and switched from a local to a state program in the mid-1990s.
Claycomb quipped, "I got to be the last president of Linn Technical College (and) I got to be the first and only president of Linn State Technical College." Linn State changed its name last summer to the current name - State Technical College of Missouri - as a better way to identify the school and its statewide mission.
"That period of time from 1993 up until the present," Claycomb noted, "is the longest tenure of any public (school) president, whether it be four-year or two-year, in the state of Missouri," although there are one or two private college heads with a longer tenure.
"It's a good time, I think, from the standpoint of where the college sits, and there's some good leadership here," he said. "We've had a lot of very good things happen over the years, and I've been blessed with having a lot of good people work with me and for me, and I also have been blessed with always having a very, very good board."
Claycomb expects the regents will decide to hire a consulting firm with expertise in college presidential searches when they meet again in June.
He thinks his own tenure will make the job an attractive one for candidates.
Also, he said, "When you look at the programming and what has happened at the college, and where it ranks today - with the Aspen Institute, as being one of the top 150 public two-year colleges in the nation - I think that there's some attractive things for some other people, who might want to step in and take it to the next level."
Claycomb also said the State Technical College of Missouri is in good financial shape.
During Friday's meeting, the regents reviewed the Evers and Company, CPAs, audit covering the 2013 and 2014 business years ending last June 30 - which had no major findings or complaints.
The management letter said school officials had failed, in one instance, to make a refund within the required 45 days to a student who stopped attending the school.
"I do believe that's an isolated event," controller Jennifer Jacobs said, "but we're going to take advantage of them pointing that out, and look into some things that could prevent that from happening in the future."
Auditors often suggest ways for schools, businesses and agencies to improve their record-keeping, and Jacobs said the new audit did that in the area of "our collections on our past-due student accounts. We've not been very successful in collecting past-due dollars, and we are going to look at that very closely and see what we can do to improve it."
She acknowledged tight financial times might be one reason for the poorer collections.
Regents approved a request to move the school's Automation and Robotics Program from Mexico, Missouri to St. Charles County, as part of State Tech's partnership with Toyota/Bodine Aluminum that was announced last year.
"We were selected by Toyota as the eighth institution in the country to do this," Claycomb explained. "It's a manufacturing initiative that involves more than just Toyota.
"In order to do that, we had to do it in the St. Louis area - and we are working with the area vocational-technical school in St. Charles to host that program."
Regents approved changing the "telecommunications" program name to "Network Systems Technology."
"The previous name implied preparation and training for telephone men, so to speak - installers, maintenance people and what-have-you," Claycomb said. "But that's really not the case anymore - it's much more in the area of digital and electronics."
Vicki Schwinke, the dean of academic instruction, walked the regents through some changes in the program review process.
"We're pulling together data that we've used (in the past) in bits and pieces," she explained, "and put it all into one package, where everybody can see it.
"And (then) we can do some bench marking with programs that are high in some areas, with programs that are lower - to cultivate a continuous improvement atmosphere."
Regents also discussed the Higher Learning Commission's planned visit to Linn in a couple of weeks, to review State Technical College's programs as part of the every-decade re-accreditation process.