State Board Votes To Begin Administrative Merger Of TCAT Crossville, Livingston

With no discussion by committee members, a Tennessee Board Of Regents Committee voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to begin the process of merging TCAT Crossville and TCAT Livingston’s administration.

The Committee On Academic Policies and Programs and Student Life voted following less than a three minute presentation. Executive Vice Chancellor for Policy and Strategy Russ Deaton said the regents understand the process.

“Sharing that administrative efficiency and capacity is something TBR knows how to do,” Deaton said. “And there’s a playbook for that. It takes a while. There are a lot of moving parts that involve academic affairs and finance and financial aid and digital strategy, you name it. It’s impacting the colleges. But we know what we’re doing.”

Deaton said the process would take under two years and would be based on a recent administrative merger between the TCAT campuses in Jackson and Whiteville. The campuses would continue to operate in each individual community. The merger, however, would be focused on saving administrative costs.

“It’s really about combining and sharing the administrative capacity for these two campuses,” Deaton said. “Over the last few months, we’ve been exploring this very beginning stages of this process. And today, if the board chooses to take action, this is but the first step in this journey towards bringing together the resources of these two campuses. There’s a lot of excitement about the idea, of course, there’s building projects going on at these campuses.”

Local leaders said they only found out about the proposal in the last two weeks. Both the Jackson County and Pickett County Commissioners passed resolutions Monday night against the idea, sighting the potential loss of local contacts and programs.