ChuckMcCarter As it prepares for its first full academic year, the Lampasas County Higher Education Center has a new director.

The LCHEC Foundation has named Dr. S. Chuck McCarter of Salado the chief operations officer of the campus, which offers health science courses and other college credits toward associate’s degrees. McCarter, who accepted a two-year contract as an independent contractor — will begin work officially June 1.

McCarter has worked for Temple College since 2002, serving as executive director of the Texas Bioscience Institute in Temple and as executive dean of the East Williamson County Higher Education Center in Taylor. EWCHEC — which offers its Legacy Early College High School students the opportunity to earn as many as 60 college credits by the time they graduate from high school — serves as a model for LCHEC.

The Lampasas campus began of- fering college-level courses in January and has attracted students not only from Lampasas County but also from surrounding entities.

Mayor Judy Hetherly, an LCHEC Foundation member who met extensively with McCarter before LCHEC’s establishment, said the administrator’s experience will benefit the new Lampasas County center.

“He will bring to LCHEC the knowledge and skill of running this type of higher education center,” Ms. Hetherly said. “We’re very fortunate to have him.”

Under McCarter’s direction, EWCHEC in 2008 received the Texas Economic Development Council Workforce Best Practices Award. In addition, during McCarter’s tenure as executive director of the Texas Bioscience Institute — a multi-institutional partnerhsip that focuses on workforce readiness for the biotechnology and health care fields — the consortium received a Bellwether Award. The national honor recognizes innovative educational programs in community colleges across the United States.

With McCarter as executive dean, EWCHEC received a $600,000 grant from the Texas Education Agency for Legacy Early College High School.

McCarter has proven experi- ence, Ms. Hetherly said, in fundraising and successful grant applications. She believes he not only can prepare LCHEC to fund itself fully within its first three years — as McCarter did with EWCHEC and the Texas Bioscience Institute — but also can help the LCHEC Foundation offer student scholarships within the same amount of time.