Howard County Executive Calvin Ball to lead Baltimore City Community College

Howard County’s departing Executive Calvin Ball will take over as interim president of Baltimore City Community College.

With BCCC President Debra McCurdy stepping down at year’s end, Ball’s appointment brings him back to the last institution where he worked before becoming the first African American elected as Howard’s executive in 2018.

The Democrat, who previously served on the County Council, took over as executive at a time when Howard was divided over how to move forward from the back-to-back devastating floods in Ellicott City. Over the course of two terms, he navigated challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, a federal government shutdown and layoffs, as well as persistent funding gaps for county public schools.

Ball always wanted to return to higher education and sees the new job at BCCC as an opportunity to expand his service to the community, he said Monday in an exclusive interview with The Baltimore Banner and WJZ-TV.

“Being an educator is who I am,” Ball said. “Empowering our current and future generations through higher education has always been something that’s important to me.”

BCCC, the city’s only two-year college, sits in northwest Baltimore, up the road from Mondawmin Mall and Coppin State University. Founded in 1947, it currently offers 30 associate degree programs. The college enrolls about 3,700 students; 48% of the its attendees receive Pell Grants, which are awarded to students with exceptional needs, and two-thirds are Black.

When he worked there before, Ball oversaw BCCC’s Complete College Baltimore program, which sought to eliminate barriers for students earning their associate’s degree. He holds a doctorate in education with a concentration in community college leadership from Morgan State University and also earned degrees from Towson University and the University of Baltimore.

Ball is stepping into the role as interim president at a challenging time for the institution.

While other local community colleges in Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties have grown their enrollment over the years, the city’s institution has seen its student base shrink. The student body has declined by nearly 20% since 2019, despite enrollment growing nationally by an average of 6%.

Ball’s focus will be addressing issues identified in a recent state audit and concerns raised by the college’s unions, he said.

The audit, released this summer, revealed a pattern of mismanagement. BCCC awarded approximately $264,000 in financial aid to 145 fictitious students that college staff already had flagged as potentially fraudulent, according to the audit. The community college also received $126,901 from the Maryland Higher Education Commission to support enrollment for those fake students.

Additionally, the audit found that BCCC paid for equipment and services that it never used, including surveillance cameras and door access controllers that weren’t installed. The electronic equipment, which cost over half a million dollars, remained unused three years later.

Ball said one of his priorities as interim president will be working with Gov. Wes Moore, Mayor Brandon Scott and the community “in a deeper way” to address the issues identified in the state audit.

The college has struggled for years. The problems have been so widespread and known to city and state leaders that the Maryland General Assembly forced BCCC in 2015 to commission an outside report on the issues facing the school. The findings, released in 2016, were stark and demanded urgent action, according to lawmakers.

Enrollment had fallen by a third between 2006 and 2016, the report found. Revenue also was down about 13%, and the completion rate for students was 20% lower than the state’s average.

The report made a number of recommendations, few of which the community college followed. BCCC did not join the University System of Maryland like the report suggested, nor did it narrow its academic focus or solve its technology issues.

Little has changed at the community college since the 2016 report, faculty say. Conditions, including enrollment and building management, have gotten worse, said Angelique Cook-Hayes, a longtime faculty member.

“We don’t have faith in the administration,” Cook-Hayes said in an interview last spring. “There has been a long-term trust issue.”

This summer, after nearly a year and a half of bargaining, the faculty union at the community college ratified its first contract, guaranteeing a nearly 9% raise and new protections.

Cook-Hayes described the process as challenging. Faculty have complained that McCurdy, who has led the college since 2019, rarely interacts with employees and often can be hard to reach.

That was evident, they say, when University of Baltimore President Kurt Schmoke announced his idea last October to consolidate BCCC under his university. At the time, Schmoke, the former mayor of Baltimore, was also the chair of the community college’s board.

Faculty were blindsided by the proposed merger, and though Schmoke said McCurdy was supportive of the idea, the community college never released a statement to the media or employees about the idea. The plan has has since stalled, and Schmoke resigned from his position on the BCCC board. He plans to retire from the University of Baltimore in 2027.

“We have many questions,” said Laura Pope, a longtime BCCC faculty member and union organizer, “and nobody to ask them to.”

Ball wants faculty and staff to know that they’ll find a partner in him and that he wants to see the institution thrive.

“I’m excited to go back to my roots,” he said.