Shelton resigns from CC

Dr. W. Myles Shelton is stepping down as president of Clarendon College to take a position in Galveston.

The CC Board of Regents accepted Shelton’s resignation during a called meeting last Thursday. His last day on the job will be June 28.

“It’s a lot of mixed emotions,” Shelton said of his resignation Monday. “Clarendon College has been very good for us personally.”

The board last week praised Shelton for the accomplishments CC has achieved under his leadership, most significantly the successful completion of the school’s accreditation process last year.

Shelton lists the construction and opening of the college’s new Vera Dial Dickey Library and the M.K. Brown Academic Center in Pampa among CC’s top achievements since he took the helm in 1999.

The president also said he is proud of the college successfully completing the goals outlined in the “New Horizons” master plan from 1999 to 2003 and in the “Opening Doors; Changing Lives” plan scheduled to be completed this year.

“The ‘New Horizons’ plan had 44 individual goals, and all of them were met,” Shelton said. “I expect we’ll see the same results when the ‘Opening Doors’ plan ends this year. All of these little accomplishments add to up to really great things when taken as a whole.”

Shelton said he will miss the community and the people of Clarendon, but he looks forward to the new challenges he will face as president of Galveston College.

“They have had declining enrollment, and then there are issues lingering because of allegations of misrepresenting enrollment numbers, which impacts their state funding,” Shelton said. “I think overall the institution is strong.”

Clarendon College’s next step will be to hire an interim president. Shelton says he hopes the board will make that decision this month.

The interim president will then guide the college in its selection of a new president. That process is expected to take between nine and 12 months.

In other business, the board of regents last week approved the hiring of Steve Williams as an English instructor at the CC Pampa Center and voted to extend the contract of acting dean of students Tex Buckhaults by 12 months.

The board also accepted the resignation of Enrollment Services Counselor Kelly Vonner, who is leaving to teach math at Memphis.