The abrupt removal of Bishop State Community College’s interim president earlier this month has drawn public criticism from Mobile County’s legislative delegation and put fresh scrutiny on a pattern of frequent leadership turnover across Alabama’s two-year college system.
On June 3, the Alabama Community College System announced it was replacing Dr. Lawrence Brandyburg as interim president of Bishop State, marking the sixth leadership change at the Mobile college since 2015. The move came just days before an ongoing search for a permanent president was set to close. Charles Jones, a regional external affairs and workforce manager with the ACCS central office, was named to lead the college on a temporary basis while the search continues.
Brandyburg had served as interim president since July 2021, stepping in after former President Reginald Sykes announced his resignation. Citing its policy on personnel matters, the ACCS has declined to explain why Brandyburg was let go ahead of the naming of a permanent president.
Brandyburg’s brother, Mobile attorney James Brandyburg, has said publicly that he believes the ouster was retaliatory. He said his brother had refused in March to appoint a special assistant, Frazier Payne, to a vice president position at Bishop State because Payne holds only a bachelor’s degree and did not meet the minimum qualifications for the role. According to James Brandyburg, Payne was hired a week later by the ACCS central office as a special assistant to the chancellor, while remaining stationed on the Bishop State campus. Payroll records from April show Payne is now paid a salary of $143,000 under the system’s executive-level salary schedule.
On June 6, ten members of the bipartisan Mobile County legislative delegation held a press conference outside the college to voice their frustration with the decision. The group also sent a letter to Gov. Kay Ivey calling for an investigation into the pattern of turnover at Bishop State and other historically Black colleges within the system.
House Speaker Pro Tem Rep. Victor Gaston, who chairs the local delegation, said the instability threatens the college’s credibility. Mobile Sen. Jack Williams said he was disappointed by the decision, noting that Brandyburg had performed well in the role and that the system had not offered lawmakers an explanation.
Mobile Rep. Barbara Drummond said the shakeup was especially frustrating given the college’s role in regional workforce training. “We want that college to be the arm of workforce development in the region. Mobile is on fire right now in economic development and we’re the envy of the entire state. This college is an intricate part of this community and it’s not fair to have this instability,” Drummond said. She added that in past leadership transitions, local legislators were consulted in advance, but that did not happen this time, and that other lawmakers who reached out to ACCS officials were unable to secure meetings.
The concern over stability comes as Bishop State has taken on a larger role in regional economic development. Airbus recently held an event at the college announcing a third manufacturing line in Mobile, in partnership with the college’s Advanced Manufacturing Center, which is expected to help train workers for roughly 1,000 new jobs. Other major employers in the region, including Austal and Evonik, have also been expanding their presence.
Bishop State’s president’s office has seen frequent change since the 2015 death of former President James Lowe Jr., who had led the college since 2008. Dr. Ullysses McBride served as acting president beginning in March 2015 before being replaced months later by Dr. Valerie Richardson. Richardson left after securing a different presidential appointment in October 2015, having served less than six months. Sykes was named acting president in February 2016 and received a full-time appointment in July 2017. After four years in the role, Sykes announced his retirement in July 2021, at which point Brandyburg was named interim president.
A broader review of presidential tenure across the Alabama Community College System shows that Bishop State’s turnover, while notable, is not unique. According to the review, 19 of the system’s 24 presidents — nearly 80 percent — have served four years or less in their current positions, with an average tenure of just 1.7 years among that group. None of those 19 has reached five years in the role.
Only one sitting president in the system has a tenure between five and 20 years: Col. David J. Mollahan, who has led Marion Military Institute for 13 years. Four other presidents have each served more than two decades in their current positions, led by David Campbell, who has spent 46 years at Northeast Alabama Community College in Rainsville. But those long tenures are the exception rather than the rule across the system.
Nearly half of Alabama’s 24 community colleges have seen four or more changes between presidents and acting presidents over the past decade, and eight schools in particular have experienced especially high turnover. Among the system’s historically Black colleges and universities, Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa, Gadsden State Community College in Gadsden and J.F. Drake State Community and Technical College in Huntsville have each had five or more leadership changes in that span. Lawson State Community College in Bessemer and H. Councill Trenholm State Community College in Montgomery, both also historically Black institutions, have seen relatively more stability, though both recently lost long-tenured presidents and their current leaders each have only about a year of experience in the role.
All 19 of the system’s short-tenured presidents have been appointed during the tenure of current ACCS Chancellor Jimmy Baker, who became acting chancellor in August 2016 after Mark Heinrich took medical leave ahead of his retirement in April 2017. Baker received a full appointment as chancellor in March 2017, becoming the first chancellor hired directly by the ACCS Board of Trustees, a body the Legislature created in 2015 to add oversight to the system. Baker is paid a salary of $383,000.
ACCS spokesperson Ebony Horton acknowledged the system’s tenure challenges but said leadership overall has strengthened. “While we have worked through changes in leadership at many of our 24 colleges across the state in recent years we now have, by far, the strongest group of leaders in the history of the community college system,” Horton said in a written statement, adding that the system is making major investments to improve programs, services and facilities at Bishop State and other colleges.
Horton noted that the ACCS Board of Trustees appointed new presidents at both Shelton State and Enterprise State during a June 8 meeting. Dr. Chris Cox was named to lead Shelton State as its fifth president in 10 years, while Danny Long was appointed permanent president at Enterprise State after five years as acting president, becoming the college’s third president since 2012. Horton also said presidential turnover is not unique to Alabama, pointing to elevated turnover among community college leaders nationally, and said the system’s focus going forward is on finding steady, long-term leaders for Bishop State and its sister colleges.
National data supports the idea that turnover has been rising across higher education generally. A 2017 report from the American Council on Education found that college presidents nationally serve an average of 6.5 years, down from seven years in a 2011 report and 8.5 years in 2006. A separate 2012-17 review by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities found that presidential tenures lasted four years or less at 44.9 percent of member institutions, while 28.3 percent lasted between five and nine years and 26.9 percent lasted 10 years or more.
Concerns over leadership volatility prompted at least one legislative response this year. In March, state Sen. Tim Melson, R-Florence, filed the Workforce Reform and Alignment Act, which proposed a series of restructuring and reporting changes intended to increase accountability within the two-year college system. The bill would have created a nominating committee to provide a pool of candidates for the ACCS Board of Trustees, required board approval for expenses above $50,000 — or $20,000 at colleges led by an acting president — and mandated board approval for all lobbying and consulting fees. It also would have required quarterly reports to the Legislature detailing the number of acting presidents in the system and how long those positions had been vacant.
Melson said he filed the bill because of what he saw as uneven performance among the state’s community colleges. “There are a lot of problems in the two-year system,” Melson said. “Some colleges are flourishing while others are dying on the vine. From operations to maintenance, it has been terrible.” The bill received a favorable vote from the Senate Education Policy Committee, but Melson allowed it to die on the Senate floor after receiving assurances that improvements would be made within the system. He said he could reintroduce the measure next session if he is not satisfied with the progress.
Bradley Byrne, who served as ACCS chancellor from 2007 to 2009 during a period of significant administrative turnover tied to cleaning up mismanagement within the system, said today’s turnover appears to stem from different causes, though he noted that higher education leadership nationally tends to see above-average turnover. Byrne said he helped reappoint roughly half of the presidents across the 28 institutions then under the ACCS umbrella, none of whom remain in their posts today. He also recalled helping install James Lowe as Bishop State’s president in 2008 and said he was proud of what Lowe accomplished in the college’s top job before his death in 2015.
Byrne, who was named president of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce in May, said workforce development remains the top concern among the chamber’s members and that a stable pipeline of skilled labor from Bishop State is essential to that effort. “Stable and effective leadership at Mobile County’s only community college is critical to our success to create a steady stream of well-prepared workers, which is vital to our existing businesses and essential for us to attract new ones,” Byrne said. He added that frequent leadership changes create a poor impression for industry partners. “They’re looking for stable, strong relationships. Bishop State needs stable leadership because of all that we’re expecting out of the Advanced Manufacturing Center,” Byrne said. “It is important to get permanent leadership there.”
Byrne said he is confident the system will ultimately find a lasting solution for Bishop State’s presidency under Baker’s leadership, but that the timeline matters. “What I will say is the quicker the better,” Byrne said. “The longer there is an acting president, the worse it is for any college.”