NCCAT celebrates expansion: Center for educator training needs increasing support
NCCAT Board of Trustees, Western Carolina University representative, Senator Kevin Corbin, NCCAT staff. (L-R): Karen Sumner, Rick Stout, Scott Penland, Cory Causby, Kevin Corbin, Desarae Kirkpatrick, Brock Womble.
Gabriel Swinney photo
On April 24, the N.C. Center for the Advancement of Teaching celebrated the groundbreaking of its 51-bedroom residential expansion at its main campus in Cullowhee. The capital project is underway thanks to a $30 million, five-year grant from the General Assembly and it also includes renovations to NCCAT’s existing facility. The expansion is expected to partially open by August and the project should be completed by August 2027, according to Adam Caruthers, an architect working on the expansion.
NCCAT describes itself as an organization that “helps North Carolina teachers grow in knowledge, skills, compassion, and professionalism so that students become engaged, self-motivated, and successful.”
In addition to the site in Western North Carolina, NCCAT has a smaller Ocracoke-based campus.
The renovation will eliminate the road-crossing and level the ground elevation to make the Cullowhee property more walkable, accessible and residential.
The literacy center is another key focus.
“We are one generation away from having the best readers in the world. We’re also one generation away from having kids that can’t read. And so NCCAT is going to be committed to making sure that there is quality literacy instruction for as long as we’re around,” said Business Manager Will Putman.
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And an additional 51 beds means upgrading the central facility to accommodate more people.
“When we have special events, like beginning teacher or our curriculum leaders conference … we’ll be able to open all four of those walls and easily seat 150,” he said, explaining that this number will allow the facility to serve at least one representative from each of the state’s 115 districts.
The ceremony was marked by several brief speeches about the importance of NCCAT and its ongoing project.
Programming at the center helps teachers fine-tune their craft, explained Deputy Executive Director Karen Sumner.
“We know that at least 25 hours of professional development is what makes change happen,” she said, adding that these benefits will only grow after the completion of the project.
“The expanded space is going to allow that to happen even more — more content area expertise, being able to serve far greater features and in all different kinds of ways, and stronger in-house expertise,” she added.
Board of Trustees member Rick Stout discussed the benefits NCCAT passes onto students.
“When educators participate in our programs, they gain new knowledge that they can use right away. They deepen their understanding of the content they teach … every strong classroom begins with a teacher who is learning and growing in their craft,” he said.
Executive Director M. Brock Womble began his remarks with gratitude for those who’d made the project possible, including late Rep. Mike Clampitt (R-Swain) and Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Macon), who had helped to secure state funding.
He noted that future expansion will only build upon the stellar reputation NCCAT possesses now.
“It’s just amazing to me, when you travel the state, what people — when you say, ‘NCCAT,’ what that means to educators,” Womble said, before introducing Corbin, who’d arrived to speak after a 10:30 a.m. General Assembly session in Raleigh.
“He’s for K-12 education. He’s supportive of NCCAT. He’s supportive of Western North Carolina. This, we would not be here today without Senator Kevin Corbin and I — he is a friend, but also, more than anything, he is just a public-school person who believes in what we do in public schools every day,” Womble told the audience.
Corbin said he was thrilled to support appropriations for the capital project, a necessary use of state funding — both for education and Western North Carolina.
“We have such great public schools in North Carolina, and I support you 100%,” he said.
However, during his time in the North Carolina General Assembly, the senator has voted in favor of multiple bills that would reduce public school funding.
Corbin supported legislation that would’ve appropriated another $248 million in taxpayer funding to private school vouchers in 2024-2025, in addition to the $384.5 million the state had already allocated.
The bill also expanded Opportunity Scholarship Program eligibility requirements so more students could qualify, which, according to one estimate by the office of state budget and management, could have resulted in a $203.8 million cut to annual public-school funding.
The Macon senator last year voted to pass H.B. 87, forcing North Carolina to comply with a section of the One Big Beautiful Bill awarding up to $1,700 in tax credits to private school scholarship-granting nonprofit donors.
According to the Wake Forest Law Review, “there may be greater potential for H.B. 87 to divert funding from public schools than what was apportioned in the OSP.”
Funding cuts manifest as low per-pupil spending. North Carolina ranks second-to-last nationwide in this category to the detriment of public-school students — and their educators.
In 2025, more than 1 in 10 teachers statewide — 10.11% — left the profession, and retention was disproportionately low among teachers with less than five or more than 30 years of experience.
These rates “underscore the consequences of the General Assembly’s policy choices — prioritizing tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, as well as expanding private school vouchers for affluent families,” wrote the North Carolina Association of Educators.
NCCAT could be poised to aid the state’s attrition crisis; it certainly transformed 2021 Beginning Teacher of the Year Emilee Higdon.
Higdon, a speaker at the April 24 ceremony, said at the time, she’d been teaching at Bartram Academy in Franklin, an alternative school for students facing barriers to education, whether those be academic, linguistic, behavioral or related to other conditions.
“As a beginning teacher, it was overwhelming. Although my education program at UNC Wilmington prepared me to meet these needs in some capacity, the sheer mass and depth of needs in this particular environment exhausted me,” she said.
By the time she arrived at NCCAT for finalist week, she was actively looking for other opportunities and considering leaving education altogether.
But NCCAT changed her mind.
“I learned so many things about pedagogy, about classroom management, about myself as a teacher.”
The professional development was unlike any training she’d attended.
The leadership, the organization — it was the “Disney World for teachers,” she said.
“When they called my name as the state beginning teacher of the year. I walked down the steps of the Ramsey Center and heard my friend whispers, ‘You can’t leave those kids now.’”
Higdon recounted returning “as a different person,” someone capable of “finding joy in the classroom again.”
Although NCCAT hosts a variety of seminars and is currently undergoing expansion, the center seems to put more focus on professional development than it does preventing burnout.
Yet, before it was first put on the chopping block, NCCAT prioritized both categories of program. It was even nicknamed ‘Balm for Burnout’ in a 2000 New York Times article.
Those who advocated the facility be fully defunded, like Senate Pro Tem President Phil Berger, targeted wellness-driven courses such as “Everyday Healthful Living: A Whole New You,” and “The Healing Power of the Arts.”
In 2011, when the retention rate of teachers it trained was 97%, NCCAT was squeezed of half its funding.
Womble in 2012 joined the center’s board of trustees upon a four-year appointment by Berger.
Throughout Gov. Pat McCrory’s term, NCCAT stood at the brink of shutdown, saved in 2013 by the House budget after neither the governor nor the Senate earmarked any funding.
The center got its break in 2014, when it once again was designated under the category of recurring funding.
Upon the request of the NCGA, it had made “significant changes to its programmatic offerings,” according to NC Newsline.
