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Randolph Community College Board of Trustees
Distinguished Service Award

The Randolph Community College Board of Trustees Distinguished Service Award was established in 2002.The nomination criteria states that an award recipient must be an individual, group, or organization that has made a long-term, consistent commitment that is extraordinary and has had visible impact or result directly related to support the mission of Randolph Community College.

2010 Lenton Slack Lenton Slack (pictured at right center), retired RCC Interior Design instructor and renowned local artist, was the recipient of the Randolph Community College Board of Trustees 2010 Distinguished Service Award, presented at the Board’s annual meeting on July 16 on the Asheboro Campus. Slack said he shares the award with fellow former instructors Charles Johnson, Cliff Norris, and Sherrill Sykes, and “the students who did a wonderful job under often insurmountable obstacles” like little to no budgets. The Interior Design program was Randolph Community College’s first “specialty” program. It was established in 1967 when the College was known as Randolph Technical Institute. The Associate in Applied Science degree was the only one of its kind in North Carolina and was part of a five-year plan to establish an Art & Design division at RTI. “Lenton Slack joined RTI’s program in 1971 as an instructor and for the next 28 years he devoted his life to building and developing the program,” said Jim Campbell, RCC Board of Trustees chairman, in presenting the handcarved acrylic “R” sculpture representing RCC’s logo to Slack. “His passion for Interior Design made RCC’s Interior Design program one of the top programs in the state.” He pointed out that over the past 43 years, other community colleges in North Carolina, and in other states, have looked to RCC’s Interior Design program as a model for their own programs. Slack was instrumental in developing the annual Interior Design Showcase, a staple of the program from the first model room designed at the Southern Living Show in 1972 until Slack retired on December 31, 1999. For the annual showcase, which served as a hands-on learning project for the students in lieu of an internship, students were broken into teams and often designed an entire house on a tight budget. Slack also involved students from other RCC programs in the project, such as Electrical students to rewire outlets and lighting in a house and Floriculture students to provide plants and floral arrangements. “The Interior Design program at RCC would certainly not have its notoriety or success without Lenton Slack’s artistic eye for design and his 28 years of dedication, direction, and determination to make RCC’s Interior Design program a model for the rest of the community colleges to follow,” said Campbell.