Dr. R. Wayne Branch, president of Clark College, has been appointed to the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) board of directors for a one-year term beginning July 1.Mari Kruger, director of Student Programs and Enrollment Services at Pierce College Puyallup, has been selected by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators to be honored as the Outstanding Mid-level Student Affairs Professional. The association has more than 8,000 individual members and more than 1,175 member campuses. This organization provides professional development, promotes exemplary practices, and is a leader in policy development. Kruger was selected from nominees across the nation and will be honored at the association’s spring conference in Tampa, Florida.
Dr. R. Wayne Branch, president of Clark College, has been appointed to the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) board of directors for a one-year term beginning July 1.
Thirteen new board members were announced during the AACC annual meeting on April 8 in Boston.
The AACC is the primary advocacy organization for the nation’s community colleges and represents more than 1,100 associate degree-granting institutions, or 95 percent of all accredited U.S. two-year community, junior and technical colleges. The AACC is governed by a 32 member board of directors, which is entrusted to protect the national association and to act in the best interests of the nation’s community colleges.
In March, Anne Cassidy became executive director of the Edmonds Community College Foundation. Cassidy was previously director of development for Holden Village, an ecumenical Christian retreat center on Lake Chelan, where she managed a national capital campaign. Before that, she served as director of development for several non-profits, including Deaconess Children's Services, Lutheran Community Services and Eastside Domestic Violence Program. She earned her master's degree in education from Portland State University.
The Community College Research Center has released Building Pathways to Success for Low-Skill Adult Students: Lessons for Community College Policy and Practice from a Longitudinal Tracking Study, a report based on a first-of-its-kind study of the progress and outcomes of low-skill adults in community colleges.
The study was conducted by David Prince of the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) and CCRC Senior Research Associate Davis Jenkins as part of the Ford Foundation's Bridges to Opportunity initiative. It was designed to give educators throughout Washington's community and technical college system a better idea of the characteristics and experiences of their low-skill adult students, who make up one-third of the approximately 300,000 students served annually by the system. The study also sought to identify the critical filter points or roadblocks at which adult students drop out or fail to make it to the next level. The SBCTC staff is using the study's findings to promote a rethinking among educators throughout the system on how to better serve low-skill adult students.
A complete copy of the paper, Building Pathways to Success for Low-Skill Adult Students, is available for download at http://www.tc.edu/ccrc/papers/Building_Pathways.pdf. The research and report were funded by the Ford Foundation.
Edmonds Community College accounting instructor Andy Williams is the 2005 recipient of Central Washington University's "Advancing the Dream" award recognizing the outstanding contributions of its alumni in community colleges across the state.
The College Bookstore received the “Outstanding Growth in the Ratio of Used Textbooks to Total Textbooks” award from the Independent College Bookstore Association – a result of an ongoing effort to meet student demand for used books.
Cascadia Community College Board of Trustees hired Dr. William Christopher to fill the position of president of the college. Dr. Christopher will assume leadership of the college on July 1.
Dr. Christopher is currently president of the Rock Creek Campus of Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon, where he has been since 1998. Prior to that time, he was the dean for instruction at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham. He also served on the science faculty at Olympic College in Bremerton and at Southern Nevada Community College in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Dr. Brinton Sprague will continue serving as interim president of the college until Dr. Christopher assumes the post.
Pierce College District's Board of Trustees has selected Dr. Michele Johnson as chancellor of the district. Dr. Johnson, who is currently the president of Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, will assume leadership of the district on July 1.
Dr. Johnson has been the president of Pierce College Fort Steilacoom in Lakewood since 1999. She has more than 32 years of higher education experience, including two years as interim executive dean for instruction and four years as dean and executive dean of workforce education at Pierce College. She has worked at Pierce College for almost 27 years. She earned her doctoral degree in educational and policy management from the University of Oregon, and her bachelor's and master's degrees in police science and administration from Washington State University.
Steve Wall will continue to lead the district as chancellor until his retirement on June 30.
Seattle Community Colleges have selected Alan Spence as chief financial officer at the Seattle Community Colleges. Spence will assume his new role on July 1. Spence comes to Seattle from the Pierce College District, where he has served as district vice president of administrative services since 1981. Previously, he served as vice president for business and finance at Saint Martin’s College in Lacey, and as an administrator at The Evergreen State College in Olympia.
Spence holds an MBA from Pacific Lutheran University, and a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from the University of Redlands in California. He is a doctoral candidate in educational leadership and policy at the University of Washington.
James C. Richardson has been selected as president of Wenatchee Valley College starting July 1. Richardson comes to Wenatchee from Southeastern Community College in West Burlington, Iowa where he currently serves as president.
Richardson’s 28 years of experience in education includes administrative positions at three multi-campus colleges. Besides four years as president at Southeastern, he was provost for student and academic affairs at Northeast Iowa Community College’s Calmar campus in Iowa, and dean of general education and academic development at Gateway Technical College’s Racine campus in Wisconsin.
He served as an academic coordinator and taught speech, English and American culture at Daejeon Junior College in South Korea. For three years he taught speech at Skagit Valley College in Mt. Vernon, where he was voted teacher of the year by the student government and selected as an exchange professor to Beijing Foreign Studies University in China. He taught in the communication skills department at Chippewa Valley Technical College in Wisconsin.
Richardson will replace Dr. David Beyer, who took over the position on an interim basis when former president Dr. Jack Becherer left for a presidency at Rock Valley College in Rockport, Illinois, last November.
Janet Holm, marketing and outreach coordinator for Clover Park Technical College, has been selected as the technical education representative to the board of directors of the Washington Council for High School-College Relations, an association of colleges and universities, high schools, professional associations, educational organizations and honorary members throughout the state of Washington.
The council provides opportunities for members to address issues of common interest and encourages high school students to continue their education at member institutions. Counselors from Sumner High School recommended Holm for the three-year term. She is a former instructor in the Clover Park Technical College Grocery Cashier training program.
Dr. Kenneth Minnaert, president of South Puget Sound Community College, recently received the 2005 Shirley B. Gordon Award of Distinction from Phi Theta Kappa International, the honor society for two-year colleges.
Minnaert was recognized for his outstanding support of the Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) chapter at South Puget Sound Community College and for his efforts to promote the honor society in the state of Washington. He received the award at PTK’s recent International Convention in Dallas.
During a recognition luncheon for him and other award winners from around the country, Minnaert was credited for his support of the college’s PTK chapter’s services activities, including Project Graduation, Shoebox Christmas and the Bulgarian Children’s Project. Minnaert also has hosted the All-Washington Academic Team ceremony on the college’s campus for the last five years, and has worked to build scholarship offerings for All-Washington team members.
The Shirley B. Gordon Award of Distinction is named for Dr. Shirley B. Gordon, president emeritus of Highline Community College in Des Moines, and current chair of the board of directors of PTK International. The Gordon Award is granted to college presidents and campus CEOs who have made a significant contribution to PTK in areas such as supporting PTK programs, developing scholarship opportunities and increasing visibility and understanding of the organization.
Minnaert has led Olympia’s South Puget Sound Community College as its president since 1980, making him the longest serving college president in the state of Washington.
SBCTC Coordinator of Student Outcomes and Assessment Bill Moore is the recipient of the 2005 Thomas M. Magoon Distinguished Alumni Award given by the University of Maryland Department of Counseling and Personnel Services.
The award is given each year at the annual conference of the American College Personnel Association, and honors graduates of the Counseling and Personnel Services Department who are working in higher education and are highly regarded as scholar-practitioners.
Moore was recognized for his service as the coordinator for the Center for the Study of Intellectual Development where he has coordinated Perry data rating and scoring; advised researchers around the country on various Perry-related research projects; and trained Perry raters since 1981.
In addition, he was honored for publishing over 25 chapters and articles on various topics of assessment and the Perry model in such sources as Doing Learning Communities Assessment, Journal of Applied Research in Community Colleges, Journal of Engineering Education, and the Handbook of College Teaching.
Clover Park Technical College Trustee Chair Joseph Kosai is among seven American citizens the Japanese government has selected as recipients of 2005 Spring Awards. Kosai, who has actively fostered goodwill between Japan and the United States for more than 46 years, will be presented the Kyokujitsu Shojusho (Order of the Rising Sun) Medal on June 29 at the home of the Japanese Consular in Seattle.
Kosai is manager of the Kabuki Restaurant in Tacoma, past president of the Puyallup Japanese American Citizens League and the Tacoma Buddhist Church. He has initiated student and high school baseball exchanges between Japan and the United States, and has been a central figure in the Tacoma-Kitakyushu Sister City exchanges.
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