Drum Roll…Get To Know our 2016 Region 2 Keynote Speaker

Community colleges are often understated gems within their various state. 45% of all undergraduate students are served within the community college. The pipeline to education is expanded through the community college, or junior college, as they were once called when originally founded in 1901. With education taking a dramatically different role with a renewed focus on access, retention, graduation and/or completion, and decreasing debt among college graduates in addition to other pressing issues, the community college president has a lot on their agenda. But as we learn about community colleges, we learn about all institutions of higher education. Things are changing incrementally at all institutions, public and private, liberal arts and community college, historically black college and university and predominately white institution. No one excluded from the change but it would be nice to hear the experiences from a college president.

 

Enter Dr. DeRionne Pollard.
She is not your ordinary college president.

Dr. DeRionne P. Pollard is a daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, an African American, and an openly-gay community college president. 

In her 2014 TEDx talk, which you should check out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5OKBg-Leig), Dr. Pollard credits the movements of our history as having empowered her to become a leader in the educational world. 

Dr. Pollard currently serves as president of Montgomery College, the largest community college in the state of Maryland with 60,000 credit and non-credit students. Dr. Pollard has embraced all the components that make her who she is today—her own movement—so that she can empower others to embrace their own.

And embracing our own movement is essential in academic advising. With so many students, student and workplace concerns (think the Dream Act, sexual assault, remedial education, time-to-complete, assessment, budget, legislative mandates), limited time, competing interests, access to resources, and knowledge overload, we want to ask Dr. Pollard how reach the mountaintop of Chickering’s vector of “success” personally for ourselves and for our students. This is one NACADA Regional Conference and keynote speaker you don’t want to miss.

Learn more about Dr. Pollard, follow her via Twitter: @DrPollard_MC

If you could ask Dr. Pollard one thing, what would it be?