Juston Pate

Dr. Juston Pate has enjoyed a 24-year career in education and has held positions in secondary, postsecondary, and state government - with the majority of those years being in the community college environment.  For the past eight years Dr. Pate has been the President and CEO of Elizabethtown Community and Technical College in Central KY, where he has been involved in community and economic development and has led a great deal of change within the college.  Juston has see ECTC's student success metrics grow across all categories, including a steady increase in graduation rates from 31% when he arrived to over 57% in the spring of 2024.  He has also played a key role in recruiting industry for the region's economic development and worked with several fortune 100 companies to create training programs while supplying a workforce for community partners such as Ft. Knox, Metalsa, Altech, Nucor Steel, and the new BlueOvalSK battery plant.  

Dr. Pate attributes much of the college’s success to the quality of the leadership in his executive cabinet, and more importantly, to the quality of the teammates with whom he works throughout the college and community.  Together, they have undertaken such changes as moving to an eight-week schedule, partnering to build a residential complex for student parents struggling with housing insecurity, establishing the college’s first dedicated foundation, more than tripling the number of graduates from its nursing program, initiating a student success hub for academic and non-academic barriers, and acquiring over $100 million for capital improvement projects.  

Moving into the future, Dr. Pate would like to see the college develop a stronger comprehensive advising plan, further reduce non-academic barriers to student success, recruit out-of-state students into the college and regional workforce, expand academic programming, and endow funds for student emergency needs.