Presidents & Trustees Collaborative

Unlock the Potential of Board Leadership for Student Success

The Presidents & Trustees Collaborative: Community College Leadership Development is an initiative designed to strengthen the capacity of dozens of community college presidents and their boards of trustees to sustain systemic reforms that improve student outcomes. This project is made possible by support from the Ascendium Education Group.

Why This Matters

Aspen’s research into community college excellence reveals that long-term, scaled change depends on college presidents and trustees having a shared understanding of why student-outcome reforms are needed, agreeing on prioritized reform strategies, and aligning their review of metrics, policies, and budgets to those priorities. With that foundation in place, institutional decisions and strategies can transcend leadership cycles and create enduring structures to support student completion and post-completion success. Without it, needed reforms are more likely to be disrupted by other factors: presidential turnover, budgetary uncertainty, and other priorities unrelated to student outcomes.

“We’ve always been student-focused, but participating in this process has helped really define what “student success” means for us. It has allowed us to take a step back and look at the big picture, rather than continuing to do things ‘the way they have always been done.’ It has brought the Board, the President, and the Executive Team together to move forward with a clear vision of the need for reforms and how we collectively plan to get there.”
Dr. Deborah Casey, President of Wor-Wic Community College

Program Highlights

Through a year-long series of sessions, presidents and trustees are guided through Aspen’s Trustee Framework and learn lessons from Aspen Prize-winning colleges—all with the ultimate goal of strengthening their capacity to align decision-making with their colleges' student-success reform priorities. The program includes:

• One in-person session that sets the stage for the work, including structured sessions for teams of presidents and board members to agree on reasons for reform, consider reform priorities, learn about the practices of exemplary community college boards, and plan goals for the remainder of the engagement.
• Two virtual sessions to sustain momentum in defining/refining prioritized metrics, considering potential changes to board meetings and other deliberations, and identifying possible actions to strengthen the board-president relationship.
• Tailored curricular activities and self-assessment tools developed by Aspen to help boards and presidents identify priorities for strengthening governance in light of their self-defined goals for advancing student success as well as other contextual factors.  

What Makes This Program Unique?

The Presidents & Trustees Collaborative provides:

• Collaborative Development: All activities will focus on presidents and trustees working together to advance student-focused reforms.
• Sustainable Impact: The program is designed to help participants establish governance practices that support student success efforts over the long term, lasting even as sitting board members’ terms end and new ones are onboarded.
• Alignment with Excellent Outcomes: While sessions are designed to enable each team to define its own priorities and next steps, they are all grounded in Aspen’s frameworks for student success and exemplary community college leadership practices.

“This professional development is unlike the average board training. It challenges participants to rethink how they approach their work together by prioritizing what matters most: strong student outcomes. It then provides a framework that presidents and boards can use to move their commitment into action, bringing clarity of purpose, roles, and priorities. The development also deepened board members' understanding of how they can best support presidents to focus on meaningful student reforms. Because the training spans several sessions, it gives applicants time to implement changes incrementally under the guidance of the Aspen mentor. The timelines establish accountability. The trainings allow presidents and board members to engage with and learn from one another. And ultimately, adoption of the framework occurs in a way that meets the needs of each individual college.”
Dr. Kristen Raney, President of Northeast Wisconsin Technical College

Please contact us at cep.boardleadership@aspeninstitute.org.