Message from the Chair

Renny Christopher

Forum Executive Committee, Washington State University Vancouver

renny.christopher@wsu.edu

Renny Christopher has served as vice chancellor for academic affairs at Washington State University Vancouver since 2013. Her research interests focus on issues of race, class and gender in U.S. literature and culture. Her memoir, A Carpenter’s Daughter: A Working-Class Woman in Higher Education (Sense Publishers, 2009), addresses her experiences as the first in her family to attend college. She has taught at several universities in California and was a Fulbright scholar in Spain in 2000. Before earning her doctorate, Christopher worked as a printing press operator, typesetter, carpenter and horse wrangler.

Claude Steele

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, Stanford University

Claude Steele is an American social psychologist and currently serves as emeritus professor at Stanford University. He is best known for his work on stereotype threat and its application to minority student academic performance. His earlier work dealt with research on the self (e.g., self-image, self-affirmation) as well as the role of self-regulation in addictive behaviors. In 2010, he released his book, Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do, summarizing years of research on stereotype threat and the underperformance of minority students in higher education. He has served in several major academic leadership positions such as the executive vice chancellor and provost at University of California Berkeley, the I. James Quillen dean for the school of education at Stanford University, and as the provost of Columbia University. He holds B.A. in psychology from Hiram College (OH), an M.A. in social psychology from Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in social psychology and statistical psychology from Ohio State University.

Sona Karentz Andrews

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, Portland State University

Sona Karentz Andrews has over thirty-five years of experience as a higher education university faculty member and administrator.  She has held many leadership positions, including vice chancellor of the Oregon University System and provost and vice president for academic affairs at two large universities. Andrews has served and continues to serve on local, state, regional and national task forces and boards. She earned her undergraduate degree in geography from Worcester State College in Massachusetts and her master’s and Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University. Her areas of experience include innovation; strategic planning and implementation; leadership development; university budget models and policy development.

Carlos Crespos

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, Portland State University (PSU)

Carlos Crespo is vice provost for undergraduate training in biomedical research at Portland State University (PSU) and professor in the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) PSU School of Public Health. He is the principal investigator of BUILD EXITO, a partnership with nine other community colleges and universities in Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands. He graduated from the Inter American University of Puerto Rico, and received a M.S. from Texas Tech University and a doctor of public health from the Loma Linda University in California. His main areas of research are physical activity and minority health.

Clayton Christian *

Commissioner of Higher Education, Montana University System

For over a decade, Clayton Christian has proudly served the students of Montana. During his tenure on the Board of Regents (May 2006 – December 2011), Christian was a champion for common course numbering, tuition freezes, and other system initiatives aimed at increasing student access, success, and affordability. As chair of the Board of Regents, he continued to focus on implementing measures to improve system accountability, transparency, productivity, and increased confidence in higher education. He was and continues to be an advocate for increased opportunities in distance learning, a measure that continues to have a significant impact on a state that encompasses over 147,000 square miles. In 2012, Christian was asked to continue his service to Montana as the Commissioner of Higher Education. Under his leadership and on behalf of the Board of Regents and in partnership with university presidents, he has elevated Montana’s educational system that serves nearly 45,000 students and 9,000 faculty annually at 16 public colleges and universities. As commissioner, Christian has leveraged public and private partnerships to dramatically increase growth in workforce development, implemented innovative state investments which yielded record amounts of university-based research, and implemented performance-based funding with institutional incentives for student retention.

Barbara Damron *

WICHE Chair, Professor and Senior Advisor to the Dean, University of New Mexico

Barbara Damron is currently a tenured professor and senior advisor to the Dean at the University of New Mexico College of Nursing. She also is a tenured professor at the UNM School of Medicine’s Department of Family & Community Medicine, and Senior Advisor to the Director for Project ECHO. Prior to that, she served as the Chief Government Relations Officer for the University of New Mexico. She was also New Mexico’s Cabinet Secretary of Higher Education for four years. 

On the national level, Damron has been a Congressional Fellow in the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP); an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions; a Congressional Fellow for Senator Lamar Alexander; Commissioner of the Western Interstate Commission of Higher Education (WICHE); Commissioner of the Education Commission of the States; and sits on the Board of Directors of Complete College America.

Damron’s long professional history spans over 35 years – 20 in New Mexico – including being a leader in education, a health care executive, an advanced practice nurse, a college professor, an international consultant, and a cancer scientist. She has built positive and extensive relationships within the state’s higher education community, as well as within the Legislative and Executive branches. She has also worked alongside community and state leaders on the promotion of civic engagement and was featured as a panelist at the Hispanic Leadership Institute’s (USHLI) “Latinas in Politics” forum previously at UNM.

Damron received a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska, a Master of Science in nursing from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Gerry Pollet

Representative, Washington State Legislature

Representative Gerry Pollet has served in the Washington State House since December 2011. Pollet is an attorney and faculty member at both the University of Washington School of Public Health and Western Washington University. Pollet serves on the Postsecondary Education, Education, Appropriation and Rules Committees. Pollet was deeply involved in developing and passing the Washington College Grant, accompanied by dedicated funding, to provide one of the nation’s broadest need-based aid programs. He was the author of a program responding to the critical shortage of teachers in Washington, including a grant program to pay tuition for low-income students seeking to be teachers in underserved areas. Pollet has been honored several times as the Legislator of the Year for his work to improve affordable access to higher education and improved student success. He is the House sponsor of The Washington Promise, for free community college tuition.

Carl Wieman

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, Stanford University

Carl Wieman has been a professor of physics at the graduate school of education at Stanford University since 2013, and before that was at the Universities of Colorado and British Columbia and was the associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Wieman has carried out extensive research in both atomic physics (Nobel Prize 2001) and undergraduate science education (Carnegie Professor of the Year 2004), including institutional change in teaching. Wieman received his B.S. from MIT and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Wieman recently published a book on large scale change, Improving How Universities Teach Science: Lessons from the Science Education Initiative.

Carina Beck

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, Allen Yarnell Center for Student Success

Carina Beck has served as the director of the Allen Yarnell Center for Student Success since 2014. Within this role, Beck oversees several student services offices that work together to advance retention and graduation outcomes for Montana State University (MSU).   In addition, Beck also oversees the MSU Hilleman Scholars Program, a scholarship program designed to improve graduation outcomes for Montana resident students.  Beck earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in organizational communication and her doctorate in higher education.  Through her interdisciplinary background, Beck focuses on the socialization process of students, and communication and analytical methods of institutions to advance student outcomes.

Michael Caulfield

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, Washington State University (WSU)

Michael Caulfield has served as director of blended and networked learning for Washington State University (WSU) Vancouver since 2013. He assists faculty with the integration of technology into teaching, and promotes new net-enabled pedagogical practice at WSU and in cross-institutional projects. Previously, Caulfield worked for Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the director of community outreach for the OpenCourseWare Consortium, and as an instructional designer and programmer in both corporate and university contexts. He received his M.A. in English from Northern Illinois University.

Laura Malcolm

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, Civitas

Laura Malcolm serves as vice president of outcomes and strategy at Civitas. She is passionate about helping others improve their lives through education. She began her career as a high school teacher in Austin, Texas and through that experience discovered her deep interest in designing tools to help people learn. Prior to working at Civitas Learning, she spent ten years in executive leadership roles directing the design and development of innovative educational technology products. Malcolm is a two-time CODiE Award recipient from the Software and Information Industry Association for product design and received her B.A. and B.F.A. from University of Texas at Austin, and M.A. in learning, design and technology at Stanford University.

Patrick Briggs

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination)

Patrick Briggs has spent the past 5 years as the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) state director for Texas. As of June 2017, he added the states of Arkansas and Oklahoma to the states he leads as an AVID state director.  Prior to this post, Briggs was the AVID Texas state assistant director.  Before that he spent 15 years as a teacher and administrator in Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District in Texas.  Briggs earned his B.S. degree in biology and his master’s degree in educational administration from Prairie View A & M University.    

Kimberly Green

2019 Alliance Annual Meeting speaker, National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium

Kimberly Green has worked extensively on federal policy impacting Career Technical Education (CTE) for the past twenty-four years. Working closely with U.S. Congress, the administration and a broad range of stakeholders, she represents the interests of and seeks support for CTE. In her position with the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium, Green helped to secure the largest philanthropic investment in career readiness/CTE: the New Skills for Youth Initiative funded by JPMorgan Chase & Co. invests in systemic, state-level transformation to increase access to high-quality CTE and aligns to the aspirations of Putting Learner Success First.  With the support of Pell Grants and the federal work study program, she is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Terry Jones

2018 Forum Annual Meeting speaker, Wayblazer

Terry Jones is an author, venture capitalist, innovator and keynote speaker.  He is the founder of Travelocity.com, founding chairman of Kayak.com and current chairman for Wayblazer, a company designed around innovation and travel.  He has a proven track record of leading companies whose innovations have revolutionized an industry. His book, ON Innovation, has encouraged innovation and cultural change for readers worldwide. Jones is a graduate of Denison University and has an honorary doctor of letters from Sierra Nevada College.

Martin Carcasson

Colorado State University

Martín Carcasson is a professor in the communication studies department of Colorado State University and the director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation (CPD). He is also the current chair of the board of directors of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. His research is focused on helping communities address “wicked problems” more productively through improved public communication, community problem solving, and collaborative decision-making. The CPD is a practical, applied extension of his work, and functions as an impartial resource dedicated to enhancing local democracy in Northern Colorado. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M in 2004.