Educators | 100 PEOPLE TO MEET IN 2021 Educators
Ranked as CNBC’s Top State for Business in 2019, Virginia earned the distinction in part for its “wealth of colleges and universities,” lauded by CNBC as the nation’s best. Tese are some of the educators and administrators who are helping to preserve and grow that reputation.
Jeannette Chapman Director, The Stephen S. Fuller Institute,
Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University Arlington
Do facts still matter to you? Then, in the greater Washington, D.C., area, Jeannette Chapman is the wonk to know. The director of GMU’s Fuller Institute is one of the area’s most trusted analysts, crunching the data on a grand spreadsheet of regional concerns — housing trends, the growing technology sector, the area population base and the long-term economic effects of COVID-19. “I examine all of the factors that currently, or could potentially, affect the region’s growth,” she says. That doesn’t mean everyone listens. “We always hope there is more that is acted on with our research,” she says diplomatically. “Some people tend to focus on what’s in the next three months and not concentrate on the important structural changes.”
Towuanna Porter Brannon President, Thomas Nelson Community College
Hampton
It takes a unique set of skills to oversee a school like Thomas Nelson, says Towuanna Porter Brannon, who takes the reins of Virginia’s fifth-largest community college in January. A first-time president but longtime administrator, she’s served at various two-year and four-year schools, including the New York Institute of Technology and North Carolina’s Mitchell Community College. “Federal funding for community colleges has diminished,” she says. “Students are faced with so many competing priorities as parents and caretakers, working multiple jobs. The challenge is to prepare them with the best education using these limited resources.” Brannon, who holds a doctorate in education from Fordham University in New York City, will immediately focus on helping the approximately 11,000-student, multiple-location college work closer with local businesses to provide “the finest talent pool available.”
Lance Collins Executive director and vice president, Virginia Tech Innovation Campus
Alexandria
Lance Collins knows how to connect academia with the technology sector, and how to unite people from distant communities. In his prior job as Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at the Cornell University College of Engineering, the new leader of Virginia Tech’s $1 billion Innovation Campus was responsible for spearheading Cornell University’s ambitious Cornell Tech campus in New York City. Collins not only diversified Cornell’s enrollment to include more female and minority students, he forged close ties between Cornell’s Ithaca, New York, campus and Cornell Tech, 234 miles away on Roosevelt Island — nearly the same distance between Tech’s Blacksburg location and the Innovation campus in Alexandria. Collins earned his bachelor’s in chemical engineering at Princeton, and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
Marcia Conston President, Tidewater Community College
Norfolk
Marcia Conston oversees Virginia's second-largest community college. With 32,000 students, Tidewater Community College was founded in 1968 and is considered the biggest higher ed and workforce training provider in Hampton Roads. Conston became TCC’s sixth president in January 2020, having spent more than half of her 30-year educational career as the vice president for enrollment and student success services at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she grew student enrollment, expanded federal work study programs and established scholarship opportunities. The Jackson State University graduate holds her master’s from Hood Theological Seminary in North Carolina and earned her doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi. She counts freelance writing as one of her hobbies and has authored two books about religion and spirituality.
80 | DECEMBER 2020 Contributed photos
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