In the role of Chief Academic and Student Affairs Officer, Geri Anderson provided leadership for all community college academic and student affairs policy review and development.
Geri spearheaded the Colorado Community College System’s remedial education reform initiative and guided significant policy changes through the system board, resulting in dramatic changes to the delivery of remedial education across the entire system. She convened a task force of remedial education leaders from across the system and guided a change process that resulted in broad support from faculty, administration and ultimately the system board. The new system-level policy ensures all CCCS students have the opportunity to pass gateway courses and enter programs of study in their first academic year. As a result, the system is experiencing dramatic improvements in gateway course success rates, particularly in English.
Rob works with all 31 USG institutions on initiatives designed to increase college access and support student success. He oversees a wide range of key initiatives including Complete College Georgia, teacher educator preparation programs, and the USG STEM initiative. Formerly, Anderson was the Executive Vice Chancellor for Administration for the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. While in West Virginia, Anderson acquired and managed several grants totaling more than $20 million and funded by organizations including the Lumina Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, CCA, as well as a federal GEAR UP grant. Each of these grants has been targeted at improving college access and completion. As a native of Augusta, Georgia, Anderson holds degrees from The Citadel (B.A.) and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div.).
Before moving to the system office in August 2013, Mr. Denley was Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Austin Peay State University. Originally from Penzance, England, Denley earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Trinity College Cambridge.. At Austin Peay, he created Degree Compass, a course recommendation and pairing system. This system won a platinum IMS Global Learning Impact Award in 2014 and has received recognition from CCA, Educause, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and President Obama. Denley spearheaded the full-scale implementation of corequisite academic support for virtually all Tennessee Board of Regents’ institutions. The scaling of corequisite support was completed after careful analysis of system-level data, ensuring gateway course success of all students.
Dr. Griffy has worked on a college campus for over 20 years and is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. Currently, she serves the university as the Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning with a primary focus on promoting student success through development, implementation and assessment of initiatives focused on the teaching, learning, and advising environment. She is engaged on campus in developing initiatives that utilize emerging technology to inform student-faculty interaction and focus high impacts. Additionally, she worked as a leader of the team that developed Austin Peay’s coreq model.
Dr. Rob Jeffs is currently teaching corequisite and technical courses at Ivy Tech Community College’s Muncie Campus.
Rob is the faculty lead for the Applied Technical Pathway guiding the development of content, pedagogy, and training of 38 instructors teaching over 60 sections to over 1,000 students statewide. He co-chaired the college’s Math Task Force, which aligned the math needs of academic programs into a more focused three-lane approach.
Michael McComas is a former C&O railroad engineer who, at the age of 35, went back to school to become a teacher. Prior to joining the faculty of Mountwest, McComas taught mathematics for eight years in Cabell County Schools and Huntington St. Joseph Catholic High School. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Chair of Liberal Arts within the General Studies Division.
McComas’ work passions are developmental education, student success, using technology to support teaching and learning, and improving online teaching at MCTC. McComas teaches both developmental and college-level mathematics, As Chair of Liberal Arts, he has responsibility for the subject areas of Mathematics, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Physics, English, and communications. Additionally, he over sees several programs, including Biomedical Technology, Electronics Technology, Engineering Technology, and Machines Technology
Mary served as Senior Vice President and Provost for Ivy Tech Community College. In her role as the Chief Academic Officer for the College and a member of the President’s Administrative Cabinet, Ostrye’s responsibilities included providing strategic vision for existing and emerging academic initiatives; overseeing the development of and compliance with academic and student affairs policy; overseeing the planning and implementation of the curriculum; and managing transfer and articulation for the college. Under her leadership, the College implemented a statewide corequisite model at scale for writing and for over half of its math curriculum; established three math pathways to align with degree and workforce needs; and restructured entry technology curriculum into one year certificate programs featuring competency-based curriculum.
Casey has worked at the Colorado Community College System office for six years in Academic Affairs. Sacks provided key leadership to the process that resulted in a new system-wide developmental education policy in Colorado. She leads special programs, grants and resource development for the System. In 2011, Sacks was charged with leading a group of faculty and staff to redesign developmental education for 13 colleges. That effort resulted in policy that eliminated long, multi-course sequences in reading, English, and math. Sacks completed her Ph.D. in higher education administration at Bowling Green State University in Ohio specializing in institutional planning. She volunteers as a mediator for her county court system and is an active Rotarian. And she is an avid polo player – horses not water.
Myra Snell is the Math Lead for the California Acceleration Project, coaching and creating curricular materials to support faculty teaching pre-Statistics courses. She is a Professor of Mathematics at Los Medanos College, where she has been teaching courses from arithmetic to calculus and statistics for the last 20 years. Snell createdPath2Stats, the first pre-Statistics course in the country to provide a one-semester alternative to the traditional multi-level developmental algebra sequence. Snell’s past roles at Los Medanos include working with faculty across campus to assess outcomes and use the results to improve learning experiences for students. She was a coach for the Faculty Inquiry Network, worked with Carnegie-Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative in Statistics, and served as a consultant to the Carnegie Foundation’s Statway project.