The Chancellor of the Virginia Community College System, Dr. Glenn DuBois, will be the guest speaker for the 50th annual commencement exercises at Dabney S. Lancaster Community College on Friday, May 12.
The ceremony begins at 7 p.m. in the Convocation Center on the DSLCC Clifton Forge, VA, campus.
DuBois is a community college success story. Before ever stepping foot on campus, he admits, his professional ambitions consisted of merely moving up from the kitchen to the dining area of the neighborhood restaurant he worked at after high school. However, a nagging mother and some inspiring professors saw more in him, and eventually got him to see it too.
DuBois has been paying that forward ever since, working in community college education for more than 30 years. Today, He is the current, and second longest-serving, chancellor of Virginia’s Community Colleges; a system of 23 colleges and 40 campuses that serve nearly 400,000 people a year.
The Virginia State Board for Community Colleges hired DuBois in the summer of 2001. Since then he has led the VCCS through two successful strategic plans, and now into a third called Complete 2021, all while enduring a roller coaster ride of unprecedented enrollment growth periods and unprecedented cuts in state funding.
Virginia’s Community Colleges, during DuBois’s tenure, have signed groundbreaking guaranteed transfer agreements with more than 30 public and private universities; become Virginia’s leading provider of workforce development services, helped Virginia close headline-grabbing economic development deals; diversified community college funding sources, re-launching a statewide foundation and doubling foundation-led private fundraising; and maintained a tuition rate that is one-third of the comparable rate at Virginia’s universities.
The Phi Theta Kappa National Honor Society presented DuBois with their State Community College Award of Distinction at its national convention in April, 2008.
Prior to coming to Virginia, DuBois built an impressive record of executive higher education leadership, including serving as the Commissioner and CEO of the New Hampshire Community Technical College System as well as the Director of Community Colleges for the State University of New York – one of America’s largest networks of community colleges.
DuBois received his doctorate in higher education administration, research and policy from the University of Massachusetts. He holds a master’s degree in juvenile justice and criminology from Eastern Kentucky University, a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Florida Atlantic University and an associate of science degree in police science from the State University of New York in Farmingdale.
More than 200 students are projected to be awarded over 400 credentials for completing associate degrees, certificates, career studies certificates and industry certifications during commencement exercises. The public is invited to attend.
