Dr. Jamal Scott, Vice President of Strategy and Community Development
The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program (Aspen) has announced that Dr. Jamal Scott, Vice President of Strategy and Community Development at Waubonsee Community College, is one of 35 leaders selected for the 2023-2024 class of the Aspen Rising Presidents Fellowship. This program, delivered in collaboration with the Stanford Educational Leadership Initiative, prepares the next generation of community college presidents to transform institutions to achieve higher and more equitable levels of student success.
“I am deeply humbled and extremely excited to join the Aspen Rising Presidents Fellowship Cohort 8 and look forward to working with, and learning from, other leaders in higher education,” Dr. Scott said. “The Aspen Institute is one of the finest organizations in the world, and this will be a life-changing experience that will prepare me to advance higher education and improve the lives of students from all backgrounds.”
Rising Presidents Fellows aspire to enter a college presidency within five years of completing the fellowship. As fellows, they join a network of over 300 forward-thinking peers — 155 of whom are sitting college presidents — who are applying grounded and innovative strategies to meet student success challenges in their colleges.
Since joining Waubonsee in 2015, Dr. Scott has had oversight of all organizational planning, marketing and communications, admissions, and institutional effectiveness efforts, including all federal and state grants. In fact, he helped lead the college to successful awarding of consecutive, federal, Developing Hispanic Serving Institutions (Title V) grants. He has served as a peer reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) since 2014 and is Waubonsee's accreditation liaison officer to the HLC, where he led the college to reaffirmation of accreditation in 2017 and a successful assurance review in 2021, meeting all five of the HLC’s criteria.
Outside of Waubonsee, Dr. Scott is an adjunct instructor and dissertation advisor for the National-Louis University Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership program in the National College of Education. He also serves as a board member for the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, along with chairing the Board of Directors for the Aurora Regional Chamber of Commerce, one of the select, five-star Chambers of Commerce in Illinois.
Dr. Scott holds an executive certificate in marketing strategy from Cornell University, an Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology, a Master of Public Administration degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
