For immediate release — March 5, 2007
(DALLAS) — Dr. Sharon Blackman, president of Brookhaven College, has been appointed to serve as a member of the Commission on Community Colleges, a new project of the College Board’s Center for Innovative Thought, effective February 2007. Brookhaven College is one of seven individually accredited institutions in the Dallas County Community College District.
The center was created 18 months ago to bring national attention to major issues in education. Building on the work of the College Board’s community college advisory panel, the commission will issue a report concerning the critical role that community colleges play in higher education, plus four to five clear “action” recommendations to the nation; the report will be used to help inform political candidates about two-year institutions across the country. Blackman and 10 other community college presidents, as well as representatives from business and policy arenas, comprise the new commission.
Issues the group will address include college costs, capacity, transfers (to four-year institutions), academic cultures, funding, accountability, developmental education, and curriculum alignment and program articulation.
Blackman, who previously served in several administrative positions at Richland College, has 32 years of experience in higher education administration, program development, counseling and teaching. She taught at Richland and Earlham colleges, and she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Blackman holds a doctorate in educational administration from the Scholars Practice Program at Baylor University. She is a certified specialist in developmental education and has participated in the Kellogg Institute for Developmental Educators.
Blackman is involved in a number of professional organizations at the state and national levels, including the American Association of Community Colleges, and she also is an active member in the Farmers Branch Chamber of Commerce (board of directors); Carrollton-Farmers Branch Rotary (board of directors); the National Council on Black American Affairs; and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., among others.
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Press contact:Ann Hatch, 214-860-2478