Contact: Ann Hatch
214-378-1819;
ahatch@dcccd.edu
For immediate release — Feb. 18, 2014
(DALLAS) — Dr. Wright Lassiter Jr., chancellor of the Dallas County Community College District, has built a professional career of many “firsts”: first black college president in the State University of New York (SUNY) system; one of the first African-Americans appointed to a bank’s board of directors in Dallas; a member of the White House Commission on Minority Business Development, the first group to create the term “Historically Under-utilized Businesses” (now called HUBs); the only African-American who has received the Russell Perry Award for Servant Leadership from Dallas Baptist University (where he is a graduate school faculty member and former chair of the DBU board of regents); and the first African-American to serve as chancellor of DCCCD, to name only a few.
Lassiter, who announced his retirement last year, leaves the district on Tuesday, Feb. 25, after four decades of service to higher education.
Beginning with the fall 2013 semester, the district’s retiring chancellor began to count down a list of “lasts”: final fall and spring semesters as chancellor; final lunch and interview with student newspaper editors; final visits with elected officials and state legislators; final trustees meetings; final cabinet meetings; and his final, formal farewell to the higher education community, family members, friends and the Dallas County Community College District during a special evening at the Hall of State at Fair Park, near downtown Dallas.