The Tennessee Board of Regents today appointed Dr. Rebecca Ashford as the next president of Chattanooga State Community College, effective July 10.
Ashford has been vice president of student affairs at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville since July 2008. She began her career in higher education in 1997 as a student advisor at what was then Brevard Community College in Florida, and has held executive-level appointments at three community colleges since 2000.
The board met in a special called meeting, by telephone conference call, to receive and consider Chancellor Flora W. Tydings' recommendation of Ashford for the presidency. Board members voted unanimously to accept the recommendation and appoint Ashford as the new president.
The board also approved a new process for selecting nominees for faculty and student members of the Board of Regents – a change made necessary by the FOCUS (Focus on College and University Success) Act of 2016. Prior to the FOCUS Act, faculty and student regents rotated among the TBR system's universities and community colleges.
The new law removed the six former TBR universities from the board's governance, effective when each of the universities' new boards of trustees convened for the first time in March and April. In addition, the state legislature this year approved a new law adding a non-voting faculty regent to the board, who will serve for a year before moving into the voting faculty regent role the second year. The 2017 law also made a minor administrative change in the process for selecting student regents.
The new policy provides that the faculty and student regents will come from the community colleges and colleges of applied technology, and sets out a process for how they rotate.
"This search is especially close to me because the new president is my successor," the chancellor told the board. Tydings served as president of Chattanooga State in from 2015 until she assumed her new role as chancellor of the Board of Regents system on Feb. 1 of this year. "During my tenure at Chattanooga State, I came to admire and appreciate the students, staff and faculty for their devotion to the institution.
The chancellor also recognized the members of the board who served on the search advisory committee: Regent Tom Griscom, who chaired the committee, Regents Danni Varlan and Thomas A.H. White, and former Regent Howard Roddy. She thanked the other 17 members of the search committee, which included representatives of faculty, staff, students, alumni and the community at large.
Regent Griscom, who made the motion to appoint Ashford, noted that she has an associate degree and began college as a student at a community college. He also thanked Debbie Adams, the college's vice president of student affairs and workforce development, for serving as interim president during the search and until Ashford's arrival on campus in July.
The board approved the Chattanooga State search criteria and appointed members of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee on Jan. 27. The committee's charge was to identify and interview candidates and then narrow the original pool of applicants to three to five finalists.