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DMACC presidential finalists discuss student support, shared governance • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]

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Date: 2026-03-06  

Finalists for the presidency at Iowa’s largest community college visited Ankeny and Des Moines this week from across the U.S. to pitch themselves for the leadership role.

Des Moines Area Community College invited four candidates to Iowa this week as they vie for the college’s open presidency after President Rob Denson’s retirement last year. Each candidate spoke with students, administrators and faculty and staff through public forums, where they touted successes at their current and former campuses and shared the vision and skills they would bring to DMACC.

Questions of student support, shared governance, and legislative work were common among the forums, with each candidate expressing their experiences and philosophies on how to handle a community college like DMACC. Those who attended the forums in person or online were able to share their thoughts on the candidates through an online survey that closed the evening of each visit.

DMACC states on its presidential search website that the college board of directors will meet at a to-be-determined time to select the new president.

Summer DeProw

Summer DeProw, chancellor of the University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College, was the first finalist to meet with campus stakeholders this week. She holds a Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Mississippi, according to her curriculum vitae, and at her current institution DeProw handles its $48 million budget, institutional strategy, outside university and other partnerships and more.

DeProw said she’s “passionate about the intersection of policy and day-to-day life” in response to a question about working with lawmakers and tuning into legislative priorities and actions that could impact the college. She said she has experience in Arkansas with following legislative actions, collaborating with other college leaders on legislative priorities, speaking with lawmakers and even writing legislation.

With higher education “on the menu,” as DeProw said they say in Arkansas, whoever is chosen to lead DMACC must be very involved with the lawmaking process.

“We’ve never been more needed and more questioned than we are today,” DeProw said, “and regardless of who you hire, it’s got to be somebody who can tell the story both at the personal level, of the impact it has on the students, but then also from a, in my opinion, data level.”

Data is also an important driver in ensuring all students are supported by their institution, DeProw said. In supporting the growing population of Hispanic students at Pulaski’s south campus, she said college officials identified that their level of support was not as high as what was offered at the main campus. Through data, they learned that many of those students immigrated to the U.S. as children and qualified as DREAMers.

Pulaski Technical College was the only institution in the state to receive two federal TRIO grants, which provide funding to support first-generation and other student populations, in order to help these students, DeProw said. The college addressed paperwork concerns from those students due to their parents being undocumented immigrants by telling them what exactly was needed to register for the TRIO program, where the information would be stored and how it was all legal.

“In meeting those needs, I started with the data of where are we — where’s the gap where we’re not meeting those needs,” DeProw said.

Other groups of diverse learners DeProw said she’s worked to support include parents, who can receive daycare assistance for their children, students with financial needs and those at different points of academic readiness.

She said she also “believes dearly” in shared governance and has been involved in developing new policies and processes for shared governance at Pulaski over the past 18 months. DeProw said she’s served as president of a faculty senate and as a member of a staff senate and is in the process of rewriting shared governance bylaws at her college.

While she said she would love to be able to come to every staff and faculty meeting to tell them about everything going on with the college and learn about their needs, that isn’t possible and shared governance is a great way to share and receive that kind of information.

“I wholeheartedly embrace that because I’ve been on both sides of the coin,” DeProw said. “And how it benefits a president or a chancellor is it keeps us informed on what’s going on.”

Lisa Armour

Lisa Armour, who came to campus Tuesday for forums, holds a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Central Florida and has served in academic and administrative roles at Santa Fe College in Gainesville and Valencia College in Orlando. Most recently, Armour worked as executive vice chancellor and provost of Maricopa County Community College District in Arizona from December 2023 to December 2025.

A philosophical touchstone for Armour is the idea of cultivating a “culture of care,” where faculty and staff in interactions with students think about what is going on outside of class and in their lives that might be impacting their “ability to be present and engaged,” she said. If something is going on in a student’s life, Armour said they would then work to connect them with either in-house or recommended resources for their specific issue.

In her experience, Armour said, nearly every student has wondered at different points if they belong in their program or area of study and worry about judgment. To combat these feelings, she’ll often confess her own uncertainties “and let everybody know that your today is not the same as your tomorrow,” Armour said.

“We all have the capacity to learn whatever we want to learn, and all the best educators I ever have known are all about figuring out what you do already know, so you can take advantage of that and connect it to new things,” Armour said. “But also they embrace the idea that we don’t all know everything on day one, and they build bridges in for students.”

When it comes to handling multiple campuses and ensuring students at all locations thrive, Armour said presidents need to be a “careful steward of resources” while not leaving anyone without what they need to succeed. There is no “one size fits all” formula to this, she said, so it’s important to be engaged at each campus to know their needs and wishes.

In response to a question about shared governance and ensuring faculty and staff have a meaningful voice at the table, Armour said she first learned about the differences that could be made for students through shared governance as a faculty member. Armour said she always thought she would be a teacher, but getting involved in shared governance as a faculty member showed how being a part of the conversations and decision making at Valencia College could impact students beyond just her own classroom.

It’s important for faculty to be “guiding lights” in informing a college’s agenda on student learning, Armour said, and throughout her administrative career she’s been in communication with both those involved in shared governance and people who haven’t taken on as formal roles.

“Although I fully acknowledge and respect that the shared governance structure provides the official voice of faculty, I’m very interested in what faculty have to think from their various disciplines, expertise, and just the various experiences they’re having with their students,” Armour said.

Developing relationships like those made in shared governance are just as important when working with lawmakers, Armour said. She’s hosted state-level leaders “very frequently” at her campuses for visits that dive into the programs they’re interested in to provide as much information as possible for them to use to advocate with at the statehouse.

It’s important that she herself also heads to those lawmakers to keep communication consistent and ensure a “two-way relationship,” she said. She’s visited state and federal officials on their home turf to strengthen relationships and ask if they need or want anything from her college, whether it be information on a program or narratives on student success and current priorities.

“It’s about your availability and your acknowledgment that, hey, we’re all public servants,” Armour said. “How can we be the most powerful team possible to make sure that all this high level learning is happening for our constituents?”

Joshua Baker

Joshua Baker told forum attendees Wednesday that he ended up driving to Iowa from West Virginia after his flight was delayed multiple times, and made it to his destination around midnight the previous evening. Currently working as president of Mountwest Community and Technical College in West Virginia where he serves “an economically and socially challenged community in transition,” according to his curriculum vitae, Baker holds a Ph.D. in community college leadership from Oregon State University.

When asked about serving diverse learning needs across the college, Baker focused on the academic and life supports colleges should provide to students as well as “the constant development of faculty” to help them keep learning and looking at their jobs with a new perspective.

At Mountwest, Baker said he and other officials have created fake students to measure their programs against, to see how real students would fare. One of the fictional students, named Jessica, was a 27-year-old single mother of two children, with one or multiple part-time jobs.

“Everything that we talk about with advising, financial aid, tutoring, it all has to be able to serve Jessica,” Baker said. “And here’s the thing — if it can work for Jessica, it can probably work for almost everybody else.”

Baker said if he is selected as DMACC’s new president, the college would see him push to ensure every student on every campus knows where to go if they need help tackling a problem and they can talk to people if they’re having a hard time. He added “we can’t solve all of your legal challenges, all of your housing issues, but we’d like to be able to do our best.”

Structure and intent are both important in ensuring a thriving shared governance system, Baker said, which can positively impact students and faculty. During his time at Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs, Baker said he interviewed someone who described shared governance as “tell(ing) them what you’re going to do before you do it,” which Baker had a “visceral gut reaction” to.

When Baker makes a decision, he said he shouldn’t be surprised when someone asks if he’s thought about a certain impact, because he should have already learned about it through the shared governance process.

“We have to work together to get the best ideas,” Baker said. “There’s no way I’m going to come up with the right decisions by not hearing your concerns.”

The intention to try and hear a range of viewpoints on topics is also necessary, he said, even if he doesn’t agree with them. Baker said when he is out and about, he wants to hear from people about what they’ve got going on and any concerns they might have.

Baker has worked within a variety of statewide systems during his time in higher education, and has experience with statewide policymaking and other higher-level workings that sometimes impact community colleges. It’s a “year-round effort” to keep up with the legislature, he said, and he needs to personally know lawmakers if he wants those efforts to be effective.

Those efforts include meetings with lawmakers, invitations to campus and getting students involved with events where they can be brought to the statehouse or Washington, D.C. In the last few years, Baker said he’s seen dual credit programming receive statewide funding and support for apprenticeship programs in West Virginia as a result of this work.

“The best indicator is when I get a text from the floor about a bill. That’s when I know we’re in a good spot,” Baker said. “And if legislation moves forward that might affect us and no one’s texted me, I know then not doing my job.”

Lori Suddick

The final candidate to meet with campus stakeholders was Lori Suddick, president and CEO of College of Lake County in Illinois since 2018. Suddick holds a doctorate of education from the University of Wisconsin and a master of arts, speech and language pathology from Eastern Michigan University, according to her curriculum vitae. Before College of Lake County, she worked at the American Association for Community Colleges as a guided pathways coach.

As someone who has been in the community and technical college space for 26 years, Suddick said her favorite part of the job is working with students and ensuring every one of them, whether they attend her institution or not, has a pathway to their future.

Suddick said “belonging is the key” to guaranteeing success for every student, and colleges should do that by making sure students have access to the resources they need both in and outside of the classroom. Messages of what is available need to be sent out in multiple ways to extend their reach, she said, and the traditional methods aren’t always the best ones in getting students to take advantage of what is available to them.

“At the heart of what we do, it’s ensuring that we are providing students a student-ready environment,” Suddick said. “That means we understand every one of you are unique people with unique stories, unique experiences and strengths that you bring, but you need different supports in order to be successful.”

Before any questions of shared governance came up, Suddick thanked DMACC stakeholders for their participation in the forums and said they demonstrate “your value on your shared governance system.” She said in response to a question on the topic that shared governance models must be “intentionally designed and very intentionally leveraged” by institutional leaders, and systems and processes must be put in place to ensure people feel like they are included.

College of Lake County has “refreshed” its shared governance system twice to make it better and make sure it is supporting the college’s strategic plan rather than “stalling the work,” Suddick said. For every policy in the college’s manual, Suddick said officials know which group it connects to so they can be part of any reviews.

With all of those processes, however, Suddick said college officials cannot lose sight of how students are doing in the classroom and their achievement outcomes, as well as what support faculty needs.

“Shared governance, at its best, is a root cause of positive impact to a culture,” Suddick said. “But if done wrong, it can dismantle any strategy or vision an institution is driving.”

Suddick said it’s been “fascinating” to watch bills on higher education in Iowa go through the legislative process, and she’s been doing her research to learn more about how community college leaders interact and make their voices heard, either individually or as a collective system, in the statehouse.

In Illinois, community colleges created a legislative caucus in order to more proactively engage with the Legislature, tell their stories and share their priorities. Like the other finalists, Suddick said she visits lawmakers in Illinois and in Washington, D.C., and invites them to her college so they can “understand its value proposition” and see the college as not just an entity always looking for resources, but as creating value from those resources.

“I would hope, in Iowa, I have that same level of partnership and focus that’s needed to really keep things moving in productive directions, or to prevent things that are duplicative, that aren’t really going to be helpful to the institution itself,” Suddick said.

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