Four new faces and two familiar ones make up the field of candidates that will be
recommended to the City Colleges of Chicago Board of Trustees for school
president positions by Chancellor Cheryl Hyman. Daley and Harold Washington colleges are set to keep their current
presidents. Malcolm X, Olive-Harvey, Truman and Wright would see new leadership under
Hyman’s recommendation.
Four new faces and two familiar ones make up the field of candidates that will be recommended to the City Colleges of Chicago Board of Trustees for school president positions by Chancellor Cheryl Hyman.
Both Daley and Harold Washington College are set to keep their current presidents. Four other City Colleges would see new leadership under Hyman’s recommendation:
- Malcolm X: Anthony Munroe, an administrator at the Ross University School of Medicine’s Bahamas campus and a former CEO of a management consulting firm.
- Olive-Harvey: Craig Follins, an administrator involved with workforce development at Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio.
- Truman: Reagan Romali, who oversaw the launch of a Houston Community College satellite campus in Qatar, a Middle Eastern country.
- Wright: Jim Palos, an entrepreneur and Chicago native who founded several education groups including the Latino Education Alliance.
A search for a new president of Kennedy-King will continue. Current presidents Jose Aybar at Daley and Donald Laackman at Washington will remain in their posts.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel was at Hyman’s side Thursday and praised the choices, saying they would help create “a structure of accountability at City Colleges that has not existed.”
He added that the new leadership would help Chicago “be what we need to be as a city, which is economically competitive.”
Hyman said the decisions were made after a national search that drew 140 applicants. Both she and Emanuel noted that student success will be an explicit part of the new presidents’ job descriptions, a change from the past.
City Colleges has for years struggled with poor student performance and high dropout rates, and is now attempting a ‘reinvention’ under Hyman. Emanuel kept Hyman in the chancellor’s post, which former mayor Richard M. Daley appointed her to last March.
“Our challenges also create an opportunity to hold ourselves to a higher standard, which we will do,” Hyman said.
The Board of Trustees is set to review the candidates when it meets next Thursday.