Kirkwood introduces three female finalists for president

CEDAR RAPIDS — After waiting 52 years to hire its first female president in 2018, Kirkwood Community College last week introduced three women as finalists to succeed Lori Sundberg when she retires later this year.

Sundberg, 64, is staying on through Kirkwood’s next Higher Learning Commission accreditation visit in October — giving her time to help onboard a new leader. She leaves as Kirkwood is making several transitions, including closing its Iowa City campus, consolidating services, and cutting costs through layoffs and eliminated programs.

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The first of her prospective successors to visit Kirkwood last week was Lisa Armour, who’s spent her entire higher education career in Florida and currently serves as interim provost and vice president for academic affairs of Sante Fe College — an 18,000-student public community college in Gainesville.

The last to visit was Lori Suddick, who’s served institutions across the Midwest, holding various leadership posts at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay before stepping in as president in 2018 atop College of Lake County, a public community college in Grayslake, Ill.

The second finalist introduced to campus — or reintroduced, more accurately — was Kristie Fisher, who early in her higher ed pursuits earned an associate degree from Kirkwood before later serving as Kirkwood’s vice president of student services from 2006 to 2014.

Fisher — who also got bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Iowa and a doctorate of philosophy in higher education from Iowa State University — left Kirkwood in 2014 to become senior director and assistant vice president of national associations and market engagement of ACT, Inc., based in Iowa City.

Most recently, she’s been serving as president of the Marshalltown-based Iowa Valley Community College District, which includes Ellsworth Community College and Marshalltown Community College. And during a public forum last week, Fisher said she’s “so happy” to be back on campus.

To the question of, “Why Kirkwood,” Fisher said, “There are so many reasons I want to be at Kirkwood.” Noting she’s spent much of her life in the Kirkwood service district, Fisher said she believes in the community college mission broadly.

“And Kirkwood is my community college home,” she said, highlighting specific aspects of Kirkwood’s work and mission that are meaningful to her and her ideals.

She cited employee development, high-quality instruction in the classroom, outside support services bolstering the student experience, and its work with both adult learners and high school students — creating a pipeline to postsecondary education.

She also pointed to the community impact feature of the community college mission.

“I learned about the community impact of community colleges when I was in my 20s working in the Kirkwood Foundation,” she said. “At that time, I had the pleasure of working for President Norm Nielsen, and I can’t tell you how many times I heard Norm talk about identifying community needs and then figuring out if there was a way that Kirkwood could help fill those needs.”

Finalist Armour — who earned an industrial engineering doctorate from University of Central Florida — said when she took her first job at a community college in Florida, she didn’t understand the difference between community colleges and universities.

“So I lucked into the community college sector. Greatest event of my life,” she said. “I always will work in the community college sector.”

Citing its pursuit of open access, high-quality with affordability, and the belief that every student can learn anything in the right conditions — Armour said she holds student success highest among her academic ideals. But she also values the “community” nature of community colleges.

“The way they embed within their communities, the way they see partnerships to advantage their students and their communities, these are things that I’m very passionate about,” she said.

Suddick — who earned a doctorate of education, specializing in career and technical education, from the University of Wisconsin, and a master’s degree in speech and language pathology from Eastern Michigan University — started her career as a speech-language pathologist.

Throughout her work life, Suddick said, she’s tried to stay focused on the central mission of creating a public good and being of service to others.

“That is how I’ve approached every part of my career — whether in higher ed as faculty or as an associate dean or as a vice president or a president,” she said. “I don't operate by a title. I operate by, what's my role because of this title?”

Suddick said she was a first-generation college student and her husband “re-careered” through a community college, with two of her kids enrolling in a community college too.

“So community colleges have been a big part of our life,” she said, later adding, “I am in community college work on purpose. I have had opportunities to transition to universities, but one thing I love about what we do is we are open access, which means we spend zero time deciding who is and is not worthy of a higher education.”

To the question of, “Why Kirkwood,” Suddick said, “Who does not want to be a part of a great thing.”

“And Kirkwood is a great thing.”

Since the finalist visits and on-campus interviews last week, the 15-member Kirkwood presidential search committee has been collecting input from faculty, staff and the broader community through online feedback forms.

A proposed schedule of presidential-search activities doesn’t identify a date for presidential selection. It does project an appointment date of Oct. 30.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com