NCII Core Team

Priya is a consultant in higher education with a focus on community colleges. Her work strengthens the ability of colleges to use inquiry and evidence to engage practitioners, inform reform actions, and improve student learning and success. Most recently, she served as the director of professional development and a senior researcher with the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (RP Group), where she created practitioner-focused professional development opportunities and engaged in statewide and national projects focused on community college reform, including the Gates Foundation’s Completion by Design initiative and the Student Support (Re)defined study.

Prior to that, Priya served as the education research assessment analyst at Mt. San Antonio College, where she partnered with faculty, staff, and administrators to develop and assess student learning outcomes and connect these research findings to planning redesign efforts. Additionally, she served as an instructor, teaching math and English in the Adult Diploma Program. Having worked in various capacities within and outside educational institutions for more than a decade, Priya is passionate about engaging and empowering practitioners to redesign approaches that enable greater and more meaningful student success.

Davis is a senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College. He works with colleges and states across the country to find ways to improve educational and employment outcomes for students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Davis’ research and thinking have informed the development and spread of innovative approaches to improving student success, including career pathways, adult technical bridge programs (such as Washington State’s I-BEST), and guided pathways to success. Together with Thomas Bailey and Shanna Jaggars, he is the author of Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success (Harvard University Press, 2015), which has become a blueprint for guided pathways reforms being implemented by colleges across the country. Davis earned a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s degree in religion from Princeton University.

Kay is an independent consultant and partner in Mc2 Consultants. She serves as senior advisor to the president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges. She was founding director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin, serving in that role from 2001 through April 2014. During that time, she also served as a faculty member in the Program in Higher Education Leadership at the university.

A founding partner in the national Achieving the Dream initiative, Kay has led numerous national and state projects focused on student success. She previously served for 10 years as vice president and chief operating officer of the Education Commission of the States. She has been a consultant to education institutions, state higher education systems, state government, and professional associations in 47 states and internationally. In addition, she served for a number of years as a community college faculty member, program director, system administrator, and interim CEO. She earned her Ph.D. in educational administration from the Community College Leadership Program at The University of Texas at Austin.

Gretchen serves as executive director of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) Pathways Project, a three-year grant initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation designed to create a national model for scaling guided pathways reforms. Gretchen works alongside seven partner organizations to develop the curriculum and materials for six Pathways Institutes for 30 selected colleges. She also leads a cadre of 12 Pathways coaches and is creating a guided pathways coaching guide, which will be available to the field at the conclusion of the grant in 2018.

Prior to her time at AACC, she was a program director for Jobs for the Future’s (JFF) Postsecondary State Policy team. In that role, she provided technical assistance to states to implement policies that support student completion agendas to ensure that more students enter community college programs and complete credentials with labor market value. Gretchen has more than 17 years of experience in higher education. Before JFF, she spent five years in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), first as educational policy director and then as assistant vice chancellor for academic and student services. One of the projects she oversaw as vice chancellor was VCCS’ developmental education redesign initiative, which included policy management, professional development programming for faculty, enhancing student support services, and working with high schools to improve Virginia high school students’ college readiness. She also served on the staff of state college boards in Arizona and taught graduate higher education courses in Virginia and Arizona.

John is a research associate at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College. His research documents how colleges are implementing guided pathways reforms, applies findings from site visits and phone interviews with colleges toward the development of tools and resources for guided pathways implementation, and examines the impact of these reforms on student success. In addition to co-authoring a 2017 report describing how the 30 American Association of Community Colleges Pathways Colleges are implementing guided pathways, he co-authored the 2016 Transfer Playbook detailing the essential practices of high-performing transfer partnerships. John led analysis and co-authored with Davis Jenkins the 2016 Tracking Transfer report presenting new metrics and national findings on state and institutional transfer performance. He analyzes national and state administrative datasets to provide insight into understudied barriers to transfer student success, such as credit transfer inefficiency, lack of early momentum, and unclear transfer paths.

Hana is a research associate at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University. At CCRC, Hana conducts research on the adoption and impacts of guided pathways reforms. Her previous research at CCRC examined the implementation and impacts of performance funding policies on state colleges and universities in Indiana, Tennessee, and Ohio. Recent publications include Implementing Guided Pathways: Early Insights From the AACC Pathways Colleges (with Davis Jenkins and John Fink) and Performance Funding for Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). Prior to joining CCRC, Hana worked in student services at HACC-Central Pennsylvania’s Community College and Metropolitan College of New York as an academic advisor and coordinator of student services. She holds a B.A. in music from the University of Florida and an M.S. in counseling from Shippensburg University (PA). Hana is currently a Ph.D. candidate in education policy at Columbia University.

As an independent consultant, Kelley focuses on making evidence useful for community college practitioners and promoting success for all students. For 15 years, Kelly has worked directly with community colleges and secondary schools to develop, deliver, and improve innovative career technical education (CTE) programs and student success initiatives. She now serves as a researcher with an interest in dissemination designed to support practitioner action. She partners regularly with the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges and individual California community colleges, providing qualitative research and evaluation, project management, communications, and facilitation services. She is currently leading projects focused on pathway development, CTE bridge programs, and student support and has directed efforts related to contextualized teaching and learning and transfer.

Greg has more than 20 years of experience in higher education research and has managed research activities in both the university and community college settings. Prior to joining the California Community College System, Greg was the director of a policy research institute at Case Western Reserve University. Currently he serves as the senior dean of research and planning at the Contra Costa Community College District and president of the Research and Planning Group of California. Recently he has also served on a statewide task force examining California economic and workforce development policy. He currently serves as an advisor to the Public Policy Institute of California and sits on the Board of California’s Centers of Excellence. Greg has worked on several national educational reform projects including Completion by Design (Gates Foundation), Achieving the Dream (Lumina Foundation), and The Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program.