• Focus
    • Our Focus
    • Services
    • Content Areas
  • A2I2 Cohort
    • A2I2 Cohort
    • Six Site Visits
    • Ongoing Support
    • 2017 Cohort Colleges
    • 2018 Cohort Colleges
  • Guided Pathways Resource Series
  • Advancing Equity Through Pathways
  • Additional Resources
  • About Us
    • Team
    • Partners
    • Projects
    • Contact
NCIINCII
  • Focus
    • Our Focus
    • Services
    • Content Areas
  • A2I2 Cohort
    • A2I2 Cohort
    • Six Site Visits
    • Ongoing Support
    • 2017 Cohort Colleges
    • 2018 Cohort Colleges
  • Guided Pathways Resource Series
  • Advancing Equity Through Pathways
  • Additional Resources
  • About Us
    • Team
    • Partners
    • Projects
    • Contact

NCII Core Team

After 20 years of consulting and industry and higher education, Dr. Rob Johnstone founded NCII with a focus on improving outcomes in higher education. While Dr. Johnstone is the only full-time employee, NCII has a core team of consultants who are deeply invested in NCII’s work.

This team has more than 125 years of experience in higher education improvement, work at community colleges, and strategic consulting. Each member of the team brings a unique perspective, as well as passion and energy, to this important work. NCII matches each project with the team that will best meet its needs.

Rob Johnstone, Ph.D., Founder and President

Rob works to help two- and four-year colleges create structures and processes that increase student completion, learning, and labor market outcomes. His unique and engaging approach to inquiry and improvement fuses the world of foundations, initiatives, and system-level policy changes with the ground-level work of college practitioners and college senior leaders.

Rob has worked on the ground with more than 350 colleges around the country both directly and on initiatives such as the American Association of Community Colleges Pathways Institutes, the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, the California Guided Pathways Initiative, NCII’s A2I2 Cohort Model, Jobs for the Future’s work with the statewide centers in the national Student Success Center Network, Gates’ Completion by Design, Lumina’s Beyond Financial Aid, and a variety of state-level and local college projects.

Rob served as a director, dean, and provost in the California community college system for more than a decade, and he worked as a strategic consultant in industry prior to shifting to higher education. With more than 25 years of consulting experience in industry and higher education, he has a unique dual perspective on this work. Most importantly, he brings an energy and passion to improving lives and communities through a social justice and equity lens.

Priyadarshini Chaplot, Vice President of Strategy

Priya is a consultant in higher education with a focus on community colleges and expertise in student financial stability, guided pathways, student learning outcome assessment, and institutional research. 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.

Kay McClenney, Ph.D., Senior Fellow

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 Schmidt, Ph.D., Senior Fellow

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.

Micaela Jimenez, Program Coordinator

Micaela works to support the full range of NCII projects.

Chris Baldwin, Ph.D., Consultant

As a long-time advocate for student success, Dr. Christopher Baldwin has spent the past
15 years pushing for the adoption of practices and policies that increase the likelihood
that students will complete a postsecondary credential. Prior to launching his consulting
practice in fall 2017, Chris was Associate Vice President at Jobs for the Future, where he
steered the effort to expand the number of state-level intermediaries know as Student
Success Centers. This work followed his 4-year tenure as the founding Executive Director
of the Michigan Center for Student Success as well as a previous stint at JFF leading the
state policy component of Achieving the Dream and his role as Vice President at Owens
Community College in Ohio. Chris’ 15 years of commitment to and observation of
reforms in the field are detailed in his recently published book, The Completion Agenda
in Community Colleges: What It Is, Why It Matters, and Where It’s Going. This book
draws on his dissertation research at the University of Michigan where he earned his
doctorate in Higher Education Administration.

Ed Bowling, Consultant

Ed Bowling is the Executive Director for Completion and Performance at Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC) in North Carolina, and for the past seven years served as the Managing Partner Director for Completion by Design in North Carolina. Ed held a senior management position at a large bank before joining GTCC as a developmental education adjunct instructor in 2006. He received GTCC’s Claire Hunter Award for Excellence in Developmental Education in 2007. In 2010, he became the Developmental Education Initiative grant director, overseeing the scaling of three core programs and two smaller projects under that grant.

Ed has engaged in state and national guided pathways work since 2011. In addition to his leadership with Completion by Design, he has provided coaching and consulting to institutions in seven states through the North Carolina Student Success Learning Institute, AACC Pathways Project and Pathways 2.0, Texas Pathways Institute, and the National Center for Inquiry and Improvement.  He shares the work and outcomes of Completion by Design and guided pathways at state and national conferences.  He received the BB&T Staff of the Year Award for the North Carolina Community College System in 2014.

Alison Kadlec, Ph.D., Consultant

Alison Kadlec specializes in building cultures and climates for innovation in higher education and workforce development. She has worked with dozens of colleges and universities across the country to support the capacity of institutional leaders and faculty at every level to effectively engage members of their communities as constructive partners in the hard work of change on behalf of student success. Alison and her team also work with the U.S. Department of Education, state policymakers and system leaders in more than half the states in the U.S. to help improve the quality of policy development and implementation around higher education and workforce issues. Before launching Sova, Alison was Senior Vice President at Public Agenda, a visiting professor in the political science department at Macalester College and an adjunct professor in the political science departments at the University of Minnesota, Baruch College and Hunter College. Alison is the author of a book on the democratic theory of John Dewey, Dewey’s Critical Pragmatism. She is also the author or co-author of a number of articles on subjects related to stakeholder engagement and public deliberation both within and outside of higher education including: “Putting it All Together: Strengthening Pathways Between Comprehensives and Community Colleges”; “Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Power”; “Changing the Conversation About Productivity”; and “Play and Public Life.” She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota and BAs from Michigan State University in Political Theory, Constitutional Democracy and English Literature.

Paul Markham, Ph.D., Consultant

Paul Markham is a strategic organizer focused on building and sustaining cultures for innovation and change. Prior to launching Sova, Paul served as Vice President for Organizational Strategy at Public Agenda and Vice President for Strategic Partnerships & Development at Achieving the Dream, Inc. Paul also served as Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he led the Foundation’s work focused on Developmental Education redesign and the creation of Pathways for student success. As a faculty member, he served as Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington Bothell (UWB) and Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Kentucky University (WKU), both broad access universities committed to the success of all students who seek a postsecondary education. In the private business sector, Paul has led a number of implementation and improvement efforts as both a Process Engineer and Quality Assurance Manager. Paul’s academic background includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Western Kentucky University. He also completed a Master of Arts in Social Ethics from Asbury Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. in Social and Moral Development from Durham University (UK), and post-doctoral studies in Sociology from Western Kentucky University.

Marcy Alancraig, Ph.D., Practitioner Advisor

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Michael Baston, Ph.D., Practitioner Advisor

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Jo-Carol Fabianke, Ph.D., Practitioner Advisor

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Kelley Karandjeff, Practitioner Advisor

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.

Amir Law, Ed.D., Practitioner Advisor

Dr. Amir Law currently serves as an Academic Dean in the California Community College system and has also served as a dean on the Student Services side house in the CCC system. He holds an MBA in Entrepreneurial Business, an MA in Athletic Coaching and Administration, and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership with a specialty in Community Colleges.  Over the course of his career, he has served as faculty in business; led the academic areas of Business, Health, Work Experience, Kinesiology, Mass Communications, and Performing Arts; and led the student services areas of financial aid, admissions, equity, first year experience, second experience, veterans’ services, international student programs, outreach, housing, and athletics.  His areas of expertise include outreach and recruitment; noncognitive characteristics as they relate to student success; learning communities; and curriculum development and assessment.

Yesenia Madas, Practitioner Advisor

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Michael Poindexter, Ph.D., Practitioner Advisor

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Laura Rittner, Practitioner Advisor

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Gregory Stoup, Practitioner Advisor

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.

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