2022 - Peggy Heinrich of ECC Selected for the Aspen Institute’s Rising Presidents Fellowship

The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program (Aspen) announced today that Peggy Heinrich, EdD, vice president of teaching, learning, and student development at Elgin Community College, is one of 31 leaders in the nation selected for the 2022-23 class of the Aspen Rising Presidents Fellowship. This program, delivered in collaboration with the Stanford Educational Leadership Initiative, prepares the next generation of community college presidents to transform institutions to achieve higher and more equitable levels of student success.

Many sitting community college presidents plan to retire in the next decade, creating vacancies and an opportunity to diversify college leadership. Aspen Presidential Fellows represent the next generation of college leadership: this incoming class of Aspen Rising Presidents Fellows is 70 percent female, and 54 percent are people of color. The institutions they represent are also diverse, located in 16 states, from small rural colleges to large urban campuses. The fellows, selected through a competitive process, will work closely with highly accomplished community college presidents, Aspen leaders, and Stanford University faculty over ten months to learn from field-leading research, define and assess student success at their colleges, and clarify their visions for excellent and equitable outcomes for students while in college and after they graduate.

“The leaders that come through the Rising Presidents Fellowship continually inspire us,” said Josh Wyner, executive director of the College Excellence Program. “We are motivated by the dedication and expertise that our fellows bring to advancing excellence and equity on their campuses, and we look forward to supporting their work.”

“Dr. Heinrich is an effective leader who, in her work to oversee the academic divisions and student services and development division at ECC, cultivates a solution-oriented mindset consisting of compromise and consensus-building,” said ECC President David Sam PhD, JD, LLM. “Under her tenure, ECC has made tremendous progress in innovative programming for adult learners, increased technical education pathways that now serve hundreds of students, and in our work of assessing student learning through an equity lens. It’s my honor to support her participation in this prestigious program.”

Rising Presidents Fellows aspire to enter a college presidency within five years of completing the fellowship. As fellows, they join a network of over 300 forward-thinking peers—122 of whom are sitting college presidents—who are applying grounded and innovative strategies to meet student success challenges in their colleges.

The Aspen Rising Presidents Fellowship is made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation College Futures Foundation, Joyce Foundation, and JPMorgan Chase.

For bios and photos of all 31 leaders, visit Aspen Rising Fellowship Leaders.