DeRionne Pollard has served as president of Montgomery College, located in Montgomery County, Maryland, since 2010. Montgomery College is a three-campus community college with 60,000 students. Pollard spearheaded the development of a new Montgomery College mission and strategic plan and has partnered actively with Montgomery County Public Schools and the Universities at Shady Grove to create Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success, a support program to help students transition from high school to college completion.

Pollard formerly served as president of Las Positas College in Livermore, California. She served on the American Association of Community Colleges' 21st Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges and the Commission on Academic, Student and Community Development. She's also a longtime CASE volunteer, a co-author of the CASE book, Opportunity Knocking: How Community College Presidents Can Lead a New Era of Advancement, and has been featured in Currents.

How did you get your start in advancement?

I had a very positive start to my work with advancement when I began as president of Montgomery College in 2010. In one of my first advancement meetings, the senior vice president for advancement and community engagement and I, along with the director of our Macklin Business Institute, visited with a donor who ran a family foundation for his late aunt and uncle. The advancement office picked this particular donor because I had a lot in common with him, and he was one of the college's most consistent supporters. Through the briefing and detailed talking points, I felt very at ease with the donor who had lived in my hometown of Chicago. It probably helped that we were at a restaurant with connections to Chicago. It was a seamless conversation about the college and philanthropy, and we were well prepared for the donor's questions about the gift proposal.

By the end of lunch, the donor made a $750,000 gift to support our Macklin Business Institute, which houses our business honors program. As a new president on my first donor visit of this magnitude, I felt like this was a tremendous first experience in development work. I have been enjoying it ever since. I couldn't do this work, however, without the tireless efforts of my very talented team, who helped to build my confidence and ensure my success. Presidents don't do this work alone; we are dependent on the quality of the team.

Describe a typical (or not so typical!) day-in-the-life as president of Montgomery College.

In a typical day, I have a wide range of meetings with internal and external stakeholders. Inside the college, I meet regularly with governance committees, with senior leadership and with faculty and students. This keeps me informed and engaged about issues that most closely impact people on our campuses. I also meet with local nonprofit and business leaders to listen to needs they see developing in the workforce and in the community. I try to keep a close ear to the ground so that the college is preparing students with training that will fill in-demand career paths. In addition, I'm in regular communication with members of the board of trustees, especially the board chair.

I usually have one to two speaking engagements in a day. I also spend a lot of time partnering with local government officials and education leaders to create a seamless pathway through college for local students. I have gone to kindergartens for several years to read to the little ones and pass out stickers from Montgomery College. I want them—and their parents—to be thinking about college from day one.

I try to spend some time each day working toward my long-term goals. When I lay them out at the start of the year, I know that they will need to be broken down into smaller steps. So I spend time accomplishing those smaller tasks that I know will move the project forward. We have two foundations at Montgomery College, so building relationships with their boards or with potential donors is an example of such tasks that I hope will have long-term impacts.

Responding to evolving situations is also a daily pattern. Since my response to a development usually requires input from experts, I spend time consulting with college administrators, faculty, staff and students to make decisions about the right course of action. In the case of DACA, for example, we have had to communicate repeatedly with students about what a ruling means for them, for college policies, for tuition rates and for potential enforcement action-no matter how unlikely-on campus. Because we have 7,000 students enrolled who were not born in the United States, this year has been a whirlwind of activity around these issues.

What are some challenges you have faced at Montgomery College? What lessons have you learned from those challenges?

Because I am a people-person, I tend to have a lot of informal conversations with people. Folks tell me stories, they share their impressions and experiences. I get to know a lot about what's happening at the college just by talking to people. In addition to knowing people, it's important to know data, especially for making big decisions. People can be subjective in their assessment of issues-it's human nature. When I have to make a decision about finite resources—or lead a group that is making such a decision—I have learned to ask for the data. What outcomes has a model of this program already produced? How are we going to measure success in this program in the future? What is the cost per pupil of this endeavor?

These can be tough questions, but they allow us to invest in the most effective programs that will serve the greatest number of students. At Montgomery College, we have trained more units to use data effectively in decision-making across the college, which also helps us to explain our spending choices to external bodies whenever necessary.

What do you find to be the most pressing problem or challenge community colleges face today?

Having enough resources to support all of the innovative programs that we know students need is probably the biggest challenge. First-generation college students are common at community colleges. Because they may not have a parent who can guide them through the college experience, some processes can be more challenging for them, such as applying for financial aid, choosing a major, finding the right academic support, transferring and planning for a career.

At Montgomery College, we have developed support for all of these facets of the educational journey, but they all require resources. Sometimes we have to make choices between programs that we know will serve students in different ways, but we can't fund them all.

Recently, we have developed a partnership with a local nonprofit that brings mobile food markets to our campuses, delivering free food to students who are food-insecure. We have recently begun using Open Educational Resources so that students can have the educational resources they need at little to no cost. Students who run into unexpected expenses can also turn to one of our foundations for emergency assistance. These stopgaps are just some of the ways we try to keep vulnerable students in school.

How has being a CASE member influenced your career?

Being a member has made me a better president through the experiential learning opportunities I have been afforded through CASE. I have been able to gain greater knowledge of advancement and development work through conferences. I have participated in CASE panels on the future of higher education and been able to debate about it with executives from other higher education institutions, including public, private and for-profit institutions.

As I have gained greater knowledge of how advancement affects the presidency, I have been able to share the wisdom I have collected by co-authoring a chapter of the CASE book, Opportunity Knocking: How Community College Presidents Can Lead a New Era of Advancement with David Sears, our senior vice president for advancement and community engagement. We also were featured in a CASE Currents article a few years ago on how the senior advancement officer and president work together and what the expectations for each role should be.

Overall, being a CASE member has influenced my career by expanding my views on higher education and my education about advancement work. It has connected me with a broader network of higher education leaders and professionals so that I can bring that knowledge and experience back to Montgomery College to further our advancement work and success.

This article is from the BriefCASE 2018 issue.