Presidential Candidate Carlee Drummer to Visit Quinebaug Valley on May 14

On Wednesday, May 14, Carlee Drummer will visit Quinebaug Valley Community College to meet with faculty, staff, students and community members. Dr. Drummer is a candidate for the president role at Quinebaug Valley Community College.  During her visit, she will also meet with members of the Board of Regents and BOR president Dr. Gregory Gray. 

Carlee Drummer

View Resume (pdf)
Campus Schedule (pdf)

Biography

Dr. Carlee Drummer began her tenure at Oakton Community College in 2001. As the Executive Director of Advancement and the Educational Foundation, she serves on the President’s Council and provides leadership across the College, collaborating with Academic Affairs, Admission, Facilities, and Student Affairs. During the past 12 years, she has been responsible for rebranding the institution with a new identity and tagline; overhauling the content and design of Oakton’s website; producing an annual magazine for alumni, donors, and friends; and mentoring students to ensure their success.

An active member of the communities Oakton serves, Dr. Drummer identifies opportunities for workforce development and collaborates with Deans and Department Chairs to create new programs such as call center management; diesel technology; elder care; mechatronics/supply chain management/radio frequency identification; nanotechnology; and Spanish for healthcare professionals. She plays a key role in strategic planning to advance academic excellence, student success, and community engagement; and was a member of the Steering Committee to develop a $68.5 million Facilities Master Plan that includes construction of a Science and Health Careers Center slated to open in January 2015. In addition, she maintains relationships with corporate and civic leaders and elected officials at the local, state, and national level. Recently she served on the Illinois Community College Board President’s committee to promote community college education.

As the chief development officer, Dr. Drummer has grown the Foundation’s assets during the past ten years from $5 million to $14 million (180 percent); increased the number of scholarships awarded per year from 179 to 541 (200 percent); expanded grants to faculty and staff from $65,500 to $165,500 (153 percent); doubled employee giving; secured $2 million in planned gifts; and conducted a feasibility study for the College’s first comprehensive capital campaign. At the end of 2012, she launched an alumni relations program that has connected with some 8,000 alumni, and inaugurated a Job Shadowing Program that enables alumni mentors to help students explore career options. In addition, she has developed a dynamic, diverse, and committed Foundation Board of Directors who advance the mission, vision, and values of the College.

Passionate about student success, Dr. Drummer partners closely with Student Affairs. She has served as Acting Director of Admission and is a founding member of the High School Strategy Team that forges strong relationships with high school superintendents, principals, guidance counselors, and teachers. She co-authored the College’s first enrollment plan and has been instrumental in increasing the number of Latino students from 807 in 2009 to 1353 in 2013 (68 percent). She also interacts with the leadership of student clubs and organizations and recently obtained funding to support the Ecology and Nursing Clubs, Habitat for Humanity, Students for Social Justice, and Emerging Leaders.

Prior to joining Oakton, she was a Vice President at Lipman Hearne in Chicago where she provided strategic marketing and fundraising communications counsel to colleges and universities, cultural organizations, social service agencies, associations, and other non-profits across the country and abroad. This experience required the ability to quickly assess and solve problems a vital leadership skill. Before moving to Chicago, she was Associate Vice President of Communications and Associate Professor of English at Carthage College in Wisconsin and served as the President of the Kenosha Symphony Association. For nearly 20 years, she lived and worked in New York City where she was Manager of Communications for The New York Public Library and Director of Publications and Public Relations at Baruch College/CUNY. She also taught English at Baruch and SUNY Stony Brook and was an experiential learning evaluator for SUNY Empire State College.

Her work has earned numerous professional honors and awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education; Higher Education Marketing; National Council for Marketing and Public Relations; and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. She is the editor and a co-author of Contexts and Comparisons: A Student Guide to the Great Works, a  textbook used by CUNY freshmen; co-editor of A Commonplace Book: Honoring the Literary Lions 1981 – 1990; and co- author of a research study, Picturing Perceptions: A Photographic Approach to Understanding Students’ Views of a College.

A lifelong learner, she is studying classical piano and Spanish at Oakton Community College and takes an active role with ¡ANDALE! (The Association to Nurture and Develop the Advancement of Latinos in Education), an on-campus organization that fosters academic preparedness and networking opportunities.

Dr. Drummer and her husband Michael share a passion for the arts and volunteering in their community. They created the Drummer Family Scholarship Fund to provide assistance to Oakton students majoring in English and fine arts.

She holds a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Wittenberg University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from SUNY Stony Brook. Her dissertation, The Broken Chrysalis: Virginia Woolf’s Grieved Grief, earned the Marilyn and Ira Hechler Dissertation Award. She also studied at Exeter University in England, where she completed a senior thesis on James Joyce.

View Resume (pdf)
Campus Schedule (pdf)