New CEO
Daria J. Willis will serve as the next president of Everett Community College in Washington. She currently is provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Onondaga Community College in New York. Willis began her career as an adjunct faculty member teaching history at Tallahassee Community College in Florida. She later served as assistant history professor, department chair, faculty senate president and executive dean of centers at the Lone Star College system in Texas. Willis also served as dean of academic studies at Lee College (Texas).
Obituary
Phillip W. Taylor, founding president of Halifax Community College in North Carolina, passed away on April 25 at age 94. He served as president of the college from 1968 to 1988, and as a trustee from 1993 to 2001. Taylor started his career teaching vocational agriculture and then served at Lenoir County Community College as dean of adult education. He became founding president of what was then Halifax County Technical Institute in 1968. Under Taylor’s leadership, the school’s curriculum grew from 2 programs to 37. It’s graduating students increased from 15 in 1968, to almost 5,000, for both GED and college degree programs. In 1976, after adding two-year transfer programs to become a comprehensive community college, the institute’s name changed to Halifax Community College. In 2013, the college named one of its buildings in Taylor’s honor.
Appointments
Madeline Pumariega has been named executive vice president and provost at Tallahassee Community College (Florida), effective May 13. She previously served as chancellor of the Florida College System. Pumariega was the first woman and first Hispanic educator to lead the system, which includes 28 colleges and nearly 800,000 students. Among her prior roles, Pumariega was with Miami Dade College for nearly two decades, serving in a number of leadership roles, including president of the Wolfson Campus.
