FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 13, 2024
Contact: Jim Lynch
Laura Rittner to Become VP of Operations & Student Success after a Decade of Achievement at OACC
COLUMBUS, OH – Laura Rittner, executive director of a groundbreaking center aimed at boosting outcomes for Ohio’s community college students has been promoted by the Ohio Association of Community Colleges to serve its a newly created position of Vice President of Operations & Student Success.
Presidents of Ohio’s 23 community colleges wholeheartedly embraced the promotion at a recent all-president gathering.
“As executive director of the Success Center since 2015, Rittner has been pivotal in creating a national model to help more students succeed,” said Clark State College President Jo Alice Blondin, who also serves as Vice Chair of OACC’s board. “This work has been a critical at a time when community colleges are shouldering new responsibilities for providing students with workplace-ready degrees in a dynamic and shifting business environment. Thanks in no small part to Laura’s leadership, Ohio community college completion rates and job attainment opportunities have increased significantly over the past decade,” Blondin said.
Rittner thanked the OACC for the recognition and said she looks forward to making an impact in her new position.
“In today’s economic and employment landscape, community colleges play a crucial role in providing hard-working students degrees and credentials that make them top candidates for employers and transfer partners,” Rittner said. “Ensuring a seamless educational and career pathway for these future workers remains my top priority.”
The OACC’s work and the role of the Success Center are more important than ever given the explosion of high-tech job opportunities coming online in Ohio, Rittner added.
Rittner, a graduate of Miami University of Ohio, earned a master’s degree in public policy at George Washington University.
The Success Center was created in 2012 with the goal of helping Ohio’s two-year colleges marshal resources that would better direct students’ education by aligning their academic choices with the jobs and careers they hoped to undertake.
The OACC took the bold step of embedding the Success Center in the Ohio Association of Community Colleges, ensuring smoother and swifter collaboration in meeting the center’s goals, and also guaranteeing that the center would serve all 23 Ohio community colleges.
The Success Center took an additional step toward improving student progress beginning in 2016 when, under Rittner’s leadership, it supported Ohio’s community colleges in committing to “guided pathways,” which streamline students’ educational journeys by prioritizing timely and relevant degree attainment.
Adding to its list of innovations, in 2016 the Success Center introduced its Student Success Leadership Institute to engage community college leaders in the new pathways system. The institute holds annual two-day sessions that address everything from sharing institutional and state-level data to closing equity gaps by advancing teaching and learning and student support processes.
Three years later, the Success Center launched the Leadership Academy for Student Success, a one-year cohort program that supports mid-level faculty, staff, and administrators.