Dec. 2, 2014

Amarillo College’s designation as one of 16 elite Leader Colleges in the nation is still in its infancy—the milestone revelation only came to light Sept. 24—yet already it is clear that membership has its privileges.

Case in point: AC President Russell Lowery-Hart will be meeting this week with the Obamas at the White House.

Lowery-Hart is among a select group of college presidents and community leaders who have been invited to attend the White House College Opportunity Summit. The gathering is Thursday (Dec. 4) and will be attended by President Obama, the first lady, and Vice President Joe Biden.

Lowery-Hart will be accompanied by Rod Schroder, superintendent of Amarillo Independent School District, and Clay Stribling, president and CEO of Amarillo Area Foundation.

The focus of the conference will be on methodologies and community partnerships that improve college access and rates of graduation, particularly among low-income and underrepresented students, precisely where AC is making strides.

Lowery-Hart says his inclusion at the summit is based on AC’s commitment to No Limits No Excuses, a community initiative that promotes post-secondary education and the living-wage jobs that ensue. It is this initiative, along with the fact that AC in 2012 became the first No Excuses College in the nation, which led to AC’s recent selection as a Leader College by Achieving the Dream.

“This is a huge honor for Amarillo College and our entire community,” Lowery-Hart said. “Clay Stribling and Rod Schroder have been instrumental in creating the No Limits No Excuses partnership, so this is an acknowledgment not only of what the College is doing by of how powerful our community partnerships are and that they are working, how they are becoming examples for the rest of the country to emulate.”

Being invited to the White House is not the first Leader College dividend realized by AC. Just last month, Lowery-Hart was appointed by the American Association of Community Colleges to serve on its Commission on Global Education. He attended his first meeting Nov. 12-13 in Washington, D.C., and says that appointment, like the invitation to the White House, was grounded in AC’s recent ascension to Leader-College status in Achieving the Dream.