INDIANAPOLIS--Ivy Tech Community College announced today that Dr. Donald S. Doucette has been selected to serve as Senior Vice President and Provost. He will assume his role on March 1, 2008.

As Senior Vice President and Provost, Doucette will provide vision, leadership and direction of Ivy Tech's more than 150 academic programs and concentrations at its 23 campuses statewide. Doucette has served as Vice Chancellor for Education and Technology at Metropolitan Community College (MCC) in Kansas City, Missouri since 1993. At MCC, he managed academic programs, services and technological infrastructure for the multi-campus community college.

"This is an extraordinary career opportunity to participate in a leadership team that is focused on building a model comprehensive community college system to assist the citizens and communities of the State of Indiana to thrive in the global economy of the 21st century," said Doucette.

Throughout his 30-year career, Doucette has served as a faculty member and administrator for some of the nation's top community college systems. "Don is a community college veteran. He has a record of leadership in innovation and has been an administrator at some of the best community colleges in the nation. I'm very pleased that he will be joining our efforts to build a world-class community college system in Indiana," said Ivy Tech Community College President Thomas J. Snyder.

Doucette recently returned from Haiti after leading the creation of the first community college in that country, the Business and Technology Institute of Les Cayes, for which he serves as the president of the board of directors. He holds similar roles with the board of directors for the Haitian Episcopal Learning Programs (HELP) and the board of directors for Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Foundation, a sponsor of a maternal healthcare clinic in Larnage, Haiti.

While at MCC, Doucette led the College in achieving two successive ten-year re-accreditation recommendations from the Higher Learning Commission. He provided leadership for the transformation of affiliated individual colleges to a coordinated and sophisticated multi-college district. In 2007 he served as the Interim President for MCC-Blue River and from 2004-05 he served the same role for MCC-Penn Valley, both times while also maintaining his vice chancellor role. Prior to joining MCC, Doucette served as associate director of the League of Innovation in the Community College in Mission Viejo, California from 1987-93. Along with director Terry O'Banion, he collaborated to develop the League for Innovation in the Community College from a modest non-profit educational consortium to a multi-million dollar enterprise. He directed League initiatives to assist community colleges in improving teaching, learning and institutional management by application of information and technology, for which he received the B. Lamar Johnson Innovation in Leadership Award from the League Board of Directors.

He has also served as Director of Research, Evaluation, and Instructional Development at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas from 1982-87 and spent two years at Maricopa Community Colleges in Phoenix, Arizona.

Doucette earned a doctorate degree in higher education and a master's degree in English from Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona and a bachelor's degree in English from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He has been published in a number of higher education periodicals, and his dissertation, "Formulating Operational Missions for Community Colleges," received the 1984 Dissertation of the Year award from the Council of Universities and Colleges of the American Association of Community Colleges.

Doucette has held teaching positions at The University of Missouri-Kansas City, MCC-Maple Woods, Johnson Community College, Maricopa Community College and Arizona State University.

He is currently a member of the on the Missouri Higher Education Funding Formula Task Force, a statewide task force to establish a funding formula for legislative appropriations for public higher education in Missouri. He co-chaired the Missouri General Education Task Force that wrote state policy for the transfer of general education credit, and currently serves on the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education's Committee on Transfer and Articulation. He has been a member Accreditation Review Council of the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools since 2004 and has served as a consultant-evaluator for the Higher Learning Commission since 1999. In this role Doucette visited or evaluated over 125 community colleges across the country.

Ivy Tech Community College is the nation's largest statewide community college system with a single accreditation and the state's second largest public post-secondary institution with over 110,000 students enrolled annually. Ivy Tech has 23 campuses and nearly 100 learning centers located throughout Indiana. It serves as the state's engine of workforce development, offering degrees and certificates that lead to good paying jobs and credits that transfer to other Indiana colleges and universities, allowing students to pursue bachelors' degrees. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.