UPDATE: More Details on White House Summit on Community Colleges

On Tuesday, October 5th, Dr. Jill Biden will convene the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges. The Summit will bring together community college administrators, faculty, and students, business and philanthropic leaders, as well as federal and state policy leaders. Summit participants were selected through a process of consulting many community college stakeholders. Summit participants include Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen; Melinda Gates, Co-Chair and Trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; William D. Green, Chairman and CEO of Accenture; Eduardo Padron, President of Miami Dade College;  Jim Jacobs, President of Macomb (Michigan) Community College; Ted Carey, President of the Student Association of Community Colleges; and Albert Ojeda, graduate of Estrella Mountain Community College and current honors student at Arizona State University.

This representative group of individuals will discuss how community colleges can ensure that the United States has the most educated workforce in the world - so American businesses can compete in the global economy and that we can achieve the President’s goal of leading the world with the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020.  They will address the critical role of community colleges as part of America’s economic vision for the future.

Dr. Biden will kick-off the Summit with an opening plenary session in the East Room of the White House. Afterwards, there will be a series of breakout sessions, which will take place in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Finally, Dr. Biden will convene a closing session at which participants will report back on issues and best practices raised in the breakout sessions. The closing session will take place in the South Court Auditorium.

For those who have expressed an interest in building an event around the live webcast of the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges on October 5, 2010, both the opening and closing sessions of this event will be streamed live on www.WhiteHouse.gov/live and timing details are below. In the coming days, we will provide a toolkit  with information about the content and the structure of the Summit, as well as background materials on the subject matter to be discussed at the breakout sessions. We hope this information will be helpful to you as you plan your event and look forward to hearing about your discussions and ideas. Meanwhile, please feel free to comment on these important topics prior to October  5th at the   summit dialogue online.   

• Opening Plenary Session: 12:15 PM EDT (Streamed LIVE on WhiteHouse.gov/live)
• Closing Session:   3:00 PM EDT (Streamed LIVE on WhiteHouse.gov/live)