The board of directors of the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, the primary advocate for Pennsylvania’s 15 community colleges, has named Dr. Stanley Sidor as interim president and chief executive officer.
“Dr. Sidor is a tremendously accomplished leader in higher education,” said Dr. Tuesday Stanley, chair of the board of the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges and president of Westmoreland County Community College. “Having served in executive roles at community colleges, he knows well the value the colleges bring to students, employers and economic growth. He also has a first-hand appreciation of how critical state and local partnerships are to realizing the full potential of community colleges as engines for educational attainment, workforce development and innovation.”
Sidor said, “It is estimated that about 55 percent of undergraduate students who are enrolled in a Pennsylvania college are enrolled at one of the 15 community colleges in the state. I am eager to advocate on behalf of those students and the community colleges that are helping them achieve their academic and career goals. I also look forward to advocating on behalf of the thousands of Pennsylvania employers that depend on community colleges to meet their workforce training needs.”
Sidor has over 27 years of higher education experience including development of close partnerships with local, state and national corporations and starting four workforce training campuses in three states. Most recently, he was president and CEO of Lake-Sumter State College in central Florida. He also previously was president and CEO of South Piedmont Community College in North Carolina and executive director and dean at Daytona State College (formerly Daytona Beach Community College), where he led the start-up of a $31 million technology campus and joint programs with county school districts.
In Michigan, while working for Northwestern Michigan College, Sidor played a lead role in the startup of the statewide National Institute of Standards and Technology Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NIST-MEP) and served as the director of the NIST-MEP Northwest Michigan extension center. Earlier in his career, he worked in industrial engineering roles in the manufacturing industry.
Sidor earned his doctorate in education from the University of Central Florida. He also holds a master’s degree in engineering management from Western Michigan University, a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Aquinas College and a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and sociology from Aquinas College.
Pennsylvania’s 15 community colleges, at 80 campus locations and sites across the state, educated 230,000 students across all 67 counties in 2021-2022, making them the state’s largest provider of public postsecondary education and workforce training. The colleges offer the lowest public postsecondary tuition in Pennsylvania. Students who start at a community college can save tens of thousands of dollars on a baccalaureate degree.
Seventy-five percent of the community colleges’ programs align with High Priority Occupations in fields such as healthcare, manufacturing and public safety. They award over 4,000 healthcare credentials annually on average, including 75 percent of all associate degrees in nursing in the state. The community colleges also partner with over 2,100 Pennsylvania employers to address workforce needs and provide contracted training to over 87,000 workers annually.