The Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research, housed within the North Carolina State University’s (NCSU) College of Education, held its tenth annual Dallas Herring Lecture on Tuesday, featuring Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of the Austin Community College District (ACC). The Belk Center is known for its support for North Carolina's 58 community colleges and for training leaders, conducting research, and sharing best practices with community colleges across the country.
Attendees from across the country and even across the Atlantic tuned in as Lowery-Hart shared how leading with love transforms community colleges and institutions of higher education into places where students, and the whole community, thrive.
“[Dr. Lowery-Hart] has an important message for all of us to hear—a message about leadership that’s not typical, but one that inspires us,” said Dr. Randy Woodson, chancellor of NCSU. “His belief in effective leadership is not rooted in power or influence of even charisma, but in something much deeper—love and affection.”
Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of Austin Community College District, speaking at the Dallas Herring Lecture on Tuesday.
“The need for us to love is more profound today than it has ever been,” said Lowery-Hart. “But, because of those realities, leading with love is harder than it’s ever been.”
Lowery-Hart previously spent almost a decade as president of Amarillo College in Texas, where he was recognized with the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence in 2023. Now, he is taking his signature culture of care to ACC, where he acknowledged the changes he hopes to make will likely take years of dedicated hard work to succeed.
Lowery-Hart shared three elements required to transform institutional framework for leadership that’s built on love: culture, impact, and communication. Love, he said, is not “fuzzy-wuzzy,” but real and often difficult work.
