On Tuesday, October 5th, Dr. Jill Biden will convene the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges.Dr. Biden will kick-off the Summit at 12:15 p.m. with an opening plenary session from the East Room of the White House, which will air live on www.WhiteHouse.gov/live.  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 3 p.m. in 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 and will also air live on www.WhiteHouse.gov/live.

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.