College Appoints Provost and Vice President of Academic & Student Affairs
(Delaware and Chester Counties, PA • March 5, 2018)—Dr. Monica Parrish Trent, currently the instructional dean of the English Language for Academic Purposes (ELAP), Linguistics and Communication Studies division at Montgomery College in Montgomery County, Maryland, has been named Delaware County Community College’s new Provost and Vice President of Academic & Student Affairs. She will start on June 18.
Dr. Trent is a highly accomplished higher education professional with more than 20 years of experience in administration, counseling and teaching, including as an English instructor at both Montgomery College and at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey. “Dr. Trent’s background and experience will be invaluable,” said Dr. L. Joy Gates Black, president of Delaware County Community College.
At Montgomery College, Dr. Trent has served as the college-wide dean of the ELAP, Linguistics & Communication Studies division since 2014, overseeing more than 150 faculty and staff in three academic departments, as well as overseeing the Germantown Writing, Reading and Language Center. Dr. Trent will bring to Delaware County Community College valuable knowledge relevant for improving student access, success and completion at a diverse, comprehensive, multiple-campus community college. She has extensive experience leading faculty and staff in distance and accelerated learning, use of open educational resources, program and course redesign, enrollment management and developmental education reform. Her experiences at Montgomery College, which serves 58,000 credit and non-credit students, with more than 500 full-time faculty members, nearly 1,200 part-time faculty members and 1,400 professional and support staff, inform her vision of the role community colleges play in higher education.
At Montgomery College, Dr. Trent also serves as the director of Achieving the Dream initiatives. Achieving the Dream is a multifaceted, national reform network focused on helping community college students, particularly low-income students and students of color, succeed. In her role as co-chair of the Achieving the Dream core team, she works collaboratively with the senior administrative leadership team to lead communication and research on key student success initiatives, which include comprehensive scheduling and advising. Her role as director of Achieving the Dream a Montgomery College will be of great benefit to Delaware County Community College, which has participated in Achieving the Dream since 2006, and has been designated a “leader college” in Achieving the Dream since 2011.
Prior to her appointment as an instructional dean at Montgomery College, Dr. Trent served as the associate instructional dean of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the college’s Takoma Park Campus from 2012-2014. She began her career at Montgomery College’s Rockville Campus in 2000, where she was a professor in the English department and a member of the counseling and advising cadre. She later chaired Rockville’s Department of English Composition, Literature and Professional Writing from 2005 to 2009. She has taught developmental English, composition, African-American literature, American literature, women’s literature, honors and distance learning courses.
Prior to joining Montgomery College, Dr. Trent was a tenured assistant professor of English at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey from 1994 to 2000. She also has held faculty positions at the University of Maryland College Park and at Northern Virginia Community College.
Dr. Trent holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Community College Leadership from the Darden College of Education at Old Dominion University in Virginia, where she also received a doctoral student fellowship. She also holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in English from George Mason University in Virginia, where she was awarded a graduate student fellowship from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. In addition, Dr. Trent is a recipient of the 2012 Montgomery College Outstanding Faculty Service Award and the 2013 Award of Excellence from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development.
