TCC president to leave post, take over foundation

NORFOLK

After 13 years at the helm of Tidewater Community College, President Deborah DiCroce is taking her leave.

On March 1, 2012, she will become president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Hampton Roads Community Foundation, which had been known as the Norfolk Foundation until last year.

"It was simply a second act that I could not pass up," DiCroce said Tuesday. "Community foundations across the country are beginning to shape public policy on everything from economic advancement to education for their communities.... That opportunity was too much to pass up."

DiCroce has been instrumental in a decade-long expansion of TCC, which expects to serve 50,000 students this year. She has helped broaden the college's academic programs, its finances and its role in the Hampton Roads community.

DiCroce became the college's fourth president in 1998, after leading Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville. There, at age 37, she had been the state's youngest community college president.

Taking the top position at TCC was a homecoming. A South Hampton Roads native, she had started her career teaching English at TCC's Virginia Beach campus in 1976. Later, she became provost of the Portsmouth campus.

When she returned to head the TCC system, she faced a challenge. The previous president, Larry Whitworth, had been fired after a strained relationship with state community college officials.

DiCroce brought a fresh vision. In 1998, she told a Pilot reporter she would make TCC "second to none - in both the state and the nation - in academic excellence, programs and service."

In many ways, she has succeeded. The college's full-time enrollment figure has nearly doubled. A million square feet has been added to its campuses. TCC now partners with community groups and offers agreements that start students at TCC and usher them into bachelor's degree programs at universities across Virginia.

DiCroce also oversaw growth in the college's finances, including the creation of a real estate foundation. During her "State of the College" speech in August, she said the foundation had established assets of more than $70 million; the TCC Educational Foundation's donor base had grown 128 percent since 2003; and a $10 million capital campaign started five years ago had achieved 101 percent of its goal.

"It has just been a marvelous journey, and I couldn't have asked for better companions," DiCroce said.

A search will soon begin for DiCroce's replacement, said Jeffrey Kraus, assistant vice chancellor for public relations with Virginia's Community Colleges.

Ultimately, state Community Colleges Chancellor Glenn DuBois will choose TCC's new president, Kraus said, but not until a nationwide search is held and extensive input is gathered from the state's 22 other community college presidents, TCC's board, and other local stakeholders.

In the event that a new president isn't in place by March, an interim would be named. However, it's DuBois' policy not to pick an interim person for the permanent position, Kraus said.

At the Hampton Roads Community Foundation, DiCroce was selected from among 100 candidates, said Harry Lester, chairman of the foundation's board and leader of the CEO search.

"She has been very active in the community," said Lester, the president of Eastern Virginia Medical School. "She has done a fabulous job at TCC, and everybody knows it. You put all those things together: a proven track record, a very capable lady and somebody very involved in the community."

DiCroce will succeed Angelica Light, who has led the foundation since 1999. Light announced in June that she would probably retire at the end of the year but would adjust her timetable depending on her successor. Light will now stay until March.

Under Light's leadership, the foundation has more than doubled its assets to $244 million, and annual grants and scholarships have grown fourfold to more than $12 million a year. Last year, the foundation merged with the Virginia Beach Foundation and was renamed the Hampton Roads Community Foundation.

Lester said DiCroce's experience not just as a college president, but also as a leader of local organizations such as the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, will help chart a future for the foundation as a "community leader."

"Debbie's leadership roles in the Hampton Roads community perfectly position her to help the foundation define where we want to go for the next decade," Lester said. "Some of that involves helping us try to figure out what's the best thing that this partnership can do to be helpful to the Hampton Roads community."

Elisabeth Hulette, (757) 222-5216, elisabeth.hulette@pilotonline.com