Shirley M. Collado, Ph.D.

Nationally recognized for advancing innovative approaches in higher education that expand student access and success, Dr. Shirley M. Collado is the President & CEO of College Track, the most comprehensive college completion program in the country. Dr. Collado holds the title of President Emerita at Ithaca College, where she recently served as the institution’s ninth president—and its first of color. She is also the first Dominican-American in the U.S. to serve as president of a four-year college or university.
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Prior to Ithaca College, Dr. Collado was executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer at Rutgers University-Newark; dean of the college and vice president for student affairs at Middlebury; and executive vice president of The Posse Foundation, where she scaled its operations nationally.
Dr. Collado is a member of the boards of ACT, Kids First Chicago, Excelencia in Education, StarRez, and Vanderbilt University. She is a founding member of Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, and serves as a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Dr. Collado is the Brooklyn-born daughter of Dominican immigrants, and the first person in her family to graduate from college.
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She earned her bachelor’s degree at Vanderbilt and her master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology at Duke University. Dr. Collado resides in Oakland with her husband, A. Van Jordan, an award-winning poet, and their dogs, Frida and Melba.

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