July General Membership Luncheon

The July General Membership Luncheon meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at the Portsmouth Renaissance Hotel. The Guest Speaker will be Dr. Edna Baehre-Kolovani, PhD, President of Tidewater Community College.

Dr. Edna Baehre-Kolovani became the fifth president of Tidewater Community College on July 9, 2012. Her professional experience as a community college president includes extensive work in strategic planning, expanding and diversifying college enrollment and exemplary fundraising and public advocacy campaigns.  

From 2010 until April of 2012, Dr. Baehre-Kolovani was president and superintendent of Napa Valley College in Napa, California.  Under her leadership, the college received federal recognition as a Hispanic Serving Institution, receiving a $3.8 million Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) grant.  For 13 years, she was president of Harrisburg Area Community Colleges (HACC).  In that time, she initiated several international educational endeavors in China and Europe; developed and implemented the College’s Strategic and Master Plans; and secured appropriate funding and support for the college’s operations and new programs.  Under her tenure, HACC became one of the largest community college foundations in the nation, with endowments and investments of more than $42 million.

Dr. Baehre-Kolovani holds a doctorate and a master’s in German and comparative literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo.   She received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education in Heidelberg, Germany.   She is trilingual in English, German and French.

In addition to her academic and professional activities, Dr. Baehre-Kolovani serves on various boards to include Virginia Beach Vision, Hampton Roads Partnership, Downtown Norfolk Council, Greater Norfolk Corporation, Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, and the Urban League of Hampton Roads, Inc.

She has received numerous honors, including the YWCA Women of Excellence; the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award for Peace from Morehouse College; the Global Vision Award from Embracing Global Women in Harrisburg; the Compass Award by the Pennsylvania Immigration and Refugee Women’s Network; the Shirley B. Gordon Award of Distinction from Phi Theta Kappa; and the Carolyn Desjardins President of the Year Award from the American Association for Women in Community Colleges.

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