UPFRONT LE ADERSHIP // BY LYNNE THOMPSON
A Practitioner President Tri-C’s new president leads with a focus on students and the community.
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4 COMMUNITY LEADER | AUGUST 2022
Michael Baston
Northeast Ohio, he credits his former students for his success. “People think maybe I’m the pied piper,” he says. “My students were the pied pipers. I followed them to help them get to the places they wanted to be.” Door to Opportunity In 2009, Baston followed his students from Berkeley College to nearby LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, New York. For years — the last seven of which he spent as dean of student development and campus life for Berkeley’s New York campuses — he sent students who couldn’t afford to complete their degrees at Berkeley to the more affordable LaGuardia.
When he received a call that the school was looking to fill the position of associate dean for student affairs and enrollment management, he decided to apply for it. LaGuardia was much bigger and one of the most diverse community colleges in the country, with 50,000 students from 163 countries. Plus, his family was from the area. “The community college space is certainly a place that really aligns with my social justice mission,” he adds. “I see community colleges as democracy’s colleges — we are those institutions that truly open the door to opportunity for all.” Eight months later, Baston advanced to acting vice president for student affairs and enrollment. He went on to
COURTESY CUYAHOGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE
he trajectory of Michael Baston’s working life began changing one day in 1998. The New York City native, an attorney representing higher education, nonprofit and religious institutions at a Manhattan firm, took a client-offered opportunity to teach a paralegal studies survey course at Berkeley College, a small, private school with eight campuses in New York City and New Jersey. “I really, truly enjoyed it — and found out that I was pretty good at it,” Baston, now 50, recalls. His evaluations were so high that the school offered him a job as assistant dean of student affairs the following year. For a time, he continued practicing law part time. But higher education proved to be the socially conscious adjunct lecturer’s true calling. “I could do, I thought, more to advance the community, to advance those students,” he explains. “I’m seeing them as those future attorneys, paralegals — those folks who are going to really change our country in so many powerful ways.” Two-plus decades later, Baston maintains that passion as he assumes the presidency of Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C). He’s driven to make continuing education more accessible by cutting red tape and implementing interventions that help students stay in school and finish their degrees. As he begins leading an institution with more than 26,700 students enrolled on four major campuses and numerous training centers across
