Ensuring effectiveness in higher education
Joree Jones has become a leader in education administration in the past 25 years, making significant inroads in institutional effectiveness and fundraising. Jones, a 1979 graduate of the Harbert College of Business, is Dean of Institutional Advancement and Excellence at Chattahoochee Valley Community College, or CVCC, in Phenix City, Alabama.
At Auburn, Jones married her high school sweetheart, David, a 1979 graduate in textile management. After graduation, the couple lived in Arkansas, then Dalton, Georgia, where David had a position in the carpet industry. Joree worked in banking, manufacturing and as a financial accountant. After moving back to Alabama, while taking care of the couple’s three young children, she ran her own business.
But in 1994, she took her “steppingstone to education” with a position at Lurleen B. Wallace Community College in Andalusia, Ala., where she would remain for a highly productive 13 years. Working under a Department of Education Title III grant, she created the college’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness.
“I had found my niche,” she says.
Jones enjoyed assessing data and determining what it was telling her. Institutional effectiveness had just
become a requirement for colleges seeking accreditation from the Southern Association of College and Schools Commissions on Colleges.
When LBWCC was up for its 10-year accreditation, Jones became the SACSCOC liaison, implementing an institutional effectiveness process that ensured the college was reaffirmed. She would later set up the system at CVCC.
Jones set a course to advance her career in business and education, earning an MBA at Troy University Dothan and a Ph.D. in higher education administration from the University of Alabama.
In her current role, Jones oversees the collection of data and submitting reports to stakeholders.