Thursday, October 1, 2026
Dr. Valerie Collins, a Rockville Centre resident who is the vice president of Academic Affairs and dean of faculty at Molloy, was one of 25 senior academic administrators in higher education selected from across the country by the Council of Independent Colleges and the American Academic Leadership Institute to participate in the 2012 Colloquium on Leadership for Chief Academic Officers: Classical and Contemporary Reading.
Individuals chosen for the program are chief academic officers in higher education who wish to prepare for changes and challenges in the decades ahead, understand complex and unprecedented situations, and further develop strategic wisdom. As a participant, Collins attended a seminar in Annapolis, Md. from July 17–21, where she studied classic and contemporary cases thought to help chief academic officers gain insight into issues commonly faced by today’s academic leaders.
“Higher education faces many uncertainties, but one thing is certain. Those who lead academic programs of colleges and universities must be able to make sense of complex and unprecedented situations and bring strategic wisdom into practical use,” said Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges. “Successful academic leadership will demand keen intellectual vision and decisive judgment, and the Colloquium will help leaders hone these skills.”
Collins has served as vice president of Academic Affairs since 1998, including an eighteen-month period as acting president of Molloy. Prior to assuming her current position, Collins was director of the undergraduate nursing program at Molloy and was instrumental in launching the Nursing Division Master’s program, the first master’s program at the college. Since 1998,. Collins has overseen the implementation and growth of master’s programs in education, business, criminal justice, music therapy and speech-language pathology. She has also overseen the launch of Molloy’s first Ph.D. program and the reorganization of the academic structure into divisions.
