President Selected For Naugatuck Valley Community College

On Tuesday, May 13, 2008, the Board of Trustees for the Connecticut Community Colleges selected Dr. Daisy Cocco De Filippis to serve as the next president of Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, Connecticut, succeeding Dr. Richard Sanders who retired as the college’s president in September 2007.



Dr. DeFilippis is Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College of the City University of New York, a position she accepted as part of an extended leave granted her by York College of the City University of New York.  Dr. De Filippis began her career at York as an adjunct lecturer in 1978, advancing to become a Professor of Spanish.  She served as the Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages, ESL, and Humanities from 1995 to 2002.  In 1991 she assumed additional responsibilities at York, first as Acting Assistant Dean and then Acting Chief Academic Officer.  From 1993 to 1994 she was Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.



While at Hostos, Dr. De Filippis has been involved in curriculum development and revision, faculty development and evaluation, planning for outcomes assessment and program review, reporting to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, and creation of innovative student support programs such as the Hostos Academic Learning Center, the Information/Learning Commons, and the CUNY wide mandatory capstone exam. In the area of workforce development, she has led the development of a full Adult and Continuing Education program and the creation of an extension campus in Washington Heights that offers continuing education and credit courses and serves as a community center.



Dr. De Filippis holds a Ph.D. in Spanish Language and an M. Phil. in Spanish Literature, from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, an M.A. in Spanish Literature and a B.A. in Spanish and English Literature from the City University of New York.  She has received numerous honors including the naming of the second Dominican Book Fair in New York in her honor by the Dominican Culture Commission in the United States in 2006 and a Congressional Citation from U.S. Representative Charles Rangel in 2004.  Dr. De Filippis served as the Project Director for the Serrano Scholars Program at Columbia University through a $2.4 million, seven-year grant from the U.S. Dept. of State and the U.S. Department of Defense.  She has been involved in numerous other grant projects supporting research in integrating technology into teaching foreign language and the U.S. Hispanic Heritage Project at the University of Houston. She was named Woman of the Year in 2006 by the Association of Dominican American Supervisors and Administrators.  She is a frequent presenter at conferences and has authored or edited numerous books and published articles.


Dr. Murali Atluru, of North Haven, Connecticut, a member of the Community College Board of Trustees served as Chair of the search committee for the presidency and worked with representatives of the college’s search advisory committee throughout the winter as they conducted a national search for the college’s new president.  Dr. Atluru attributed the successful outcome of the search to the match of Dr. De Filippis’ experience in academic and administrative leadership with the search committees’ requirements for a president. “Dr. De Filippis is a scholar and an experienced educational leader who is committed to student success and meeting the needs of learners.  Her astute academic leadership, her experience in program and service development, and her ability to build consensus about institutional priorities has led to her success and the success of the institutions she has served.  Her dedication to community involvement is notable and will strengthen the relationship of the college with the communities it serves by expanding its offerings to benefit the Greater Waterbury region.”  



Chair of the Board of Trustees, Louise Berry of Danielson, Connecticut, expressed her confidence in Dr. De Filippis’ ability to lead Naugatuck Valley Community College during the coming years. “Dr. De Filippis is well known for her dedication to students and to expanding learning opportunities to meet their needs. She is recognized as a talented academic leader, and she has been extremely successful in advancing the institutions she has served throughout her career.  We look forward to having Dr. De Filippis join our Connecticut system of Community Colleges.”