EdNC. Essential education news. Important stories. Your voice.

Search ednc.org

Register for the 2025 Dallas Herring Lecture with Dr. Jason Wood, former president of the 2025 Aspen Prize winner

Share this story

Our republishing policy

EdNC is a nonprofit, online, daily, independent newspaper. All of EdNC’s content is open source and free to republish. Please use the following guidelines when republishing our content.
  • Our content must be republished in full. If your organization uses a paywall, the content must be provided in full for free.
  • Credit our team by including both the author name and EdNC.org in the byline. Example: Alex Granados, EdNC.org.
  • If republishing the story online, please provide a link to EdNC.org or a link to the original article in either the byline or credit line.
  • The original headline of the article must be used. Allowable edits to the content of the piece include changes to meet your publication’s style guide and references to dates (i.e. this week changed to last week). Other edits must be approved by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
  • Photos and other multimedia elements (audio, video, etc.) may not be republished without prior permission. Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you are interested in sharing a multimedia element.
  • If you republish a story, please let us know by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you have any questions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Canonical tag

Please include the following canonical tag in the <head> of the republished story.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.ednc.org/register-for-the-2025-dallas-herring-lecture-with-dr-jason-wood-president-of-2025-aspen-prize-winner/">

HTML content

This includes the title, byline, content, and tracking pixel required for republishing this story.

Copy & paste HTML
This story is tagged:
Dr. Jason Wood (second from right), Southwest Tech president, and Holly Clendenen (second from left), chief student services officer at Southwest Tech, receive the college’s Aspen Prize during the Aspen Institute Awards in Washington in April 2023. The college was a finalist for the award in 2023 and 2024 before winning in 2025. Photo courtesy of Jose Luis Magana

Registration for the 11th annual Dallas Herring Lecture is now open. The virtual event, presented by the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research (Belk Center), is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. 

The nationally recognized lecture honors the late W. Dallas Herring — known as the “father” of the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) — and is a chance for community college leaders in North Carolina and beyond to reflect on the most pressing and emerging issues facing their institutions, while also thinking strategically about the path forward. 

Dr. Jason Wood, former president of Southwest Wisconsin Technical College (Southwest Tech), will deliver the 2025 lecture, titled, “We Don’t Graduate People Into Poverty: Designing the College Experience Around Student Success.” 

Sign up for Awake58, our newsletter on all things community college.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Wood is the former president of Southwest Tech, where he served from July 2015 to June 2025. He has extensive leadership experience in higher education, with roles in recruitment, college preparation, and student services at community colleges in Oregon. Wood also served as the executive vice president for student and academic services at Central Wyoming College. 

In April, Southwest Tech was awarded the 2025 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence — a national recognition for high achievement and performance among the country’s community colleges. The Aspen Prize, created in 2010, honors colleges that show “outstanding performance in several areas of student outcomes: student learning, certificate and degree compilation, transfer and bachelor’s attainment, and employment and earnings after graduation.” 

The college was recognized for how it served students inside and outside the classroom, and for their exceptional graduation rates, “particularly among lower-income students, and for the strong wage outcomes of its graduates, who earn nearly $14,000 more than the regional average within five years,” according to a recent press release. 

Dallas Herring Lecture speaker announcement. Courtesy of the Belk Center

Southwest Tech is an example of how a rural college can achieve “remarkable results through innovative leadership and a culture of continuous improvement,” the release says. The release goes on to say that under Wood’s leadership, Southwest Tech has focused on “expanding student access, fostering success and ensuring long-term sustainability through innovation.” 

“President Wood’s leadership reflects a clear commitment to access, innovation and the transformative power of education,” said Dr. Audrey J. “AJ” Jaeger, W. Dallas Herring Professor at the NC State College of Education and executive director of the Belk Center. “His work not only aligns deeply with the values of the Dallas Herring Lecture but also resonates with North Carolina’s growing need for skilled workers and strong workforce outcomes. We’re honored to have him share his insights this year.”

The virtual event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. You can register online here.