Biography of president preston pulliams children
This content was published: October 12, . Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
Preston Pulliams – PCC president, photographer, student
Photos and story by James Hill
Preston Pulliams
He’s not only the president of Portland Community College, but Preston Pulliams is also a customer.
Pulliams, a resident of Beaverton, is a budding photographer and student.
He has applied his hobby all over PCC and the world, from small things like flowers to huge ones like the presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C., and an excursion to China. The instructors in PCC’s Community Education program helped foster his interest in the art and helped him develop his talent.
He credits the photography instructors for opening his eyes to different aspects of the art.
One area, composition, Pulliams said he learned that it is much more than a technical process that involves understanding your camera, how you look through the viewfinder and how you make a print. It’s the challenge of composition and comparing work with others and getting new perspectives from instructors that keeps him coming back.
“I do get a sense now of what a well-composed print should look like,” he said.
Biography of president preston pulliams jr ExecAtlas delivers executive intelligence and relationship mapping for more than three million executives. Preston Pulliams is president of Gold Hill Associates, a community college president search firm. Prior to joining Gold Hill Associates, Dr. Pulliams served institutions as college president, most recently as interim president of Mountain View College in Dallas, Texas. Prior to his presidency at PCC, he served as vice chancellor for community colleges for the State University of New York, where he coordinated and directed the activities of the 30 community colleges in the SUNY system.“I’m not producing perfect prints but I do have a sense of what to look for. The composition piece of photography is really what gets me excited. And I’m excited because the instructors have been so engaging.”
So how do his fellow classmates and his instructors treat PCC’s commander in chief?
“It’s been interesting,” Pulliams said. “Students connect with me in terms of their experience at the college and I often hear how things are going, how they enjoy their classes, and what their experiences are.
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Take a quick glance at his early back story, and it would seem unlikely that Preston Pulliams would end up where he is today, at the helm of the largest post-secondary education institution in Oregon. Born in Muskegon, Mich. He had to work to help support the family along with his father, a foundry worker who never had the opportunity for a formal education himself but who always pushed it for his children. The president counts the bond as his top achievement at PCC to date. Thanks to it, the school is expanding distance learning and workforce programs — cutting down wait lists for programs like nursing and welding — upgrading equipment, and adding new centers in Newberg, Sherwood and Beaverton.I get a different perspective of PCC inside the classroom, which is really fascinating.”
One of Pulliams’ favorite classes is Warren Mitchell’s Spring Landscape Photography course. Even though the president couldn’t always attend class due to his hectic schedule speaking and traveling, Mitchell said that Pulliams always goes the extra mile to do the assignments.&#;
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“It was wonderful; he did all of my assignments and even some extra stuff,” Mitchell said.
“Five years ago he started taking my classes and he didn’t know much about his camera, but loved photography. Now he is very skilled. His composition is pretty good, too.
Biography of president preston pulliams Pulliams has led the state's largest community college nearly eight years, since May of , raising the college's profile in the region. Under his leadership, the college's enrollment grew more than 40 percent, scholarship awards to students tripled and annual contributions to the PCC Foundation climbed. The president, also a member of the. Pulliams revealed his retirement plans to PCC's board of directors Thursday evening. The board will launch a national search for a new president this spring.Once he missed one of our field trips because he was busy, but went to the site we were at outside class and took the photos anyway. I don’t know if he will sign up for my class this fall, but I hope he does.”
When he got the PCC job in after finishing up as vice-chancellor for Community Colleges for the State University of New York (SUNY), Pulliams was stepping into a situation that would soon turn a passing fancy into a full-fledged hobby.
PCC’s Community Education program, one of the biggest in the nation, offers hundreds of non-credit and continuing education classes across the district and online. It contains 4, classes each year, including 22 different language courses, many educational trips to 12 countries, 15 varieties of dance classes, a plethora of sustainability courses and is home to a nationally recognized online program.
Pulliams decided to take advantage of PCC’s non-credit program after his move across the country from New York.
The camera he bought for the trip was so advanced, it was a chore to take photographs, he said. Hence, the camera remained mostly in its bag during the duration of the move to Oregon.
“Before that trip I was just a point-and-shoot kind of guy that took pictures at family outings and vacations,” he said.
“But that trip across the country I saw all those beautiful things and didn’t know how to record them and do a good job of it.
Biography of president preston pulliams death This content was published: May 27, Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed. Photos and story by James Hill. But if one thing remained constant has been his devotion to creating access for students who would not otherwise have had the chance to earn a college degree. His Campaign for Opportunity is raising money for first-generation college students who need financial assistance and student support to attend PCC and complete their degrees.That motivated me. It has been a love affair ever since with photography. When I arrived here five years ago I decided since I had this nice camera why not take some courses?”
Now, the camera is his constant companion on business trips, vacations and any other kind of free time. His specialty is landscape because, “it doesn’t talk back to me,” he said with a chuckle.
“I want to learn how to photograph people, but right now my real love is landscape.”
However, his highlight was taking pictures of hundreds of thousands of people at President Barrack Obama’s Inauguration in January. “I loved shooting the crowd scenes – just the expressions on people’s faces reflecting what was going on; it was a historical event,” he added.
You never know where a Community Education class might take you and, for Preston Pulliams, he wants to parlay the skills he’s learned to not just benefit himself but the college, too.
He plans to get other PCC photographers together – such as Christine Chairsell, vice president of Academic and Student Affairs – for an exhibit to sell their work to benefit the PCC Foundation and student scholarships.
“It has been fun observing a hobby turn into his discipline,” said Chairsell. “He has developed the photographer&#;s eye in the very special ways he artistically blends light and color, then balances out every shot with superb technical skills.”
About James Hill
James G.
Hill, an award-winning journalist and public relations writer, is the Director of Public Relations at Portland Community College. A graduate of Portland State University, James has worked as a section editor for the Newberg Graphic more »