Michelle Allmendinger ’97

Allmendinger has over 20 years of experience in higher education. She began her professional career as a high school English teacher and part-time college coach before transitioning into full-time collegiate coaching. Dr. Allmendinger earned her master’s degree in human kinetics from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 2003 and spent six years coaching women’s college tennis and softball full-time before moving into higher education administration as athletic director and assistant dean of students at Scott Community College.

In 2014, she stepped away from her AD role to pursue a doctorate in higher education administration at Michigan State University, which she completed in 2018. Her dissertation focused on ethics and decision-making in higher education administration. Following her doctoral work, she served as dean of student development at Clinton Community College for five years, and then in May 2023, she was appointed to vice president of student affairs at Southeastern Community College.

At Knox, she played tennis and softball, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a McNair Scholar, and earned a double major in English and secondary education. 

What about Delta College appealed to you, as well as becoming a college president?

I’ve been in education for my entire career. I thought I was going to be a high school English teacher when I left Knox. Things took different turns along the way, and different opportunities presented themselves. In 2010, after leaving teaching and coaching college for a while, I became an athletic director and an assistant dean at Scott Community College in the Quad Cities. That was really my first step into higher education administration. I was reporting to our president, so I really got to see what a president does, how she interacts on campus and in the community, and I decided that was something I had the skills and desire to do. After serving there for four and a half years, I stepped away to pursue my doctorate in higher education administration and began this path.

This spring, I really started looking; I had been a vice president of student affairs for a few years, and it was time to consider becoming a president. I did my Ph.D. at Michigan State, so I had really fallen in love with Michigan, and when this job came up, I really wanted to have a look at it. Immediately before my interview, I felt a connection to the mission and vision here at Delta. They’re so committed to student success and innovation that it felt like it resonated with everything I have done in my career and what I want to do moving forward.

How did your experience at Knox prepare you for your path?

For me, I can pick any number of things Knox helped me prepare for this position. I was a two-sport athlete and a double-major at Knox; I was working a part-time job on campus, and I was a McNair Scholar. I was connecting with every part of campus and juggling many responsibilities. The thing I love about the liberal arts is that I was making connections; nothing was isolated. I had a class senior year, a senior seminar, and the class was about frontiers. The U.S. western frontier, the space frontier, and exploration and innovation. It was an amazing class; it didn’t have anything to do with my education or English majors per se, but it was a neat way to think about innovation and critical thinking. It’s a way Knox taught me to look beyond the simple answer and see how things are connected in the bigger world.

How much did athletics help not only in, but beyond your education?

I started my leadership journey in those teams. I was a captain for the softball team and the tennis team, helping everyone work toward the same goal. That became my vision when I became a coach: everyone has to know their role and how it fits with someone else’s role for the bigger goals of the team or institution. Athletics have always been a part of who I am and how I lead.

You were a first-generation student; you’ve worked with TRIO at other institutions. How much do those programs create a path for a student and help guide them on their academic journey?

My family was very supportive of education, but my parents never went to college. I didn’t know what I didn’t know; there are so many terms, offices, and procedures I didn’t know. I don’t think I fully appreciated what McNair was; I got something in the mail at 18 years old saying I should participate in this. Were it not for McNair, I don’t think I would be sitting here. It opened my eyes to the possibilities. I thought I was going to be a high school English teacher, and McNair was talking to us about going beyond a bachelor’s degree, going for a master's, getting a Ph.D. I didn’t think I wanted to do that, but it showed me I could do that, and that was a world I could move through. No matter which of the TRIO programs a college has on its campus, it’s about showing a student more about the environment they’re stepping into and the possibilities beyond that. My time in McNair inspired me to create a whole student support program when I was dean of student development at Clinton Community College, and we called it R.I.S.E. 

When you were a high school student, what about Knox appealed to you and what have you taken from that to appeal to a new generation of students looking to enroll in higher education?

My JV high school tennis coach was a Knox alum, and he kept dropping the name and saying I have to check out Knox. I got to the campus and fell in love with it. It was really about the opportunity to do all the things I loved without giving up on anything. I wanted to play tennis, I wanted to play softball, I wanted to do a double major, I knew I was going to work, and Knox sort of fed all of those parts of me and had a path to where I thought I wanted to go. In the climate right now with people questioning the value of college, what I want for Delta and Knox is for people to understand that college is here to support them in getting where they want to go and helping them be ready if they go somewhere they didn’t anticipate, which is what happened to me. The lessons I took away from campus that have served me so far are what I want here at Delta: an environment that supports students, challenges them, and provides every opportunity to reach the future they want for themselves.

What are some of your goals for Delta as a president?

Everybody in higher education is talking about the enrollment cliff, but community colleges like Delta are in a really good spot to meet that challenge because we do things with dual enrollment, engaging high school students earlier in the college process. We work with our community businesses and adult students; there are around 40 million adults in America who have college credits but no credentials. They started but never finished. We’re in a wonderful position to invite them back and help them earn that next certificate or degree. I think it’s meeting the different challenges that come at us, whether it was the pandemic, changes to federal financial aid, the enrollment cliff, so I’m looking forward to engaging that creativity and that collaboration to meet those challenges and keep Delta moving in a positive direction. It’s a great school, and I’m thrilled they picked me to be the next president here.