Tyjaun A. Lee, Ph.D., was named interim vice chancellor of administrative services Aug. 24, 2023. She previously served as president of MCC-Penn Valley since 2017, where she was responsible for all campus operations and academic and student services, including for the Heath Science Institute and Advanced Technical Skills Institute. Lee also served as president of a second campus, MCC-Maple Woods, from 2018-2020.
Prior to joining MCC in 2017, Lee served as vice president for student services at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland. In that role, she managed administrative units, programs and student services including recruitment, enrollment, student development, retention, marketing, athletics and operational oversight of auxiliary services for students.
Before that, she served as associate vice president of enrollment management and student services at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Virginia, where she provided strategic collegewide guidance and execution for activities related to enrollment and student services.
Lee also served as director of the counseling department at the Metropolitan campus of Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, where she designed programs for students at risk academically. She was also national director for the Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy (SEMAA), where she managed a performance-based NASA contract, monitored and established 15 SEMAA sites across the country, and conducted workshops for at-risk students for NASA Glenn Research Center in Ohio. She served as director of the Student Support Services program at David N. Myers University in Ohio.
Prior to arriving in Kansas City, Lee was active in several community programs for underrepresented young men and women, including serving on the board for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington (Prince George’s County branch), the Homeless Youth Work Group and the state and local Action Advisory Group for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Lee currently serves on the boards of Connections to Success, Girl Scouts of Northeast Kansas and Northwest Missouri, and Literacy KC. She is a member of the Black Achievers Society of Kansas City. She is past president of the American Association of Women in Community Colleges, an affiliate of the American Association of Community Colleges.
Lee is also a past president of the National Council on Student Development. She previously worked on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for the American Association of Community Colleges.
She has been nationally recognized for her leadership and her work with underrepresented and underprivileged students. Lee considers this work near and dear to her heart because she was a first-generation college student and grew up in a single-parent home.
Lee was honored by the Kansas City Business Journal as a 2023 honoree for Women Who Mean Business. In 2020, she received the Paragon Award for New Presidents from Phi Theta Kappa, the academic honor society for students at two-year colleges, and she was honored with the Lift Her Up Award from the Lift Her Up organization. She received the Connections to Success Tribute to Success Award for 2019. In 2003, she was presented the Nsoroma Award from the National Technical Association for her commitment to higher education. In 1994, the city of New Orleans honored Lee for her outstanding recruitment efforts at Ohio University’s Athens campus. Lee is a also a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc.
Lee was recently appointed by Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas to represent Platte County on the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority board.
Lee, a Cleveland native, completed her undergraduate and graduate programs at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where she received a doctorate in educational leadership, emphasizing higher education administration. Ohio University School of Education appointed Lee the Holmes Scholar. Her dissertation consisted of a phenomenological study of African-American women deans on predominantly white college campuses.