A respected leader in higher education and community development will deliver the keynote address during this year’s Camden County College graduation ceremony. Rutgers University–Camden Chancellor Wendell E. Pritchett will address the Class of 2013 during the 45th annual commencement exercises on May 18.
Approximately 1,500 associate degrees and academic certificates will be conferred during the ceremony. The event will begin at 10 a.m. in the Truman Courtyard on CCC’s Blackwood Campus, which is located at College Drive and Peter Cheeseman Road in Gloucester Township. More than 5,000 members of the College and local communities are expected to be in attendance.
Pritchett, a native of Philadelphia, has been the chief executive officer of Rutgers’ Camden Campus since 2009. He administers an annual budget of more than $60 million and oversees 1,100 employees serving the 6,600 students who are enrolled in 34 undergraduate programs and 25 graduate programs. Under his leadership, the Campus has added a nursing school, a 350-student dormitory and an Office for Civic Engagement and has made many other contributions to Camden’s revitalization and to economic, social and cultural development throughout South Jersey.
Before coming to Rutgers, Pritchett taught law at the University of Pennsylvania and history at Baruch College of the City University of New York. He also had served as deputy chief of staff and director of policy for Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and as director of district offices for U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Foglietta, D-PA. He previously had been an attorney with Regional Housing Legal Services and the firm of Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen.
Pritchett has been president of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities since 2012 and also is a commissioner of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, co-chair of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia/World Class Greater Philadelphia, a member of the Select Greater Philadelphia/CEO Council for Growth Board, a member of the United Way of Camden County Board of Directors and a member of the Cooper University Health System Board. He previously was vice chair of the Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia, president of the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp., chair of the Barack Obama for President Urban Policy Task Force, a member of the Pennsylvania State Planning Board and chair of the Community Legal Services of Philadelphia Board of Directors.
The author of two books and multiple articles about urban history and policy received an Urban History Association Best Article Award in 2008 and was named a USA Eisenhower Fellow in 2012. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Brown University, a juris doctor degree from Yale University and a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
