Melanie Dixon will start a new job as president of American River College in January.
Portland State University alumna and former award-winning PSU administrator Melanie Dixon has been selected as the president of the Sacramento, Calif.-based American River College (ARC), which enrolls more than 30,000 students annually. Dixon starts her new leadership role January 1.
“I feel scared; I am excited; obviously, I’m incredibly humbled to lead a college the size of ARC and in a very large Community College system,” she says. “That’s very exciting to me and a great opportunity to transform lives, so I’m really looking forward to working with the faculty, the classified professionals and the students and seeing what kind of magic we can make together.”
Dixon, who earned a Master of Science in Postsecondary Education from the PSU College of Education, received the prestigious PSU President’s Diversity Staff Award in 2013 while serving as the PSU assistant director of diversity and multicultural student services in student affairs. In that role, Dixon advocated for minority students on campus and managed more than 200 students at PSU as the African American student services coordinator.
A stand-out student and leader at PSU
“That position prepared me and allowed me to understand boots on the ground,” Dixon explains. “I had a direct interface with the university students. I case managed students, ensuring they had the resources they needed. I also expanded programs and supported the opening of facilities like La Casa Latina, a cultural resource center. This role prepared me to be a strong and thoughtful administrator when I transition to ARC.”
Not only was Dixon an award-winning leader at PSU, she was also a notable student. Professor Michael J. Smith was her advisor when she was earning her master’s in the Postsecondary Adult and Continuing Education (PACE) program. Smith said that Dixon stood out in the classroom as a scholar, and she also found the time to help him publish two academic papers as the first graduate assistant he ever chose to hire.
“Always focused, prepared, collegial in class, Melanie was not afraid to bring up difficult topics and did so in a way that never alienated her classmates,” Smith said in 2013 after Dixon received her Diversity Staff Award.
In 2014, Dixon moved to Los Rios Community College District, which also includes ARC, to become the Dean of Student Services at Folsom Lake College (FLC). Again, Dixon’s talent, education, experience and leadership skills helped her advance quickly. Within three years, she earned the title of FLC's vice president of student services. Serving as president of ARC will be her biggest leadership role yet and Dixon says the journey to this achievement wasn’t easy or simple.
A hard-working leader from the start
Dixon says she and her two brothers grew up in a low-income home in Northeast Portland, but they all worked hard to excel and have been successful personally and professionally. She says their mother, a single mom, imbued in them a great strength, sense of humanity and an intense work ethic.
Dixon earned her GED at Portland Community College and returned years later to work on an associate degree for transfer to PSU, where she earned her bachelor’s in communications with honors before entering the PACE master’s program. When she joined the PACE program, she met Smith. She sought to emulate him as an African American leader and as an encouraging, supportive force for future leaders.
“Quite frankly, Michael Smith is what kept me in the program,” Dixon recalls. “He validated my lived experience; he validated my identity; and he gave me signals that I belonged there and I had something important to contribute.”
Dixon says Smith’s challenging curriculum helped her grow and, when she was his graduate assistant, he helped shape her as an administrator, teaching her to ground her administrative practice in research and analysis.
“Without him, I wouldn’t be here,” she says, adding that, she will never forget the leaders like Smith who helped her.
“I am so humbled by Melanie’s words,” Smith says.
In fact, Dixon wants to be the type of leader for her employees, colleagues and students who can inspire people, particularly young people of color with dreams of their own.
“I want my students and their children coming up behind them to know you can be a GED recipient, be a community college transfer student and ascend to a presidency in the fourth largest community college in the fifth largest economy in the world,” she says. “It’s a big deal. I just hope that PSU keeps involving people of color. I hope that it continues being more intentional about serving its students and creating pathways for students of color to go into graduate programs because we, as leaders in education, have the ability to change the world.”