Dr. Kristie Fisher, left, leads IVCCD board members and staff on a tour of renovations to the MCC campus after a board retreat in April of 2022.

After four years at the helm of the Iowa Valley Community College District (IVCCD), Kristie Fisher is heading home to accept her “dream job” as the president at Kirkwood, it was announced Thursday.

“Honestly, in my 30s when I decided I wanted to be a community college president, the place I initially wanted to do that was at Kirkwood, and it was because of my long connections there,” she said. “I’m a big believer in things happening for a reason, and the beautiful thing is, because of the path that took me here, I got to spend four really great years in Marshalltown and at Iowa Valley.”

The Prairie High School alum’s Kirkwood experiences date back to her days as a college student when she worked toward an associate degree before completing a bachelor’s degree at the University of Iowa and a graduate degree at Iowa State. She has held several different roles at Kirkwood during her professional career, including, according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, serving as annual giving director from 1995 to 2000, director of special projects and assistant to the president from 2004 to 2006 and as vice president of student services focused on enrollment, recruitment, retention, advising, and financial aid from 2006 to 2014. Other than the last four years in Marshalltown, she has lived in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City corridor her entire life.

In looking back at her Iowa Valley tenure, Fisher recalled the successful passage of a $32 million bond issue in 2019 as one of the highlights, characterizing it as “transformational” for all three of the district’s campuses — MCC, Ellsworth in Iowa Falls and Grinnell.

“I think anyone in the public who would come to either of our (main) campuses would see that we spent that money really well, and it’s really setting Marshalltown Community College and Ellsworth Community College up to be successful into the future,” she said. “So I’m really proud of passing the bond issue and then being such a good steward of taxpayer dollars in the work that we’ve done.”

She’s also proud of the way students and staff have overcome adversity, whether it’s battling two dorm fires, the COVID-19 pandemic or the derecho that wreaked havoc across the Marshalltown area.

“I feel like we’ve not just survived those bad events, but we’ve really flourished,” she said. “And we’ve just done tremendous work on faculty. The amount of progress we’ve made on assessment is exciting because that impacts students in positive ways, and just some of the programs we’ve put in place to support students.”

Although she will be moving about 65 miles east on Highway 30, Fisher is excited about the future of Iowa Valley and hopes her successor can continue the positive momentum already in motion.

“What I would tell anyone who’s gonna follow me is that they’ve got the best leadership team imaginable at the executive leadership level, to collaborate with that and keep the good work moving forward because there’s just a lot of good things happening,” she said. “We have a fabulous board. We have fabulous employees. We have supportive communities, so I can see why people would be really interested in this job.”

Fisher told the T-R she had been approached about other jobs at schools with bigger budgets in the last year and a half, but she wasn’t interested in any of them except Kirkwood. She told her husband as much, remarking after meeting with the hiring team at Kirkwood that it was the last interview of her life because she would either wind up with the job or retire at Iowa Valley.

And even as she prepares to leave, Fisher can’t say enough good things about the Marshalltown community.

“It is so impressive. People don’t just say things in Marshalltown. They actually do things. They get it done and they work together, and it’s been such a fun experience,” she said. “When the time came to decide to apply (at Kirkwood), I knew I was going to apply, but I struggled because I like it here so much. If you would’ve told me four years ago that I would’ve struggled in that way, I would never have guessed that I could’ve felt so at home here in such a short time.”

Fisher plans to stay at Iowa Valley until late September or October, and a search for her successor including both internal and external candidates is expected to commence soon, with more details to come at upcoming board meetings.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.