Christine Johnson McPhail

Christine Johnson McPhail served as the 13th President of Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, NC from 2021-2023. Prior to joining Saint Augustine’s, Dr. McPhail served as President and CEO of the McPhail Group, LLC and a nationally recognized thought leader in higher education. She is the founding professor and director of the Community College Leadership Doctoral Program at Morgan State University. McPhail is the former president of Cypress College in California. She also recently served as a professor of practice at Kansas State University in the John E. Roueche Center for Community College Leadership Development. She is a Certified Associate for Emergenetics International, which helps organizations, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, achieve desired results including increased efficiency and improved communication through solutions centered on the Emergenetics Profile and tools. After multiple decades in higher education, McPhail served as a leadership coach with Achieving the Dream with a mission to help leaders shape the teaching and learning environment by engaging, aligning, and inspiring people to act. She has developed proven coaching and consulting methodologies and leadership programs that are now used by numerous institutions to help their leaders drive results. McPhail is the recipient of the 2018 Diverse Champions Award from Diverse Issues in Higher Education, the 2010 AACC National Leadership Award, and the 2008 League of Innovation’s Terry O’Banion Leadership Award. She served on the Advisory Council for the Community College Survey of Student Engagement and the National Center for Postsecondary Research at the Community College Research Center. She served on the board of directors for the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and the Council for the Study of Community Colleges. McPhail has also served as the affirmative action officer for Division J of the American Education Research Association and on the editorial board for the Community College Journal of Research and Practice. She is the editor for one of AACC’s best-selling publications, Establishing and Sustaining Learning Centered Community Colleges, the coauthor of the best-selling Practical Leadership in Community Colleges with George Boggs, and author of Leadership Tune-Up: Twelve Steps to Becoming a More Successful and Innovative Leader.  McPhail’s research interests lie in the intersection of three fields of higher education: leadership, governance, and learning.