Bernie Ronan

Dr. Bernie Ronan is the Director of the Maricopa Community Colleges' Center for Civic Participation. Working to increase awareness and involvement in civic life, the Center hosts forums to engage the faculty, staff, students and community in deliberating about policy issues. Over the past four years, the Center for Civic Participation has hosted over 80 forums across the state of Arizona, involving some 2000 citizens in forums on issues as diverse as aging, school reform, city planning, and tourism workforce development.

He also serves as Director of Mesa Community College's Center for Public Policy. The Center for Public Policy pursues community partnership opportunities for the college. Over the past three years the main project of the Center has been developing a downtown campus for the college in partnership with the City of Mesa.

Over his career as a public administrator, he has developed numerous community partnerships and has done research and analysis on public policy issues.

Nancy is Treasurer of the National Security Archive in Washington and served on the Advisory Councils of the U. of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center Program on Excellence in Children's Media and the Small Press Center in New York. She has also worked with the State Department to advance libraries in Eastern Europe. In addition, Nancy judges Project Censored's Most Underreported Stories of the Year.

He has been an administrator in the Maricopa Community Colleges for the past 15 years.

Prior to that he served as Deputy Director of the Arizona Department of Commerce, and prior to that was Research Director in the department. He also served as Deputy Associate Superintendent of the Arizona Department of Education, where he was responsible for research and planning.

An Arizona native, he has postgraduate degrees in theology and public administration, and obtained his doctorate in public administration from Arizona State University.