Lou Albert served as President of the West Campus of Pima County Community College in Tucson, Arizona from 2003 until his retirement in 2015. He is a former academic Vice Chancellor of the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District (1998-2003); and former Vice President of the American Association for Higher Education (1982-98), a not-for-profit membership association where John Gardner served as a member of its Board of Trustees. At AAHE, Lou was responsible for organizing the annual National Conference on Higher Education, and for special initiatives that focused on school/college partnerships, service-learning and civic engagement, and instructional technology.

Lou was also a faculty member and senior administrator at Essex Community College, now a part of the Community College of Baltimore County. Lou’s board service includes two terms on the National Board of Campus Compact, a consortium of nearly 1,200 college and university presidents committed to advancing the civic mission of higher education.

He also served for six years as Chair of the Board of Trustees for the International Partnership for Service-Learning. In Tucson, he is a past Board Chair for the United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona.

Lou earned his Master of Science in Zoology and Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Maryland-College Park. He holds a B.S. in Biology from Loyola College (now University) of Maryland. In 2001, he was awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris Causa) from Cuttington University in the West African nation of Liberia.