Assistant Dean, School of Professional & Continuing Education

Carol Fleming holds the position of Assistant Dean of the School of Professional & Continuing Education (SPCE) at James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg, VA. During her 16 years at JMU, Carol has helped JMU elevate its community outreach and engagement work, including managing JMU's successful classification and reclassification for the Carnegie Foundation's Classification for Community Engagement. While focusing on university-wide community engagement initiatives, Carol led JMU's inaugural Engagement for Public Good National Conference and is now collaborating with others on campus to make sure JMU is seen as an Anchor Institution. Over the past 16 years, Carol has helped expand JMU's outreach and engagement operation from a three-person unit to a 24-person organization supporting an ever increasing and diverse portfolio of work. In addition to university-wide initiatives, Carol also provides leadership over JMU's Youth Programs and the Lifelong Learning Institute.

Prior to JMU, Carol spent a decade successfully creating and collaborating around arts integration and programming in Chicago's public schools: first, as a Director at Urban Gateways, which was the country's largest K-12 arts integration organization; then, as Director of the Chicago Public Schools' Fine Arts Magnet Cluster Program, which included 60 schools and over 40,000 students. Drawing upon her unique skills and collaborative approaches developed as an artist, Carol organized and motivated a large and broad array of cultural institutions, universities and colleges, arts organizations, artists, and K-12 schools to bring invaluable arts and educational programming to Chicago's students, including teacher professional development, artist-in-residency programs, live performances, fields trips, and summer programming. Carol holds a B.A. in Dance and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College in Chicago.