Stephen Handel

Stephen J. Handel, PhD serves as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the President for ECMC Foundation.  In this role , Steve interacts with all members of the Foundation’s leadership team to advance the organization toward its strategic and operational goals.  Prior to joining the Foundation, he served as the College Board’s Senior Strategist for Strategic Higher Education Assessment Use and Opportunity and as chief admission officer for the University of California (UC) System, providing leadership on freshman and community college transfer policy and practice for the nine UC undergraduate campuses.

Steve is the co-author of books and monographs on higher education, including Beyond Free College: Making Higher Education Work for 21^st Century Students with Eileen L. Strempel (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and the two-volume series, Transition and Transformation (also with Strempel, 2016, 2018), The Promise of the Transfer Pathway: Opportunity and Challenge for Community College Students Seeking the Baccalaureate Degree (with Ronald Williams, 2012) and the Community College Sourcebook: Strategies for Advising Transfer Students from Experienced Community College Counselors (2009). Steve’s articles and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, Times Higher Education (UK), Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, and About Campus. Some titles include Fairness and Fate in Elite College Admissions, Under Match and the Community College Student, Reimagining Remediation (with Ronald Williams), Strengthening the Nation by Narrowing the Gap (with James Montoya) and Second Chance, Not Second Class: A Blueprint for Community College Transfer.

Steve earned his PhD and MA degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, a BA from California State University, Sacramento, and an AA from Cosumnes River Community College (Sacramento, CA).