Sinclair Community College Hires Former State Legislator to Help With Expansion

By Stephanie Irwin, Dayton Daily News, Ohio

Jan. 3–DAYTON — Tom Raga, former state representative from Mason, now works for Sinclair Community College as its senior director of strategy and regional development.

Raga reports to Sinclair president Steven Lee Johnson as part of a new senior leadership team that will focus on ways to increase its enrollment across the region, Johnson announced Wednesday.

“Tom will focus his energy on our regional development and expansion of access to college,” Johnson said in a prepared statement. “He will work with external organizations that are keys to our success including school districts, colleges and universities, local industry and business, government and economic development organizations.” Raga’s appointment comes as a special task force for the Ohio Board of Regents considers changes to Ohio’s system of community college service districts, that may open the door for schools such as Sinclair to pursue operations outside of their service districts.

While Sinclair’s official service districts are in Montgomery and Warren counties, the two-year community college based in Dayton has been looking to expand its reach elsewhere, saying its students come from more than a dozen counties.

Sinclair has been locked in a fight over Greene County students with Springfield-based Clark State Community College.

In Warren, Sinclair has settled on Mason for a campus there, on a site along Interstate 75 across from Paramount’s Kings Island. The Mason planning commission reviewed a site plan Tuesday night.

Raga served three terms in the Ohio House of Representatives and was a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in 2006 on the Kenneth Blackwell ticket.

In the House, he served as vice chair of its finance and appropriations committee and as a member on the agriculture and development and primary and secondary education subcommittees.

Raga graduated from Moeller High School in Cincinnati and holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University.

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