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Dr. Michael Mills is the Associate Senior Vice President of Equitable Access and Student Success for EASS at Montgomery College. He has been with Montgomery College since 2009. Dr. Mills oversees faculty and staff professional development as well as the distance education program and libraries. His focus is providing faculty and staff with the professional development necessary to positively impact student success, and on using open educational resources to reduce the cost of education for students.

Prior to joining Montgomery College, Dr. Michael Mills had  18 years of experience at the Delaware Technical and Community College. He served as DTCC’s Director of Distance Learning beginning in 2001. Before that, Dr. Mills was a full-time Education Technology faculty member and the Communications Department Chair. He began  teaching online in 1998. 

Dr. Mills holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership with a concentration in Educational Technology and an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership with a concentration in Adult Education from the University of Delaware. He also has a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Maryland.

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Shinta Hernandez, Ph.D. is the Dean of MC Online and Academic Support at Montgomery College (MC), providing leadership in online education, open education, and the Digital Learning Center. From the time she started at MC in January 2007, she has helped to advance work in open education and open pedagogy, social justice and equity, inclusive curriculum, faculty professional development, international collaborations, online education, and the social science disciplines.

Previously, Dr. Hernandez served as the department chair of sociology, anthropology, and criminal justice and professor of sociology at MC. She also served on the leadership team of the Achieving the Dream (ATD) Student Success Network. She is the co-founder and co-developer of two MC faculty fellowships centered on online education and open education, including the global award-winning United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship, which has grown to 13 institutional partners across North America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Asia. She also has experience in external leadership roles with the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER), Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC), MarylandOnline Leadership Institute (MOLLI), and the Maryland Chief Officers of Online Learning (COOL).

Dr. Hernandez received her B.A. in Psychology from Brandeis University, M.P.P. in Social Policy from Georgetown University, and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland College Park. She was recently awarded the Diversity in Business Award by the Washington Business Journal (2024) and by Women We Admire as Top 50 Women Leaders in Maryland (2022). She was also awarded the Outstanding Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching and Advising from MC in 2017 and the Excellence Award from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) in 2018.

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Dr. Pruneda-Hernandez began her career at Montgomery College in 2005 as an adjunct professor, becoming a full-time faculty member in 2008. In 2017, she was appointed as the coordinator of the early childhood program, becoming the collegewide senior director for early childhood education programs in 2020 and Acting Dean of Education and Social Sciences in 2022. 

Through her work in early childhood education, she increased enrollment through extensive outreach, wrote successful grants (which raised $2 million) supporting students at no cost to them, and developed the fully online applied science degree, reducing the time to a degree significantly for students. She collaborated and supported WDCE with developing courses and curriculum review to add grant and other programmatic needs, ensuring quality and facilitating the integration of credit and noncredit content and flow. Dr. Pruneda-Hernandez has developed strong relationships with the community and provides leadership coordinating the regional early childhood education professional continuing education and community engagements events, including the Regional Early Childhood Education Summit, Statewide Early Childhood Education Symposium, and countywide early childhood education events.

Dr. Pruneda-Hernandez has served on numerous collegewide committees, including co-chairing one of the standards for Middle States accreditation and participating in the 2022 cohort of the American Association for Women in Community Colleges LEADERS Institute. Dr. Pruneda-Hernandez was awarded the MC Faculty Outstanding Service Award in 2015 and the NISOD of Excellence Award in 2016. Dr. Pruneda-Hernandez was also the recipient of the American Association of Community College Dale P. Parnell Distinguished Faculty designation for 2018 and was awarded the Association of Community College Trustee (ACCT) 2019 Northeast Region Faculty Member Award. 

Dr. Pruneda-Hernandez earned a doctorate of education from Walden University, a master of science in education from Nova Southeastern University, and a bachelor of arts in Spanish from the University of North Florida. 

  

Paul D. Miller has extensive experience in STEM instruction; K-12 curriculum development; instructional design and teaching methodologies; project evaluation; inclusive professional learning/development; instructional technology integration; instructional systems development; program implementation fidelity and evaluation; and over $34 million in federal and state grant facilitation and management. He has worked with school systems in 28 states and presented internationally at conferences on cooperative learning models, scaling programs for enhanced math achievement, effective leadership coaching practices, professional development, competency-based learning, and technology integration to support teaching and learning.

From 2007 to 2018, Dr. Miller worked at the Success for All Foundation and Johns Hopkins University, where he led the development of technology-based learning materials (for reading and mathematics), piloted web-based professional development and personalized learning systems, developed training workshops for teachers and administrators, and managed teams to develop early childhood program materials in partnership with Sesame Workshop, Inc.

Before joining Montgomery College, Dr. Miller has served as Director of Strategic Operations/Section Chief for Monitoring and Accountability for the Maryland State Department of Education’s Division of Early Intervention and Special Education Services, where he led the design and development of a statewide micro-credentialing program and provided professional development support for the integration of specially designed instruction within an inclusive environment to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

Dr. Miller holds an Ed.D. with a focus on Instructional Design for Online Teaching and Learning from Johns Hopkins University and an M.A. in Instructional Systems Development from the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

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