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“My husband helped me make the decision to accept the job at Montgomery College,” she said. “He was a graduate of Santa Monica College and spoke warmly and fondly of the experience offered to community college students in California.”

Not only was Cooke’s husband, Paul, a community college alum, in 2002 the political science instructor became a founding faculty member of Cy-Fair Community College, one of NHMCCD’s five colleges, where this year he received the faculty excellence award. It didn’t take long for Cooke to share her husband’s zeal for community college and to become “committed” to its mission of making higher education accessible to all.

“I am really motivated by the chance to create opportunities for people to achieve beyond their wildest dreams,” she said. “Many of our community college students come to us without knowing what they truly are capable of accomplishing. I enjoy helping people grow and have mentored many a student, employee, faculty member and budding higher education leader.”

Cooke capped the last three years of her 10-year teaching career at Montgomery College as dean of the college’s natural sciences and health professions programs, a post she held from June 2002 to January 2005. Her next step up the career rung was as associate vice chancellor, workforce development for 45,000-student NHMCCD, the post she left to accept the Grossmont College presidency.

“Since my days in the classroom, I have been asked to assume and define brand-new positions and structure within the college or district,” she said. “Each position has presented me the opportunity to merge the lines of credit, continuing education (non-credit) and corporate training, as well as funding agencies, resulting in extensive resources available to the college district and community.”

Just this year, Cooke spearheaded a successful campaign to obtain a $1.6 million Skills Development Fund grant from the Texas Workforce Commission. With the funding, NHMCCD provided training to upgrade job skills of 850 employees representing 12 businesses in the manufacturing industry.

In 2001, she was involved in responding to industry needs by starting a biotechnology institute at the college. The following year, as a new dean, she joined institute directors in giving presentations on integrating biotechnology into curricula and workforce partnerships at a League for Innovation conference in Long Beach.

Cooke serves on a variety of boards at local, regional, state and national levels. She was recently selected for a three-year term on the International Chair Academy’s Practitioner’s Board, an educational organization focused on providing leadership training to midlevel administrators at colleges and universities.

Cooke is also a conferred member of Sigma Xi, the international honor society of science and engineering whose members are elected based on their research potential and achievements. More than 200 members have won the Nobel Prize.

In recommending Cooke for the Grossmont College presidency, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District Chancellor Omero Suarez highlighted her science background, in particular her training at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, ranked among the nation’s top two cancer hospitals in U.S. News & World Report’s annual “America’s Best Hospitals” survey. Cooke focused her research at the center on the role that cell recognition and adhesion play on cancer cell metastasis.

“Her science background will fit extremely well with Grossmont College and this region,” Suarez said. “She has taught biology, microbiology and biotechnology at universities and community colleges for more than 13 years. Her doctorate from Georgetown University is in biology and her 10 years in the North Harris Montgomery Community College District followed postdoctoral work at one of the world’s most respected cancer centers, renowned for its groundbreaking research and treatment of cancer.”

Science and medicine have had a lifelong influence on Cooke, shaping her childhood and her educational and professional pursuits in later years.

Born in Lucknow, India in 1963, Cooke immigrated to the United States at age 5 with her family, a move that resulted from a nursing shortage that led Dallas-based Parkland Memorial Hospital to recruit Cooke’s mother. Her father, an English literature instructor at Lucknow Christian College, put his career on hold for the year her mother was committed to working at Parkland Memorial.

“We arrived at New York and made our way to Dallas, Texas,” Cooke said. “Due to Indian immigration laws, we came with $8 per person in our pockets and what we could carry in luggage…Our first home was at a YMCA camp outside Dallas and some of our newest friends in the U.S. were in charge of that camp.”

From Dallas, the family moved to Missouri, where Cooke’s father was hired to teach at the University of Missouri. It was also in Missouri, where his second career as a minister took root, when he began working part-time as an education minister. From Missouri, the family relocated to rural Pennsylvania, where her father had been recruited to lead his first parish.

“We lived in a small town with no stoplights and no ‘foreigners’ and he served a blended Methodist and Baptist congregation…” Cooke said. “I lived in this rural town from seventh grade until I graduated from high school and went on to college in DC.”

Cooke said she has many memories of India, although she confides she doesn’t know how much she actually remembers and how many are from stories she and her two siblings heard from their parents.

“I have gone back to visit and as I entered my teen-age years, I realized that I didn’t really fit into either culture, American or Indian,” she said. “We didn’t have a word for that back then, but now the word to describe people born in India who grew up or came of age in the United States is ‘Desi,’ and many movies have been made of the cultural nuances. Most are quite funny and we laugh a lot.”

In India, her parents spoke Hindi, English and Malayalam, one of 23 official languages of India.

“We initially spoke all three languages and I have gradually lost the ability to speak these, but can understand the basics if spoken slowly,” Cooke said.

With a mother who’s a retired nurse, an older brother who’s a chemical engineer in Rochester, N.Y., and an older sister who’s a physician in Palm Springs, science runs deep in Cooke’s family history. Her father, the lone non-scientist in the immediate family, retired from the Methodist ministry in 1998 and remains active in his church and in community volunteerism. He and his wife live in Palm Springs.

Cooke said she was probably genetically predisposed to an interest in science, but not wanting to compete with her sister and brother, who both excelled in the subject, she began her first year as an undergraduate as a pre-law major. It was, however, counter to her true disposition as a scientist, and a year later, she returned to study biology, chemistry and physics.

“It was like going home,” she said. “While I loved being in DC and being involved in politics and learning a great deal through exciting real-life experiences, my brain worked in a more scientific and mathematical way…”

GCCCD Governing Board President Rick Alexander praised Cooke as a “president worthy of leading an excellent institution.”

He said her excellent academic background and communication skills were among the attributes the board was looking for during the yearlong search for a new president.

“Her strength in these areas was very obvious during the public forums held at Grossmont College last month,” he said. “Because she comes from a multi-college district, she knows the importance of district wide teamwork and we are confident that she will be an asset to the entire district.”

The board in June unanimously approved a three-year contract.

Cooke said she sought a move to California and applied for the Grossmont College presidency because of the college’s strong student focus and the commitment and dedication of employees to the college and the surrounding community.

“I am looking forward to working with the talented and energized faculty and staff at Grossmont College,” she said. “It is clear that they are strongly committed to student success.”

“The focus on providing the best possible experience for the students, the role of the college in the community, and the sense that all employees enjoy and are committed to working at the college and supporting the surrounding community played a central role in my decision to pursue this opportunity at Grossmont College.”

Cooke also credits the college for its “excellent reputation” for academic and student achievement, as well as its wide variety of programs and services well known throughout the nation. As for what she brings to the college, Cooke describes her leadership style as “open and collaborative,” which inspires others to work together toward a common goal.

“What really shines through is my caring for people and creating opportunities for them to grow and develop, whether they are students, employees or community members,” she said. “My passion for helping students and the community is only matched by my firm belief that the faculty, staff, and administrators are the essence and core of who we are as a college.

On a personal note, Cooke is looking forward to enjoying the outdoors and San Diego County’s famously temperate weather, along with her husband and the rest of the family: Dillon, the couple’s 9-year-old son, and dog, Nala, a Rhodesian Ridgeback that the family rescued last year from abandonment.

A former marathon runner who says she’s “now simply a fitness enthusiast,” Cooke lists hiking, mountain-climbing and canoeing as among her family’s favorite pastimes.

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