Gateway's Decker Named Outstanding Administrator For KCTCS

Amber Decker of Erlanger has been named the New Horizons outstanding administrator in the statewide Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Decker is director of grants and contracts at Gateway Community & Technical College in Northern Kentucky.

Decker received the award in May during the KCTCS annual New Horizons faculty-staff conference.

Simply being nominated by your peers for New Horizons recognition is the highest honor an employee can receive within the system, said Gateway President/CEO Ed Hughes. To be selected for the statewide award truly signifies that you are the best of the best.

Decker was nominated by her peers for excellence in her role in charge of grants and contracts. Gateway derives about 30 percent of its annual revenues from such funds and in 2010 was awarded a federal Health Professions Opportunities grant slated to bring about $8 million to Gateway over the next five years.

Decker joined Gateway in 2000 as director of adult education and has served in her current capacity since 2008. She also serves as an adjunct faculty member. From 1995 to 2000, she was executive director of the Northern Kentucky Adult Reading Program.

A graduate of Northern Kentucky University, Union Institutes volunteer management certificate program and the University of Louisville where she earned a masters degree in human resource education, Decker is a doctoral candidate at the University of Kentuckys Ed. D program in Higher Education. In addition to numerous leadership activities at Gateway, she is a board member of Partners in Prevention and a graduate of Women in Leadership Development and Teacher Leadership of Northern Kentucky.