Irving McPhail is president and CEO of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. McPhail served as Chancellor of the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), one of Maryland's largest and most influential higher-education providers, from 1998 to 2005. Under his leadership, CCBC successfully reorganized from three separate community colleges into a single, multi-campus public college that is highly regarded for promoting academic excellence, developing potential, nurturing talent, and cultivating partnerships that benefit the people, families, and businesses of the Baltimore metropolitan region. McPhail also served as president of St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley and president of LeMoyne-Owen College. He has held senior tenured faculty appointments at Morgan State University, Delaware State University, LeMoyne-Owen College, and Pace University, and served for one year as chief operating officer of the Baltimore City Public Schools. The son of an upholsterer and a homemaker, McPhail grew up in Harlem, New York. He earned an academic scholarship to Cornell University, where he took a bachelor's degree in development sociology. He holds a master's degree in reading from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He was a National Fellowships Fund Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his doctorate in reading/language arts. McPhail has served as commissioner of the American Educational Research Association Commission on Black Education, co-founder and president of the National Association of Black Reading and Language Educators, and secretary of the board of directors of the American Council on Education. He is the co-editor of Teaching African American Learners to Read: Perspectives and Practices, and the co-author (with his wife, Christine Johnson McPhail) of Transforming Classroom Practice for African American Learners: Implications for the Learning Paradigm, which won the 2000 Research Award from the Maryland Association for Adult, Community and Continuing Education. McPhail has received numerous awards, including: the 2004 Harvard Graduate School of Education Alumni of Color Achievement Award; the Exemplary Leader and Pioneer awards from the National Council on Black American Affairs of the AACC; the Learning Facilitator and Distinguished Service awards from the Community College Leadership Doctoral Program at Morgan State University; the Certificate of Honor from the Baltimore County Public Schools; and the Emerging Scholars Award for Commitment to Excellence in Developmental Education from St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley. President George Bush named the Community Outreach program of LeMoyne-Owen College, which McPhail created, the 246th "Daily Point of Light" on September 12, 1990.