George Soule Elected Chair of Minnesota State Board of Trustees

ST. PAUL, Minn., June 18, 2024 – The Board of Trustees of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities has unanimously elected George Soule to the role of chair, and Dawn Erlandson to the role of vice chair. The chair is elected for one two-year term; the vice chair is elected for one one-year term. Both appointments become effective July 1, 2024

"Serving as chair is an honor and a privilege, and I am grateful for the confidence my fellow trustees have shown in me,” said Soule. “I look forward to continuing our work together providing opportunities for all Minnesotans to create a better future for themselves, for their families, and for their communities.”

Soule has served on the Board of Trustees since 2017. He is an appellate tribal court judge for five Minnesota tribes, including the White Earth Nation. He is a founding partner of Soule & Stull LLC, where he is a civil trial attorney handling cases involving product liability, commercial, and negligence claims.

Soule is a member of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. He is a past president of the Minnesota American Indian Bar Association and a past chair of the Minnesota Commission on Judicial Selection, and he served on the board of the Minnesota State University Moorhead Alumni Foundation.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Minnesota State University Moorhead (formerly Moorhead State University) and a juris doctor from Harvard Law School.

Erlandson has served on the Board of Trustees since 2012. She is the president of Aurora Strategic Advisors, Inc., where she leads public affairs and marketing communications efforts for local, state, and national clients. She served as chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of Community College Trustees from 2019-2020, the chair of UPSTREAM, a national environmental organization, the founding executive director of the Great Plains Institute, the market mechanisms coordinator for President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development, and as board president of the Minneapolis Community and Technical College Foundation. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Hamline University.

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Minnesota State includes 26 community and technical colleges and seven state universities serving approximately 300,000 students. It is the third-largest system of two-year colleges and four-year universities in the United States.