Until 1996, the College Forum Committee selected speakers to come to the campus for a one-performance engagement. That year, the committee decided to emphasize a Scholar-in-Residence program, opening the selection process to the entire faculty. The goal was to involve all segments of the academic community by providing a scholar to reside at JCCC for a sufficient length of time to interact with faculty, staff and students. Scholar-in-Residence programs are intended to enrich a discipline and/or the entire college community.

Since the program’s beginning, dozens of instructors have been directly involved in creating Scholars-in-Residence programming that has reached hundreds of JCCC students and community members. Some past programs have featured Jon Jory, the director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville; Nora Erro-Peralta, author and professor at Florida Atlantic University; Hiber Conteris, author and professor of literature and foreign languages at the University of Arizona; Admiral William J. Crowe, senior adviser to GlobalOptions and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet.