Since 2013, Walter Dalton has served as President of Isothermal Community College where he has led an aggressive building program and is working with the Isothermal team to develop initiatives to help the community meet the “challenge of change” in a transitioning economy. In 2016, Isothermal Community College, in partnership with Tryon International Equestrian Center, won the System’s Distinguished Partners in Excellence Award and in 2015 ICC was one of ten schools selected as a finalist for the national Bellwether Award for its partnership with Western Carolina University on certain specialized articulations.

Immediately prior to his work at Isothermal Community College, Dalton served on the faculty at Gardner Webb University. Dalton served twelve years in the NC Senate where he was a chair of the Education Committee and later a Budget Chair. He was author of the Innovative Education Act which laid the foundation for creating early colleges throughout NC and in 2008, he was elected Lt. Governor and thereafter he chaired the “Jobs Commission” (Joining Our Business and Schools Act). He also served on the NC Board of Education, the NC Community College Board, and the NC Economic Development Board as well, as the Southern Regional Education Board and the Board of the NC Center for Public Policy Research. Dalton is a graduate of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and earned his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He thereafter practiced law for over thirty years. He is married to Lucille Hodge Dalton, a former teacher. They have two children and two grandchildren and live in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.