Pima Community College’s new chancellor, Jeffrey Nasse, said he’s receiving a “warm Tucson welcome.”
And, yes, he was referring to the heat since he moved from Florida to Arizona at the start of August, but through his 100-day listening tour across the college’s campuses, he’s also feeling the embrace of the community.
“I think to make good decisions as a leader, you need to be informed,” Nasse explained in a sit-down interview with the Arizona Daily Star. “I knew coming to a new state, new city and obviously a new college, that in order for me to be effective, I had to listen and learn.”
Nasse was chosen for the job by the PCC Governing Board after a year-long, nationwide search. He previously served as the provost and senior vice president of academic affairs and college operations at Broward College in Florida.
Coming from the faculty ranks, he said, has helped him “see things as a teacher and a learner.” Nasse previously served as a faculty member teaching English and creative writing at Central Maine Community College, East Caroline University and Florida Atlantic University.
One of his goals for his first year, he said, is to help boost enrollment at the community college. From when he started at Broward College in 2017, Nasse was successful in increasing the graduation rate every year.
“How are we engaging with each of our public high schools?” he said about his strategy to increase enrollment and graduation numbers. “How are we tracking our engagement with high schools, with local communities? Quite frankly, we should even be touching base at middle schools very early on.”
Some students, Nasse said, know they plan to go to college from the start of middle school or high school. Others don’t think about post-secondary education until much later. Those students, he said, need to know about PCC.
“Outreach is something I think about in terms of enrollment,” he noted.
Enrollment at PCC is crucial to the institution’s success, given community colleges in Arizona get very little state and local funding. Oftentimes, community colleges like PCC rely on tuition dollars. But getting students to enroll isn’t Nasse’s only priority. It’s also about keeping them enrolled.
“In some of the data that you look at nationally for community college, you have students that are passing their classes, so they’re doing well in their classes but then they just disappear,” he said. “Life happens. They lose a job; a family member gets sick. Maybe it’s housing or food insecurity.”
It’s often up for community colleges to “remove those kinds of obstacles” and “support students.”
PCC should be supporting students in this way, Nasse said, because it’s a “catalyst for economic development” in Southern Arizona.
The son of two special education teachers, Nasse knows firsthand the “difference” that education can make.
“Education can make such a difference in people’s lives, economically and in their career, but also living a healthier, more engaged life,” he said. “So, I think (we play) a huge integral role in support our development of the community.”
