Personnel Changes, Jan. 14, 2025
Greetings colleagues,I am writing to share the news announced earlier today at our All Faculty Day event: Our Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Dr. Dolores Durán-Cerda, will be retiring on June 30, 2025, to focus on growing her family. Dr. Durán-Cerda will transition from her role as Provost in mid-February to take on a newly created Cabinet-level position, Vice Chancellor for Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives & Community Engagement, until her departure from the College.
In alignment with our commitment to shared governance, I will actively seek your perspectives, as well as the advice and counsel of the College’s leadership, to formulate a plan for the future of the Provost’s office.
Vice Chancellor for Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives & Community Engagement
One of our top priorities as a college is to improve student outcomes, including increasing enrollment, retention, and completion rates for all students. Our 2024-2026 Strategic Plan Extension commits us to doubling the “completer counts” of Hispanic or Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Black or African American learners by 2025-26, compared to the 2014-2015-to-2019-2020 average.
While we have made meaningful progress in these areas, significant barriers to student success remain. Disparities in graduation rates, retention, and access to critical resources hinder our students’ ability to fully realize their potential. Addressing these gaps is central to our Mission—and to our broader vision of education as a pathway to economic mobility.
The charge of the Vice Chancellor for HSI Initiatives & Community Engagement is to tackle these challenges head-on, leveraging the strength of our institution and community to meet and exceed our ambitious goals, and empower all of our students to achieve greater success in their academic and professional lives.
Building on a Strong Foundation
As a proud Hispanic Serving Institution, Pima has long championed initiatives to better serve Latino students. In October 2024, we were one eight institutions newly certified with the Seal of Excelencia from Excelencia in Education, underscoring our commitment to not just enrolling but intentionally serving Latino students in ways that promote their success and economic well-being.
Dr. Durán-Cerda is uniquely qualified to lead this effort. Her deep knowledge of the College, wide-ranging community and national connections, and passion for helping others make her the ideal person to take on this critical new role. As she embarks on her capstone assignment at PCC, I am confident that the initiatives she develops will leave a lasting legacy, reflected in the success of our students and the economic vibrancy of the communities we serve.
Please join me in expressing our heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Durán-Cerda for her decades of service and congratulating her on this exciting new chapter.
Change in reporting structure
Effective Jan. 20, 2025, the Office of Community & Government Relations will report to the General Counsel.
Executive Director/Community & Government Relations Libby Howell and her team already work closely with General Counsel Jeff Silvyn on a wide range of topics. The seating of a new State Legislature, along with the possibility of major changes at the federal level that could impact Pima, compel the College to improve internal lines of supervision so that we can efficiently work toward outcomes benefiting our students and the PCC community.
As we continue to listen and learn, we will look for new ways to reimagine the College to meet new challenges and opportunities.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey P. Nasse, Ph.D.
Chancellor
chancellor@pima.edu