Managing Editor Alex Ortuno
Dallas College Chancellor Joe May was scheduled to retire from his position March 1, according to Alex Lyda, senior director of communication for Dallas College. Dr. Justin Lonon, who has been serving as the executive vice chancellor, was to assume the duties of chancellor on that date.
According to the agenda of a Feb. 1 regular meeting of the Dallas College board of trustees on Feb. 1, a resolution was set where Lonon would be appointed as the future chancellor of Dallas College during the transitional period as May relinquishes his day-to-day duties and responsibilities.
During the transitional period, Lonon will assume the duties of chancellor while May will become chancellor emeritus by June 11, according to Lyda. The board meeting agenda said the transitional period will be from March 1 – Aug. 31.
As May stepped down from his position as chancellor, he reflected on his time serving higher education and Dallas College as a great journey.
“It kind of completed for me my professional journey in higher education and it’s been a great journey. With being the head of the [Louisiana Community and Technical College System], the [Colorado Community College System], president of Pueblo Community College and others but by far, this is the highlight of my career,” May said.
While the transition of the seven colleges into one may be a big achievement, May does not consider everything he has done to be about achievements as he tried to solve problems that Dallas College had.
“To be honest, I don’t really think about it in terms of achievement or things of that nature. I think of it in terms of solving the problems that were out there. Lots of people were talking about the consolidation of the seven colleges and certainly it was a big move, and it took a lot of effort and energy. But it’s no less important than the work we did creating career pathways for students, putting in place something that’s almost invisible to students but very important and that’s the work we do with our labor market intelligence center to make sure our programs are aligned with the economy,” May said.
May also mentioned the importance of trying to have students leave without any debt. While May was involved in the transition to Dallas College, he believes it was largely a success, despite uncertainties in the future, which cannot always be predicted.
“I absolutely do consider it a success and anyone looking at it from the outside in has marveled at the fact that we’ve been able to make this type of change relatively smoothly. I can point you [to other places] in the country that are underway or attempted this. And for a whole lot of other reasons, a lot of good reasons, it just hasn’t gone as fast or as smoothly as we have here. That being said, that doesn’t mean that we’re able to forecast everything that would happen and how it might impact every single individual and things could have been done better. Of course they can,” May said.
Even though Dallas College may have many benefits and support for students and employees, May said there is still more to be done to fully improve.
“Even though I would consider this a success, I would also say there’s still a lot of work to be done to improve services, access, opportunities and, most importantly, improve our graduation and completion rate,” May said.
“The goal has to be what can we continue to do as an institution to ensure, we’ll probably never hit 100% but how can we get as close as 100% as we can of every single individual being able to achieve his or her goal. That has to be, I think, the guiding principle by which Dallas College operates and does that mean 50 years from now, will we be there? Probably not but, hopefully, whoever’s leading the institution in 50 years will still have that guiding principle that says we’ve got to continue to work toward that goal,” May said.
While he has no regrets on the transition of Dallas College, May said he wished he had understood the issues students were dealing with much earlier.
“I probably wish I understood some of the challenges students were facing sooner. I came to Dallas College in 2014. I didn’t fully grasp how this was getting in the way until June 2019. Now, that’s a long time to be in this role and to have a set of problems that was getting in the way of students getting their degree. I guess if I had one regret, I didn’t have that clarity around how this was interfering and got started on this earlier because clearly, it had been going on for some time,” May said.
While Lonon is humbled to be the next chancellor for Dallas College, he wants to continue the mission of Dallas College helping its community.
“It is a tremendous honor to serve as the eighth chancellor of this amazing institution that since 1965 made such an impact in this community and it’s also home for me. I’ve been here over 16 years now. I’m passionate about what we provide for our students. I’m passionate for supporting our students and serving our community and our business partners that depend on us to help provide a workforce,” Lonon said.
Lonon knows Dallas College faces challenges that impact its students and employees but he said he will make efforts to ensure better communication of more information.
“We know that there are still gaps we need to focus on. We did listening tours in the fall and another virtual one that occurred a couple of weeks ago to hear from employees to hear where they saw the gaps that may exist through the transition. I want to ensure that we have an opportunity for feedback,” Lonon said.
Lonon added that communication with both students and employees will have opportunities for feedback and have moments of engagement with representatives of students.
“We had these series of listening tours that we did internally. We will continue our town hall meetings that we have done and get feedback where we can. I’ll be active on campus, both informal and in formal sort of ways for those sit-ins. I’ve done small group conversations at each of the locations and I want to look for opportunities to meet with student groups on a frequent basis,” Lonon said.
Lonon also wants meetings with student government representatives and student media members once per semester.
In the case of employees, Lonon wants to ensure as much support as they need to serve the campus community and students.
“Our chief human resources officer has shared with the board some things that we’ll be doing around professional development and training opportunities to ensure employees can be successful and for new onboarding for new employees,” Lonon said.
Lonon also mentioned that while chancellor, the culture of Dallas College will be something he will focus on but it will take time, as Dallas College is still relatively new.
During the transition of Lonon to chancellor and May to chancellor emeritus, Lonon will have an executive team and support from other networks across the state and the nation for advice.
Lonon expressed hope for seeing change within the first year of his new role but noted that change does not always come quickly.
“Change comes at many different speeds and so as I’ve talked about the barrier busting business being very intentional in identifying some of those barriers, I can tell you again that some of those that I know are issues for many of our students that we’re going to focus on heavily would include childcare. We just recently announced a partnership with the Bezos Academy that is going to be at Cedar Valley and Mountain View,” Lonon said.
Lonon also wants to get additional access to health services for students, as access to
healthcare has been a challenging issue for many, especially during the pandemic.
Lonon said existing facilities across Dallas College may see enhancements and expand new facilities as well. This would also come with the construction of a new downtown campus to replace the current El Centro Campus.
Pushing for academic innovation at Dallas College is something Lonon wants to do as well.
“We have such amazing faculty that I want to leverage that expertise and even new innovative ways that may cause us to think through [these times],” Lonon said.
One big change for students is the eventual possibility of programs going fully online.
“Students may be able to pick up classes and some short-term courses certainly and then also around academic innovation is also our expansion of online and I don’t mean just online courses. I mean developing complete online programs so individuals can take those online programs and not just a collection of online courses. That’s another big thing that we’re working on next year,” Lonon said.
Lonon said he is excited to be the next chancellor, thanking faculty, staff and students.
“I’m excited with amazing staff, amazing faculty and the focus that we have on serving our students. You guys are why we all do this work and so I’m excited to be doing it and to see what’s ahead.”
