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Maria L. Hesse, President Dr. Hesse serves as President and Chief Executive Officer for Chandler-Gilbert Community College, one of the ten Maricopa Community Colleges in the Phoenix metropolitan area. CGCC is a comprehensive college with university transfer, general education, developmental education, continuing and community education, and workforce development programs. CGCC's three locations serve more than 14,000 credit students and 4,000 non-credit students annually in the growing and vibrant communities of the Southeast Valley including Chandler, Gilbert, and Queen Creek.
President Hesse began her educational career at the Judson School in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she served for seven years as a teacher, dean, and high school principal. She has been with the Maricopa Community Colleges for more than 25 years working for Mesa Community College, South Mountain Community College, the District Support Services Center, and now Chandler-Gilbert Community College. Her early years in the Maricopa Colleges included positions as Director of Student Activities and Services, Coordinator of the Ford Foundation funded Transfer Opportunities Program, and Manager of Faculty Employment for the Maricopa Colleges.
In 1987, she became the first chief student affairs officer for Chandler-Gilbert Community College with responsibility for admissions, records, registration, advisement, financial aid, minority, disabled and re-entry student services, student life and leadership, and other functions. She then served for a decade as a faculty member in the Business and Computer Information Systems division, where she also made leadership contributions as the college accreditation coordinator, co-coordinator of the service learning program, and founding faculty member at the Williams Campus. As chief academic officer for four years, she helped double enrollment, significantly expand workforce development programs, and enhance teaching and learning initiatives in cooperative learning, service learning, learning communities, and instructional technology.
Since becoming college president in 2002, Maria has helped the college significantly expand programs and services to serve greater numbers of students. New facilities have been constructed such as the Performing Arts Center and the Student Center at the Pecos Campus and others are underway such as Ironwood Hall at the Pecos Campus and Engel Hall and an aviation hangar at the Williams Campus. The Sun Lakes Center has doubled in size and continues to serve the special needs of the mature adult communities of the Southeast Valley. New academic programs have begun in nursing, law enforcement, and fire science, while expansion has taken place in teacher education, engineering, humanities, social sciences, wellness, business and computing, and aviation. The college has been recognized with many awards and recognitions such as the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) campus sustainability national leadership award, the U.S. President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, the National Council for Instructional Administrators (NCIA) award for best practice in assessment of student learning, the National Council on Student Development (NCSD) award for best practices in student services, the National Association of Community College Teacher Education Programs (NACTEPP) exceptional colleges award, and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) High Performing Colleges in Active and Collaborative Learning.
Maria holds Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Science degrees from Arizona State University. She has Master and Doctoral degrees in Educational Leadership from Northern Arizona University and is a graduate of the Harvard Institute for Educational Management. She has served as a consultant to other colleges from Florida to California on service learning, learning communities, technology, and accreditation.
President Hesse is actively involved in the community and serves on many boards including East Valley Partnership, East Valley Think Tank, the Chandler Chamber of Commerce, the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, the Alumni Association of Arizona State University, CHW East Valley Hospitals, the Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center, the Chandler and Gilbert economic development advisory boards, and the Chandler Education Foundation.
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